A Dog's Three-Dimensional World of Light, Shapes, and Scent — Mostly Scent?

Is Marco the dog following a visual trail, with the additional visual cues of rocks lined up on the side, or is he following "a rippling, three-dimensional tapestry of light, shapes, and scents, with every object effusing odors that are further revealed upon nose-first investigation"?

According to the researchers interviewed for this article in Popular Science, "Why Your Dog Needs to Smell the World," too many dog owners neglect smelling opportunities in favor of motion. 

Many dogs, however, live in less enriching circumstances. They spend most of their time in relatively scent-impoverished indoor environments and then, when taken outside for a walk, are hurried along at a pace that’s more about their caregiver’s interests than their own. Even just a cracked-open window can make a difference, says Horowitz, though she tries to let her own companions, Quiddity and Tilde, sniff to their hearts’ content while exploring on a stroll.

Dogs change too: Our former collie-mix, Shelby, used to charge forward on walks. She never learned not to pull the leash -- or I was unwilling to correct her again and again times 1,000. 

More often she was off-leash except for the last bit of the walk home, past the other houses.

But as she aged, she more and more prefered to take "sniff walks," going a couple of yards and then pausing to examine some tuft of grass or bush. That is what old dogs often want to do.

Mountain Lions, Dogs, and Lethal Force

This mountain lion was captured and tagged in Boulder in October 2021.
Relocated to the mountains, it was killed in December 2022 after attacking dogs.
(Photo: Boulder Police Dept, via the Colorado Sun)

In 2003, Colorado journalist David Baron published The Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predator's Deadly Return to Suburban America.

Its topic was human-lion relations on the northern Front Range of Colorado, where cities bump into the mountains, with a focus on Boulder County. (A National Public Radio reporter, Barron wrote that book while on a fellowship in environmental journalism at CU-Boulder.)

As Colorado moved away from treating lions as "varmints" with a bounty on their heads to game animals with a limited "take" allowed, populations had rebounded. Boulder, like many other places, had a thriving herd of in-town mule deer, especially on its western edge, and lions had followed the deer — as they do. (The usual figure you hear is that an adult mountain lion will kill a deer every seven to ten days, feeding on the carcass while it is still relatively fresh.)

The death of Idaho Springs high-school athlete Scott Lancaster, ambushed by a lion in 1991 while training for the cross-country running team, was the first recorded human kill in Colorado.

(Here is a list of post-1890 fatal lion attacks in North America, which is undoubtedly incomplete, especially as regards the US-Mexico border region.)

The attack on the young runner is key to Baron's book, as his website explains:

Here, in a spellbinding tale of man and beast that recalls, only in nonfiction form, Peter Benchley’s thriller Jaws, award-winning journalist David Baron chronicles Boulder’s struggles to coexist with its wild neighbors and reconstructs the paved-with-good-intentions path that led to Colorado’s first recorded fatal mountain lion attack. The book reveals the subtle yet powerful ways in which human actions are altering wildlife behavior.

My takeaway from Baron's book was that the Colorado Division of Wildlife (as it was then called) was willing to try some active "management" of suburban and exurban mountain lions, but the feedback that they got from public meetings leaned toward "Please don't kill them. We can learn to co-exist."

Have things changed? A headline in the online Colorado Sun reads, "Mountain lions killed 15 dogs in 30 days near a Colorado town. Attacks continued and now a lion is dead."

Subhead: "People living in neighborhoods around Nederland wonder why Colorado Parks and Wildlife can’t do more to stop attacks on their pets".

In response, Sam Peterson, CPW’s Area 2 Boulder South District wildlife manager, held a meeting at the Nederland community center. Most of it focused on how to peacefully coexist with lions, but that’s not what the 140 people who attended were after. They wanted to know why lions were hiding out under porches, grabbing 100-pound Dobermans and 70-pound Labs and stalking dogs on leashes held by humans.

So the debate continues: Active measures versus careful co-existence, with residents coming down on both side and CPW reluctant — for both philosophical and budgetary reasons — to commit to sending marksmen and hounds after every mountain lion seen eyeing a dog.

Some Nederland-area residents now do their outdoor chores with firearms handy. But there's a catch. Under Colorado's "nuisance wildlife" laws (link is a PDF file),  a dog is not worth as much as a goat, for example, if the goat is classified as "livestock" and not a "pet."

• Black bears and mountain lions CAN NOT be destroyed when they are causing damage to personal property, including pets. 

• Black bears and mountain lions CAN be killed when it is NECESSARY to prevent them from inflicting death, damage or injury to livestock, human life, real property, or a motor vehicle. Any wildlife killed shall remain the property of the state, and such killing shall be reported to the division within five days. “Real property” means land and generally whatever is erected or growing upon or affixed to land. (Note: “Personal Property” means everything that is subject to ownership, other than real estate. Personal property includes moveable and tangible things such as pets, furniture and merchandise.)

In the Colorado Sun article, we see what happens when someone uses lethal force — sometimes:

After being driven away from one dog attack, a lion moved on to the next house:

The large, reddish cat walked up a neighbor’s driveway. . .  Several minutes later [the residents] heard several gunshots. CPW’s deputy regional manager Kristin Cannon filled in the rest of the story. 

Cannon says the lion attacked a dog at a home 400 yards from [the first attack]  and that during the attack, the dog’s owner killed the lion. She reiterated what Peterson had said, that it’s illegal to kill a lion to protect a pet but that in this instance CPW won’t be pressing charges due to “the totality of the circumstances.” 

Which is to say that the law is black-and-white but the wildlfe officers have a lot of discretion based on circumstances and the shooter's attitude. In my small experience, I have seen them usually avoid charging a shooter, which might put them in court being cross-examined over whether the bear was in the "personal property" garbage can or trying to break into the "real property" house. And there are the public-relations aspects.

