SEEING TWO LARGE DOGS KAYAKING DOWN THE MAROOCHY RIVER IS SOMETHING TO BEHOLD, BUT AT GEMLIFE MAROOCHY QUAYS, IT’S A REGULAR OCCURRENCE FOR RESIDENTS AS WHISKEY, COGNAC AND THEIR OWNERS MEGAN RASHLEIGH AND BOB DENSLEY HIT THE WATER.
Sisters Whiskey and Cognac travel everywhere with Bob and Megan and participate in some interesting activities. The groodles live up to their reputation of the Labrador cross golden retriever breed, and at four and five, lust for a daily adventure.
“We’ve been here for 14 months, and the girls love it. We take them walking on the boardwalk and exercise daily, but paddleboarding and kayaking are their favourites,” Bob says. “In Belmont, we owned a 25-foot Roberts yacht and all four of us were avid sailors, so that’s where they got their sea legs, but we’ve always had them in ‘water woofers’ in case they fell in.”
“They’ve always worn life jackets in case we needed to turn the sailboat around on Lake Macquarie.
While Cognac is a confident swimmer, Whiskey’s bottom is on the bigger side and she sinks a bit,” laughs Megan. “She panics without one.”
“It was a natural progression for the girls to go from sailing to stand-up paddleboarding and kayaking. As long as they’re together, they’ll try anything, although they usually end up travelling with Bob.”
The couple say they have been extremely lucky with their pups who are from the same mother but different litters.
“We got Cognac because Whiskey was such a wonderful dog,” Megan says. “We knew the moment Cognac arrived that we made the right choice because Whiskey not only became Cognac’s big sister, but also mothered her and made everything easy.
“She toilet trained her, saved us all the ‘baby bites’; taking them herself, and she taught her to chew big pebbles to help blunt her baby teeth. Everything we taught Whiskey she taught Cognac. She was amazing.”
The dogs love their new home at GemLife, especially their backyard.
“We were lucky as we got one of the larger yards that backs onto the pickleball courts, giving us an extra 2.8 metres – perfect for our groodles,”
Bob says. “They also love to run in the off-leash area, and everyone knows them here. It’s so much better having two dogs. They even take turns guarding. While one sleeps, the other guards and then they swap.”
“They’re really smart dogs although I think they would probably show the burglar where to find our most expensive possessions and lick them to death,” Megan laughs.
Bob and Megan say their intelligence is uncanny.
“They’re too intelligent because you treat them like simple dogs at times and they just look at you like, ‘we aren’t stupid, dad’,” Bob says.
“Or you call them and most of the time they come straight away but if a sniff is worth it, they look at you like, ‘not finished yet’, the little rascals,” Megan says.
“They love to play hide and seek,” Bob says. “We let them out when there’s long grass and trees, and sometimes they hide and stare at each other in a Mexican stand-off waiting for whoever flinches first, it’s hilarious.”
Bob and Megan also report some very clever tactics.
“They’re very cheeky. On a recent trip, we left the door open between our bedroom and the front cabin of our motorhome and Whiskey quietly crept out of her dog bed, onto the floor and into our bed,” laughs Bob. “She lay down with her bum facing us so she could ignore us. Her way of saying, ‘you can’t see me’.”
“They’re fussy too. They love chicken, smoked trout and pate, so they have a fancy palate,” Megan says. “We were at my sister’s recently and she had a food platter out that I left on the coffee table. When we returned, the goats cheese, pate and salami was gone, but they left the spicy salami. They’re smart enough to avoid chilli.”
“They have the poodle stomach so if they’re not hungry, they just won’t eat but will always hoover up their favourite food,” laughs Bob.