Kayaking With Dogs

Take your dogs kayaking. Sounds simple enough, right? Except for when your dogs haven’t been in a kayak before, and two of them are prone to going for a swim.

This was the task before us this weekend. I wanted our first kayak trip of the year to be just the two of us so I could get back into the swing of things. But as fate would have it, we had a family birthday party to get to Saturday afternoon, so there was no way I was leaving the dogs alone for the kayaking AND the party.

Our three dogs are well-travelled. They routinely come fishing with us in the boat. They ice fish with us. They go camping, hiking, and exploring with us. Heck, they even survived a 2-week road trip to Alberta last year.

But kayaking? I had my reservations. To be fair, Molly had been in a kayak once, briefly, last summer. Erza and Molly had also spent a few minutes in a canoe. It was not enough to ease my anxiety-ridden brain, yet I followed Darrell’s lead when he pulled out his favourite line, “It’ll be fine.”

We arrived at a small local lake and immediately had mosquitos buzzing around us. The oppressive heat had finally broken and we were greeted with a perfect summer morning, at the beginning of June.

After getting the kayaks off the truck and set up, the five of us donned life jackets and ventured into the unknown.

Panda rode with me. As my shadow and best bud, there’s no way he would be okay with riding on Darrell’s kayak. My biggest worry with him was that he’d refuse to get his feet wet while climbing into the kayak, which he did greatly resist, and that he’d clumsily fall out while shifting around, which he halfway did.

That drop of his hind end into the water was enough to convince him he didn’t want to leave the dryness of the kayak, and I’ll admit that the rest of our outing was uneventful as far as he and I were concerned.

The girls were a different story.

Darrell had his hands full with Molly and Erza. He put Molly behind his seat and Erza in front. It took some finagling for him to get both of them in there, but I was impressed at how quickly he accomplished it. He paddled for a few short moments, and then the expected happened. Erza jumped out.

Erza doesn’t like being away from either of us, so when she saw me paddling, she decided it was time to go for a swim to catch up. Molly’s never one to pass up time in the water, so she jumped in as well. Somewhere on the GoPro footage there is an obvious eye-roll from me as all this was happening.

Let me state here that life jackets on dogs are the best things, even if your dog is a strong swimmer. The life jackets we bought have a handle on the back, and boy do those come in handy for lifting wayward dogs back into boats.

Laughing like this was the most entertaining thing he’d seen in days, Darrell paddled closer to shore so both he and the dogs could all get some footing to climb back into the kayak. The girls actually seemed to be enjoying the swim.

This rigamarole happened twice before we finally got a few minutes of actual paddling in.

Since the jumping out was likely to happen again, we stayed in shallow water.

I was thanking my lucky stars for having Panda in my kayak. It took him some time to relax and sit, but he was such a good boy and just watched everything with interest. Kayaking with him won’t be a problem.

For a few wonderful minutes we had some fun paddling, with all of us contained in kayaks. It was a quiet day on the lake, with only two other boats out while we were there, and a breeze that helped us cover some water in no time at all.

When Erza and Molly looked like swimming was on their minds again, I decided to head back. It wasn’t long before Erza jumped in and eventually met Panda and I back at the launch.

Would I call the outing a success?

Yes, actually. Neither of the kayaks tipped, neither of us humans had to go for a swim, and all five of us made it back to the truck in one piece. Despite my sighs and eye-rolls, I had an easy outing. Darrell had the chaos twins to deal with, but he laughed the whole time.

We’ll continue to take them out in the kayaks when we can. Repeated exposure has been the key to making them great travel dogs, and I’m sure the same will work with the kayaks. There’s just a bit of work to do.

This did change our plans for our next camping trip, though. We’ll be taking the 12-foot tinny instead of kayaking with the dogs. I think that will make for a more relaxing trip for all of us.