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Paper Work!
One day in Tupper Lake, Ranger (and maybe even Linck) made a real mess of our small field office. While the other International Paper Co. employees and I went out to lunch, Brian and I decided to just let Ranger, still just a pup, and Linck stay in the office. At this stage, Ranger was about 5 months old and he seemed like he sometimes had a hard time being left alone. But, he was doing well recently and Brian convinced me that the two dogs would be fine without a kennel and just left inside the office instead of being carted along in the back of the trucks which was typical. We enjoyed our lunch and were probably gone for a half hour or forty five minutes. When we returned to the office, I was the first to open the front door and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I wanted to hurry up and lock the door so no one else would see what I was seeing, but it was too late. We all huddled just inside the door and all of our mouths were fixed in similar positions – open. Looking straight ahead was the common room/entry room with a snack counter and safety book materials. Off the back of that room was a small bathroom. The snack bags were torn up, the safety material was ripped and strewn around and the bathroom magazines and toilet paper were pulled and pushed all over the place. Looking to our left was a small room that led to two offices. One office was the secretary’s and other office was the log salesman’s. These offices were staffed by Jeannie and Ritt, respectively. I walked over to Ritt’s office first because it was always so neat and clean and orderly. While I stepped over all sorts of chewed up papers and snack crumbs I had really hoped that Ritt’s very tidy office had been spared. I peaked in and my heart sank. It appeared as if a wild animal chased its tail on top of Ritt’s desk for several minutes. Stuff was everywhere! I looked into Jeannie’s office next – same story. The computer keyboard was on the floor, the phone and answering machine were knocked off the desk and it seemed as if no paper product had been untouched in her entire room. I made what seemed like a long walk back through the mess to see Jim’s office on the other side of the entry door. Jim was the manager of the office and the boss. He was usually easy going, but this was extreme. I had hoped that at least his office was spared. Nope. It wasn’t. While Jim’s office was not in the worst condition of the bunch, it was certainly not spared. Maps, printouts, notes, drawings, aerial photographs and various other important documents were all over the floor. At this point my mind began to wonder – “how could all this have been done in such a short lunch break and how could my little puppy have even been physically capable of such a catastrophe? Could this have been all my dog’s fault? Maybe this really had become one of Linck’s finest works. Afterall, he seemed smart enough to concoct and implement such a plan to get my little pup in big trouble.” Everyone began cleaning up and grumbling about the puppy and the words came out of my mouth, “this couldn’t all have been just Ranger.” Brian seemed appalled at my comment. His coming response was cut off by Jeannie shouting for us from her office. We all went in to her now messy office and she wanted us all to hear what she had just discovered on her answering machine. She played the message and believe it or not the culprit of all this big mess must have put a paw on the record button on the machine. It was all on tape – about 3 minutes worth anyway. The noises that came from that machine included ripping paper, running, jumping, and all sorts of carrying on. These sounds could have come from a dog of any age. But, along with these noises were a tell-tale puppy whimper, puppy growl, and various other damning puppy noises that left no question in the mind of any hearer about which dog actually made this entire mess. Brian didn’t have to say a word. He (and Linck) were instantly cleared of any wrong-doing whatsoever. I (and Ranger) on the other hand were guilty, as suspected, and had to spend many hours that day working out solutions for torn up paperwork and the mess that Ranger created.
There Is Nothing Worse!!!
Let’s have a competition. What can you think of that would be the worst thing you could ever imagine your pet eating? Now, I’ve been around pets for many years and I’ve heard many stories about pets eating some pretty ugly stuff. What could be so incredibly raunchy that it would top the “what’s the worst thing for your dog to eat” competition? How about garbage? I know dog’s love to get into it, right? Many of Linck’s “away from home” adventures included a bad smell of some nasty garbage can. What about their own vomit? While we humans can’t even imagine this, dogs come by it naturally. It is very common for dogs to spit up and begin to eat immediately. Any of you who have owned a pet can come up with your own entries into this competition, but just see if any of them come close to what I am about to tell you. I think I can at least make the top five “worst things a dog could ever eat” list with the following two incidents that were “part of the package” with Ranger.
