See Spot swim

So, it's summer here at Kapiti and we've had a good month or so of lovely weather. Did it all really start at the end of spring? Soon, the sea will be warm enough to paddle/scream/dunk in and we'll be in that happy state of smelling of sea and salt and hungering for fish and chips.

Nice.

Kyle has always loved the sea, and when we're confident he will stay within arms reach we let him off to paddle and swim. It's always a bit of a heart-in-the-mouth stage ... does he care enough to come back to us? Needless to say he does. But it took a long time to build up that trust factor, with a very strong focus on ensuring he always came back to us when we called him (while on the lead) and sat when we asked.


Funnily enough his version of "sit"on the beach is lying down. He doesn't do that anywhere else.

So when no people or dogs were around, we let him off and he just sprints into the waves, looks at us to see it's okay, and ploughs on through the foam.

Everything was always fine until the day he noticed seagulls don't just walk and fly. Nope. They float. So he just kept swimming out one day to get a couple. Images of sharks, cello's playing in the distance and me screaming "I think we need a bigger dog!" came to mind.

But he came back, I was soaked from swimming after him and my voice was gone and my throat ragged. He just looked at me from the beach and laughed at me. Fun huh dad? FUN.

But Magic doesn't like the sea yet - or maybe it's the waves. He's slowly going closer to patches of calmer water, and we'll keep encouraging him. He shows no interest when Kyle is off the lead. We'll try him in a stream and see what happens.

I know maremma's can love fresh water, and have seen pics and video of them at the sea - but does anyone have any experiences to share?