But the option to charge someone is always there, beloved dog or not.

Deer or Dogs: Mountain Lions Like Them Both

A lion who did not understand the concept of "focal length" on an inexpensive trail cam.

The Vail Daily reminds ski-country residents and visitors that mountain lions can be just about anywhere in winter time. Two big attractors are "town deer" and loose dogs.

“In Eagle, Vail and Edwards, deer live in everybody’s backyards,” said Colorado Parks and Wildlife District Wildlife Manager Matt Yamashita. “That’s a major contribution to human and lion conflict. Mountain lions don’t discriminate between food sources. If there’s a deer there one day and a dog the other, it’s all the same to them.”

* * * 

“When people call about mountain lions, their biggest concern is how to keep themselves, their families, their pets safe,” Yamashita said. “Most activity we see in Eagle County is tied to dogs, specifically, dogs off leash. They’ll stalk dogs. When dogs are in danger, they’ll instinctively retreat to their owners. Dogs are the No. 1 instigator for human-lion interactions. If people could be cognizant of that, we’d have fewer conflicts.”

You always hear that a lion's territory is 70–100 square miles (18,000–25,900 ha). But territories do overlap.

Marco Gets a Poem at the Taos Farmers Market

The Saturday farmers market in Taos, New Mexico, is a rarity: sellers of food outnumber the sellers of homemade soap, crocheted potholders, and other non-edible items. Especially now, when local tomatoes, corn, pears, etc. are flooding in. 

I bought some pears that were small, with brown patches, not pretty enough for a supermarket display—but wow, the fresh pear flavor! 

And you can buy poetry. There are often one or two poets for hire who sit with portable typewriters, ready to produce a poem for any prompt—which is a great way to develop your poetic virtuosity.

 I ordered a poem a few years ago about a long-gone downstairs bar on the plaza after I overheard two guys talking about it. I had my first legal (American) drink down there when I turned 21, while working here. (This is not counting a certain Third World country where I think I had my first drink in a bar at 16.)

Today it was for Marco, the new Chesapeake Bay retriever. I introduced him to itinerant poet Marshall James Kavanaugh, who started tapping the keys. It's one draft only, no capital letteers but one, no revision, don't keep the buyer waiting too long!

a big day
for a big fella
finding the small world of home
extends into a community at large
a place for harvests to grow
for friends to be had
every tail wag of golden splendor
ricochets with raucus energy
such sweet tastes
and alluring smells

to be Marco at the market
is to be a gentle discoverer
sailing ancient seas
tapping the toes to paths leading
in every direction

like a dream, there are things
to chase that give themselves
up to our impressions

a companion that grows
like this scene of abundance
he is the explorer
that gives curiousity its name.

Your dog deserves a poem too.

Blog Stew—But You Had Better Bring a Gallon of Water

• The subtitle of Southwestern writer Craig Child's book The Secret Knowledge of Water is "There are Two Ways to Die in the Desert: Thirst and Drowning."

For this Mesa County mountain biker, it was the former. And his would-be rescuers were not in much better shape.

• Wyoming sheep rancher and author Cat Urbigkit deals with a documentary film crew: 

The last time a film crew came to the ranch, a videographer tried to follow behind a guardian dog while holding a large piece of recording equipment low to the ground, getting a dog-level view. The dog, Panda, had barked and warned the guy to back off, but when he persisted, I had to quickly step in as the enraged dog wheeled around to take out the equipment.

This visit worked out better, with cameos by the livestock guardian dogs.

• Thanks to legislative changes, the medical (not recreational) cannabis market in Colorado is cratering, with businesses closing down.

Medical marijuana sales in Colorado are down by 43% in the first four months of 2022 compared to the same span in 2021 . . .  According to the state’s Department of Revenue, wholesale prices and overall sales volume have gone down and overall sales volume has declined for the 11th month in a row.

Negotiating with a Chesapeake

A couple of weeks ago I was unloading Marco at "the pond" when I met a guy preparing to leave, along with his friendly chocolate Lab. Noting Marco's breed, he recited — like I had never heard this before — "You ask a golden retriever. You train a Labrador retriever. You negotiate with a Chesapeake Bay retriever." 

Bear in mind that Marco arrived as a 10-month-old whom I don't think had every experienced water outside the baths he got at the breeder's kennel during his short career as a show-puppy. 

It took him two or three visits to get accustomed to bigger water, but there is something to the idea of breed predelictions. Collies like to herd other critters, and Chessies like to splash and swim.

Now we are at this stage:

Marco: I'm ready. Throw the bumper!

Me: You need to sit here by me. Marco! Come!

Marco: Are you kidding? I'm in the water. Throw the bumper! 

Me: Marco! Come!

Marco: You going to make me? You and whose army? THROW THE BUMPER! 

Splash! 

He brings it to the water's edge, but he does not want to come out himself, until I start to leave while offering him a treat. Then he is right there.

We will keep working on the fine points. It is just so good to see him in the water.

A Big Burn Down by Bent's Old Fort

Fires everywhere in southern Colorado this week. I myself was "toned out" of bed at 2:27 a.m. yesterday, soon to be loaded into a brush truck (Type 6 engine) with three other volunteers, headed up the canyon as "mutual aid" to a grass fire running in front of 50 mph winds. 

A concentrated attack from three fire departments soon knocked it down, and after that we were just wet-lining and chasing flare-ups. 

The fire burned right up to the walls of the reconstructed trading post (National Park Service).

Meanwhile, down the Arkansas, two big fires blew up in southern Colorado, one around John Martin Reservoir and the other upstream at Bent's Fort.  This famous 1840s-1850s trading post was rebuilt on its original site in time for the 1976 American Bicentennial — now the reproduction has outlived the original. (And it has flush toilets).

