Dwane Folsom wasn’t trying to impress anyone when he taught his best friend to scuba dive.
“I just wanted a diving buddy,” he said.
But now the two of them are getting a lot of attention, because his best friend is a 3-year-old Labrador retriever mix that has about 30 dives to her credit. Folsom calls her Shadow the Scuba Dog.
“She looks forward to it,” said Folsom, who has been diving with Shadow for eight months. “She wants to do it.”
Wearing a plastic globe over her head and connected by hose to Folsom’s air tank, Shadow has been able to go underwater as long as 20 minutes. Once there, Shadow walks on her hind legs while paddling with her front legs.
“She has no fear of it,” said Folsom, who adopted Shadow from an animal shelter two years ago.
Shadow has dived in the Cayman Islands with stingrays as well as in the back-yard swimming pool at Folsom’s Boynton Beach home and is becoming an underwater celebrity of sorts.
Folsom said he got the idea to take Shadow diving with him by watching her on a dive boat.
“Whenever I was diving, she always wanted to follow me, but she couldn’t,” he said.
Often, Folsom said, Shadow would jump out of the boat, watch him go underwater and chase after his bubbles.
Folsom, who has been diving for more than 20 years, figured there had to be a way to take the dog underwater.
Folsom said he used positive reinforcement-treats-to encourage Shadow.
“She’s a very dedicated dog,” Folsom said, adding that Shadow also has learned to ride on his motorcycle with him and is learning to water-ski.
He said he had qualms about taking Shadow diving at first because he didn’t want to force the dog to do something she didn’t want to do.
But Folsom said he decided to go ahead with his plan after careful consideration.
“The dog, of her own free will, wants to do it,” he said.
That’s not surprising, said Dr. Jim Grubb, president of the Palm Beach County Veterinary Society.
Grubb said Labrador retrievers naturally love the water, and there is nothing wrong with taking the dog diving as long as the dog wants to.
Folsom had to design and test a system that would enable Shadow to breath underwater. He is working on redesigning Shadow’s fifth breathing device.
Although she is unusual, Shadow is not the only scuba-diving dog in the country. Folsom said that while he was training Shadow, he learned of a California dog that also scuba dives. But, he noted, there’s a difference.
“That’s a Hollywood dog,” Folsom said.
