Pets afloat

Mack, Mack, Johnson, Carrot. See it?

Good boy. Yes, we have a new crew member

on board, Mack, the border Terrier puppy.

So this episode of the Water Rd is all about having pets afloat.

We'll be hearing about the lengths you sometimes have to go

to to get your cat to come back home.

There's all sorts of tricks that people suggest, like if you're a

lady hanging your bra outside so your scent is actually in the

air. And we'll discover that it's

possible to have more unusual animals on board as well.

The nose turns head when you're walking up and down the toe path

as well. It's it's a good conversation

start. Lots of people stop and wonder

what we're doing, walking and talking this with the top

animal. Welcome to the Water Rd.

Well, Mac is named after the Macclesfield Canal because

that's where we were when we found the litter, went to choose

him and brought him home. He joined us at 8 weeks old.

I think it's fair to say that having a puppy on board has been

harder work than we expected. When you're on a boat you don't

have a garden to let them out in and when you're moving all the

time, every new place is exciting.

All the advice on toilet training, for example, says they

should use the same place all the time.

That's impossible when you're constantly cruising.

Now puppy training isn't really about teaching the dog what to

do, it's about teaching the owners.

And a friend recommended a trainer in Bollington on the

Macclesfield Canal who gave us valuable advice on what to do

with Cal Thorpe from Off Leash Dog Training.

And you've been helping us with Mac because he's been a bit of a

handful. In your experience, are we alone

in finding that it's very hard work having a puppy?

No, puppies are horrible, quite frankly.

Bitey little messes and not very nice.

What's the secret then? What do you have to do to make

them a nice puppy? Good breeder first and foremost

for finding the right breeder for the right dog, for the right

people instead of, oh, that one's pretty, I'm going to have

that one. So you want to look for a decent

breeder who's got decent lines, who's not just after the money

for the puppy. Then it's making sure that

you've got really good sleep patterns so that your dog learns

what to do, when to do it, and loads of redirecting onto things

you want them to bite instead of your legs.

Obviously we're living on a boat.

You've come to the boat to do a couple of sessions with Mac.

Do you think it's easier or harder being on a boat?

Much harder. You've got restricted space so

therefore you've not got places where you can put him for sleep

out of the way, so he's always got distractions of things

moving around. You've got no garden so toilet

training is an absolute nightmare for you is when you

first start your risk of everything is highlighted so

over friendliness with other dogs when they're going past.

So you're doing too much socialisation and literally

making things just more which can make matters worse later on.

So especially with our terrier breeds, what are really quite

choose. Choose your world carefully.

Terrorists. So they want to be biting a lot

of things and chewing a lot of things because that's what their

design is and that's what their make up is.

So for me, when you're living at the side of the boat or living

on the boat, you're much more exposed to lots of different

things than people are in houses because you're going to have

wildlife right on your doorstep no matter what.

Plus sometimes impolite people and impolite dogs.

So we've got to make sure he's properly trained is what you're

saying really, isn't it? Yes, but I think that with every

dog, it's just your circumstances are going to be a

little bit tougher because you're literally contained in a

barrel. Literally.

It's a very pretty one, but you've got less space for doing

things that you would normally be able to do in a 2 up to down.

The exact same goes for people who've got too much room.

So when I go to people's houses that have got like 10 bedrooms

and things like that, they've got too much space.

So the dog does too much naughty business.

So like the toilet in on the other side of the mansion,

darling. So in some ways a smaller for

toilet training's easier, but for a bigger area it can be even

harder. But for you guys, I think the

quietness of your boat is the hardest bit because as soon as

you walk to your kitchen, they're disturbed.

But he's going to have a really good sleep pattern because

you're putting it in. And hopefully he's going to

really enjoy that life, isn't he?

Don't you think? Yes, yeah, I'm coming with you.

He is going to have a really good life on the boat.

You're just going to work on it always.

While dogs are certainly the most popular pet among boaters,

there are also quite a few cats. Some of them are indoor cats,

but others are allowed out, which opens up new challenges.

I spoke to Pip from Narrowboat Oliana about Tilly, who's been a

boat cat for 10 years. So Pip, obviously we've now got

a dog and dogs are trainable, whereas cats are notoriously

independent minded, aren't they? So how does that work on a boat?

When Tilly came to live with us when she was four months old, we

sort of had some ground rules straight away.

We'd we my old cat had moved on board with us when we first

moved to live on board boat and Houdini been sort of she was an

old cat. So we didn't have a cat flap or

anything like that. And we decided to keep the same

sort of rules for telly. So once her evening meals down,

she can't go out etcetera. So she comes back for her food

and and then doesn't expect to go back out again.

She actually thinks that she should sleep with us rather than

be alive at night and running around the world.

