Note to self: Don’t bring the dumb dog on the next hiking journey. I have no idea why it is that Zoey (that’s the dumb one) did this, but for some odd reason she decided to find herself in a world of potential disaster today.

We went hiking on a local BLM trailhead. It clings to a river (that’s more like a stream in most parts. At least right now in Fall), and in a few spots it gets deep enough that a dog (say, like a Black Labrador – hey, I have one of those!) could go and swim in. Cool. Well every time we go, my Lab does go and swim at a particularly deep and easy-to-reach spot. I stand on the trail, and huck small logs to the river/water hole below for him to retrieve. Retrievers are funny like that, huh? Anyway. If you didn’t get it from the previous sentence or two, the river is below the trail. Down an embankment.

After a while, the dogs became more interested in checking out the surrounding area. This may have been due to my lack of want to through the damn stick anymore, but it was what it was. Well Zoey (that’s the dumb one) decides she’s going to be brave and go off investigating something. I was trying to get my backpack off so I could hang out without it clinging to me, and the next thing I know is I hear a quick ruffle and Zoey’s out of sight. No problem, I don’t mind the dogs exploring, so long as the come when I call them. Well, out of sight or not, after some moments pass and I hear no more ruffling, and where I expected to see a small white dog running around sniffing, I saw none. So I call.

Nothing. So I call again. Nothing. I didn’t figure she was in trouble at first because I hadn’t heard any yelping, nor even so much as a whimper. But now I was a little worried, because she was between me and the river, so there’s no way she could have gotten too far out of range without crossing my line of sight. So I go to investigate the area. And as I get there, I see…

Zoey. Looking at me with this face of complete embarrassment, shame, and surprise. She looked at me as though to say “dad! Wow, um, glad to see you… um, not sure how to explain this, but um… help? I love you! Don't tell anyone about this though, OK? Love you!” She had walked out on brush. Brush. Not ground. Brush. I’m not sure what had possessed her to do this, other than dumb-ness, but there she was, having fallen through a level of brush and now sitting on another level of brush below that, too far down to get back up to where she was yet too high to make it to ground below without a substantial fall. I threw a rock to see, because I thought the water was just that close, but nay, it was an illusion, as the rock continued down through brush and air until hitting ground much further below.

Now, Zoey (that’s the dumb one) is a mere 35-40lbs. I’m closer to 200. I’m not quite sure how she expected me to rescue her, but I could tell from those sad puppy-dog eyes that this was indeed her expectation of me. Having just stripped my shirt to get some sun on my skin (and by extension, a tan), I now had to go and put it back on, as all this brush was blackberry bushes, which are quite thorny. Ouch.

This lead to some questioning. How the hell do I rescue a dog from a platform that couldn’t hold her weight, much less mine at 5x the amount? I broke out my knife and started cutting the brush down, mostly to rid the area of thorns, but found that it was making the top level of brush lay down closer to her chest. So I did that some to kind of break it up, then I noosed her with one of the leashes around her neck, and pulled while she climbed, so she could make it up the embankment she had fallen down. It worked, I don’t think she particularly cared for the solution (being noosed and all), but it was that or I jump down to grab her and we both go crashing down the embankment to whatever lie below. And all’s well that ends well, right? Needless to say, I kept a good eye on her the rest of the trip, and I don’t think I can trust her next to any embankments anymore; damn dog.

In lighter news though, Miles (He's the smart one) is becoming quite a strong swimmer. Yes he’s a Lab, but you have to understand that he’s 75-80lbs of pure muscle, and floating isn’t his strong-suit. He loves it terribly, swimming, but he’s just never really been that great at it. But with going to the beach and fighting the waves for a couple hours every other day or so, plus all the hiking and swimming there too, he’s gotten to be better, despite the lower fat-to-muscle ratio that comes with constant workouts like his. Instead of just a pair of eyes & a nose above water, his whole back is above stream-level, not even getting wet anymore. Still slow as shit, but he’s pushing enough force now to keep himself damn near out of the water!

Me? Well, I ran a little today. Because running a lot – obviously – was out of the question. Yeah. Guess I’ll have to practice that one some more. I had mentioned to The Girl that on our beach outings, we ought to dress for the occasion and go jogging along the shore.

You know that look you get when you have a great idea that makes total sense but the woman doesn’t want to play along because it means work? Yeah, I got that look.

Peace.

Tags: Animals, women