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rules of addition and was going to teach him subtraction next. Finally she fessed up that she leaned forward a little to cue Yasha that the command to speak—“Yasha, what’s . . .”—was coming. When she wanted him to stop barking, she leaned back and said, “Good dog!” Yasha didn’t really know how to add. He simply read Robin’s body language and barked until she cued him to stop. His skill at arithmetic always entertained the girls’ friends, but it wasn’t on my shortlist to teach my new puppy.
    I grumbled a bit about Robin and Debbie’s not having taught Yasha useful things such as the American Kennel Club (AKC) obedience exercises. I’d started him on the novice exercises before going to Eastern Europe. But the girls’ mischievousness showed that Yasha had a flair for learning new behaviors. That was intriguing.
    Genetically, as a Border collie, Yasha was an incredibly quick learner. By his eighth month of life, he had learned all the novice and open class obedience exercises of the American Kennel Club and was working on the utility exercises.
    As a German shepherd, Yasha was fearless. One day when he was a little over a year old, I went with members of Wofford College’s Adventure Club to canoe a few stretches of rapids on the Green River, only about an hour’s drive from the Wofford campus. I had become a keen paddler since we moved to South Carolina, and introduced many students to white-water canoeing and kayaking through the Adventure Club. Running class three, four, and five rapids on rivers in the Southeast was a passion of mine, and kayaking the Grand Canyon one year was a thrilling high point.
    On this beautiful spring day, Sally and Debbie came along to run shuttle for us, dropping us off at the put-in point upstream and meeting us at the take-out point downstream. Yasha was along as well, full of excitement. He was getting near his full size, but still very much a puppy in temperament. It was not his first trip to the river, but until now he’d mainly only splashed in shallow pools. What swimming he had experienced was in flat, calm water, and although he seemed to love getting wet, he was a weak swimmer at best. So we weren’t expecting him to work on his dog paddle that day.
    Along a stretch of the river called Big Corky, the rapids drop fifteen feet over a distance of about a hundred yards, and are rated class three—“Intermediate.” Sally and Debbie walked Yasha down to the bank to watch us navigate that section. I was three-fourths of the way through the rapids when Yasha leaped excitedly into the water. He had never seen me paddle through white water before and he was eager to join me.
    As soon as the current caught him he knew he was somewhere he didn’t want to be, and he paddled with all his might, flailing furiously, trying to get back toward Sally and Debbie. Still a growing puppy, Yasha didn’t have the strength to get across the current. A whirling eddy sucked him under. He popped back up, struggling to make headway, clawing at the water.
    Coming through the last bit of rapids, I threw my paddle into the center of the canoe, grabbed the gunwales, and vaulted out into the water. I gripped the bow of the canoe with my left hand and with my right hand reached out for Yasha, who was just getting sucked down again. I caught the scruff of his neck, hooked my fingers in his collar, and lifted his head above the water. And then I kicked furiously with all my might, levering down on the bow of the canoe with my left hand to buoy Yasha and me up. A few more kicks and we were in quiet water where I could stand up and Deb waded in to lend a hand.
    Yasha shook himself furiously. He was panting hard, but his breathing soon evened out and his dominant emotion seemed to be intense excitement. A few minutes later he was splashing around in the shallows, diving for rocks. From that time on, whenever Yasha saw me