Meet Carson, Southern California’s top (surf) dog

Looking for ways to beat the heat with your four-legged friends? Have you considered teaching them to surf?

On “ Do You Work Here? ” Mike Simpson headed to Huntington Beach to meet Carson, an award-winning canine surfer. He and his human, Jill Nakano, teach other dogs how to ride the waves.

“It started because we had another dog named Kihei, rest in peace.” Nakano said. “I love to surf, and so I took him to the beach and I would go in the water with my board and he would bark, bark, bark, bark at me at the shore. So then one day the board was kind of near the shore, and then he bark, bark, bark, and he got on the board.”

Nakano had “no expectations,” but she slowly eased Kihei into the waves, and he took to it like a seasoned pro.

“It got to be kind of like an obsession to where, oh, I'm gonna be like a human surfer and I'm gonna start dialing in his board and getting him the better board and I'm going to get him a little life suit,” she said.

Around that time, dog surfing became a thing , with competitions happening around San Diego. Nakano fell into the community, and when she rescued Carson in 2014, he followed in Kihei’s pawsteps.

Nakano says her salty dog surfing lessons attract calls and emails from people all over.

“I get people from the Midwest, Idaho, Utah,” she said. “Some of them just want photo op – oh, my dog's birthday is coming up and I want to take a picture of my dog on a surfboard. So I get that, but I do get some serious people who want to see if their dog can surf and then maybe advance to competition.”

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Think your dog is cut out to be a champion? Check out Good Kharma Surf’s website to set up a lesson, and listen to the full episode above for more.

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