Hi, Izzie here. I was looking through photos with my mom human recently and realized I’ve been on SO many vacations, mostly to the beach, that surely I’m an expert on beach vacations by now. If you’ve never been on a vacation to the beach with your humans, here are a few of the basics you need to know. I don’t expect you to get it perfect your first time out (we can’t all be Izzie, afterall), so plan on a few vacations to get the hang of things.
This is me on my first ever trip to the beach. My mom human had a hurt foot, so as she propped up her foot, I got to sit on her lap. Like a boss. I carefully watched what all the other dogs were doing, then I eventually went and explored “my beach.” A few lessons here: 1) puddles at the beach taste icky, 2) seaweed bad, 3) driftwood sticks good.
Besides dogs there are weird birds at the beach called seagulls. At first they scared me, but then I realized that their sole purpose in life is to hang out trying to get food all day. Mad respect. They drop this little white/light green stuff – DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT, eat that stuff.
Back in the hotel room, make sure you look happy, like freakishly deliriously happy, 100% of the time. In the future this will be recalled by your humans and they will say things like “we HAVE to take Izzie on vacation because it makes her so happy.” Heh. You got ’em where you want ’em after that.
However, it IS ok to look sad when it’s time to leave. “Awww look, Izzie doesn’t want to leave” they’ll say. This may speed up the time between leaving and another beach vacation. Another valuable lesson in this picture is bring a friend. Octopus here always goes to the beach with me. His squeaker is still in tact for now, so we have to have elephant toy without a squeaker for night time to be quiet for the other hotel guests.
Now this picture is very important. On vacation there is a thing called “room service.” Dude, a person can bring things like bacon right to your room! I refer to that person as “bacon man” and I loves him. Also, because your humans are on vacation, they are a bit laid back with the rules. Work this. Place yourself conveniently located next to the food when it arrives. Make a face that is combination cute and semi-starving and before you know it they are handing you food off their plates! Score! Now only if we could make this happen at home…
Another important opportunity for food is at the local coffee shops. If your humans like to stroll around the little shops, stopping for coffee might include a cookie. Even if your humans don’t get a people cookie to share with you (like if they are selfish bastards), many of the little shops sell dog cookies or have a treat bowl on the counter. This seems totally appropriate and everywhere should do this. By the way, don’t I look pretty fetching in this jacket? My mom human got it for me before this last vacation in January. A styling jacket means more random humans walking by will oooh and ahhh over you and say you are cute, as they should.
Sometimes your humans will just want to relax. Make sure you’ve gotten your petting allotment in, and then chill by yourself and let them do things like read a book in peace for a bit. If you are too needy with the attention, it can be a negative. Sometimes you have to leave the humans alone to do their stupid stuff that does not involve you.
Hope these tips for taking a beach vacation were somewhat helpful. All these pics were taken in Cannon Beach, Oregon. I highly recommend it there as the whole town is super dog friendly.
