The Ferry Dog

Every morning at seven thirty, the ferry leaves Manly for the center of Sydney. It is full of people going to work: office workers with laptops, students with headphones, tourists taking photos of the Opera House. And for the last few months, there has also been a dog. He is a big, friendly brown dog with one white ear, and he always gets on alone.

Nobody knows where he comes from. He walks onto the ferry, sits at the front, looks at the water for half an hour and gets off at Circular Quay. In the afternoon, he takes the ferry back to Manly. The crew give him water and say hello, but he doesn't belong to any of them.

One of the commuters, a young programmer called Josh, started taking pictures of him. He created a social media account called "The Ferry Dog" and posted a photo every day. Within a month, the account had fifty thousand followers. People from all over the world left comments, and the dog got a name: Captain. Soon a local TV channel did a short report about him, and a newspaper put his photo on the front page. Everybody loved Captain, but nobody knew who his owner was.

Elena Ruiz, a journalist from Valencia, was working in Sydney for a few months. When she read the article, she wanted to know the rest of the story. "Every dog has a home," she thought. "Somebody must be wondering where he goes all day." So one afternoon, she took the ferry back to Manly and followed Captain when he got off.

He walked along the beach, crossed a park and turned into a quiet street of small houses. He stopped in front of a blue gate and barked once. An old man opened the door. His name was Frank, and he was eighty-two years old.

Frank invited Elena in for a cup of tea and told her everything. For forty years, he had worked on the Manly ferries, first as a sailor and then as a captain. Every morning, the dog used to walk him to the wharf. When Frank retired, his legs got worse and he couldn't walk that far anymore. But the dog didn't want to stop. "He still goes to work," Frank said, laughing. "He's the only one in this house with a job." The dog's real name, it turned out, was Biscuit.

Elena's story was published in Spain and in Australia, and it became the most-read article of the week. A month later, the ferry company invited Frank for a special trip. He sat at the front of the ferry with Biscuit beside him, looking at the water, just like in the old days.