Dogs, cats right at home on water with boaters

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Journal Gazette

By Laura Meade Kirk

Phil LeBlanc says his Portuguese water dog, Mate, has full run of the boat when he goes out on calls.

Mate likes to run circles around the cockpit, stopping at the bow and stern, draping his huge curly paws over the edge of the boat as he checks out what’s going on.

Lucy and Daphne like to curl up in the cabin, preferably on the lap of Mom or Dad. And they’re never on deck without their life jackets on.

Churai and Rama favor the bow of the boat, especially when they’re on the launch heading to their sailboat. They’re not particularly fond of the water that sprays up at them, but that’s to be expected. They are cats, after all.

These are among the many dogs and cats that have become familiar sights on board boats at Brewer Wickford Cove Marina in Wickford, R.I., on the shore of Narragansett Bay, and at other marinas and docks.

Newport, R.I., harbormaster Tim Mills says he’s seen a variety of pets during his six years of patrolling the waters there – including a pet monkey and a tiger cub that were seized by an animal-protection officer because they had been imported into this country illegally.

“You’d be amazed at the pets at marinas,” said Phil LeBlanc, a captain with Safe/Sea Towing and Salvage Co. in Wickford. He recalls one cat at Pettis Marine Boat Yard in Warwick that would climb up ladders to get on people’s boats “to go mousing.”

Mills said people make all kinds of special provisions for their pets – from litter boxes and life preservers to special ropes with lots of knots that hang over the side for cats to grab onto if they fall into the water.

But most boat owners say they don’t need special accommodations. Their pets simply adapt to life on the water.

Ask Duncan and Jeannie Ingraham of Portsmouth. Their dog, Princess Grace, a 6-pound Maltese, recently spent 10 months aboard the couple’s 47-foot sailboat, Main Event, during a trip to the Bahamas. The only things they brought for their dog were food and a bed – and a life jacket for rough weather, which didn’t happen often.

They’d go ashore each night to let Princess Grace relieve herself, but otherwise she was content aboard the boat, Duncan Ingraham said.

Judy and Jim McGuire of Saunderstown, whose cats Churai and Rama sail with them to the Bahamas nearly every year, say they don’t even have to worry about stopping ashore. Their cats use a litter box.

The McGuires didn’t initially plan to include their pets in their sailing trips, but soon after they got their first sailboat back in 1976 they went to put their cat in a kennel and it was so dirty they couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her there. “So I said, ‘We’re taking her with us,’ and she just did well,” Judy McGuire said.

They’ve been taking their pets with them ever since.

There have been some adventures, Judy McGuire said, like the time one of her cats – a Korat named Meiko – fell overboard while trying to jump from a dinghy onto a friend’s boat.

Meiko somehow managed to swim right under the friend’s sailboat and popped up on the other side. Meiko climbed the ladder and scampered aboard, shaken up, but none the worse for wear.

The McGuires do hang a knotted rope off the side of the boat for the cats to grab onto if they fall in. But so far, it hasn’t been an issue. They lock the cats in the cabin at night, to keep them safe.

Harbormaster Mills said he has heard of “a few people who’ve lost their dogs overboard, never to be found again.” That’s more common with a powerboat, which can travel for miles before the owners realize the pet is even missing, he said.

Most pet owners say they keep their animals close at hand, for that very reason.

Jane and Richard Goulston of Wickford say their dogs, Daphne, 6, and Lucy, 3, are secured on leashes on the dock and on the deck, unless they’re under way in calm seas. Even then, they wear life jackets.

Daphne and Lucy, longhaired miniature dachsunds, are basically lap dogs content anywhere their master’s lap happens to be.

The dogs tend to hang out in the galley of their new boat, which is comfortably furnished with the dogs’ bed, chew toys and treats.

The Goulstons, who’ve traveled as far as New York City with the dogs on board, keep veterinary records and a special medicine kit on board.

Sally Andrews, whose family lives next to the marina and owns Safe/Sea there, say they’ve had dogs “all our lives” and they’ve always taken them on their boats. Most have come from animal shelters, but one day she saw an ad for a Portuguese water dog and decided she had to have one. So many people fell in love with her dog that she went on to breed the dog and since has sold the pups to other boat owners, including many in Wickford.

They’re traditionally working dogs, Andrews explained. “On Portuguese fishing boats, they’d herd fish into nets, carry messages between boats and guard the catch when the boat was in port.” But the dogs she breeds, she said, “go out on the boat and stay out of the way ... They don’t get any fish unless it’s out of the tuna-fish can.”

They just like to be with their owners, out on the water.

Her son Peter, who started the business with his father in 1983, said he often takes the dogs to work with him. His company includes four rescue towboats that he says is “kind of like AAA for boaters” – towing boats that have broken down, or doing salvage work.

Peter Andrews said his dogs are trained not to jump off the boats for a swim, so that they don’t “decide to jump in while we’re on a job.”

Mate, the 3-year-old Portuguese water dog owned by Safe/Sea captain LeBlanc, loves to go out on the jobs, LeBlanc said.

“He’s really zero maintenance. You just put him on the boat and he does his thing,” LeBlanc said.

And LeBlanc loves the company. “We’re by ourselves 99 percent of the time, so it’s fun to have the dog out.”