[stomachmonkey]

You are now screwed.

One day I'm driving home from the office and I take a back way through the neighboring beach town. I see a guy walking a dog that looks EXACTLY like my Newfie Mastiff cross Dakota.

I pull over and it turns out to be one of our QA guys and the dog, Nikita, is one of Dakota's litter mates, her sister. We both got our dogs from the same guy at work.

So we agree to get the dogs together at the beach that weekend.

Dakota has never swam, Nikita is like a fish.

Dakota approaches the whole thing rather timidly, going in knee deep, then chest deep, then she floated and freaked out.

She calms down and tries it again, she swims in circles in a shallow part for a couple of minutes and before you know it it's on like Donkey Kong.

Total time from "what's this water thing?' to chasing balls 100 feet off shore was maybe 15 minutes.

The worst part, now we could not keep her out of water.

She used to burst through the bathroom door when we were bathing the kids and try to fit all 150lbs of herself in with them..

My FIL loved it though.

He had an in ground pool that no one really used anymore, except the dog.

We'd pull up to the house and she'd bust out of the back of the car, make a beeline straight for the yard and spend hours doing laps and entertaining my FIL.