Re: Looking for boaters with pets.
Our dogs are a part of our family, and I love<br />boating, so the dogs go boating with us on trips that won't be too much for them.<br /><br />This year both of my older dogs passed away. My Alaskan Malamute, Zola, was 11 when she died in January. My older mixed-breed dog, Alex, was also 11 when he passed away in June after a battle with cancer. We miss them very much. We still have many wonderful memories of our times with them, including memories of boating and hanging out at the water with them.<br /><br />Zola was my BIG water dog, she LOVED water (she took after me that way!)! We live on the Elk River in northern Alabama, about 7 miles upstream from the mouth where the Elk meets the Tennessee River. We have a small dock on the river where we keep my 18-foot runabout boat. If we went down to the water, Zola and Alex went, too. In her younger days, Zola loved to run down the length of the dock and take a big flying leap into the water -- it was very impressive!
When<br />we went out on the boat, both Zola and Alex loved to lay in the bow area of the boat and put their noses up to sniff all the wonderful smells as we cruised around on river. One of my favorite things is to cruise out to big water on the Tennessee and find a nice place to stop, sit and read and swim. Zola was big into swimming, too, and swimming off the boat in deep water was fine with her. I remember<br />one time when she was out swimming for about 20 minutes -- I started thinking she must be getting tired, so we brought her to the stern and hoisted her back into the boat (no small feat with an 80 pound dog also carrying a load of water in all that fur -- I'd make a platform for her by hanging onto the boarding ladder and placing a cushion on my lap (to guard from getting scratched by her back paws -- learned that trick from experience!) where she could get "traction", then I'd raise up<br />to help her kind of jump back into the boat. On that particular occasion, I pretty much made her get back in, it seemed like she'd been out for so long. Well, she had the last laugh on that one -- once in the boat she ran up to the bow and jumped right back in the water!!!
<br /><br />Alex was not as much into swimming, but he really loved cruising around on the boat. He loved laying in the sun, and the bow seats were just perfect for his sunbathing! We got a new dock this year that has steps to a deck above the boat slip that dogs can climb. Alex spent a few happy days with us up there laying in the sun before his passing in mid-June.<br /><br />We have two younger mixed-breed puppies now who have gone on a few boat trips with us this year but we haven't had a chance to see if they'regoing to be full-fledged, enthusiastic boaters yet. We hope so, though!<br /><br />Gordon, one of the pups (he's about 10 months old now) loves to ride in vehicles and seemed to really enjoy the trips we've taken so far on the boat. Ziggy, our newest family member (he's about 7 month old and a mixed breed, too) is a little more ambivalent about vehicle rides -- we are hoping as he gets older his enthusiasm will build!<br /><br />fone_man, my Zola was a beer-hound, too!<br />We always carry water for the dogs when we take them along, but however much I tried to convince her not to, Zola would always drink river water when we were there. She never quite got the concept of salt water -- the times I took her to beaches on the gulf coast, she'd try to drink while she was in the water, too, and boy did she make awful faces when she got a good taste of that!
<br /><br />This brought back a lot of way cool memories of times with my older dogs. Hopefully we'll make many more in the future with our more recently adopted family members!
<br /><br />-anne