Fire in cottonwood groves along the Arkansas River (La Junta Fire Dept.)

The Bent's Fort fire has burned more than 1,000 acres today.  No threat to the fort really, and no homes lost in the area. 

“There is no threat to Bent Fort, it is being protected so I want that to be the main point. Mainly the fire has been in the river bottom, it has gotten out to some farm land but we’ve contained it off some farm land so its maintained to the river area,” [La Junta Fire] Chief Davidson said.

Funny thing, a fire like this probably would make the area around Bent's Fort look more like it did in its heyday, when the horses of trappers, traders, travelers, and visiting Cheyenne Indians no doubt nibbled all the grass and the riparian cottonwood groves were picked over for firewood. I have been told by Park Service staff that the wetland area east of the fort was not there in those days — it is a result of changing drainage patterns.

An old pole barn at Oxbow State Wildlife Area (Colorado Parks and Wildlife).

 

Across the river, much of the Oxbow State Wildife Area burned over too. It's a place where I once had a good duck hunt with my old dog Jack, and I was thinking of revisiting it with Marco this year. And maybe we will, just to see how it looks after a summer's regrowth.

Further down, another fire was burning around Fort Lyon and John Martin Reservoir. More old stomping grounds. 

The fire near Cheraw was contained Tuesday. (KOAA-TV)

 

It's time to become reacquainted with all that area, come September or October.

Oh Gawd, There Is a Puppy in the House

 I am at my desk reading the morning news. 

There is a swishing sound, but it does not really register on me.

Then I go out into the hallway to see this white stripe going down its length into the living room.

At the end sits a Certain Dog, very pleased with himself.

"I thought only cats did that," I said.

He is now eleven months old, an adolescent mix of serious  and goofy.

We think that he might catching up on puppy shenanigans that the more regimented life at the breeder's prevented him from enjoying when he was half this age.

Like most dogs, he figures that going Full Wigglebutt ensures that all will be forgiven.

Retrievers and Me (7): Marco, the Dog with the Wrong Tail

"Conquer Through Cuteness."
That is the Puppy Way, Marco knows.

Already published

Part 1: The Retriever Who Did Not Retrieve

Part 2: A Professional Golden Retriever

Part 3: A Bulldozer of a Dog

 

Part 4: Hardscrabble Jack

Part 5: Half a Lab, Totally Brave

Part 6: Fisher, the most Difficult Dog

The Covid pandemic "shrinkage" sneaked up on us. By early 2021, I realized that I was not going anywhere except two nearby towns, even after being vaccinated against Covid-19. It was a mental thing. "Lassitude," M. called it. 

Fisher's world was shrinking too. His increasing mobility issues meant walks were shorter and shorter, a quarter mile instead of half a mile, then maybe only 200 yards, then less. No rough terrain.

In May 2021, I drove up to Colorado Springs. I had not been there since March 2020. There were whole new buildings downtown! 

In June, we realized two things: First, Fisher had reached the end of his trail. Second, we had to hit the road! Go somewhere! Break out! No more "Covid Contracture"!

Now dogless, we took our popup trailer down to the Conejos River, along with what seemed like hundreds of other campers and RV-ers. It felt wonderful.

A trip to northern New Mexico followed in September. In October I went to visit my friend Galen in North Dakota. We did a little bird-hunting. It seemed wrong not to wear a whistle. (Gracie, his young German wirehaired pointer, was picking up the slack as a bird dog.)

November saw us on the road to the Texas Hill County and San Antonio. It was a business trip for me, with some sightseeing. We knew it was our last planned trip, and then it would be time to think about dogs.

I put out some feelers about adopting another mature Chessie or a Lab. Nothing panned out. M. was interested in a black German shepherd puppy, but the fostering organization said we lived too far from "their vet." 

Then a Colorado Springs breeder DM'd me after reading what I had posted on a Facebook Chessie group. She had this ten-month-old dog — not a little pup, but not fully trained either.

We went to see him. This time, I had more questions, like why was she getting rid of him at that age? What was his problem?

It looks fairly straight here, not typical for him

The problem was his tail.

"Tail of medium length; medium heavy at base. The tail should be straight or slightly curved and should not curl over back or side kink."

American Chesapeake Club Breed Standard 

The website goes on about how the standard should "enable the Chesapeake to function with ease, efficiency and endurance." What does a curvy tail have to do with swimming, water retrieving, or upland hunting? Nothing that I can see.

The breeder explained that he had been shown for "conformation" — and club records show him as far away as York, Pa.* She had also considered training him as a therapy dog — and I agree he has a easy disposition. By Chessie standards, he is a love bug.

Oops, there it goes curling over his back!

But as he grew, his tail curled too much! So he was selling for half price. But we could take him home, and she would hold the check. We brought him home on the 2nd. On the 5th I emailed her: "Cash the check." We had a new dog, and his name (thanks to M.) was Marco.

So much was new. I think his previous world was concrete-floored kennels and mowed grass. Now there was snow, ice, cactus, pine needles, goatheads, twigs, trees. And other dogs barking at him! And horses — so big! 

His reacting to birds on the television screen makes me think he had not been in a room with a TV set before. 

The basic retrieving instinct is there, and if this weird warm weather holds another day, I can take him to a shallow pond for a controlled water introduction.

Yep, dangerously curled.

Of course, there are puppy problems. He is always stealing something: a piece of crumpled paper, a glove, a T-shirt from the laundry basket. He is not 100-percent housebroken, but we are working on that. 

It has been 25 years since I had a dog so young. Retriever-training books are being (literally) dusted off. Dummies and balls and check cords, etc. are gathered into a bucket.

