Shadow the dog's life changed forever when his owner Gareth Winn bought his son a skateboard as a Christmas present.

Shadow the German Shepherd is turning heads in South Canterbury after stealing a teenager's Christmas present and teaching himself to skateboard.

Albury man Gareth Winn said motorists were stopping and taking photos of his prodigious pooch, who was spending four to five hours a day skating around the yard, the school's tennis courts, and the rest of the village.

He was no Tony Hawk yet, but he was surprisingly good at controlling his one-paw roll with an ollie to stop, Winn said.

JOHN BISSET/FAIRFAX NZ Shadow loves to lick the sandpaper grips on the top of his skateboards.

"He used to bang it into your ankles but now he controls it that well. He goes quite fast, but he probably needs a bigger one to get all four legs on."

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Shadow's life changed forever around Christmas of 2011, when he was a six-month-old pup. Winn got his then-teenage son a $150 skateboard as a Christmas present and within two days Shadow had commandered it as his own.

Four years later he was onto his fifth skateboard and people in Albury were donating new ones whenever he had worn out the one he was practising on.

Winn said Shadow loved the texture and the taste of the sandpaper-like grip on the top of a board and he would lick it constantly until it wore down.

"He enjoys it a lot and he's a right show-off. He will go around the whole town with it and heaps of people stop and take photos of him because he's got really good at it now.

"He's a beautiful dog, friendly as, the best-natured dog in the world, I reckon."

Winn said when Shadow was not skateboarding he would play with TJ the cat, who loved to wind him up by digging his claws into Shadow while he was sleeping.

Shadow had not been fixed and Winn said he was keen to speak with anyone who had a German Shepherd bitch and was interested in breeding the two.