Dog had impromptu swim with dolphins

If was just another day at the beach for Jackie the labrador-huntaway cross - she kept trying to catch the waves and they kept getting away - when three life-forms of a kind she had never seen before suddenly showed up. There was no hesitation. With all the impetuousness of her 10 months, Jackie was off to join the dolphins swimming just offshore.

"I think she just wanted to know what they were," owner Arriane Christie, of Whangarei, New Zealand, said. She had been at Whangaumu Bay on the Tutukaka Coast, where she often took Jackie, for about an hour when the dolphins dropped by. "I think they were just wanting to play. Jackie was in the shallows and they came right up to her," Christie said.


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"I was a little bit nervous to start with because I thought one whack of their tails and she (Jackie) could be knocked out. The three dolphins swum around the area for about 40 minutes. They were a good size, probably up to two metres long. Jackie was in and out of the water, watching for when the dolphins came closer.

"When she wasn't in the water she was fully focused on them. If I walked in front of her she dodged out of the way so she could see them again," Christie said. "They (the dolphins) were messing with her a little bit, going really slow and then when she caught up they would speed up and then circle around her." By the time the dolphins swum away, Jackie was exhausted. :"She slept the rest of the day and all night," Christie said.