Surf Advisory: Dogs in the Water

By Megan Grant

I live in Pacifica, a small coastal town just south of San Francisco. Most people who don’t live in the Bay Area have never heard of it, and that’s usually how we like it.

A couple weeks ago was the World Dog Surfing Championships. You read that correctly. DOG surfing. It felt like half the town showed up for it. People come from all over to watch this thing, not just Pacifica, and the crowd at Linda Mar Beach showed it. 

Watching the dogs, the crowd, the whole scene, made me realize something. We live at the beach and hadn’t actually been all year.

Part of it is the weather. Pacifica isn’t known for beach days. If anything, our warmest weather shows up in the fall, not summer. But that’s just part of the reason. We just don’t make the time.

I drive past whales on my way to drop my son off at school. Whales. On a Tuesday. On the way to school drop-off, like it’s nothing. And most days, it is nothing to me. I’m thinking about backpacks and whether we’re going to be late, not the fact that there’s a whale in the ocean forty feet away.

Seeing everyone enjoy our town reminded me how lucky I am. Not everyone gets an ocean view on their morning commute. Not everyone gets a world championship dog surfing competition to bring the whole town out on a Saturday, rough surf and all. I get to live here, in this ridiculous, beautiful little town, and most days I don’t even notice.

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