Theo At The Beach

If you haven't yet checked out my newest flickr pictures, there's a ton of Theo (and some other Corgis from my meet-up group) at the dog beach this last weekend. We had such a blast! Even Husband had fun, and he avoids having fun at all cost. He hates the beach (it's the sand of course), but he still had undeniable fun! When were leaving and walking back to our car I turned to him and said "that was fun!" waiting for the usual apathetic/grumpy response. But he surprised me by enthusiastically responding that it was fun. No one sounded more surprised than him.

Let me start off by saying that my comments on the pictures below will be below the pictures themselves. When I read other people's blogs I notice some people right above, some below, and some do both in one post! I always find it confusing, and I'm a big enough dork to actually tell you upfront. So there. Now we'll get on with it...


I was pretty nervous about how Theo would do at the beach. The meet-ups lately have stressed him out a little because there are just so many Corgis! Plus, Theo isn't a big fan of water, so I made sure not to get my hopes up. I figured at the worst we would watch a bunch of Corgis play in the water while we sat and watched.

It was pretty tentative starting off. As you can see, Theo was afraid of the waves at first. He would run out when the waves were out, and then run back to us when the wave came in. It was so adorable!

Thankfully Theo gave us a pleasant surprise: he was playful! He chased Corgis, he barked, he frolicked. And after he was comfortable with all of that, he played in the water! I've never seen him so happy. He was also very excited to discover that he could eat water, salt, and dirt all in one gulp! I was not so excited about that, but I figured it wouldn't kill him (I had fresh water standing by for when he was thirsty from drinking salt water).

He made me proud by always sticking close to us. Even when he wandered off to play, he always gave me his attention when I called his name. If you can't pick my Theo out of the gaggle of Corgis in the picture, he's the one looking right at me like a good doggy.

Theo would only go up to a few inches of water. Eventually I wanted to see how he liked swimming, so I tricked him a little. I waded out into the water and called him to me. He was doubtful, but he really wanted to be where I was, so he waded out too. As you can see from the picture, he got a bit google-eyed just going chest deep.

Then a wave came in and he was swept away! Hehe, ok, not really. He was just forced to swim a bit to get back to shore (it was only like 6 feet away). The picture above is literally his very first moment swimming. He sank a bit at first, but he figured out how to doggy paddle in mere seconds. I guess I'm a sink or swim kind of a mom.

Theo made a beeline right back to shore. As adorable as he looked swimming, he was in a panic the whole time. I felt so guilty! I'm a terrible person, I know, but I think it was a good experience for him. I think next time I'll just carry him to deep water and support his belly a bit while he gets used to it. I didn't think of it at the time.

When he got to shore Theo shot me the dirtiest look he's ever given me and ran straight to Husband for safety. He ignored me and wouldn't go near the water for a couple minutes afterwards. But like most kids when they're pouting, he got over it quickly and before long he was back to normal. Though Husband told me later than when he walked out there with him, Theo kept growling at the waves. Hehe. You tell 'em Theo!

Pulling out the tennis ball for some fetch definitely helped. Usually Theo is too distracted to play fetch when we're out with other dogs, but this time he was able to focus. And boy was he focused! We purposefully threw it out into the water to see how he would react with the waves. He was too obsessed with the game to pay any attention to the waves (he gets like that with fetch when we play at home). It was so funny watching him try to soccer kick the ball back across the sand. Hehe. It didn't work out very well for him.

We were all thoroughly pooped afterwards, and proceeded to do nothing the rest of the day except rest (and give Theo a bath, which was anything but restful...). We'll definitely have to make more trips to the beach this summer! Since the temperature is sweltering during the day, the beach is pretty much the only place we can take him that qualifies as "out and about". Is it Fall yet?