We love the occasional off-season beach trip. We typically can’t get to all of our favorite mid-Atlantic beaches that we’ve accumulated over the years in a single summer, so cue an off-season trip to the one we missed the previous season. Off-season beach trips are especially great for dogs, as the beaches are usually quite deserted and distraction free, and dog regulations far more lax if even enforced at all. And let’s be honest, we actually go to the beach more for our dogs at this point than our teenaged children. Our kids used to love Virginia Beach, VA and still do, but now are more like “muh WiFi need to login” whereas the dogs are like “YEEEEEEEEHAAAAW!!!!” In defense of our children, having now two dogs has increased their beach enthusiasm by quite a bit, because it’s pure joy seeing two dogs blast around a beach and having the time of their lives together. You can’t help but bask in their joy and enthusiasm, and be a part of that with them. I’ve said this many times, but dogs are a gift from God to teach us humans what pure love and joy is supposed to be like.

Believe it or not, this was the first time we had both Puffles and Raya in a car at the same time together, so what better way to test it out than a 4 hour road trip? I folded down the split right rear seat of the third row of my Suburban and let Raya’s crate peek through, so that she could stay crated or come out into the back seat if she wanted to. We actually kept her crated the whole way down and she was fine. On the way back up, we gave the dogs the whole rear seat and allowed her out of her crate, and they shared the space together very nicely and didn’t fight even once! We were impressed, to say the least. They’ll both be great road-trippers together.

But enough of the logistics. We kept saying “we’re going to da BEACH!” to Puffles and he knew exactly what we meant. He could smell it as soon as we got there, and pulled hard for us to take him there right away. Raya was like, beach? Huh? What? She learned fast!

Doggy beach photography with Canon EOS R6 and RF 70-200mm f/4L IS lens.

So yeah, could you tell they had fun? :) They were both dead tired after blasting around the beach each day and slept very well at night. Poor Raya could barely even move for a final potty break one night, and had to be carried out. The weather was in the mid-50’s for most of our time there, which is just about perfect for these dogs to be able to blast around without getting overheated, which is actually another great reason for an off-season beach trip for dogs.

MOAR Photos

Fun fact. I took nearly 1,500 photos over the weekend, but only put 27 in the blog. If this wasn’t enough and you really need MOAR photos, click the link below to see an extended cut with triple the number of photos. I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of these two. Enjoy! :)