The Eternal Question: Can You Teach An Old Dog To Surf?
Woof Republic is so excited to be participating in the Unleashed by Petco Surf City Surf Dog® competition at Huntington Beach this weekend. From watching videos on YouTube, I marvel at the sheer talent of those pups and watching them shred waves!
For the blog I wanted to use my two guinea pigs my husband and Pixie to determine how these prototypical Pacific Northwest kids would fare doing surf lessons and Pixies level of talent on a surfboard in the water! (Some background about Pixie she loves the water and used to swim in the lake in Seattle multiple times a week. When we moved to LA I learned two things:
1) What LA calls fresh water is not fresh water and is always a reservoir. If you want true fresh water you need to drive over 4 hours. I have a very funny story about an experience at Big Bear I'll share on the blog 2) If Pixie wanted to swim she would have to do so in the ocean. She taught herself to wave jump it's pretty epic and she's very comfortable in the ocean and even fetches in the ocean.)
To teach these two PNW kids to surf I enlisted the help of Jill Nakano who runs Good Kharma Surf. She is incredible and teaches both humans and canines. Jill has taught her own pups how to surf and she has participated in many professional Surf Dog competitions. Kihei is her rescue Chihuahua mix who is extremely talented and they've traveled around and they were even featured on Good Morning America! Jill and Kihei are the PROS!!
Upon starting the dog surf lesson, Jill wanted to gauge Pixie's comfort on the board on land. It was pretty cute because Pixie loved it and chilled on the surfboard while she watched Dad practice pop ups. I had to torture her a little and buy her the CUTEST life jacket ever at Petsmart link here. If Pixie's going to wear a lifejacket it will either be adorable or make me laugh, her life jacket accomplished both objectives :)
Interestingly Pixie was a natural at surfing, she was not scared of the board and hopped on and was quite zen about it. (MUCH TO MY SURPRISE) I think she was jealous of my husband and wanted to get in on the action.
Jill said that she had not seen a lot of dogs so comfortable with such an unfamiliar concept and was shocked that at 10 that she was that good with it. The only caveat came because Pixie loves to drink salt water (doesn't understand the correlation that it always makes her incredibly sick). Outside of the pictures seen there was a LOT of puking and other stuff that wasn't so awesome. According to Jill, " Pixie has potential for surfing more seriously but needs to get her salt water consumption under control" haha :)
We got to watch Kihei and Jill the surf at the Unleashed by Petco Surf City Surf Dog® competition to identify Top Surf Dog®! Take a look at how talented Kihei is here
For more information about Dog or Human surf lessons check out Jill she is incredible!!! Inquire with Jill for pricing and to schedule lessons!