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An island, a dog, and a Schuylkill lifer

The island across from Boathouse Row had no name, and neither did the dog. At its lower end, you could jump across to the island, which was formed from sediment brought down the Schuylkill. There was nothing but wildness over there, trees and weeds and that dog.

Al Wachlin, left, and Ethan Santiago, right, along with Miss Pippin, Wachlin's dog, check the lane bouys during the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia, Pa. on May 8, 2015. (David Maialetti/Staff Photographer)
Al Wachlin, left, and Ethan Santiago, right, along with Miss Pippin, Wachlin's dog, check the lane bouys during the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia, Pa. on May 8, 2015. (David Maialetti/Staff Photographer)Read more

The island across from Boathouse Row had no name, and neither did the dog. At its lower end, you could jump across to the island, which was formed from sediment brought down the Schuylkill. There was nothing but wildness over there, trees and weeds and that dog.

Al Wachlin is a fixture on Boathouse Row, a former head of the Schuylkill Navy. Wachlin kept seeing this dog with distinctive black-and-white markings on the island across from his Fairmount Rowing Association boathouse. Wachlin began leaving food over there. This went on for six months.

"At one point in time, I put a doghouse out on that island, with a blanket in it," Wachlin said. "The next day, the blanket was gone."

As Wachlin told the tale, the blanket thief was next to him on the banks of the Schuylkill. You spot Wachlin, you typically see the dog. She isn't homeless now, she lives with Wachlin and his wife in the Fairmount section of the city. She has a name now, Miss Pippin. Still a three-times-a-week rower when he gets the chance, Wachlin, 76, puts down the lines and buoys that separate the lanes for all the big rowing races, including this weekend's Stotesbury Cup Regatta. When Wachlin takes his wooden barge out, Miss Pippin is with him, has been for 13 years.

Wachlin thought she lived on the island since that's where he always saw her.

"At that time, she avoided people and other dogs," Wachlin said. "And she was really, really super-quick. I think she's mostly border collie. If she couldn't outrun another dog, she could outmaneuver them. She was really agile. I think she took [the blanket] up on Lemon Hill. You would see her at the azalea garden or somewhere. I tried to get close to her, I couldn't get within 60 feet. Everyone was very concerned about her. . . . We discovered she was actually crossing the drive every day. She was actually living up on Lemon Hill."

Even without a home, he said, the dog had common sense. Rainy days, she'd be under a bench. If she wanted some sun, she'd be on top of the bench. Eventually, she followed the male poodle owned by a friend of his home and the woman took her in, named her Pippin. That's how Wachlin ended up with her at his place. In the first weeks, he said, she'd wake up at about 3 in the morning. Wachlin figured out that's when she used to check the trash bins.

"The first winter that I had her, I bumped into a homeless guy down near the Water Works," Wachlin said. "He looked at me, 'Is that the dog that was up on Lemon Hill last winter?' I said, yeah. He said, 'She didn't bother nobody. She just wanted to be left alone.' "

Was it a quick assimilation to staying with him?

"Pretty quick," Wachlin said. "Except the week I got her [when] my wife was away. I left the dog in our kitchen dining area, closed the two doors. I went up to take a shower. I had just rowed that morning. I came down, all the curtains were down, there was a half a pound of butter that was on the table that was gone."

They quickly became inseparable.

"She wouldn't eat unless I was standing there," Wachlin said.

She was welcomed around Fairmount's boathouse, he said, because all of a sudden the geese weren't leaving their droppings on the dock. In her early months with him, "she got out of the house like three times. All three times, she came back to the park."

Wachlin could relate. He began rowing at Penn and never left the river. Last weekend, Wachlin and Miss Pippin took a spin up the Schuylkill to make sure the buoys he'd put down for the Dad Vail were still in place. The dog found the shadiest spot on Wachlin's barge and put her head down.

Skimming along the water, around the Strawberry Mansion Bridge, Wachlin said, "We have a real healthy turtle population. You see that log? As we get close, they usually drop into the water." A turtle was on the log, and dropped into the river. There was a faint sound of car traffic on Martin Luther King Drive. Across the way, Wachlin pointed out where a car had gone into the river some weeks back. There was still a tire sticking out of the mud.

Wachlin performs the same task for big races over at the Cooper River. He remembers one year the NCAA championships were in Pennsauken and the mother of a rower complained about this dog wandering around with no leash. The tournament director told the woman that the dog had a job, that she grabbed loose buoys in the water.

So the dog found both a home and a community that's got her back. Miss Pippin is probably 15 years old now, her faithful companion figures. And she'll log more time on the Schuylkill this weekend than any Stotesbury rower.

In her younger days, she apparently was an athlete herself.

"The high school girls who would row out of Bachelors - they'd see her at the tip of the island," Wachlin said. "They said that she could actually catch a fish. She would go charging across the river. She loved the water."

@jensenoffcampus