Time to go ashore

Our friends Jim and Cynthia take their Border collie Ned when they go out in their yacht. Early on he developed an ingenious method of telling them he wanted to be taken ashore.

Unless Ned wanted to swim, he knew the dinghy was his only mode of transport. The problem was that the little boat floated several meters away at the end of its painter, which was tied to the stern of the yacht. How was he to bring it within jumping range?

At first he tried pulling on the painter, but the dinghy didn’t come close enough before falling back to its original position. He overcame this problem by grabbing the rope further out, while it was still slack from his initial pull, and tugging it again.

After he’d repeated this procedure several times, the dinghy was much closer. He had also pulled in a loop of rope long enough to allow him to walk along the deck with it in his mouth. With a little trial and error he had the right-sized loop for the dinghy to come right in and bump against the stern. At this point he abandoned the rope and ran back aft to jump in before it slipped away.

Finally, from his position in the dinghy, he could lock his eyes on Jim’s – and the message was loud and clear. Okay, now we go
ashore!

Wendy Willett
Queensland
Australia

From Animals are SMARTER than JACK