The Life of Riley, A WDC Shorewatch dog
Find out about WDC Shorewatch through the eyes of Riley the springer spaniel and his owner Steve Truluck.
A dog that writes blogs? Pull the other one! OK so actually I’ve trained my human to type what he’s told; he’ll do anything for one of my cuddles. I’ve been asked to write a series of blogs to tell you all about my whale and dolphin adventures in Scotland.
My human first met me when I was very little and luckily for me he lives right next to the sea. I’ve always loved the sea. I can go swimming and I find lots of sticks and balls on the beach. Occasionally, if I’m really lucky, there are dead seagulls which I love rolling on but my human isn’t very happy when I do that. What does make him happy is seeing dolphins. He gets so happy he starts shouting and squealing. It’s so embarrassing. Luckily for him most humans get like that when they see dolphins. He met a group of local people who are also passionate about whales and dolphins and now we all go watching and they do the squealing together while I pretend I’m not with them. It’s called Shorewatch and it’s run by wildlife charity, WDC – Whale and Dolphin Conservation.
Shorewatch relies on volunteers like me and my human to look out for whales and dolphins from specific sites and then record their sightings. The information can then be used to check for long-term trends when whales and dolphins are present at the site. With this information the kind humans at WDC help protect these amazing creatures of the sea. The best bit is that anyone can do it and it only takes 10 minutes which means loads of time for the humans to play with me. There are Shorewatch sites all around Scotland where volunteers watch from and contribute to helping protect the marine environment. I’m proud to be a Shorewatcher.
So, please follow my blogs and I’ll tell you all about the cool marine mammals you can see, like orcas, humpbacks, minkes and dolphins. Plus I’ll tell you about the nice humans I meet shorewatching and explain to you how Shorewatch works.
I hope you’ll like reading about my adventures and me enjoying the life of Riley.
