Wet Pets and Other Watery Tales
Camden-Rockport Animal Rescue League
The Book:
Sample Story
Meg -- A Small but Mighty Swimmer
By Townsend Hornor
Osterville, Massachusetts
For a number of years I have run a very small marine service business in Osterville on Cape Cod. I have also had a life-long love affair with dogs, and for a time raised Labrador Retrievers. More recently, reflecting the restrictions of a pickup truck cab and a small, open, half-decked work boat, I switched to West Highland Whites. Surprising to some, I've found these dogs demonstrate many of the Labrador attributes of loyalty and companionship, spunk, and love of the waterÑalbeit usually the fore shore rather than anything much deeper. And, they are a better size for me.
One day about eight years ago, I was out with an associate looking for a client's mooring that needed a new pennant. We were accompanied by a rather small year-old Westie bitch named Meg, who weighed perhaps eight or nine pounds and, when swimming, floated with her small head barely visible in the water. You guessed it: she fell overboard, unseen! I am usually very careful to keep an eye on whatever dog I have with me, as he or she may roam around the narrow side decks of my work boat; but this time I goofed as I concentrated on searching for the missing mooring.
It was blowing northwest 15-20 mph and cool for a spring day.
We were in a bay about a quarter mile from the nearest shore on either side of us. We looked and looked, more and more frantically, but after almost an hour we finally gave up. I returned home, telling my good wife that I had carelessly drowned our youngest dog. I sat down in despair. What was there to say?
About thirty minutes later, the telephone rang. A friend asked if we were missing one of our Westies! The dog had swum the quarter mile to shore in the choppy water, climbed up on the marsh bank, then
traveled another quarter mile to our friend's house. When I arrived, Meg was playing vigorously with one of his dogs, liberally coated with marsh mud on her belly!
Cats may have nine lives. Meg has at least that number and an incredible amount of spunk and muscle and energy, too. She is now nine, has played Toto in the Wizard of Oz with a local theater group, and is looking for new worlds to conquer. And, when the water is warmer, she swims!