Dog Whisperer

Our last day in the Cook Islands. I thought i should devote a moment to the plant life. On our walkway from the main road to the house there is hibiscus in 5 different colours, fragipani in yellow and pink (that's what they make the flower necklaces out of in the Cook Islands), coconuts and the above plant (which i think must be related to a bird of paradise).

Anyhoo onto the subject of this particular blog entry. We dropped the chariot off around 1pm and headed back to the beach house. We had put 300km on that thing, the island is only 36km round so we drove it a few times. It had been a lazy morning and the early afternoon was also quite lazy but finally we decided we shouldn't waste our last day so we decided to walk across to the little islets we could see from the house.


We waded across the water to the first islet and upon arriving were greeted by two very friendly pooches wearing collars. Shrugging our shoulders (dogs in the Cooks are pretty relaxed and free wandering) we headed to the back of the islet to see how close we could get to the reef edge breaking on the lagoon. As you can see we got pretty close to the thing.


We decided to cross the three islets and return to the Muri beach spot where Blaise had been launching kites. Our furry friends had followed us the whole time we were walking and when we started to cross to the next islet they followed us. Now the water was not deep, chest high at best and the distance wasn't that great. To my knowledge dogs are good swimmers, see doggy paddle, so much to our surprise we found our doggy friends were not the best of swimmers. You would think that dogs living on an island would be swimmers. Anyways we had nicknamed them Shorty and Stubby, Shorty kept trying to climb onto Stubby or me and Blaise and Stubby didn't like his ears getting wet, he kept shaking his head to get the water out which made him sink.

At one point we found them a rock they could climb up onto.

We gave them a chance to rest and Shorty (the black one) had a real hard time coming off the rock, he only hopped down when we got far enough away from him, and even then he kept trying to climb on top of one of us. We arrived on the 2nd islet and as we walked down the shore we were joined by a third dog and then a fourth one. All wearing collars and friendly thought the 4th one looked a little skinny.

It was by this point we started our theory. Local dogs followed the tourists out to the islets during low tide as they went exploring but then got stuck there and couldn't get back even during low tide. So when we showed up they came out of the trees with the hopes they could follow us home. So with 4 of them in tow we started our walk across the water to the third islet. One of them broke off leaving us with three. Stubby and Shorty did their thing, shaking his ears or trying to climb onto us. By this point we getting very amused with our collection. On the third islet we could spot the Muri beach resorts so we headed to the crossing. Now here was definitely deeper; it came up to about my neck, not a far distance though. So we set out, Stubby, Shorty, the new skinny one and Blaise and I. I was carrying the backpack on my head and things started off well. Blaise got across with the skinny dog. He took off at a run as soon as he got ashore, guess he was eager to get home.

Stubby (the ear shaking one) was hanging back with Shorty who was doing his jumping onto Stubby trick. As we got further away from them Shorty lost his nerve and turned back to the islet, got there and started to howl. Stubby also turned around and headed back to join him. I looked at Blaise, he looked at me, took the bag and smirked and headed to the resorts. I turned around and headed back to the dogs.

Both got up to see me when i got ashore back on the islet, Stubby was happy to see me and dove back into the water but Shorty just wouldn't do it. I petted, called, coaxed and nada so I headed back with Stubby in tow figuring someone else would rescue Shorty. Half way across with Stubby I heard a yelp and Shorty had launched into the water after us. He reached us and then panicked. He jumped on Stubby who was trying to desperately keep his ears dry. His shaking his head was sinking him and then Shorty jumped on him, they both went under, doggie panic ensued.

Having enough of this I grabbed one under each arm like a footballer, after an initial struggle they realized that they were not drowning anymore and they calmed down.

By this point Blaise and a couple of other tourists were standing on the shore enjoying the show of me carrying two dogs and Blaise had the camera out.

Shorty made a break for shore as we got close enough and headed off home (we assume) but Stubby needed a little more help. Then he followed us...everywhere...he followed us up the path to the road, he followed us down the road, up our driveway, up the stairs of the house...we had a problem. We went inside and Stubby stayed on the deck resting. "Well at least we'll leave tonight," I said, "He'll head off when he realizes he won't get fed."
He spent an hour on the deck before standing up and stretching and heading off down the driveway. And that is the saga of Shorty and Stubby.