Dogs Love Boats Too

Larry and Maggie enjoying some time on the water.

We loved taking our old Golden Retriever (Mollie) out kayaking with us and she swam alongside our boats. Mollie passed away and we were ‘dogless’ for about 8 months until we saw Maggie’s picture in the local Humane Society’s weekly newspaper ad. My wife and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to at least to check her out. We discovered that we matched very well and she was ours! (More accurately, we were hers!)

Maggie was 3 years old at the time (she’s nearly 6 now) and has been a terrific companion – except she doesn’t much care for swimming! She is fine in the water except that she and paddles directly for the nearest shoreline!

We thought we’d try to get her on the water by taking her out in an inflatable 2 – person kayak and she really liked that. I already acquired a wonderful Sawyer Orca V-Lam (crank shaft) paddle at Canoecopia a couple years ago but that was too short for the inflatable kayak. I picked up a Sawyer Orca V-Lam straight shaft paddle which worked just fine.

The next step was to get Maggie her own boat! We bought a child size sit-on-top and glued down a rubber mat so she would have good footing. She loved it! Even better – I could take her with us in our touring Kayaks. Here are a couple photos of our recent outing on the lake!

LarryJjankowski