Bark If You Love Me

What better way to share Memorial Weekend than taking my beloved Golden to see the ocean for the first time. The Cape was calling and Jen invited us to her 3-floor beach house with a sprawling deck to bask in the sun and unlimited views of the Atlantic.

Rocco prepped for the trip - a few tennis balls, a bag of chow, his bedding and doggie shampoo. We arrived shortly after 1am Friday to avoid congestion. A few minutes later we're falling asleep to the sweet sounds of crashing waves and the whistle of windswept skies.

Despite the frigid temps Rocco plunged headfirst into the salty sea water like a fish out of water. Discombobulated at first he lapped up the waves with unbridled enthusiasm and canine curiosity. This wasn't a fresh water river, lake, pond or stream this was a salty ocean and he surveyed his roost with a new found respect and admiration. Then he discovered the rocks. Thousands of rocks. Hundreds of thousands of rocks. So many rocks and so little time to bury them all. Yes, bury. He's a digger by nature and became fixated on uprooting rocks and planting them back in the sand. This behavior was most perplexing. No longer interested in the tennis balls he was acting out some deep-seated impulse or instinct that only a dog brain could understand.

I figured that after the tide swept forward he'd abandon his obsession but I was wrong. Three days later and he was still trying to dislodge rocks like a world class excavator. Even other dogs, people and seagulls couldn't distract him from his new purpose. It took a heavy leash and plenty of dog snacks to coax him back to the deck where we took a long needed nap to the smells of coco butter and sounds of 1980's flashbacks on the I-Pod.