She comes home for dreamies. Thank you for coming home,

Dreamies, which is the best bit about whenever she comes in the

boat, she gets dreamies as a reward.

We ring a bell whenever we feed her, a little like reception

bell, and we call food time Ding, Ding time because it's

Ding Ding. And that was something that

somebody suggested online at one point.

That would mean that if your cat's outside, you could ring

the bell and they'd come running home for some food.

Tilly just lifts her head and goes, alright, OK, But if she's

busy outside, she's busy. Some days I can go outside and

call for her and she'll come straight away.

Other times if she's busy with finding friends, etcetera, you

have to be very patient and go keep going back outside to call

for her. There's all sorts of tricks that

people suggest, like if you're a lady hanging your bra outside so

your scent is actually in the air and their litter tray, which

is always a problem if you just cleaned the litter tray.

So it sounds as though you're saying that cats can be kind of

trained in a sort of way. In a sort of way, not like a

dog, which is like sit, lie down, etcetera.

I suspect we're as trained as much as she is, as in we give

her the dreamies whenever she comes home.

We started it so it's our fault and we have to open and close

doors because we have no cat flap.

So are there other considerations then that you

have to bear in mind, like if you're more up somewhere?

Yeah, we we choose where we more.

You can't always choose a really good place to mow for a cat.

So we wouldn't mow next to a busy Rd unless there's no

choice. Near a fast running river.

Maybe not ice. No, she wouldn't be allowed out

because she'd want to walk on the ice if there's duckweed

across the canal. Tilly's first ever swim was at

Selby Basin when she went out. Looked.

She normally looks to which side the towpath is.

And yes, Tilly, we're talking about you.

And she looked at the grass and thought it was great and went

for a swim and swam the full length of our 60 foot boat.

We do a quick cap and health and safety.

And she has a whole series of ratings for different moorings,

doesn't she? She does.

She has the Tilly stamp of approval and she also has names

for places like Birmingham isn't Birmingham.

Birmingham is Bombingham because it's pants.

It's not very good for cats. She goes out in Birmingham in

the middle of Birmingham near the Sea Life Centre, but it's

bricks and a few shrubs so that gets a a bum mark.

And but if it's somewhere really good where there's good hunting,

good trees to climb, she loves climbing trees, then it gets a

Tilly stamp of approval that goes on our.

Blog and you mentioned the hunting for friends as you call

them. Have any of those made it onto

the boat? Yes, we have had a few.

Every now and again we get mice. We tend to be a boat that has

doors closed most of the time so she can't bring them in.

We did once have a baby rabbit brought in that on our previous

boat to Oliana and she brought it in through the front door.

I didn't know what it was in her mouth to start off with and I

slammed the door in front of her, the bathroom door, which of

course has a little air vent at the bottom and the rabbit

managed to get under the door but she couldn't.

So we did manage to rescue this baby rabbit and kept her inside

whilst the baby ran. Rabbit bobbed back to it's

Warren or whatever, and then she sat by the Bunny hole for the

rest of the day, waiting for another one.

And it's not just cats and dogs. We've seen boats with parrots

and other birds on board and there was a boat at the Crick

Boat Show a year or two ago which had a built in rabbit cage

in its saloon. And Gemma and Jack have a border

Terrier called Goblin who's a year older than Mac and a 7 year

old tortoise called Tea Cake. They live on a wide beam boat in

Skipton in North Yorkshire and have a mooring with a garden

that they use in the winter. I started by asking them what we

could expect over the next year with a border Terrier.

It's a wild ride. We have our ups and downs with

him, don't we? Yeah, he's, he's got a sixth

sense for chaos. I was just saying the other day

to Gemma, you can't really have a terrier without becoming a

little bit terrier. You just got to kind of roll

with the chaos a little bit. And yeah, make what you will of

it. He's literally the best thing

that we've ever done though, like he's just completed our

little family on this boat as a name and he's settled in so

well. Do you think having the garden

helps with with having the having the pets?

Oh 100% yeah we last. I mean because we've only done 1

summer with with Goblin. We realised when we came back

here how easy it is just to kind of let him out in the garden for

a run around. Whereas on the tour path I would

imagine it's very similar to living in a flat, isn't it?

You've got to kind of go out with them and it's a walk every

time they need to go out, especially puppy times.

That was every time. Like as we were training him, we

had to put his harness and his lead on every time we let him

out to use the loo. And how do the two of them get

on together? Because it's a bit of an old

mix, isn't it? A border terrier and a tortoise.

Yeah, they didn't really have a choice, did they?

Tea Cake was hibernating when we got Goblin as a pup.

So Goblin had about. Did he have about a month?

Yeah, just to settle in and. Without him.

And then we woke Tea Cake up and I think he was just like, what?

