This book, by sailor and author Diana Jessie, is useful but doesn’t evoke the same kind of rapturous praise — from me at least — as Jessica Stone’s book on the same topic. Jessie is clearly an experienced sailor and offers sensible, considered advice about how to handle traveling in a boat with pets, but too much of the book is devoted to general pet care issues. There are, for example, long sections about pet grooming, cat toilet training and dog kennel training that needn’t be there — these are topics that are handled admirably in other books and on-line, and they take up valuable page space that could have been devoted to the more interesting and tricky problems faced by sailors accompanied by pets. There’s no question that Jessie has that kind of knowledge — her description, for example, of how she and her husband trained their cat to rescue himself by scrambling back onboard (via a trailing towel) is fascinating, and incredibly helpful.

This is a worthy book, certainly, but if you want only one book on the topic, make it Jessica Stone’s Doggy on Deck.

Amazon link:
Cruising With Your Four-Footed Friends: The Basics of Travel with Your Cat or Dog