Stern Lines: Ruff and the Bear

STERN LINES

Ruff and the Bear

by Jefferson Holland

Way back in the last century, a legendary dog named Ruffian adopted us. He was part Labrador retriever, part Chesapeake Bay retriever, 90 pounds of personality wrapped in black, curly fur. He had grown up with the rowdy bunch of young guys who worked as instructors at the Annapolis Sailing School, hanging out at the marina at the mouth of Back Creek. After the end of one season, most of the guys went back to college and I offered to look after Ruff for a few weeks until we could find him another home. A few weeks turned into 12 years full of amazing stories.

I was working as the PR guy for Annapolis Boat Shows at the time, and we produced a maritime heritage celebration in the harbor one spring. The main attraction was a water rescue demonstration by Newfoundland retrievers owned by members of the Colonial Newfoundland Club. We had arranged a square of floating docks as the demonstration arena, but it turned out that the Newfies refused to jump into the water off the docks. I was surprised at this, since Ruffian was not just good at leaping off the end of docks, he would do it just for fun, even when nobody was around to watch. But it turned out that the dogs had been trained in a lake where they could wade into the water from a beach.

Eventually, we figured out how to sink one end of a float and turn it into a ramp. This worked well, and the dogs performed their rescues to the delight of the visitors who crowded around the square. One of the stars of the show was Bear, a two-year-old Newfie weighing about 120 pounds. Bear took ahold of the bowline of my 100-pound canoe and pulled me and four little kids around in circles. He swam a life ring out to a volunteer who pretended to be drowning and hauled the “victim” back to safety.

When he wasn’t in the water, Bear would always have his teddy bear with him. This was a full-size, stuffed toy that Bear carried around in his mouth everywhere he went. After the day’s program, I was talking with Bear’s owner at the end of one of the high, fixed wooden piers by the adjacent waterfront hotel. My little daughter was with me, and so was Ruffian. I wanted both of them to meet this wonderful Newfoundland. As we were talking, Bear sat down and set his teddy bear carefully on the deck, but too close to the edge of the pier. We all watched with alarm as the teddy bear tipped, tipped, tipped over and splash! landed in the harbor. Bear stood up on all fours and stared down at the teddy bear. He gasped. He gasped again. Here was a 120-pound, highly trained water rescue dog and he was helpless to save his beloved pet teddy as it began to drift off in the tide.

Then kavooosh! Ruffian leaped off the end of the dock, snatched the teddy bear and brought it back safely. I grabbed Ruff by the scruff of his neck and helped him scramble up onto the float and we delivered the teddy back to Bear, who laid down, cuddled the teddy under his muzzle and sighed with relief.

Ruff stood next to all of us and shook.