Gosh, you haven’t humiliated yourself yet! I’m impressed:) I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve made a fool of myself, lol. Looking forward to reading about your experiences on and off the water.

Doing the desensitizing to flapping tarps is good also get dog used to moving objects like a wobble board… Agility actually would be good for a few different reasons. It teaches dogs where their legs are under them in tight spaces like the dog walk and teeter AND the teeter is also moving. Those are good things for sailing or powerboat life for a dog. Start teaching your dog to go potty on a piece of astro turf or sod… if you will spend long hours on the boat there is not always a chance to get to shore to potty the dog so going on a piece of astro turf or sod on the deck of the boat is priceless.

Also make sure your dog is used to being confined… when water is rough you won’t want them up on deck, you’ll want them down below in the cabin area so they don’t get inadvertently tossed off the side of the boat. Another thing you will want to consider doing is getting dog used to wearing booties. Good ones can help them grip wet decks AND keep your gelcoat from getting scratched up.

If you haven’t already, start teaching your dog to potty on command on lead so when you CAN dock and get off onto land, dog will go potty then not wait until it’s a 9-1-1 situation.

Outside of that, you really need to be able to get the dog on a boat.

I may never get all the way around the world. Taking turns keeping watch in the middle of the ocean is not my idea of fun.

All great ideas. We’ve already started on the wobble board. Honey’s happy to look at it but she’s very reluctant to climb aboard. We’ll just have to be patient.

A few thoughts. I’m not sure if a sunfish would be a good boat to start with. It’s not that light (I believe the hull weighs somewhere around 120 lbs), and the floor space on the inside of the hull is very small, so Honey would have to sit on top– this feels much less stable than a boat with a deeper hull with more space. Also, because sunfish are so lightweight compared to their sail square footage, they are much more likely to capsize than other boats.

We own a little Flying Scot, which is a smallish but heavy and therefore really stable– much less prone to tipping. It’s not a big boat but it does have a lot of “floor” space, which would be great for a dog to sit in. Down there, there is no risk of falling off the boat. The sad thing is, we keep it at a marina that doesn’t allow dogs, so poor Sir Chick has never been on it (we have only owned it since last fall and are trying to come up with a way to get him onto the boat without violating marina rules).

If you do buy a small boat, look into places where you can store a boat and trailer on dry land in a boat yard of sorts. Many marinas offer a grassy area where you can park for a low cost– between $20 and $50 per month depending on geographical area and size of the boat. Our marina has a boat lift/hoist that picks the boat up and sets it in the water, but with most smaller sailboats you could also easily launch it from a trailer via a ramp. The nice thing about keeping a boat onsite at a marina is that you don’t have to put the mast up and down every time you sail– it takes a lot of time and makes rigging the boat up much more time-consuming. We can get into the water in about 20 minutes from the minute we park our car at the marina, but if we had to assemble the mast, run all the lines, etc, every time, it would be more like an hour at the front end and a back end. Just something to think about.

Email me if you want to “chat” about it any more!

Aleksandra

hope you had a great holiday weekend xox

Thank you for the wise reminder to always listen to the dog.

After we discovered Honey was afraid of flapping tarps on a very windy camping trip, I followed up with the tarp on a clothes line. It really seemed to help. So maybe I’ll go back to it and add some ropes to the grommets to simulate the movements of a sail. Boy, will that give my neighbors something to laugh about!

Thanks for sending the picture of the wobble ball. I had a hard time picturing what you were talking about. I will definitely give it a shot.