[Paddlewise] Dogs in boats

Finally, after 2 years of trying to convince myself to get my kayak out
(it's a long story) some friends called in and forced me into it and the
good part is that it was fantastic to paddle again. Back to regular
Wednesday night paddles now :-)

Some of the recent traffic here has got me to thinking:
I just can't fathom what it would be like to live in a community like where
Marinell lives.

How many people take there dogs paddling with them.

I have spent many pleasurable hours with my rather large (German Shepard
sized + ) no name brand (he was supposed to be a small Border Collie X dog
but kept on growing) sitting in the front cockpit of my double. He just
loves it. He lets me know if he needs to get out, so I just pull into the
shore and he jumps out. I start paddling again and he will run along the
shore until he wants to get back in. He will stop running and stand at the
edge of the water and bark so I just paddle in and in he jumps and off we go
again. I get as many strange looks and laughs as PeterO's large pink dog.

The only problem I have encountered is if there are lots of white bait
swimming on the surface. He likes trying to catch them and can make things
quite unstable.

The only other problem is I just can't get him to hold a paddle  correctly
so he can share the load :-)

All up it is very satisfying thing to take my dog for a paddle and even
after all this time away from the kayak he was getting very excited when he
saw me getting my single ready. He knew something was wrong though because
the double is orange and the single is white. He did look very sad as I
slung the kayak on my shoulder and set of down the road without him. (only
30 meters from the launch site)

cheers
Wilky
>From down under down under where the summer is warm and the days are long.

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