“Great swimmer.”
So, read the tag on the collar of Tuwanek legend, “Lou Do(i)g,” who passed away in April. He was 14.5-years old.
Co-owner Ione Doig Smith said the tag, and accompanying phone number, came in handy over the years as Lou set off on one adventure after another. It was the dog’s passion for long-distance, open-water swimming that earned Lou his legendary status and Doig Smith said, the family just had to accept he would eventually make his way home -- with the exception of the time Lou launched himself from Roberts Creek, where the family was enjoying a beach day.
“We took him to Roberts Creek and let him off leash and sure enough, he started swimming. And I thought he'd come back, because it's pretty rough, open water and he was gone a good hour so, I was starting to get nervous,” Doig Smith remembers. “Then I got a phone call from a woman in Wilson Creek.”
Turns out the German shorthaired pointer swam along the shoreline until he reached Wilson Creek and ended up on a woman’s property on Tyson Road.
Doig Smith describes Lou us something of an “enigma.” She says, while he was a great family dog, he lived something of a separate life – and she was OK with that.
“He had a personality that was almost like a human. You know, like how people anthropomorphize animals all the time. In this case, he kind of did it to himself,” she said. “He would make friends with humans. He would wander around the neighborhood and, Tuwanek has a lot of tourists, so people who are either coming for the day to use the beach or who are staying at the local hotels or Airbnbs, would leave notes in the guest books about him and about how they befriended this brown and white dog, and how he was so sweet and he would walk people home or go for hikes with people. He had his own life.”
Doig Smith and her husband brought Lou home when he was just three-months old, with hopes he’d make a great companion for their children. They only had one child at the time, but the family eventually expanded. She says Lou took it upon himself to walk the kids to the bus stop at the end of their driveway every morning and wait for them to get on the bus, and then be back in time for them to get dropped off again later in the afternoon.
But one day after Lou accompanied the kids to the bus stop, he didn’t immediately return. She said a little while later, the school bus pulled up again and Lou hopped out. The bus driver told her they spotted Lou walking down the road so gave him a lift home.
Lou’s protectiveness towards the kids didn’t end at the bus stop. Doig Smith said the only time the dog barked was if there was a bear around and in one incident, Lou treed a cougar.
But it was Lou’s love of the ocean that made him so well known. She said as a puppy he wasn’t too keen on the water until he started spotting ducks and geese and his pointer instincts kicked in. She added, while Lou was never successful in his hunt for waterfowl, those forays into the ocean saw him make friends with a pod of local seals.
“He would stand on the shore of the beach or sit for a while and scan the water and wait for the seals to come. And, I kid you not, he would leap, I have videos of him,” said Doig Smith. “He would leap into the water as soon as the seals came and he would swim out to them. And it was almost like they played a monkey-in-the-middle kind of game out there together. And they talked to each other, almost in this kind of barking communication. It was really neat to watch it.”
She noted there was no aggression from Lou or the seals, instead she describes their interactions as “playful.”
“It was it was cool. So, he started that, I think, as a means of just playfulness. And then he would go on adventure swimming,” she said. “He swam right across Sechelt Inlet and he would regularly swim between Tuwanek and Sandy Hook, which is pretty far. He was hilarious and kind. And people just got a real kick out of him and all of his adventures.”
She added, some people suggested strapping a GoPro camera to the dog to find out what he was up to, but the couple decided against it.
“We toyed with the idea but ultimately, I wanted him to almost have his own independent life that we weren't necessarily privy to. And I liked that idea that he had these adventures without us.”
Doig Smith said while they allowed the dog to enjoy his independence, if anyone out there has a story about Lou they’d like to share, she’d love to hear it and they’d be welcome to leave a comment on her Facebook page, which has a post announcing the dog’s death.
In response to her post, 49 people have left condolences and their own Lou stories, including one that read, “He was a ‘one-of-a-kind’ dog, family member, companion, community member, protector and true comforter. So fortunate that the girls got to grow up with him. No doubt people will be telling Lou stories for a long time to come.”
Doig Smith says a couple years ago, she started to write a children's book about some of his adventures. She noted, it’s a work in progress, which she hopes to continue this summer.
“It doesn't happen very often, to find a dog who brought that much joy to people's lives,” said Doig Smith. “There's so much going on in the world that's just hard right now and dark. And it was so lovely to have this character in our lives who, obviously, was oblivious to politics and climate change and any of that stuff, and just offered so much joy and laughter in our lives. And I was so happy that he brought other people we didn't even know, that kind of joy as well.”
She added, a celebration of life for Lou is being considered for later this summer.
