Brighten Your Day

Went for a walk on the nature preserves out past my property today and decided to go down towards the river through the ravines that cut through the cliff sides. About a mile and a half from my house, two dogs started howling in that “don’t come any closer to me” bark. I couldn’t see them, but they were so loud as their howls echoed up the rocky ridges.

At this point, there are no people for at least a mile and a half (my house) and certainly no domestic dogs out there, so I started looking. Up the cliff side, I see these two beagles. I climbed about 50 feet up to them. The female is pinned between that log and the embankment and can’t move. The male is so weak, he can only move a couple steps to try to fend me off before having to lay down. No cell phone service and on a sharp slippery face, I sat there and earned the male’s trust.

After about 30 mins, the female still wouldn’t let me get close without biting at me and dusk was coming. With all the predators in my woods, I figured they wouldn’t make it another night. I decided to block her from falling past me and pulled the log out the was pinning her. She was now free and I could now see that she’s probably very pregnant too.

Not knowing how to get them down (he’s too weak to walk and she will bite me if I do much as try to touch her) I decided to try and get her to follow me by carrying him. It worked. I led her down the safest way I could. More than an hour later, I lugged that big soon-to-be dad up the cliffs and out of the ravines with her slowly following.

It blows my mind how loyal the male was to be on that cliffside with her so long that he could barely walk. Got home and the police couldn’t find microchips on them and no one has claimed them on local social media yet. Calling shelters in the morning. If it doesn’t work out, I suppose they get to start their new family with a new family of their own. Don’t know what to call them yet, but my story makes me smile.

Update: the owner found our posts and reached out. She was overjoyed that we brought the dogs into our house and kept them safe. The dogs names were Copper and Toddy (as in “Hot Toddy”) and went missing Oct 30th. Copper likes to chase deer and always comes home afterwards. He said it was unusual for Toddy to go with him.

He also said the two dogs were inseparable which explains why Copper never left Toddy when she was stuck on that cliffside. The family received reports that the dogs were seen going the opposite direction from where I found them and is why their search efforts never made it to my area. My kids grew very found of the dogs during the few hours we had them and the mother and son both said they’d bring the dogs over to play with my kids anytime they wanted too, and that makes me happy to hear.

It turns out that Toddy was not pregnant after all. She was just heavyset around the mid region.