Some dogs don’t enjoy swimming at the beach. They will probably love the beach anyway, just because they get to play with all of the other dogs there, but try to convince them to go any deeper than ankle-height in the water and they just won’t do it! I see some dogs barreling themselves into the water at the beach, straight into the waves – and then I look at Keeda, who stands there and watches them with a sad, apprehensive look and her ears folded back.

Last weekend Keeda and I went to the river. The amount of salt in the water was greatly reduced from that of the beach and there were barely any waves at all. Keeda gladly swam after sticks, swam around with other dogs, and just had a lot of fun splashing around. She didn’t seem to have any of that apprehension that she did at the beach. I contribute this to two potential factors:

• No waves
• Less salt

At the beach, Keeda usually manages to swallow some water somehow and gets a salty string of drool running from her mouth. She hates it. At the river, though the water still had a bit of salt in it, it didn’t bother her much at all.

The dogs at the river also didn’t have waves higher than them sweeping toward them – Keeda was more than happy to swim a reasonable distance away from the shore.

So – if your dog doesn’t like swimming at the beach, consider taking it to a river or lake instead.