kayaking with a dog

We've been trying out all sorts of ways to kayak with Skippy. Skippy is now about 55 lbs and prefers to be up on all fours and moving around in a boat. He jumps in the water for a swim now and then, and whines when I get too far from him. The life jacket helps a lot for picking him up and getting back onto a boat.

Top: the best kayak we've found so far (a sit-on-top plastic Cobra Explorer kayak with a big flat deck). Lower right: a silly thing we tried, but Skippy was able to balance (briefly) when in a small kayak on his own. He wasn't so good with the paddle. Lower left: another method we tried for fun. Skippy was actually able to balance pretty well on the large plastic sea kayak, but it took a lot of effort for me to keep the boat upright. We kayaked like this about 5 minutes and didn't even get wet!