For the labor-day weekend, we drove for a couple of hours to this beautiful lake in NH. There, we met up with 4 friends and rented 3 canoes. We loaded all our stuff and paddled away for about an hour to a peninsula on the lake where we were to camp.

Kaiju was very nervous on the canoe and tried to lean out and possibly go into the water several times at the beginning. Since he had been familiarized with water at Flowdog for the past month, he may have figured that it would be better to be in the water than in this strange thing called canoe. Thankfully, the life vest had a handle on the back which we pulled back to keep him in place. He eventually settled down to a very strange position. You can see it in the previous post. He kept his one front leg dangling out and dragging in water. Sometimes, he would stick his nose in the water.

There was one scary incident. About half way to the destination, Kaiju started screaming his head off. I turned around from the front of canoe to see what was going on. In the back, in Paul’s arms, the pup was squirming like crazy, screaming, and showing his teeth. Apparently, Kaiju’s paw got stuck in between the folded leg of a camping chair, which was in a sack and laying on the canoe floor. Paul later told me how frightening it was. Kaiju’s leg is not 100% yet, and he could have twisted it wrong and re-injured it. Paul somehow slowly pulled the pup’s paw out of what almost resembled a bear trap, while Kaiju’s Shiba screams echoed all over the peaceful lake.

As expected, Kaiju was totally anti-social at the camp site. He stayed away from the chairs and the campfire. His red beacon glowed in the darkness next to our tent for most of the night. His nerves were too frayed to eat anything other than high-level treats, all weekend. We tried hard to make him eat, but he would nudge and topple the food bowl with his nose, then hide all the kibbles under the pine needles on the ground.

Although he was totally unsure about the tent and other people and all that, he LOVED the trails, and the beach. He stepped into the water when we told him to come, after much hesitation, and he even swam a bit (not voluntarily).

It took him about a week to get back the normal appetite and meal schedule after the trip. He was definitely stressed out overall, but he did look very excited and happy here and there during the trip. We are hoping he will loosen up a bit next time and actually eat some food. We are considering going camping just by ourselves to see how he does. For that, we need one more warmer weekend…