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On a
recent trip to the Bahamas, my husband and I were walking the docks, checking
out the boats, when I saw something that took me back a couple of summers.
On the bow of a 48 Californian was a small, plastic kiddie pool in which
someone had carefully planted sod. It was now lying on its side, obviously
abandoned. As I grabbed my husband’s arm and pointed it out, we
both laughed out loud. We knew what it was right away: a portable lawn
for dogs.
Our
thoughts went back in time to Bert, a five-year-old golden retriever we
had adopted from the local humane society who showed his intelligence
by his love of boating. In fact, he loved it so much that just the mention
of the word boat would trigger a mad dash to our dock, as soon as the
front door was opened. Things got so bad that when speaking of our boat
we had to spell out certain words, as you would with a child, so Bert
wouldn’t catch on to what we were talking about.
Bert
was not entirely to blame for feeling like he belonged on the boat. The
first summer that we had him, we spent the entire season cruising the
Bahamas. But before we actually made the decision to bring a 90-pound
dog—albeit an enthusiastic sea dog—aboard a 42-footer, there
were a few details about his physical needs that we had to work out. The
crossing from Florida to the Bahamas usually took about six hours, and
checking into customs right away assured that Bert would get “shore
leave” as soon as possible. However, once we cleared customs and
settled into our cruising routine, which includes a lot of anchoring out,
we needed to make arrangements to get him ashore often. Our nine-foot
Zodiac was certainly up to the task, provided we could find anchorages
with sandy beaches. These were always high on our list anyhow, but making
them an absolute necessity would eliminate a few of the more sheltered
coves that offered no soft landings.
That’s
when I got the inspired idea to teach Bert to use the dive platform to
do his business. Yes sirree, by the time I was through, he’d be
barking at the transom door every time nature called, and the livin’
was gonna be easy. I’d passed Psychology 101, so I was sure that
it was going to be as simple as positively reinforcing him when he used
the platform. Pretty soon he’d never need to touch land again.
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