A major issue for a forest manager in the Adirondacks is logging road maintenance. A big part of our Spring season would be filled with traveling logging roads and looking for washed out sections. We had to schedule our road maintenance based on a fairly tight budget and a priority of which roads would be utilized for logging in the upcoming year. While checking logging roads it was very common to find washouts or potential washouts that were being caused by beavers. You see, beavers would create dams in streams and back up sections of streams to create large ponds. Beavers and their ponds are very common in the Adirondacks and most folks would agree that they add a beauty and uniqueness to the area. Even I liked looking at the ponds that were created by these hard working creatures. However, often the results of their work and pond creation would wash out sections of our logging roads, and fixing these washouts became quite expensive. We fixed many of them with dozers, culverts, and gravel – especially in high priority areas, but one day we got a call from a trapper who offered another solution. He was looking for work and wanted access to our 200,000+ acres to trap beavers and sell beaver pelts. It seemed like a good combination – our need to reduce the number of beaver washouts to save our road budget and his need for income through selling beaver pelts. We decided to work together and began to work out details of the arrangement. The details were fairly simple actually, except one of his requests seemed strange. He asked if he and his two helpers could park a small camper in our culvert yard (a place where we stored culverts and some other small road maintenance equipment). The culvert yard sat behind the office – maybe three hundred feet away – and had a gate that could be locked to keep someone from messing with our culverts or equipment. The beaver trapper liked the idea of the gate and thought he and his helpers could just “live” back there for a few weeks at a time in their camper while they took day trips out to various properties to trap beavers. We found it hard to believe that someone would live back there for weeks without running water, heat, and any other of the essentials of life, but we didn’t know until later just how unique these tough individuals were. We reluctantly agreed and the beaver trappers moved in and began working hard at their task of trapping beavers.
After a couple weeks we mostly forgot about the trappers. They left their campsite early and arrived late. The properties they were trapping were so large that we rarely crossed paths with them. We’d occasionally see them driving in or out, but that was about it. But, things started to change around the office. Typically, if Brian and I were going to be inside the office for a while, we would just let the dogs outside and then when we were ready to leave we would just walk out to our trucks and the dogs would be ready to go. It was as if they watched for us to come out so they wouldn’t miss the ride to the woods. But now, we would walk out to our trucks and the dogs were nowhere to be found. We would get to our truck and have to whistle several times loudly before we’d see a yellow dog come running through the woods from out back. This happened a couple days in a row, so we got real curious and decided to follow their tracks back to where they’ve been spending so much time. We followed their tracks in the snow and could not believe what we found. I found their primary track lines right back to the culvert yard and a BIG pile of what appeared to be entrails and various other internal body parts and carcasses of small animals. This heaping pile of grossness was every beaver, minus the skin and hair that our trappers have caught for weeks. We didn’t realize they had been skinning all their beavers right in our culvert yard and throwing the carcasses just outside their campsite into a rotting heap. Of course, both dogs were very attracted to the smell and taste of this heap and it was clear to us that both dogs had spent A LOT of time feeding here in the last days. Brian followed a secondary dog trail that led to the unthinkable. I could almost imagine a dog being attracted to rotting meat and bones, but this other track led to an area that the trappers had seemingly designated as their bathroom. I won’t describe the evidence, but let’s just say we knew the dogs had spent some time there as well.
We controlled the dog’s movements around the office completely after that day and we greatly altered our agreement with the trappers. I didn’t think there could be a worse thing for my dog to eat, until the next incident that occurred after we moved back to PA. Ranger had spent two years in the Adirondacks and in his third year we were back in PA. Deer season in PA was much different from deer season in the Adirondacks. There was never a problem taking Ranger to the woods with me in NY because there are few deer and few hunters to worry about. In PA, I had to worry about Ranger due to the vast number of hunters in the woods for two whole weeks – I never wanted him to be mistaken for a deer or just shot because someone identified him as a dog that might be chasing deer. I typically kept Ranger at home during deer season in PA for these reasons.
The Monday after deer season was over I had Ranger back to work with me in the woods. While I measured and marked trees, Ranger would run like crazy after being away for two weeks. He always seemed even more energetic after such a long rest and seemed to hunt and chase and run even faster than usual. I did notice that Ranger was not around me as much as usual on this Monday, but I thought he was just venturing a little further than normal or spending a little more time around my coworker, Ron, or maybe I was just not used to having him with me due to the two week lapse. Anyway, I basically ignored the feeling on Monday, but Tuesday was no different. By noon on Tuesday, I was becoming more aware that something was going on with Ranger and I needed to find out the issue. Just then, I heard Ron say, “Mike, Ranger is eating something!” I found the dog and realized that he was heavy into a deer gut pile, left after a successful deer hunter “field dressed” his game. It hit me that we had been in the same area both Monday and Tuesday and that there were probably several deer that had been field dressed in these woods. My dog had been gorging himself on deer guts for a day and half!
What goes down must come up!
Yep, you guessed it, in both of these cases, Ranger’s digestive system reversed itself. The beaver guts, the human waste, and the deer guts all were seen again (and again). The vomiting in both cases were inopportune. In other words, in the middle of the night and on into morning – what a mess! However, these stories should not scare you, but rather make you aware that not paying close enough attention to where your dog is spending its time can come back and bite you.
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Oh the messes that I’ve (we’ve) had to deal with - some because of my dog’s natural desire to be a dog and eat just about anything, no matter how vile, and others through no fault of his own. But, in all, now that I look back on all those really messy events, I don’t gag or choke or even get mad like I did when they happened. I look back on those events now and sort of smile. We got through them OK and really, they were just part of the package of having a pet dog. I must say, in all, Ranger was worth it.
Look for many more stories like this in WOODS DOG.
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