School is in session, but sessions are short, just ten minutes. And the teacher is less worried about him Getting It right away. Tomorrow is always another day. Let's go for a walk. 

* He appears as Ocotilla's Orion of Dalbrian

Retrievers and Me (6): Fisher, the Most Difficult Dog

Already published

Part 1: The Retriever Who Did Not Retrieve

Part 2: A Professional Golden Retriever

Part 3: A Bulldozer of a Dog

 

Part 4: Hardscrabble Jack 

Part 5: Half a Lab, Totally Brave

A mid-air frisbee catch, somewhere in northern Wyoming.

"Fisher" was the name he came with. It was a little suburban for my taste, but, I thought, he has so much to learn, so why add learning a new name all that?

Wrong decision! I should have taken him to two or three dog-shamans for soul-retrieval and psychic cleansing, given him a dose of ayahuasca, changed his name, and dyed him blue. Anything for a fresh start.

It started when Jack's cancer was worsening and we knew that his days were limited. M. and I were sitting in Eske's Brew Pub in Taos that spring (Jack being back home at a wonderful boarding kennel) and decided that we should be thinking about another dog.

I contacted the breeder who had sold us Jack, but in the intervening dozen years she had dropped out of making new Chesapeake Bay retrievers. 

Willing to adopt an adult dog, I contacted the Chesapeake Bay Retriever Relief and Rescue group. (As usual, most of the adoptable dogs were on the West Coast or the Upper Midwest or East Coast.) A volunteer from the Colorado Springs area came out down to meet us, meet Jack, and check out  our home. She promised to be in touch. 

Fisher's first day — looking good — on land.

And she was! Someone in Denver had brought her a 2-year-old dog. He was not yet listed on the website. Would we like to meet him?

We took two vehicles so that Shelby could come and meet him at a neutral site. When we arrived, there he was, sitting a perfect Sit on her kitchen floor while she tossed him cheese bits.

"He's a food whore," she said. Truer words never spoken.

The two dogs met, sniffed — no conflict.

The previous owner was there. He said something about a divorce, no one home all day . . . kids . . . whatever. And he said that when Fisher swam in a lake, "they had a hard time getting him out." That should have been a warning.

Not only was he a food whore, he was a food bully. When I tried feeding both dogs in opposite corners of the kitchen, he inhaled his kibble, ran over to Shelby, body-slammed her out of the way, and inhaled her food too. So, separate rooms.

(Jack, meanwhile, gave Fisher a menacing growl, and immediately started sinking fast, to where he had to be put down the next day. I wished that he had not had to see the new dog arrive.)

The next day, I took him down to the dog swimming hole (picture here). I tossed in one of the retrieving dummies, and he sprang after it — and kept going. Barking crazily, he rampaged over the dam and headed downstream, splashing, wading, swimming.

I jogged down the parallel road, tracking his barks. When they stopped moving, I cut through someone's lawn and down to the creek, where he was standing calmly in a pool. I waded out and snapped a leash on him, then walked home in soggy jeans. What was that all about?

Another day, I tried a shallow pond. At first he dog-paddled normally, then it started — splashing with his front paws, biting the water, ignoring all commands. Thinking he was in distress, I stripped to my underwear and swam after him, herding him to the bank. In fact, he was not in distress at all. Given time, 10–15 minutes, he would stop and swim out

It's called "water-freaking," I learned in online forums. And no one seemed to have a cure for it, really. It appeared to be genetic. Watch this video and add more barking and more thrashing.

I tried working with him, using food mainly, to encourage him to be in the water without going nuts, but with only small success. It was like trying to cure epilepsy with dog biscuits.

In the long run, it meant he was only an upland hunting dog. With sharptail grouse or pheasants, he could be useful. But I had a Chesapeake who had to be kept away from water deep enough to swim in.

That was not the worse thing that he did

A year went by. He had some hunting experience, and we felt we were calming down his food aggression.

Then one summer day, when M. was setting out our meal on the front porch dining table, I heard her screaming. I ran out to find her backed up against the porch gate, her forearms bleeding, Fisher in fighting stance in front of her.

I grabbed the nearest object, a large metal dustpan, and lit into him like an angry ape, yelling and bashing him with the dustpan until I had chased him to the far end of the porch.

Then she and I spent some time disinfecting and bandaging her wounds. (That NOLS Wilderness First Aid class was helpful.)

Fisher at 11. He never went gray.

I had a plan for him. I would put a pistol in my pocket, snap on his leash, take him for a walk up on the national forest, and come back alone. He had crossed a line and kept going. There would be no more.

So how he live to be almost 14? He could thank my wife's tender heart and a dog-writer in St. Louis.

When I told her my plan, she begged me not to do it. So I did not. But I had no Plan B.

She offered one. Her sister-in-law, a true dog-lover, lives in greater St. Louis and supports a group called Stray Rescue of St. Louis. The dogs they foster and try to re-home come with every behavioral and socialization problem that you can imagine. The group's founder, Randy Grim, put his experience into a book: Don't Dump the Dog: Outrageous Stories and Simple Solutions to Your Worst Dog Behavior Problems.

We did everything in Chapter 9, "Bullies with an Attitude." When other people came to the house, we either crated him, or we coached them on how to act. (Hint: He could be bribed.)

Things were better — until the day a neighbor stopped by, drove up to the house, and got out of his truck. I started down the steps to the driveway — and then Fisher, who had been napping on the porch, shot by me and launched himself at the guy. More defensive wounds. More bandaging and apologies — we ended up taking the neighbor and his wife to dinner at the best restaurant in the county.

But before that, they had gone to a walk-in urgent-care clinic for proper medicine, antibiotics, etc., and the clinic reported the dogbite to our county sheriff. I got a call from one of the public health nurses: "Just so you know, your dog was reported, and you will be hearing from the sheriff's office."

