Our friends Rex and Lisa invited over 100 members (and their dogs, of course) of our Great Dane Meet Up group out to their sprawling lakeside home yesterday for a pot luck gathering.

The perfect place and day for 100+ Great Danes to meet and play (click to enlarge).

Angus posing for a closeup before heading down to the lake for a swim.

Fantastic day of food, drink, and swimming…and we got both of our Danes to finally swim.

Jersey and Angus on the boat dock, getting ready for their first swimming lessons

Danes are not good swimmers by nature. Because of their deep chest and large, heavy heads, Danes have a hard time swimming efficiently. So, most Danes tend to wade in chest deep, but go no deeper.

We bought an extra-large doggie life vest for Angus, and after towing him out to deeper water just once, he was swimming all around the lake on his own after that. He even swam about 30 yards out to the dock once without his vest on.

Angus chasing me out into the lake.

We don’t have a vest for Jersey yet, but he was very confident and fearless swimming up to 15-20 yards off shore into mine or my wife’s arms or onto a float. When Jersey gets to full grown, we’ll buy him a life vest like Angus’, as they both really seemed to enjoy swimming with us in the lake.

While Jersey and Angus were busy swimming in deeper waters, these Great Danes waded in the shallow end (click to enlarge).

A baby Blue and his pack

That’s little 4.5 month old Jersey sitting in this next picture (click to enlarge):

Jersey waiting for hotdog to hit the ground.