What is this? And last winter they got on so

well, didn't they? They.

Yeah, we had broken heating last winter, so they were kind of

just buddied up by the fire and I think it was a a kind of a

relationship built on stress really.

If they were going to be warm, they had to put up with each

other. That soon changed once it was

fixed though. T Cake has absolutely re

established the hierarchy. So people might imagine that a

tortoise is easier to manage than a dog or.

But has T Cake had his moments? Yeah, from last year didn't.

He, yeah, we've had plenty of moments with that little, little

shell boy. He last year, we lost him for 10

days. Yeah, we were on our mooring.

Bit of a strange story really. You were doing some gardening

and Yorkshire be in Yorkshire, some pigs got out of the farm up

at the top and Gemma's natural Yorkshire instincts kicked in

and she went to Herdham back into the field and thought TK

won't go very far, he's only slow and then came down and he

was gone. And normally, like, we'll stick

like a pom pom or something on his shell or like a little flag

or something so we can see him in the grass.

And I hadn't done that day. And then when it came back about

20 minutes later, I was like, oh, no, but he's gone missing

before. And we've kind of just thought,

oh, I'll turn up, we'll find him.

He's usually in the same bushes every time.

And then I had to go to work. And then we knew when it got to

kind of overnight that we might not be finding him here.

We had all kinds of people come and search for him.

And then we had. 4 labradors come and try and sniff him.

Oh yeah. We had some trained Labradors of

our friends who sniff and search dogs.

They came and tried to look for him, but ended up just jumping

in the canal. So that wasn't very, that wasn't

very productive. But then we came back from a

walk and we were just walking over the canal bridge and just

out of the corner of my eye I just saw him just swarming

through the field. With a little scheme of geese

behind. Him.

Yeah, in with all the Canadian geese.

He's. Got a little, you know the tiles

that you put on your keys so you can find your keys a little.

Tracker. So we just blue tack that to him

when he's outside so we can ring him if he goes missing.

The other problem with him is as well is that we've raised him

to, I don't know how we'd manage this, but he'll only eat Pak

choy and he'll only eat hand fed Pak choy.

He won't eat off his own accord. You imagine them being so plain

and quite boring really, but they're so emotive at tortoises.

They just, yeah, he's really got a sass about him.

And he's he's, if he wants to be demanding, he'll make himself

known. Don't get a tortoise if you

think it's an easy animal. It's not, especially on a boat.

When we bought the boat, we didn't really understand battery

banks so much. We'd lived on a van, we knew

about 240 and 12 Volt and etcetera, but we didn't really

understand the the full in and outs of conserving electric and

what uses what. So when we moved him onto the

boat, he's obviously got a really high energy that needs to

be on for like 12-30 hours a day.

So we just rinsed our first battery bank just by using a

tortoise lab. Probably cost us about £600 in

leisure batteries until we got educated and solar panels.

So it's much better now. So finally we've got any advice

for us to get through the first year with a border puppy.

Lots of puzzles, like you can't get out every day, obviously we

walk him and whatnot, but so I'd say just about every day we set

him a little blanket puzzle and like we do a lot of sniff

training around the boat and hiding things and just keep him

entertained, Yeah. Yeah, it's all breed specific,

isn't it? Because the, the sniffing and

ratting dogs, we do a lot of stuff to kind of keep him

enriched and keep his brain active.

I think just ride the wave. We've had a, I've had a terrible

week with him this week. He's been a nightmare, running

off after everything and anything.

But then we've just take, we've just come back from the beach

with him this afternoon and he's been beautiful.

He's been such a good boy on the beach, so he's restored my face.

Terry's being Terry as they just love novelty as well though, and

when you're moving on every couple of weeks and you know,

you go from village to village and he's got somewhere new to

explore, he's just comes into his own.

He's just the happiest creature you'll ever meet.

You can follow Gemma, Jack, TK and Goblin on Instagram at our

floating house Tip Make and Tilly the cat have a blog.

mollyanna.co.uk Cal Thorpe is off leash dogtraining.co.uk or

find her at Wolfington's in Bollington and Mac is on

Instagram at Mac The boating border.

And that's all for this episode of the Water Rd.

Next time we'll still be on the Macclesfield Canal, exploring

the Middlewood Way, The Walking and cycle path that runs

alongside part of the canal using the bed of a former

railway. I'm really pleased with how the

community are involved, how they get together, how many people

know each other, walk with each other and meet each other, go

out for drinks together, you know, and it's all because they

meet on the middle way. The Water Rd is produced and

presented by me, Adam Porter. Don't forget to follow or

subscribe so you're alerted when new episodes are published and

all previous episodes are always available to listen to wherever

you get your podcasts from. Thank you for listening to The

Water Rd.

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