Yikes, his rabies vaccination was expired! I rushed him to the vet, so that when the bored deputy called, I could say, "Oh yes, he's up to date."

The law here is "Two Strikes and You're Out," but M. does not believe in dealing with The System, so he skated.

We tried one more thing that Randy Grim's book does not mention: bear spray. We live with bears, and in the summer, a canister sits on the kitchen counter, ready for walks in the woods or, heaven forbid, a home invasion via the back door. 

The next time Fisher started acting aggressive toward her in the kitchen, M. gave him a shot of Udap cologne. It cooled his jets right away. "Ow! She bites back!" Once or twice more she just had to lift it up off the counter. He had learned.

All the aggression made it hard to get into his head, but eventually I figured out that inside the big dog was a scared dog. I don't think he had been mistreated, but he was missing something. One neighbor (whom Fisher never bit) used to just shrug his shoulders and say, "That dog was made on Monday." (Think of a GM auto plant in the 1970s.) 

Fisher hiking in the Wet Mountai

Sometimes we wondered if there was such a thing as canine autism, because when riding in a car he seemed overwhelmed by The World Out There. Must bark! Must jump around! Yet in a crate he would travel quietly all day long.

For all that, he was still The Dog. Shelby died six years before he did (they were never friends, but co-existed), and after that he had it all to himself. And we had some good times, if he was carefully managed.

We had him cremated and placed his ashes in an urn up the ridge between two boulders. M. likes to go up and sit with him.

Read the last installment: "Marco, the Dog with the Wrong Tail."

Retrievers and Me (5): Half a Lab, Totally Brave

Already published

Part 1: The Retriever Who Did Not Retrieve

Part 2: A Professional Golden Retriever

Part 3: A Bulldozer of a Dog

 

Part 4: Hardscrabble Jack

With Shelby and Jack on a spring hike in the Sangre de Cristo Range

Shelby was the mystery dog. She was our first "rescue," not through a group, but through a neighbor. M. and I were her third owners, and I guessed her age at around two years at the time. If that is true, she lived to be fifteen, so she had a pretty good run.

Allegedly she was half Labrador retriever and half Rough Collie. Her coat was long and silky, like the Rough Collie's, but her ribcage was more round and her muzzle not as long as the "needle-nose" purebred strain. She weighed 75 lbs. (34 kg). And she was black, with a small white blaze on her chest. "Shelby" was the name she came with.

She had nicknames too. "The Bandit Queen" was one of them. Before she came to live with us, she aready had a small posse of her own who followed her for quite some distance.

If Jack was "my" dog, M. hoped that Shelby would be "her" dog, but in fact, Shelby was Shelby's dog. 

Another of her nicknames was "cat in a dog suit." Although she stuck with us, we felt that she always had a Plan B in case we let her down, and possibly a Plan C as well.  

In personality, she was a collie. Walking in open country, she would not be up front quartering like a hunting dog, but off to one side — with the invisible herd of sheep in front.

She was more predatory than any of the Chessies. Once I found a dead fox squirrel in the snow near the house, and the snow told the story of how she had caught it as it tried to cross from tree to tree, killed it, whirled it around in a war dance (blood splatter), and then left the carcass for me to find.

Another time I came out to find her playing Keep-Away with Jack around the vegetable garden, having possession of a still-warm dead chicken. Another neighbor's dog was shot for chicken-stealing —  did she care?

Victor the cat and Shelby shared a fashion sense.

She and Jack were a sort-of pack but she also was close to our cat Victor, who shared her long silky black coat with a white blaze. It was a cross-species genetic connection of some sort.

I credit her collie side with how she was "crazy-brave." Once M. told me how she charged a black bear near the house, but consented to be called back.

But that was not her peak of crazy-brave.

When she was twelve (?), Jack was gone, replaced by Fisher. One morning in late summer I was walking them both off-leash up the Forest Service road.

Fisher, still young, had "the zooomies," and he went racing down into a deep gully, up the other side, and into a thicket of Gambel oak. Shelby, now slow and arthritic, plodded along by my side.

He ran into the oak brush but suddenly shot out again at a run, pursued by a medium-size black bear. (The bear was just loping. Don't underestimate their speed over a short distance.) 

He dashed back down through the gully, ending up in a face-off with the bear, who was on the far side.

There was a poor mast crop (acorns) that year, but that particular clone-cluster had a lot, which had attracted the bear.

I was calling him, but he was too overwhelmed by events to come to me. Meanwhile, Shelby launched herself at the bear.

Old and arthritic? She forgot all about that! Barking furiously, she charged down into the gully and up the other side. Head down, tail flowing in the wind, she went for the bear like a black guided missile.

The bear turned and ran into the brush, pursued by Shelby. 

I ran to grab Fisher, saying good-bye in my heart to Shelby: "You lived a good life." I fully expected to hear the shriek of a dog being disemboweled. 

There was silence.

Something black moved in the oak brush. Dog or bear?

Shelby trotted out into the open, squatted, and pissed with her back to where the bear had gone. Then she consented to notice that she was being called.

With a dog collar in each fist, I hustled them toward home.

Crazy-brave.

Next: Fisher, the Most Difficult Dog

Retrievers and Me (4): Hardscrabble Jack

Already published

Part 1: The Retriever Who Did Not Retrieve

Part 2: A Professional Golden Retriever

Part 3: A Bulldozer of a Dog

Jack swimming in the creek on a hot summer day.

Let's try changing Leo Tolstoy's famous opening line of his 1878 novel Anna Karenina to this: “All happy dogs are alike; each unhappy dog is unhappy in its own way.” 

