Kemah moved aboard Mother Jones with us in 2011 – when he was 8 years old.

Before that, he had always lived in a house, with a big, fenced yard – to play and to poop in.   “How would he adjust to life onboard?” we wondered.

Luckily, Kemah is an active, inquisitive dog and had joined us in a lot of outdoor activities in the past. Surely, his flexibility would prove helpful in this new area, right?

Well . . . Kemah tends to meet new experiences with suspicion – and the boat was no different.

His first-ever experience with a boat was shortly before this picture was taken on Matagorda Island on a mini-vacay (our last vacay before our 2011 life-altering sabbatical). The boat was a flat-bottomed-bay boat and he was not at all excited to step onto a moving platform and then hear a monster (aka the engine) growling beneath him. He yelped and squealed the entire 25 minute ride out to the Island. Because pitbulls are so tough.

HOWEVER, even though he thought the water tasted gross, he found the sand of the Island to be super fun to run in, the sandpipers fun to chase and when it was time to get back on the boat a few days later, he jumped at the chance for the sea breeze to fill his ears like little furry sails.

O-kay . . . we were hoping he might remember this experience when we moved aboard Mother Jones. After all, it had been two years (that’s a decade and a half for him) since he stepped aboard. And, so much change had recently occurred: we had moved him from our old house to a friend’s 200 sq. ft. garage-apartment; then to 3 days of moving across the country from Texas to Florida; then onto a boat. I think for quite a while, everywhere we bedded down for the night, he was wondering “is this where we live now?”.

When we moved aboard, we made sure to take our time walking him around the boat. We pointed out the boundaries with a stern “NO”s at the edges, etc. At first, he was really not keen on the idea of jumping from land to a weird, moving thing on the water. But, within the first day or so, he found out there were pillows on board and he was sold!

K’s first day aboard: “There’re pillows here! I think we can work this out”

Just like us, Kemah went to work transitioning from landlubber to live-aboard. He seemed to have a lot of success drawing upon a particular skill he spent years honing on land (seeking the most comfortable napping solution)

and applied that skills to his new life at sea

Speaking of re-purposing old skills in a new environment, K also went to work picking up the slack on some odd jobs. From his old land-lubbing life:

to new jobs on the water: