Our four-legged dumpster diver spent his first five years living on the lam in West Virginia. Earl and I were talking, we doubt he had ever seen the beach! I’m not sure how much open water there is in the rolling hills of Appalachia.

I had an inkling Linus would *love* the water. When I’ve been taking him to the dog park at Carl Schurz, he will put both his paws in the large-sized water bowl and splash around like crazy. It’s very cute, although a tad embarrassing because he gets water EVERYWHERE and there is none left for the other dogs (I always grab it and refill it at the fountain).

So last weekend we loaded his crate in the Jeep, procured sustenance in the form of egg salad sandwiches from Lennys, and headed due north to beachtown, CT. Here are the photos:

Someone is all cute in his crate on the way there

What’s this soft white stuff under my paws?

My sister’s dog, Sammy, shows him how it’s done. (Hey, you’re a corgi! Aren’t YOU supposed to be the one herding HIM?!)

This beach stuff is pretty fun!

Where are you going? Don’t leave me here! I’m coming!

The drip-dry method

Swimming’s fun and all, but I’d rather race around on the sand

shake shake shake, shake shake shake, shake your corgi! shake your corgi!

My niece helps towel him off

Back home he gets his first bath! HA HA HA HA HA. We basically just hosed him down, added doggy shampoo and tried to rinse all the sand off. It was hilarious because I mostly didn’t contribute and stood around giggling whenever Linus would shake water all over Earl and my niece. It was super-cute.

At the campsite, Linus with his new “fan club,” two of my nieces. I will add here that he is extremely well behaved around kids and seems to know that they’re special and he has to be extra-gentle around them. He let my niece Bailey literally poke him in the eye several times while she was trying to put a necklace she made on him. It was, unfortunately, way too small (the reason he kept getting poked was because it wasn’t big enough to fit over his head!), but she’s going to make him a new one soon. But I was happily surprised to see how great he was with them. With a new dog, it’s always a little worrisome because when these little kids are petting him, you’re thinking in the back of your head “Oh my, all it would take would be one little chomp….”

My bro in law knows how to grill some awesome meat

snuggled up in the tent for bed. It was COLD that night and also most of us got woken up in the middle of the night by a pack of coyotes yipping which sounded like they were steps outside the tent! But it was such a fun weekend and when we got home, our guy was EXHAUSTED.