The Dog Beach

Yesterday Beth and I wanted to go to the beach to kick off the new year. There are only a couple places in the world that bless us with sunny days on the beach in January and Southern California is one of them (I love you, so cal!) Instead of going just down the street I wanted to bring Montana so we went to the Huntington Dog Beach, which is the closest dog beach around.

My born and raised Northern Cali dog has been to the beach one time in his life and it was freezing, this time would be a great adventure for him.

As soon as we arrived, so did manic montana. He almost killed me getting down to the beach, so I let go of the leash. He went running as fast as he could to the water. I went chasing after him but it was too late, he was in the water chomping at the waves as they crashed and formed white water. I grabbed on to the leash and tried to prevent him from eating the water, but it was no use, he just dragged me into the ocean and I quickly remembered how massive he was.

Finally I got the pooch to head up to the nice blanket Beth had laid out for us. My thought was to have him drink fresh water so he wouldn't be tempted to engulf the salt water, but he wanted no part of it. Instead he did his business right in front of our blanket and took off running to the water again...Beth, was mortified. "He just pooped right here." I started cleaning it up, and asked Beth to watch him while I went and disposed of the evidence. She relunctantly agreed.

As I hiked up to the trash I realized I also needed to visit the restroom. When I walked back I could see Beth timidly watching Montana and aggressively trying to stay clean...it was a hilarious sight and I couldn't stop laughing the whole walk back. Beth finally gave in and touched a dirty stick to give to Montana, Montana took it with pride, shook his head and wacked a little girl building a sand castle in the back with the giant stick. Beth scrambled to get the stick from Montana and was searching for me at the same time. When she finally spotted me she told Montana to go get me. He came running full speed, rubbed his face on my beach dress, walked over to our blanket and yacked sea water all over the sand.

I'm one of those crazy dog owners that talk to my dog as if he is a person..."see, I knew you were going to get sick, now drink some fresh water" But instead he looked at me as if to say..."are you crazy, I just made room for more!" And he was off again. This time I followed him and told him NO everytime he tried to drink the water, it worked until he decided to keep a far distance from me so he couldn't hear me say "NO."

I gave up, and took him back to the blanket where he yacked again and ran back to the water. "I forfeit" I told Beth, "Where are those cookies?"

"You can't take those out or the dogs will come" She obviously spoke from experience.
Beth's entire body was covered with two towels and a sweatshirt, I could tell my germ phobe friend was completely uncomfortable with the fact that I had brought her here. To confirm this thought, Beth pipes in, "I can't believe they poop in the sand." All I could do was laugh and then she called me a Jerk.

We got about 20 minutes of peace before Montana came running up to say hi. His mouth was foaming and he had spit bubbles at the corners. This means he needs to yack, sure enough, there he went. Beth yelled, "Salt Water" at the passerbys that stared in disgust.

This time Montana stuck around and shortly after it was coming out both ends. More people stared and I quickly took it as our cue to leave.

"Come on Beth we gotta go, before this gets worse"
"Yeah no kidding"
We gathered our things and took Montana to the car, he drank a whole bowl of fresh water and moaned the whole way home.

The rest of the night I took care of my sick pup and wondered if he learned his lesson...probably not.