Summer Fun

[Viking Lady]

A conversation I had with another BPO'er led me to a thought I had last spring. I have a friend who lives in
Clearwater,Florida who has a boat and a Jack Russell. She stopped taking him out on her boat, which he loves, because she was spending all her time scooping him out of the water. He just loved jumping in the ocean.

Are any of you boaters and do you take your dogs out with you?

[NewfFan]

My family use to take our Papillion and Sheltie on the boat with us, out on the lake. We don't go as much as we use to, and both dogs are seniors now.

Actually, my family is kinda crazy. We use to load up the 2 dogs and our Cockatiel and head to our cabin. My dad would put the bird outside in a tree, take the dogs out on the boat and that's how we would hang out. One day, the bird's wings needed to be clipped but dad was going to be a dare devil and put him outside anyway, Sonny, the bird, took off out of the tree, flew out over the lake, swooped back, and landed in another tree, much higher up. Dad tried to catch him in a net, Sonny flew his path again, and ended up hitting a power box and crashed, poor little guy was fine, but his trips to the lake have since ceased. He's still alive...

The Pap tried to jump out of the boat when she was about 5 months old, Dad caught her over the side of the it, I was driving, she never tried it again and loved the boat from then on...she did have her life jacket on, however.

[jesday]

When we lived on a lake  we had a really fun sport boat. Fast enough for water skiing and tubing yet had an open bow and lots of seating for just cruising. Chili (chihuahua) always went with us. His favorite thing to do was stand in the bow twitching his nose back and forth like a radar. The lake had several little bays and one in particular always had someone Bar-B-Qing. That was his favorite because of all the delicious smells wafting his way. We called it Chili Bay.

Our Lab-Newf mix at the time was deathly afraid of the water. We took him in the boat once and he spent the whole time splay-legged on the boat floor. We could never get him in again. It was always so sad that a water dog was afraid of the water. The family would spend the day on our dock, swimming, diving, hangn' out. He had to be with the family, but being a black dog sucked up all the heat and sun. It would take two of us to push him off the dock to cool him down. He swam right to shore and whimpered the rest of the time. Wanting to join, but not coming back on the dock.

We'd repeat the whole thing the next day. On the dock - near heat stroke - dunked in the water (Where we put him in was not deeper than his head) get out, whimper. His name was Bud, but the kids called him Bud Lite.

[Viking Lady]

When I was 13 we lived in Plattsburg, NY...right on Lake Champlain. We went out on our cabin cruiser one Sunday and took our new collie puppy with us cuz we knew we could put him in the cabin if we needed to. While cruising out to our little Spoon Bay to picnic the wiring under the steering caught on fire. My dad pulled out the fire extinguisher to put it out and it just spat out a few bubbles of nothing. He had just told us to get ready to swim to the island (we weren't that far away) and I got hysterical because we were going to have to put Duffy in the water to swim too. Dad smothered the fire but of course we were stranded. Then, coming closer was a HUGE yacht from Canada that towed us in to the marina. I was sooooo embarassed. There was a guy about my age on the big boat. Plus their boat made ours look like a dingy.