When Perk was gone after only ten years, I turned to the Internet and located a Chesapeake Bay retriver breeder in Black Forest (an area NE of Colorado Springs). 

M. and I visited her, bringing photos of Perk as our credentials, and we put down a deposit on one of the current litter, who were just fat little puppies wriggling around in the whelping box at that time.

In June she announced that our puppy was ready. Based on our previous ownership of a dominant male, she assigned us another one —first out of the whelping box, she said — although he never grew as large as Perk, topping out at 90 lbs. (41 kg).

He spent his midsummer following our cat Victor around the yard and garden, until Victor seemed to say, "Would someone get this clumsy puppy away from me?" (Victor's real inter-species friendship was with Shelby — see the next post.)

He perfected his characteristic stance, front legs braced extra-wide, as though saying, "Are you going to make me? You and whose army?" 

In late summer we took a car-camping trip up into British Columbia and Alberta, visiting friends and some of my Canadian relatives. He sat in M.'s lap as we traversed Wyoming on I-80, contentedly chewing on the armrest. 

Jack bays back at the local coyotes.

In a small Idaho town, a retired logger gave him his "secret name" — Little Hamster — and told us a story of another Chessie who would ride atop a loaded log truck. 

On a hiking trail at Lake Louise, the cute puppy/le chiot received many compliments.

But I don't have many tales to tell about Jack. He hiked, he hunted, he camped, he traveled, he howled back at the local coyotes. Although his muzzle went gray early, I hoped he would live forever. As you do.

His only quirk was that he did not show his belly. If you caught a little bit of belly showing as he napped and wanted to rub it, he immediately would turn upright. Perk used to wriggle on his back in the snow, making doggy "snow angels." but Jack would never do that.

When he started to pass blood in his thirteenth year, and I took him to the vet, it took me and a vet tech together wrestle him over and hold him so that the vet could pass the ultrasound transducer over his bladder area.

It showed "a mass," she said. 

A relatively new graduate of the Colorado State University vet school, she was a little afraid to say the C-word to a client, I think. But that's what it was — bladder cancer.

I wrote a haiku some time later:

I splash cold water on my face.
The young dog sniffs
at the old dog's grave.

The young dog. Fisher. Oh gawd, Fisher.

Maybe I should acknowledge another dog as well before dealing with . . . Fisher.

Part 5: Half-Lab, Totally Brave.

 

Retrievers and Me (3): A Bulldozer of a Dog

Perk modeling an improvised muzzle, from an article
I wrote for Gun Dog magazine on field first aid.

Already published

Part 1: The Retriever Who Did Not Retrieve

Part 2: A Professional Golden Retriever

Just a few years after I hunted over the "Swiss guide" golden retriever, M. and I found ourselves living in a 1908 smelter worker's cottage on the wrong side of the tracks in Cañon City, Colorado where I had been hired on a start-up outdoor magazine, Colorado Outdoor Journal, edited by my friend Galen Geer, who appeared in Part 2 as a writer-deputy sheriff but was on his way up, or at least out.

You probably have not heard of it — not because you are unhip, but because like 80 percent of magazine startups in the (barely) pre-Web era, it failed. That's another story.

As managing editor, I was the main point-of-contact with the writers. Some were already established, such as John Gierach and Ed Engle for trout fishing, Doug Harbour for upland bird hunting, and David Petersen for elk hunting.

Others were not, like the man from the North Fork Valley who had written a piece about his moose hunt, back when moose were only recently re-introduced in Colorado and licenses very few, available only by a lottery system.

The North Fork Valley in Delta County is on the Western Slope, but he was going to be in Cañon and wanted to drop off some photos or something in person, so of course we said "Come on by."

After taking care of business, he asked Galen and me, "Do you fellas like dogs?" 

"Sure," we said. 

"I have two pups out here from my last litter," he said, "but I have not yet found homes for them." 

He had built a sort of nest with straw bales and plywood in the bed of his pickup truck. He dropped the tailgate, and the two pups emerged. One bounced right out, while other came more cautiously.

They were four-month-old Chesapeake Bay retrievers, born to a dam named Dustbuster of Bone Mesa, sired by a dog named Mount Lamborn's Baron. One or both, take 'em. No cost. I chose the bouncy one.

Galen had no room for another hunting dog but I now had a small house on a large lot with open land beyond that  — and I remembered that superb golden retriever. I knew nothing about Chessies, but they were clearly retrievers too.

I called M. at home and said that I had been offered a puppy. She agreed to my bringing him home. Later she admitted that the word "puppy" to her meant a little guy that you could hold in your cupped hands. Instead, here was a doggie who weighed maybe thirty pounds already!

His first new experience was being attacked by cats. We had three. They all went into full Intruder -Attack Mode, and he was soon backed into a corner of the dining room, going "Please don't hurt me!" The cat line-up would change, but he always drew a line between Our Cats (politely ignored) and Other Cats (could be chased out of the backyard).

His name was Perk, from the idea that free puppies were a perk of the job. I joined the Hunting Retriever Club (HRC) chapter down in Pueblo, and so registered him with the United Kennel Club as "Baron's Editor's Perquisite."

He grew to 105 pounds (48 kg), a stoic bulldozer of a dog. He traveled with us from Puget Sound to the Shenandoah Valley and made the move from Cañon City to the higher hills. He hiked and hunted and accompanied me at the endless summer work of cleaning the irrigation ditch.

At the new place, where houses were farther apart, a neighbor once asked if we still had a dog. "I never hear him," she said. 

That was because he saved his window-rattling Woof! for serious things: "Someone is walking up the driveway!" or "There is a bear out front!"

I took him to HRC training classes. That group makes much of distinguishing themselves from other dog groups. They have "hunt tests" or "hunts," not "field trials."  Handlers wear camouflage, not white coats. Duck calls are blown and blank shotgun shells fired. 

