Last night I was out for a walk on the seawall in the Olympic Village when I spotted what appeared to be a seal chasing a flock of geese around in circles. A crowd of people had gathered near the shore and were all watching this spectacle in awe, and it soon became apparent to me that it wasn't a mammal of the sea but a mammal of the pooch variety: somebody's dog! Apparently they didn't read the signs that say "THIS WATER IS NOT SAFE FOR SWIMMING".
A woman holding a leash and a roll of poop bags was flailing her arms and yelling at the thing on shore, and as 5 minutes turned into 10 minutes and the geese continued to elude the beast some of us in the crowd begun to worry that it was going to run out of gas and drown. He was about 200 metres out from the shore, so we yelled at nearby boats asking them to help, but they couldn't hear us. A lady standing next to me asked "Do you think he responds to whistling?" to which I replied that it was worth a shot, even though the owner had been trying everything audible to get its attention. The lady put her fingers in her mouth and produced the loudest whistle you've ever heard, and to everyone's surprise the dog's ears immediately perked up and it began swimming towards her, and the shore. Cheers broke out as the pup finally reached the seawall and a man (pictured below) hauled her out and held onto her until the owner ran over and collected her.
The whistler is pictured left below, petting the pooch name was Maggie. I didn't get the whistler's name but we'll just call her Hero.
