Minn. parents urged to be 'water watchdogs'

A local water safety foundation is urging parents and other adults to become water watchdogs this summer.

The Abbey's Hope Charitable Foundation is distributing tags that can be passed between adults as they hand off responsibility for watching kids at play in water. The idea is to assure someone is always focused on the kids.

"You avoid the situation where everybody is watching the pool but nobody is really watching the pool," said Alan Korn, executive director of the foundation.

"It's a little lanyard that you wear, which has some rules on the back of it," he said. "But one is: When wearing this tag, you agree to watch the children. And in 15- or 20-minute increments, you completely engaged in the safety of what is going on in the water."

The foundation is named after six-year-old Abbey Taylor, who died in 2008 from injuries caused by a wading pool drain.

A visualization of the water watchdog tag from Abbey's Hope Foundation.