The Great Port Townsend Dog Wapping

I was not actually a witness to the wapping of Port Townsend’s canine population. I had been to Seattle that day, trying to convince translators that right to left languages are a breed apart and really do need other software. This trip was made possible by asking in Sheri-the-wonder-sitter, to look after my tiny Rose. I only heard about the wapping the next day.
Actually, there was a hint of something having done amiss in Shar’s report, that night: “Rozz got loose and ran down to the waterfront; we looked for her all over and only found her after the sun set. She was swimming in the bay with all the dogs.”
“She did?!? She was?!?”
“Yes – oh, not Rose! it was Rozz, my dog,” she explained.
Whew.
The next morning, after giving the toddlerette her share of guilt-reducing mama’s-been-away gifts, I inquired after the main figure of her exciting day. “Did you have fun looking for Rozz, sweetie?”
“Oh, yes, Mama! She was wapping!” exclaimed my little flower, baby-blues agog with delight.
Our household is far more multi-lingual than I am, so I went over to dad’s study, to ask if Dutch dogs wap, and how they do so.

“No, I can’t say that they do,” said the man I’d married. “They waf, sort of, or vuhff, you’d call it.”
Back to the kid, to inquire. “Rosie-pie, can you tell me what you meant, when you said that Rozz was wapping?”
Heaven hath no angel sweeter than my round-faced little one. She looked up from her coloring project with an incredulous look. Mama was being dense again, it seemed. “Rozz was wapping!” she insisted.
“But,” I persisted, “what exactly was she doing?”
She picked up a purple color.
“No, really, sweetie; did she wap with her mouth?”
“No, Mama.”
“Ok, did she wap with her paws?”
“She was wapping with the other dogs, mama,” she said, with a somewhat condescending tone. It had taken me a while to figure out that the schhhhadyou was just a shadow in Dutch, so she already knew I was a bit slow.
“Did the dogs wap together, honey?”
“They was wapping, mama!”
“Did they wap in the water?” I saw the look in her eyes and dropped the notion. Wapping was a land-based activity. “Do they wap with their leashes around a tree?” Nope. No leashes. Which was how Rozz got away from Sheri and set out on the wap path in the first place.
I tried another tack. “Rose-toes, can you tell me where she was wapping? Was she wapping on the beach?”
There’s a sort of desperation that creeps into a mother’s voice, when she’s doing her best to use a word that she hasn’t quite fathomed nonchalantly, as if it were hers to begin with. Rose picked up on it right away. “Mama, Rozz was wapping, by the water, with the dogs,” she intoned. Her emphases were as clear as her patience. Mama may be a bit slow, but has been known to be useful. “She had a red scarf.”

Rozz is a black mostly-Labrador, not given to fashion accessories.
I tried to act out a good doggie wap. “Did she wap like this?” I asked, on all fours. Not. “Or like this?” I rolled over and imitated a dog-on-rug backscratching session. No, not that either. “Can you show me how she wapped?”
But enough had been, apparently, enough. Rose has been careful not to use complicated words around me, although she did tell her dad that “Rozz and the other dogs were really wapping.” But she had to make sure I wasn’t around to witness this confidence. He didn’t think it was crucial. “Next time she sees a dog wap, she’ll show us; she’s considerate, she likes teaching us,” he reassured me.
I hope so. Next time, I want to see it, too. Because I couldn’t help asking her, the other day, whether all the dogs wapped or only Rozz, and if I’m to believe my informant, they were all wapping, in plain view of Water Street traffic.
And wouldn’t you know it? They picked a day I was out of town to do it, too.