Below: heartbreak for any dog owner, the original Mac Harken goes missing a long way from home during a Tornado regatta in Ohio. Above: an unrepentant Mac II is chauffered back to base with his brother in arms Sharkey looking a little more sheepish in the back seat. Usually the pair were off stealing food but occasionally Pewaukee’s Police Chief was left trying to maintain a straight face while advising Harken and Brownie Lewis that there was talk of charges on the grounds of canine sexual misconduct…The stuff of local legend, first Mac and then these two began the long tradition of dogs enjoying equal rights with humans at the Harken plant. Not all work (opposite) – Olaf Harken pilots his landyacht Millennium Factor while filming a TV commercial for electronics giant RCA. Nice aero work includes a deep plate to seal the boom/deck junction (endplate) and top mainsheet blocks neatly tucked away in the boom
nowhere to be found. I had a bad feeling that he’d decided to go home with one of his new friends. I spent a solid week looking for him that time, going to animal shelters, newspapers writing articles about him, asking around church meetings and tons of false leads I got from my many $100 posters with his picture. On my last day of searching I found
him, 18 miles out of town in the yard of a huge drywall manufacturing plant. Nothing like a grown man and his long lost scruffy mutt rolling around on the ground both crying and yelping with joy… But that is a short version of a long, very
trying night and an endless week of looking for my best buddy. Mac was really good on a sailboat too,
standing on the bow even on a fast-moving scow or 470. How he kept from sliding off is beyond me. He did not enjoy ice boat- ing, though, the wind screaming through his ears and no ice boat dog helmets back then – or now! Mac lived 17 years and after him I got
Mac II. He was soon joined by a Springer Spaniel, Sharkey, belonging to Brownie Lewis, a wonderful engineer who has been with us for 40 years and was a well-known 470 measurer back in the 1970s. Both dogs spent every day at the plant greeting people, pretending to provide security and wandering the offices and plant sticking their noses in waste baskets or helping themselves to unattended lunches. With his new buddy Sharkey the pair’s
slopping away on a fancy bridal shower lunch the ladies had prepared for one of the girls getting married. Man, what a scream we heard from that one, but it was hard not to laugh at the sight of Mac and Sharkey full of cake frosting and whipped cream all over their muzzles with ears lowered and a ‘who me?’ look. We had to go out and buy a whole new lunch, but it was worth it! Not all bad. Brownie reminded me that
crime skills evolved... the local police would now turn up with them following accusations from neighbouring dog owners of ‘dog sexual harassment’. Both had freedom of the plant – some-
times they were caught up on our confer- ence table happily chowing down lunches delivered for our noon meetings. We usually knew when it happened because there was always a scream from one of the ladies who first entered the room. Their crowning culinary achievement was the time they were on the table
although those two helped themselves to lunches from careless employees they also earned their keep… sort of. An English sailor who saw that Harken ad (last month) with both mutts in it was about to place a $3,000 hardware order with our major competitor in Southampton, but instead he called us in little ’ol Pewaukee, and said, ‘Anybody who allows dogs in their workplace gets my order!’ So those two fish and skunk-smelling troublemakers got us the order from that ad and they partly paid for the sandwiches they stole! Today I run into and play with several
dogs in our plant every day. Dogs have always had a priority in our company and our people can bring them to work when- ever they want, so instead of two we now have lots of them. Thankfully most of them are better behaved than the former Macs and Sharkey who set the pace. They even get their special ‘Harken Dog Day’ where they all come and enjoy our hospitality. What a hoot!
Peter Harken, Pewaukee Wisconsin q SEAHORSE 51
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