Five Short Dog Stories

The dogs aren't short. The stories are.

I’ve had the good fortune of sharing a portion of my life with five of man’s best friends. There have been a few cats as well, but they never cottoned to the idea of river running or walks, so I don’t have the same stories to tell about them. Though the tales of Dead Cat, who became Princess, and Speedy Gonzales do rise to the level of being quite memorable.

Lady MacTavish

Lady MacTavish was my first dog love. We simply called her “Mac”. I don’t know the story of how she arrived in the Moore household, but she was always there when I was growing up.

We told inquirers she was part Skye Terrier, but I think that was wishful thinking as much as anything. She had a shaggy, unkempt, black coat and her bangs completely obscured her eyes and a considerable part of her snout. As a result, when she was curled up like a bagel, there was no way of telling which end to pet.

In her later years, after copious amounts of dinner scraps and she had become portly, we liked to joke that, if she were standing still, we couldn’t tell if she was coming or going.

Gretchen

We were on the Green River through Desolation and Gray Canyons. Our large party had stopped for lunch at a historic, decrepit ranch. The day was hot. The earth scorched and dry. We sought shade in the adobe ruins of the old ranch house while the lunch crew prepped.

Gretchen, a shepherd mix of some sort, some claimed she was part coyote, went off on her own to recon the place for herself. I didn’t give it a second thought.

The group’s mood was a little bit gloomy for some reason and when lunch was served it got gloomier. The pasta salad had been overcooked the previous evening in preparation for lunch and by the time it was to be served it had congealed into a block. The lunch crew had to cut it into tiny cubes to go into our pita pockets.

As we were morosely eating a nearly unpalatable meal, under the unrelenting heat from a midday sun, a few of us started to smell something that smelled a lot like death. Putrefaction amplified by the high desert temperatures. I noticed Gretchen meandering amongst us. One side of her coat was smeared with something foul and, of course, she was as happy as a clam.

She had rolled in the fetid remains of a freshly dead horse. Ah, the memories!

Winnie

Winnie was an Australian Sheltie and shepherd mix. Her herding instincts were strong. In my raft, the only time she would sit still was when we approached whitewater. Other than that, she circumnavigated the boat hundreds of times daily.

She hardly ever fell out and, to my knowledge, up until her 14th year, she never had to endure a “combat swim”, which is involuntarily having to swim a rapid.

So, despite her nervous herding energy, when it came to whitewater, she was all business.

The year before she died she was riding on someone else’s oar boat. I was in charge of a group of high schoolers in a paddle raft. The Deschutes River was running exceptionally high. Buckskin Mary Rapid, typically a yawner, certainly not technical, was. . . big. The raft being rowed with Winnie on board was just ahead of my raft.

An enormous wave at the beginning of the rapid crashed over the oar boat and Winnie was unceremoniously swept off. Her very first combat swim at the ripe old age of 98.

A year later she insisted on accompanying me on spring guide training even though she was suffering from a tumor in her esophagus and had trouble breathing without a tiny dose of ibuprofen. When she saw me packing my outdoor gear, she perked up like I hadn’t seen her do all winter. The first few days on the water you could tell she was loving sniffing the beginnings of spring and life on a river.

She died on the river at the camp prior to the rapid where she had been knocked into the water. We all agreed it was just the way she planned it. And that she had no intention of seeing Buckskin Mary again.

Daisy

I almost lost my left toe due to Daisy.

Well, I have to shoulder a certain portion of the blame. I had forgotten whether I had left the keys in the secret hidden place for the shuttle drivers. So, I was desperately trying to row into an eddy before I drifted too far downstream from the launch site.

It was early in the river season and the Deschutes River was in full bloom. As per usual, I was rowing a heavily laden raft with all of the party’s gear. I told the two paddle rafts they could forge ahead and I would catch up to them at lunch. The problem with that decision was that they had the first aid kit.

Daisy rafted with me on the Deschutes from the age of 8 weeks until she died at the age of 14 years. She easily received more rafting miles than a majority of my staff.

On a raft, she would be calm - unless - you were making your way to shore. She knew all of the stops on the Deschutes and would anticipate them in advance. But she would also get very excited for ANY stop. And she had this annoying habit of leaping off the raft and - then - before I could disembark, she would leap back on to the raft.

This had the effect of pushing the boat away from shore and forcing me to leap off the boat, possibly into the water (my least favorite thing to have happen), or making me take up oars once more to get closer to shore just to have her leap off again. It was a very annoying trait.

On this day, I not only forgot whether I had left the keys but I forgot Daisy’s habit. I worked the heavy boat into the eddy - made powerful due to the spring runoff - and tried to drop my oars and get off the boat before it bounced away from shore. As I started to jump from the raft, Daisy was lunging to get back on. I had to alter my trajectory and jump over her and, at the same time, completely neglect my landing.

Along the shores of the Deschutes, the beavers are active. They tend to chew certain riparian bushes into small clusters of what they called in the Vietnam War “punji sticks”.

With my open-toed Chaco sandals, I awkwardly landed on one of those freshly chewed bushes. The pain was immediate and excruciating, but elicited no more than a “Goddamnit, Daisy!”

The sad part is - there was no need for those acrobatics that day. I HAD remembered to leave the keys. Fortunately, there was a first aid kit in the shuttle rig. I patched myself up as best I could.

Later that evening, I was evacuated to Madras Hospital from the Trout Creek Campground. Lesson learned.

Sally

Sally is not so comfortable on river trips. She’s not agile because of a knee issue. She’s terrified of flapping tarps. She’ll spend her night in the rain dug deep into a copse of bushes before she will ever sleep under an open shelter. She doesn’t like to swim even if temperatures are in the 100s.

Though she doesn’t mind wading up to her belly and cooling off her tush.

I’d say she’s indifferent about river trips. I think they are arduous for her. Like most dogs, she doesn’t mind the outdoors part, but she can take or leave the means of transportation.

Hiking is more her style.

On her first guide training spring river trip, for some reason, she was posted on someone else’s oar boat. I suppose I might have been in a paddle raft or perhaps she got put in a raft that would reach camp well before my raft would. So, I heard this secondhand.

They pulled into Frog Springs Camp at the eddy closest to the creek. Because the river was higher than average, there was a bit of a mucky swamp along shore. Whoever had Sally on the raft probably did not know how lacking in agility she was. I mean, I have to lift her into my Subaru. Her hind legs just do not have the spring and hops your normal 5 year old dog has.

But she was ready to get off the raft.

She took her greatest leap into the unknown, landed in the muckiest and murkiest part of the shore and, according to the eyewitnesses, momentarily disappeared before emerging like the creature from the black lagoon with algae, mud and sprigs of grass dripping from her.

Even so, it didn’t dampen her enthusiasm for finally being on shore.

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Dogs. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. We don’t deserve them.

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What about rats? AAR Kathe-Taylor Moore sent me this intriguing story about a rat who has been honored as a hero. His name is Magawa.

And you would have to be Rip Van Winkle and have no idea how to use technology before this video would have escaped your attention, but I am going to post it anyway.

For the record, I would have thrown a rock, multiple rocks actually, at the 15 second mark. I also would not have been recording my likely death.

Apparently these encounters are becoming a lot more common, because if you liked the video above, you’ll like this one as well!

Thanks for reading, sharing and staying touch! - JLM