Dogs on boats, and our best Friends in general.

There was a recent demand on a dog thread.

So we have it now.

 

We all owe our dogs.

Never I have seen a being, better capable of judging the REAL value of a person, never one willing to fight for his best enemy ( the children riding on him and already torn down half the ear), the ones disturbing his sleep every day, annoying him every moment, have been the ones he fought for with fury. Brought them to school and back, and laughed, yes laughed, when they were happy.

There was a flip side. In two years I had four lawsuits. The Brother of my Daughters was very aware of critical moments. He did smell what the society was willing to tolerate as a common approach. He nearly killed one, and has attacked three other guys my Daughters desrcibed as "strange uncles". I was´nt there, but I must not. A healthy dog knows better.
So, he was right, he had to fight for the minors, and he had the right to kill, when in doubt. NOBODY has the right to touch any children. (at least not when Sterling was near)

One has been of a strange breed, a Dogge / Labrador mix (dogge is the great Dane), the other, the successor, has been the same strange mix, both from the public Kennel / Sanctuary.
The first was a giant at 74 kilogram and about 70cm shoulder hight. He was exactly one meter long, from moul to ***.
The children said "wouwy", and "shnourtzelpourtzel" , something like "doggyly" or so. Pet names, for a creature twice as mighty as the average adult human.
But he was "wouwy", calm friendly, never agressive, "Schnurtzelpurtzel", "wauwilein", doggyly".

And the day came, when he did his job.
A premature idiot treatead his 4 or 5 years old daughter like a punching ball.
The "wouwy" heard the crying of the child and was on the scene in no time.
Biting the knee of the "agressor" to crumbles was a matter of a second, gettig the freightened Girl into his moul and bringing her to my feet another moment.
Good luck, the ossies (the east German) did not know much about lawsuits in these days.

There are some more stories to tell, but please peers, your turns!

Regards
Richard

Proud (that my dog was well educated), sad (that he is not alive anymore), interested in others experiences.

 

Here's our Nikki a Norwegian Elkhound on our boat in a lock on the Muskingum River, Ohio, USA.

 

Ho,

I did not believe I would been told about dogs a much. Norvegian Elk Hound....
never heard.

 

I once had a dog who was half Australian Cattle dog, and half coyote. He followed my sons out of the yard one day into a vacant lot where some older children were playing, and a boy about 14 or 15 years old deliberately rammed him with his bicycle. Petey took him by the leg and dragged him off the bike, then let go of him. The boy's parents called the Sheriff's Department, and a deputy showed up ready to shoot or impound Petey. I told him, "even a dog has a right to defend himself."

To my surprise, the deputy laughed and replied, "you know, I never thought of it that way before. But I guess you're right." When the dog catcher arrived I showed him a proper license and rabies certificate, and refused to let him take the dog out of my yard. When he turned to the deputy and demanded his help, the deputy just shrugged. I had a very mad dog catcher on my hands, but he couldn't do anything.

A couple of weeks later, I received a restraining order in the mail from the Municipal Court, sternly ordering me to keep the dog in my fenced yard, and to have him restrained with a muzzle and a leash attached to a chest harness if I had to take him out for any reason.

He bit me once, too. But it was my own fault. He was barking at some kittens in a corner of the yard with the mother cat hissing at him, and I walked up behind him, told him "Petey, knock it off" and slapped his butt. I don't think he ever heard me; he just reacted to the slap by turning around and burying his teeth in my leg.

When he saw it was me, he let go in a panic and backed up for a moment. Then I could almost see his thoughts: "well, too late now. In for a penny, in for a pound"...and he jumped straight at me. I clubbed him down with a car-wash wand I had in my hand, then kept beating him back with the broken remnant of it until he had enough.

Eventually he decided he was whipped. He flopped on the ground, whined, and started crawling toward me on his belly. We stared at each other while I seriously thought about braining him completely, but I guess the submissive posture works on people too. So we made up.

Interestingly enough, he never approached me after that without making a deferential little bob with his head as he came up. He didn't cringe or act worried, but he always made the gesture. My brother watched him do it one day and said, "you know...it's a good thing you won, or you'd have had to shoot him." I agree.

 

Never had a dog bite me, especially one of my own. I'm not sure I could forgive that. My first dog, Jenny could be rather dominant and often tried stuff she wasn't supposed to. When she was young she had a bad habit of taking a person's hand in her mouth, gently enough but I didn't like it although other people thought it was cute. So every time she tried it on me I would stuff my entire hand down her throat. She soon quit. She was so gorgeous that people stopped us in the street.

