“Wow, that’s awesome!” On a huge inflatable surfboard, Rebekah Abern and Elizabeth French paddle down the waves of California under the watchful eye of an unusual instructor: Chupacabrah, a small black goat imperturbably posted at the front of the boat.
This one-year-old biquette is an integral part of their first lesson on Pismo Beach. Despite the turbulence of the foam, the goat demonstrates to the two tourists from Montana that it is enough to be relaxed to keep your balance.
“The goat surfed much better than me,” laughs Rebekah. “She had the positioning and it was obvious that she had already done it, (…) she was at the bottom.
The 41-year-old agricultural insurance agent emerges elated from this unusual experience. “Who surfs with goats? It’s extraordinary,” she told AFP.
Enough to give the banana to his real instructor, Dana McGregor. For more than ten years, this crazy sweet Californian has built his reputation by throwing his goats in the water.
In the land of surfers, where boarding your dog on your board is no longer amazing – the doggies even have their own world championship – the biquettes hide an unsuspected sliding potential, according to him.
“They have an incredible balance,” he says behind his generously provided goatee. “They have these claws that allow them to hang on to the board.”
The crazy idea came to him in 2011, after acquiring a goat to get rid of the poison ivy and weeds that invaded his mother’s house.
Once the pasture had been cleared, the animal was initially supposed to end up on a barbecue. But the surfer is “attached”, to the point of getting her on her board on her birthday. Armed with a paddle, he propelled the goat into a wave, a challenge she met with flying colors.
This moment of shared joy remains like a revelation to him.
“I felt like I had found heaven on earth, as if something supernatural had just happened,” says this little blond with blue eyes. “I thought to myself: wow, this animal would never have had the opportunity to surf.”
The simple joke then turned into an existential mission. Over the years, the ex-professional football player has had other goats, with whom he has multiplied aquatic adventures.
Heroines of numerous Youtube videos and two children’s books, they also invited themselves to his surf lessons. So much so that their owner is now nicknamed the “goatfather” – “the godfather of goats” in English – in his small town of 8,000 inhabitants.
“My vocation is to bring joy to people”, sums up the forties. “And that’s thanks to the goats and the surf.”
It’s hard to miss this sea shepherd at Pismo Beach. He drags his goats everywhere with him, to the beach as to the supermarket, in a car with a bonnet surmounted by an emblem in the shape of a goat.
In the ocean, the eccentricity of his animals proves useful in overcoming the apprehension of apprentice surfers.
“When we start, we really focus on things like, are my feet okay?” Rebekah Abern says. “But when the goat is there, it’s just confident and lets it go. And suddenly you say to yourself: I’m going to let myself go too.”
“People are inspired by it,” confirms Dana McGregor, who has seen many children overcome their fear of water. “They say to themselves: if a goat can do it, so can I.”
One of his biquettes, Pismo, even pushed the limits of what the instructor believed possible. Together, they took a wave of more than two meters, before the animal expelled it from the board with a whim to complete the “ride” solo.
Since then, this seasoned surfer has dreamed of sharing a tube with one of his protégés.
Getting into a roll, “it’s just an incredible feeling”, he fantasizes. “So a goat in a tube, that would be epic!”
02/09/2023 07:25:59 – Pismo Beach (Etats-Unis) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
