We've had threads about dogs before—e.g., what breed, how to train them, what kind of canoe for them, where do they sleep.
For this thread, just tell a memorable story (or two) about dogs and canoeing. It could be your current dog, a former dog, someone else's dog. The story could be joyful, sad, happy, tragic, funny, silly . . . anything memorable. Pictures always add interest.
I had dogs my whole life until about 10 years ago, but I never took them canoeing with me except for a couple short times with Sasha, our Lhasa Apso, so I don't have any really good dog stories. Here are Sasha and me in 2000 on my tractor:
One time in the early '90's, I was paddling my new Kevlar Swift Winisk a lake in Maine with my wife and Sasha, who had never been in a canoe, never swum, and never had even been in water. Sasha was a yap, yap, yapping little dog, and she began getting all excited and yapping at some nearby ducks. She got so excited that she jumped right over the gunwale into the water. I'm not sure she knew it was water. Well, she reflexively paddled for a few seconds before I quickly grabbed her back into the canoe. But she kept yapping and tried to jump out again, so I had to leash her down.
Never again.
The only other canoeing dog story that sticks in my memory is when someone else had a retriever in a fairly crowded campground on a river. That dog thought it was great fun to retrieve some object from other campers and run all over the place with it in his mouth. The dog's insensitive owners apparently thought that was fun, too, as they laughed while other campers tryed to catch the dog to get their possessions back. That dog stole the second hat I ever owned in my adult life, a Skunk Train engineers cap from Fort Bragg, California, and ran all over with it. I finally got it back all full of saliva and a tooth hole. It wasn't funny to me.
I never brought any of my Golden Retrievers or German Shepards in a canoe because, although I loved them and their companionship, I'm not sure other paddlers would have loved them, especially my protective Shepards. But they all were great tractor dogs, who would accompany me as I worked my 11 acres. Max the Stickaholic was especially talented at tearing willow roots out of the ground when he wasn't chasing deer or killing groundhogs. Here, I said goodbye to him when I moved to Florida in January 2007:
For this thread, just tell a memorable story (or two) about dogs and canoeing. It could be your current dog, a former dog, someone else's dog. The story could be joyful, sad, happy, tragic, funny, silly . . . anything memorable. Pictures always add interest.
I had dogs my whole life until about 10 years ago, but I never took them canoeing with me except for a couple short times with Sasha, our Lhasa Apso, so I don't have any really good dog stories. Here are Sasha and me in 2000 on my tractor:
One time in the early '90's, I was paddling my new Kevlar Swift Winisk a lake in Maine with my wife and Sasha, who had never been in a canoe, never swum, and never had even been in water. Sasha was a yap, yap, yapping little dog, and she began getting all excited and yapping at some nearby ducks. She got so excited that she jumped right over the gunwale into the water. I'm not sure she knew it was water. Well, she reflexively paddled for a few seconds before I quickly grabbed her back into the canoe. But she kept yapping and tried to jump out again, so I had to leash her down.
Never again.
The only other canoeing dog story that sticks in my memory is when someone else had a retriever in a fairly crowded campground on a river. That dog thought it was great fun to retrieve some object from other campers and run all over the place with it in his mouth. The dog's insensitive owners apparently thought that was fun, too, as they laughed while other campers tryed to catch the dog to get their possessions back. That dog stole the second hat I ever owned in my adult life, a Skunk Train engineers cap from Fort Bragg, California, and ran all over with it. I finally got it back all full of saliva and a tooth hole. It wasn't funny to me.
I never brought any of my Golden Retrievers or German Shepards in a canoe because, although I loved them and their companionship, I'm not sure other paddlers would have loved them, especially my protective Shepards. But they all were great tractor dogs, who would accompany me as I worked my 11 acres. Max the Stickaholic was especially talented at tearing willow roots out of the ground when he wasn't chasing deer or killing groundhogs. Here, I said goodbye to him when I moved to Florida in January 2007:
, and hard to catch. Absolutely everything is a game. Just turned 2.
. A few dumpings have occurred, and a lot of stress and anxiety on the part of the paddler. So I want to get her used to the boat before taking her out, and also want to start on a small, shallow lake first. We’re at our camp on a river right now, which might be a sketchy place to start.
