Published by Bantam Press / Random House, 2005, 352 pages

“We could bore ourselves to death, drink ourselves to death, or have a bit of an adventure.”

A retired couple, Terry and Monica Darlington take their whippet, Jim, and their narrowboat, meant for canals, across the Channel into France. This is a travel book whose star is the family pet: the thieving, pubs- and chips-loving whippet, Jim (the “narrow dog” of the title).

He is a reluctant sailor, though—he hates it when the ground shifts under his feet, so moving boats are things he could do without. But since he doesn’t really have much choice, he puts up with his humans’ eccentricities and even manages to summon enough sangfroid to comfort Monica when she is convinced the boat will capsize. And it does sometimes come close to capsizing. Especially as Terry and Monica are not expert sailors. Narrow boats are long and perfect for sailing down inland canals, but completely unsuitable for crossing a large body of water.

The book starts in the canals in Britain, then the momentous crossing of the Channel, battling six-foot waves (they’re helped by an expert, The Principal) and then through French and Belgian canals. Sailing through canals exposes parts of cities most people don’t see, and they meet people you wouldn’t normally meet as a regular tourist—sea captains, the occasional drunks and gongoozlers (landlubbers who are fascinated with boats). I learned a lot about locks (which help raise and lower boats between canals with different water levels) and lock keepers. Jim is a big attraction—everyone they meet along the route is taken up with “les anglais et leur petit lévrier”.

Through all this sailing, Jim is irrepressible. They can’t even take him to the vet without him dividing up the patients in the waiting room “into those he could chase, those he could impregnate and those he could eat”. Tied to a café table in Paris, he tries to strangle himself, drag away the table, look for scraps and maybe some sex. At one point, Monica decides Jim should earn his keep and catch rabbits for their dinner. So Terry and Jim go hunting. Except that the rabbits are savvy enough to know that this is no hunting dog, and calmly step back into the hedges when they see Jim charging, stepping back out once he had gone.

A laugh-out-loud book about an enjoyable trip and a dog you will fall in love with.

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.