We learned some good things.  But serious competion would require travel around about a four-state area, campaigning a dog through various "hunts" of increasing complexity. I lacked the time, money, and inclination.

It seemed to me that a "Started" dog had the basic skills for a hunting retriever, assisted by his own learning on the job. So I dropped out after that level. He got his one (camouflage-printed) ribbon. It might still be around here someplace.

Plus, I never forgot a conversation I overheard while waiting for an HRC chapter meeting to begin. This woman, one of the club stalwarts, was complaining that her husband had taken their competition dog out the previous weekend for some actual duck-hunting. 

"He ruined [the dog]!" she exclaimed to her friend.

The lightbulb went on for me. It was not about the dogs and actual hunting; it was about humans coming up with increasing complex and unrealistic challenges for the dogs so that they could have canine winners all neatly ranked.

Perk would jump into the Arkansas River flowing with bits of ice and grab a duck. Wasn't that what it was all about? 

Part 4: Hardscrabble Jack

Retrievers and Me (2): The Golden Retriever Who Was a Real Professional

Part 1: The Retriever Who Did Not Retrieve  

 

Horn Peak from across the Wet Mountain Valley  (Wikimedia Commons).

It was the early 1980s, I had my grandfather's Winchester Model 12 shotgun,  and my friend Galen Geer, who worked as a deputy sheriff in Custer County, Colorado while developing his skills as an outdoor writer, invited me to go mourning dove hunting in the Wet Mountain Valley, which makes up the western part of the county, bounded by the Sangre de Cristo Range.

The party consisted of him, me, another off-duty deputy, and a man I will call "Charlie." Charlie was an independent operator, a bit of a trickster. He was somewhere on the spectrum between professional hunting guide and poacher, but I was never sure where.

Among other things, he taught me to blow a predator call properly, enough that I was able to impress another pro guide one time.

So we were going dove-hunting, but we had no dog. No problem. Charlie had it covered.

We stopped at a house in the little town of Silver Cliff.

A hunting-line golden retriever.

Charlie went to the back yard, opened a gate, brought out this golden retriever, and put him in one of the trucks.

"It's OK," he said, "I have permission."

The dog was a total professional. He was the Swiss mountain guide of hunting dogs.

 "You are my clients for today? Sehr gut. Let us begin."

We moved from spot to spot, mostly pass-shooting over stock tanks at ranch windmills. 

If a dove was hit, he trotted out, found it, picked it up — and always returned it to the shooter who had hit it.

If you missed a shot, he might turn from where he sat in in front of the guns, curl his lip, and give you a significant look, as though to say, "I am a professional. Please do not waste my time. Do better."

We paid him in head-scratches and bits of sandwich. At the end of the day, Charlie returned him to the back yard in Silver Cliff. I never saw his owner.

I wanted a dog like that.

Of course, I did not get one.

Part 3: A Bulldozer of a Dog

Retrievers and Me (1): The Retriever Who Did Not Retrieve

A boy with a shotgun that shot only corks, and a Labrador retriever who did not retrieve.

The yellow Lab's name was Misty. Dad got her cheap. She had been bred several times. He thought she might make a hunting dog. He was wrong. In his phrase, "She wouldn't retrieve hamburger."

He tried to train her, but Misty was just not interested. Maybe he was too impatient. Who knows?

On the other hand, she was sweet-tempered and never harmed anyone. She was an outdoor dog — Dad bought a set of plans and some sheets of plywood and built her that two-roomed doghouse, which was placed on the south side of the house with the inner room generously piled with straw — and she spent South Dakota winters out there. One summer she wandered off, and despite all the searching, was never found again.

The boy, well, he didn't know anything. When Misty followed him to school during first grade, he dragged her home again, then arrived at his classroom crying because he was tardy and embarassed.

The next year, Misty was replaced by Fritz the dachshund, litttermate of Dad's buddy's dog, who for some reason needed a home. Fifteen pounds of dog, but he weighed about sixty pounds in his own mind — which got him into trouble once or twice.

Nevertheless, Fritz went small-game hunting, camping, and backpacking. The month before the boy went off to college in Oregon, Fritz suffered a heart attack or something on a camping trip and never fully recoverered. After an interval, his condition worsened and he had to be put down; the boy never saw him again.

But he knew where Fritz's grave was on the Pike National Forest and visited it occasionally in future years. 

Part 2: "A Professional Golden Retriever"

A Bear and His Dog

Dogs I have had seem to take one of two attitudes toward black bears. The three Chesapeake Bay retrievers all believed in keeping a safe distance and barking a warning. Come to think of it, Jack (1996–2009) once treed a bear cub while walking with the woods with M., who — once she realized what had happened — grabbed him and vacated the area. Shelby, our crazy-brave collie-Lab mix, charged solo after bears several times — and lived to tell about it. There was a reason she was called The Bandit Queen.

But now here is a German shepherd (Or shepherd-mix, if it is the dog that I think it could be) hanging out on the ridge up behind the house with a bear. That is a first for me, and also for our wildlife-rehabilitator friends, who said it was "really strange."  Maybe these two did not read the part in the manual that says dogs and bears are supposed to be antagonists?

Click the photos for a larger view.

A small (subadult?) black bear wanders toward the camera.

 

An hour and a half later, here is a German shepherd.

But the bear is still hanging around too, and they seem unperturbed by each other.

 There were no further photos of either animal after that.

The Last Post I Will Write about Fisher

When he could still run — Fisher, spring 2017.

Once there was a Chesapeake Bay retriever named Fisher, whom we took in as a 2-year-old "rescue" back in 2009. 

