Yesterday, we headed out early for a hike along the Middle Box Canyon of the Gila River in Grant, County, New Mexico. We had done this hike about a month previously in gorgeous weather and crystal clear water. I had gotten some great pictures of my girls against the scenic river canyon terrain. Things had changed drastically for this hike. For one thing, monsoon season has finally started and the crystal clear water of a month ago has been replaced by cappuccino-brown water swollen by the heavy rainfall on Saturday.
The second change was to our hiking pack dynamic. My hiking buddy, Bonnie, has rescued a young lab named Jed. He's about four inches taller than her other rescue Lab, Pete, who is our usual hiking companion.
Jed had been rescued literally an hour before he was to be euthanized by Lab Rescue of Southern New Mexico. He had been living on the economy for quite some time before he was picked up as a stray near Clovis, New Mexico. He was pretty skinny from his adventures, but is starting to put on a little weight. The estimate was that he was about a year old. Despite his size he was just a huge gangly teenager. He went galumphing around clumsily, but really took a shine to the Tollers. Even Ceilidh, the fun police, deigned to play with him a little bit.
Jed had only been to the river one time before, and wasn't yet comfortable with swimming or staying with the group off leash. We were planning to work on his hiking manners and reliable recalls while also bolstering his water confidence. He'd only been at Bonnie's for about a week so we weren't sure if we would be able to let him off leash, but we were hoping that his constant need for human attention would translate into no need for the leash. After a shakey start we were relieved to find that of all of the dogs, Jed stayed closest to us. He also immediately seemed to form an attachment to both of my girls.
The Toller girls tolerated Jed pretty well. I had some concerns about what Ceilidh's reaction to Jed would be, but she seemed to sense that he was just a big doofus and after an early lesson in trail manners in which he was oh so contrite, she even offered to play a little with him. Sue enjoyed romping with Jed and running back and forth along the trail at top speed. This took the pressure off the "adult" dogs, Ceilidh and Pete, who could just enjoy the river without having to deal with the youngsters.
Jed eventually figured out that swimming wasn't so bad. After awhile he appointed himself Toller lifeguard. Every time my girls got into swimming depth water, Jed would charge in and try to "save' them by grabbing them by the neck to pull them to safety. In the process there were quite a few dunkings as Jed is about three times as big as my girls. I was so proud of Ceilidh for her high tolerance of this behavior. She mostly just tried to dodge away from Jed in the water, but she did shoot me some "Can't you keep this idiot from trying to drown me?" looks. Eventually, even Sue got fed up with being saved so she invented the "Let's ditch Jed" game, where she would lure him into chasing her and then would scramble into some tight spot where Jed couldn't go.
We ran into two very healthy coyotes on our hike but managed to distract the dogs before they noticed them. The coyotes managed to vacate the area pretty quickly, so we didn’t have any incidents. By the end of the hike Jed was coming reliably to my "come check in" whistle and he was very comfortable with the water, just not obsessed with it like Ceilidh or Pete.
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