> I went out to the farm on Monday for grilled hamburgers and homemade icecream. I keep my canoe out there so I decided to paddle around the pond ("the lake")for a while. It was too hot to fish much, but I had a yard-sale flyrod I wanted to try out. Naturally, Blackie went with me. She's a medium-sized mixed-breed, black(what else?)dog about ten years old. She doesn't have a clue that I'm not a dog person. She loves everybody.
> Blackie doesn't care for canoeing, she prefers to dog paddle alongside. So here I go gliding across the water with her pacing me. If I slow down, she circles me. If I stop, she takes off on her own, sometimes sloshing in the shallows and even climbing out on the bank. The pond is about 3.5 acres and shaped like a pork chop. We covered most of it, and Blackie covered some of it twice. The $2 flyrod worked great, but who can catch fish with a dog swimming around?
> Howard

I met someone once whose dog came with him when he went snorkelling for crayfish (lobster). The dog would swim around on the surface while the owner was down below, and every time the guy caught a cray, he'd go up and give it to the dog. The dog would take the cray back to the beach and guard it, then swim back out to pick up the next one. This is absolutely true, and the dog wasn't specially trained or anything. He just started doing it one day.

Brunnen-"you hear some interesting things, working for a dive magazine"G