Over the years he progressed from Horrible Dog — there were reasons why his first owners could not cope with him — to Horrid Dog to Exasperating Dog to Problem Dog to finally just The Dog. 

I have written about him here quite a few times, and he has popped up elsewhere in blogs and on Facebook, as in this blog post by hunting writer Holly Heyser on her old Norcal Cazadora blog. He appears there as "the guilty dog." 

Spinal problems from a nasty twisty fall he took while chasing something finally got to be too much. (I have been down that path before.) After three years of coaxing him along with gentle treatment, CBD oil, and pain medicine, it was time for the curtain to fall, last week, just short of his 14th birthday.

I am training myself not to check the front porch for his presence every time that I drive in.

UPDATE Jan. 17, 2022: I was wrong. He got one more post, which tells the rest of the story.

Who Needs Bigfoot? We Have Mystery Beasts

 I know what they are, but where did they come from? 

First, an orange cat. He looks a lot like Charlie, a neighbor's cat who frequently visited people staying in the guest cabin in the early teens. Then he vanished, as semi-feral cats often do. But now there is another orange cat, presumably the source of cat tracks seen on snowy mornings.

Then this yellow dog has turned up a few times this spring on a scout camera near the house. We don't recognize him — and M. is the sort of person who walks a lot and knows the local dogs better than she knows their owners. But I can't believe he is living on his own.

Another camera, which was set to video, picked up some visiting black dogs — and then this, which definitely is not a dog.

That was on March 31st, between snowstorms. Obviously a pig. M reminded me that certain neighbors, who keep making inept experiments at homesteading, had two piglets last summer — once or twice they came visiting and then trotted home. 

One piglet was black, she said. I don't remember. But this one does not look like it's trotting home. In fact, it is moving in the opposite direction in a determined manner.

I have not picked it up again on a camera since then. Is it running free? Maybe there will be a good acorn crop this year, but not for six months, so root, hog, or die.

Just something else to watch out for. Like stray tortoises.

How to Defend Yourself against Dog Attacks

There is a kind of hostile big German shepherd-mix dog who runs through our woods sometimes. Yes, I know who owns him, and yes, if this were a just world, the dog would feast on his owner's body, but in the meantime . . . 

So I read this article on how to defend youself against dog attacks with interest.

Dog attacks occur all over the world. In Thailand and Cambodia, I’ve locked eyes with the vicious, feral dogs lurking in the alleys. In Haiti, I met what locals called “the Haiti dogs,” that have killed and even eaten humans at night. I don’t know the statistics for bites in those countries, but they can’t be any better than ours. Given the grave damage and high frequency of these incidents, it would behoove us train for these encounters. Some beasts want to bite you. Today, let’s learn how to bite back.

You have two arms, but you could get along with just one, right?

And before you start in with "What caliber for," let's remember that in some times and places, firearms may not be an option, or that using one might get you into a whole 'nother set of problems. So it is good to know your options. (Bear spray has worked for my wife and myself also.)

Fisher and His Metal Mommy

Fisher, his Kong toy, and his "wire mother" — we call it "metal mommy."

Harry Harlow was an American psychologist of the mid-20th century who permanently damaged many baby rhesus monkeys in order to prove "scientifically" that babies need nurturing mothers.

But maybe his research has something to do with my dog Fisher.

Baby rhesus monkey with
"cloth mother" (Wikipedia).

Harlow's experiments were controversial; they included creating inanimate surrogate mothers for the rhesus infants from wire and wool. Each infant became attached to its particular mother, recognizing its unique face and preferring it above others. Harlow next chose to investigate if the infants had a preference for bare-wire mothers or cloth-covered mothers. For this experiment, he presented the infants with a clothed "mother" and a wire "mother" under two conditions. In one situation, the wire mother held a bottle with food, and the cloth mother held no food. 

Fisher turned 13 earlier this month, making him officially an elderly dog.  His appetite and digestion are good, sight and hearing OK, but if you watched him hobbble along the trails up behind the house, his age would be apparent — despite all the joint-health supplements and CBD he has ingested over the years.

He was a bouncy 2-year-old when we got him. He had been turned over to the Chesapeake Bay retriever rescue organization, and there were reasons for that. Most, I slowly realized, revolved around fear. Although not outright mistreated, I think he had been alone too much. He can co-exist with another dog, but he has never had a dog-buddy. There was food-agression. There was biting. I won't tell the whole sad story here, but after a year with us — when we thought he was improving — he was ->|  |<- this far from going for a one-way walk with me up onto the national forest.

M. argued to save his life, but he never respected her until she hit him with bear spray one time in the kitchen. He was that kind of dog. The other thing that saved him was Randy Grim's book Don't Dump the Dog: Outrageous Stories and Simple Solutions to Your Worst Dog Behavior Problem. (M's sister-in-law, who is a dog person, had volunteered with author Grim's organization Stray Rescue of St. Louis, and she suggested it.) We followed some of Grim's suggestions rigorously, and they helped. That plus time-in-service.

He mellowed as he aged. His body language softened, although he was never cuddly. But he started doing things like lying by my desk chair, which was new.

But somehow, something was still missing in his life.

July turned extra-hot this year, and I brought up an old box fan from the basement. I positioned it to blow across the study rug where he likes to lie, catching a whisper of breeze between the adjacent bedroom windows and the open front door.

He liked it. He liked it even when room was cool. He not only lay in front of it, but he pressed his body up against the grill. Some mornings after his walk and breakfast, he would come into the study — where I was doing my morning news-read online — lie on the rug, and whine a little. Until I turned it on — then he was content.

That is when I thought of Harry Harlow. It's not the cloth mother, but the wire mother — only this one vibrates? Does it feel like a return to the womb and his mother's heartbeat? And what happens when winter comes? But maybe at this point in his life I should indulge him.