One of the most challenging things about boating with a dog is finding a place for your dog to do his or her business. Our home boating territory is Georgian Bay and the North Channel. We've always been able to find a place to take Frodo to shore by dinghy if we are on anchor. We love anchoring so we've done that a lot. Fortunately, Frodo has a 12 hour bladder, or more, so we take him to shore just before sunset, before the mosquitoes are swarming, and he won't need to go again until the next morning.
Once you are on the inland river system, getting your dog to shore is not as easy on anchor. The options are:
Stay at a marina: This is not always possible. Some distances are too far and you are often at the mercy of the locks. Commercial traffic has priority so your plans need to be flexible.
Look for options in advance for taking your dog to shore when you are anchoring so you can choose a good anchoring location for you and your dog. Watch for public boat launches (marked on charts), small craft marinas, grassy or rocky shorelines, etc. Be careful not to choose a muddy shore because you might sink knee deep into it! Some sources will even tell you if an anchorage is pet friendly.
Train your dog to use a pee pad or grass pad on your boat. We opted to try the grass pad on our boat.
Training Frodo to Use the Grass Pad
We spent about $60 on a fake grass pad with a plastic tray and we started working with it at our house before we left. We were told to reward him if he came close to it, and then if he went on it, and so on. This should be done a few times a day. Unfortunately, Frodo is a bit neurotic, so when he touched it, he leapt off immediately. He did not trust the faux grass! Meanwhile, our grand puppy had no trouble using it to pee on with next to no encouragement but that did not entice Frodo either. Cam got rid of the faux grass and picked up a patch of sod for about $2 and put that in the plastic tray that came with the faux grass. That was not as frightening to Frodo so that's what we took to the boat. One day Frodo finally walked onto the grass and I was so excited, I over-praised him. From that, he learned that if he sat on the grass, he got rewarded, so he sat on it a lot, waiting patiently for his treat.
We had read once that you should try and get another dog to pee on it. So we invited our friends to bring their dog on the boat to try it. They wanted their dog to learn anyway. To everyone's surprise, she put the dog on Frodo's grass, said "Go pee" and the dog peed right away! Suddenly, Frodo was very interested, but he was conflicted about peeing on it on the boat. Cam lifted the tray off the boat and Frodo peed on it. Yay! He had a couple more successes with it on shore but not on the boat. We were making progress! I think we would have gotten there eventually except for two things. The first was that we got rid of the grass before we crossed over to the United States and we could not find more sod after that before we took him home. The second was that Frodo always knew that he had the option to go to shore, and that's what he wanted to do. I suspect that if he had stayed with us and we had been on one of the anchorages where we couldn't get to shore, he would have eventually given in and peed on the grass patch.
The advantage of the real grass over the fake grass is that it has it's own filtering system. We were on a boat where a dog used a faux grass pad. The owner showered it with the hose after every use but you could still smell the pee. If you use the disposable pee pads, then you have a lot more waste to deal with and that smells too. The disadvantage of the real grass is that you have to water it and cut it, although, it only took about 5 minutes to cut it with the scissors. Also, you shouldn't bring it across the border.
From our boating friends who have been successful in getting their dogs to pee on their grass pads, we have these suggestions:
Be patient. Your dog can last much longer than you can imagine without going pee. If you can't get to shore, they will eventually go but it might take more than 24 hours!
Consider the size of the grass pad that you will need. If you have a bigger dog, you will need a larger pad, or multiple pads as they might want to circle around before they do their business.
If you have the opportunity, start training your dog to pee on the grass pad when they are a puppy.
Comments