She was one smart dog and I had her pretty well trained. One day her leash was on a line between two trees at the local park. I called her but she had run the leash around the furthest tree so I called her to "Go around" -the command for untangling the leash. She went the wrong way, so I yelled "other way" more in desperation than hope and waved my hand in a circle. She looked at me for a while, then looked at the tree. Then she started to circle the tree in the other direction. I yelled her to "Go round" again and she did, then she was able to run down the line and join me. The folk at the next picnic table were gobsmacked. I did not know until then that dogs could problem-solve.

When she died I broke up.

 

One of the members of the association preserving our steam ships had a "Skippertje" named Cindy. She was dressed to bring a rat when she was asked "wo ist die Ratte?" -"where is the rat?"

We once went to celebrate a rebourne old steam ship.

Of course our dogs were part of the celebration. At one of the 4**** Michelin Restaurants in Germany, a young French woman had a mad idea to ask Cindy (the only German she did know), wo ist die Ratte? Cindy brought one........

 

I hadn't heard of them either until I saw one while at a tree farm cutting a tree for Christmas. One of the most beautiful things I ever saw.

 

Terry,
I was not in doubt. Just as life is, you never know all the stuff.


And now your story please!



For your comment I opened the thread!

 

Well, there was nothing for me to forgive. I hit him first. And we sorted it out; no problem.

I've been around dogs all my life, including a stint as a meter reader, and I've been bitten several times. Each and every time it was avoidable had I been thinking a little faster, or been a little less careless. I've never taken it personally.

The stupidest thing I ever did was walk into my brother's unlit home in the middle of a bright summer day, and notice some little wiggly things in the corner. I thought they were kittens, and like an idiot I stuck my hand down into the darkness to pet them. It was a litter of miniature Dachshunds, and they did a number on me with their needle-sharp little teeth. That's what my fingers looked like: like I had stuck them into a sewing machine. Talk about smarting....

I'm impressed by your dog; I think I've only seen one in my lifetime that had enough sense to reverse when he was wound around a pole.

 

That is a typical Labrador behaviour. When my wife went into the sea, my dog tried to rescue her by biting in er hand gettin her towards the "safe" shore. I could not tell him she is safe, he did it every time. When I went to swim, there was no problem, but I am the leader of the pack. I have to protect him, not he has to make me feel safe.

When my dog would take care of me, I would ask myself about my position.

Cheers
Richard

 

One of the best dogs I ever owned was half Labrador Retriever, half Golden Retriever. She wasn't planned; the daddy was a big black Lab who turned out to be surprisingly good at climbing fences.

But I found out later that some people deliberately cross the two; they say the Lab mellows out the Golden, and the Golden sharpens up the Lab. And it's true that pure Golden Retrievers can be very neurotic.

 

-for which we are all deeply in your debt.

- I admire a guy who comes back for more punishment. OK, another Jenny story -

The guy I got Jenny from was my best buddy. He bred dogs and trained them. In retriever trials dogs are expected to return with the bird in a straight line, no going around obstacles just go through/over/under/across them.

We were out on a combined hunting/training trip and he tossed a bumper for my Jenny to fetch. It went down a steep bank into a creek, and Jenny followed it down, picked it up and set off up the bank. She couldn't make it as it was so slippery and steep, so she searched up and down the bank for a better spot, still couldn't make it so she dropped the bumer and managed to scramble back up the bank.

He told me all the things my dog had done wrong then tossed the bumper for his yellow lab to show how it was done. His dog tore down the bank at great speed, grabbed the bumer and tore back up the bank, only to get stuck in the loose stuff that had stopped Jenny. His superbly trained dog tried over and over again to get up that last bit of bank, never straying from a straight course and never dropping the bumper. Eventually my buddy had to climb down and help his dog up the bank!

My buddy is no longer around, and now I am very glad I had the decency to say absolutely nothing. Zip. Honest!

 

Had one of those .. no nonsense kind of dog

 

In another time in my youth I was playing Klondike.. Had a pack of huskies, lived in hut in the middle of wilderness without electricity and was never bitten by a dog.. actually I did bite a dog in a few occasion as a reminder who's the boss.. had long sled tours around etc.. but those beasts were not anything anyone should ever take to "civilized" environment like in a house or on a boat.. even the cars I had that time were 30year old Mercedes or even more rusted Lada's