I spent the weekend in a three bedroom beach house with fifteen people and three dogs.

It rained the entire time but we didn't let that get us down. We had ample amounts of booze on hand, a foosball table at our disposal and a copy of Arnold Schwarzenegger's immortal 1985 classic, Commando.

If you've never seen Commando, get thee to a video store. It's easily the best of Arnold's cheeseball '80s films. No, not Total Recall, Predator or anything of that caliber. I'm taking about movies like Conan the Destroyer, Raw Deal and that movie he costarred in with the fatter, unfunnier member of the Belushi brothers. Commando is no less than 50 million times better than all of those movies combined. Do they have any combination of the following? Alyssa Milano, an out-of-place calypso soundtrack, a unintentionally fey henchman or any scenes where Arnold takes out two guys with flung buzzsaws and/or his kidnap victim turned co-conspirator busts him out of police custody by firing a rocket launcher at the vehicle he's sitting in?

Nope.

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about dachshunds and what happens when you take them to the beach on rainy, cold afternoons. On Saturday, as storm clouds engulfed the northern Oregon coast and the temperature dived into the mid-50s and while everyone else was hiding out at the Moe's in Cannon Beach, someone came up with a great idea: let's go swimming. In the ocean.

So we hit the sand with the dogs in tow. Three of us covered ourselves in Columbia Sportswear, two others went in swim trunks. Between us: no less than five undergraduate degrees, a doctorate, a law degree and absolutely no wetsuits. With all of that higher education lodged in our skulls, someone should have had the common sense to talk the participants out of an activity practically guaranteed to result in hypothermia. Unfortunately, Common Sense isn't a major offered at any university that springs to mind.

They lasted 45 minutes out there among the waves and seaweed. Two of the dogs concerned themselves with the chasing of sticks and seagulls, barely noticing the weather. Lil' Egon wasn't so lucky. This was his first trip to a coastline and, with good reason, the year-old Daschund hated it.

After running away from the waterline, he did what he could to avoid the sand entirely, at times standing on three legs. Back in the car, he gave us all a look of pure disdain and fury. That morning, he had woken up everyone at a too-early hour by running around in circles while barking and jumping on the heads of people camped out on the floor.

An example of precog-puppy revenge? Probably. Egon would also make a later attempt to steal my sandwich back at the house. He failed but continued to throw down his Ultimate Stare O' Guilt (see below) anytime any humans made the mistake of making eye contact with him throughout the rest of the weekend.

I'm glad to report that we didn't spend the rest of the afternoon at any area hospitals. A blazing hot shower off-set any hypothermia and they were back out there again on Sunday. Regardless of the weather, sneaker waves, logs, jellyfish, Jaws etc., some people just can't resist the siren call of wave jumping.

Labels: beach, dogs