Today DogGolf.info features an exclusive piece by international dog golfing advocate in the Netherlands, Linda Van Borssum. I stumbled upon her Facebook page “Golfen Met Hond”. It included lots of lovely posts about her fairway adventures with her two pups as well as great references to other dog friendly courses on the continent and even several shout outs to DogGolf.info. She kindly shared her dog golfing story with us:

I have been playing golf for a while. Mostly 9 holes because I have 2 dogs and I don’t want to leave them at home alone for too long.

Then one day…..

I saw an advertisement of The Dunes; a golf course in Zandvoort, the Netherlands. They were organizing a golf fair and invited people to join. So I asked my golfing friend and her husband in the Facebook comments where the event was being advertised:

• Me: “Hey Simone, this looks nice, shall we go?”
• Simone: “I think that would be fun. But what about the dogs?” (we both have dogs and Zandvoort is a 4 hour drive for us).
• Nigel (owner of the Dunes)“Just take the dogs with you!”
• Me: “No way, is that possible? I have never seen a dog on a golf course.
• Nigel: “Yes, off course that’s possible. It’s also common here to go for a round of golf with your best friend/your dog”

What a great idea. We often play golf on different courses in the Netherlands and when we are on holidays abroad. But when we take the dogs with us on holiday, we thought that playing golf would not be possible. This Dunes opportunity is something we want to try.

So off we went to Zandvoort, the four off us, with our dogs. Especially my dog Brigges (the black one, a Rottweiler, 5 years old) thought this was a great idea. First off all he likes to come along wherever we go. He likes to exercise. And he likes to do chores. And soon we noticed: he likes to run after the ball. (but he is a bit too strong to just run off, so bad idea!) He has to wait first and can only start walking when we tell him to. Then he looks for the ball and points to it with his nose; not touching it, because that is, of course, not allowed. He is also not allowed to come on the green so he has to wait a while. Otherwise, we are afraid he would leave pitchmarks with his nails. And we haven’t been able to train him on reparing pitchmarks.

It took some practicing. But Brigges loves to practice and to find the ball. He is very proud when he does. And he finds a lot of balls (even ones we didn’t hit ). He also likes the Ping-sound of the driver. In fact so do we, when its sound like a good hit . Dabbert (The red dog, a Boulab, 3 years old)) just likes to walk and watch. He doesn’t care so much to do the exercises and listening is not his cup of tea. But he likes the walk and the company. They both don’t care so much for other dogs or people on the course. But once we saw a herd of deer running across hole 3 at the Ullerberg, Ermelo. They liked that a bit too much. But we always have them on the leash on the course. Just for these kinds of moments!

Anyway; dogs enthusiastic, we enthusiastic. We wanted more. But it turns out: not everyone is enthusiastic about dogs on the course in the Netherlands. You get a lot of comments from people who think this is a really bad idea. “I don’t take my cat or my bird in the cage either, so leave them dogs at home! What’s next? What if he gets a ball on his head? Dogs don’t belong on the golf course. What will he do when I yell Fore?” etc.

Well, here’s a tip. You can train your dog for FORE. And you can train your dog for a lot more. Sometimes better than people, I guess. Ever noticed when someone yells FORE a lot of people look up to see where the FORE-ball is coming from?

Anyway, I asked our dog-trainer to come up with a few exercises to train the dogs for a nice walk on the course. Sit and wait even when strange things are moving before you, is always a good exercise!

And when you try this golfing with dogs; not to forget; bring enough water and some snacks for your hairy friend. A lot of courses welcome your dogs but most restaurants don’t.

My dogs are strong enough to walk all day. And they don’t care about hills or rough fields. But they don’t like it when it’s too hot. And I always carry poopbags. Just in case. But I walk the dogs before we go golfing.

I got more and more excited and wanted to check what more I could find. Where I could bring my dogs to the golf course. It opens new opportunities for vacations for example. I checked in England, Scotland, Germany, France and it’s all perfectly normal to walk with your dog there. Even St Andrews is dog friendly. After a bit off digging, I found out that there are also a number of golf courses who are dog-friendly in the Netherlands. Then I thought; maybe there are other dog owners who want this too so I have created a Facebook page: Golfen met hond (the page is in Dutch). Through the page, I found that a lot of people want to take their dog(s) with them so I made a list and put it on Facebook and I got a lot of tips from people to make the list even longer and longer.

Some courses reacted because they got completely excited. It resulted in competitions for “dogs and owners”, the first one in the Netherlands. Of course, at The Dunes. I wonder if it was the first one ever? I hope to organize another contest this year in September.

What I like about this, is that all of a sudden, I am in contact with people in and out of the Netherlands. People who want to take their dog on vacation and want to play some golf.

And that’s how I became the lady with the golfing dogs .