While biking down one of my favorite trails last year I happened upon a couple of fellow mountain bikers from New Orleans. They were on a short vacation-camping trip in the park while back home, visitors there were making a mess of themselves and their town. It was Mardi Gras week with Fat Tuesday now just three days away. They were stopped alongside a small creek taking a break. But the main reason I noticed them was the fact that they were being accompanied on their ride by two medium sized dogs. They explained that every year during Mardi Gras they would leave town to get away from all the craziness. These biking excursions always included their two Springer Spaniels. They were part of their family. The dogs would run along with them as they rode the bike trails. It was obvious to look at these two guys, the dogs, that they were having a ball. Jumping over each other in the stream, taking an occasional sip from the running clear water, full of energy and looking like they could run all day. Obviously well treated by a couple who knew how to take good care of trail running dogs. I noticed that both dogs were wearing leather foot coverings to protect their feet while running such long distances. The couple explained it to me while feeding a couple of treats to the dogs and themselves, that today, a Saturday, they would bike the 17 mile loop two times and the dogs would do the same, one loop in the early morning and the other in the late afternoon. I’ll never forget the image of the four of them saddling up and heading down the winding single-track path, disappearing in less than a minute through the wintered leafless silver gray trees. When I got home my own aging dog Thunder barley raised his head to even only half-heartedly acknowledge my existence. Poor Thunder, I really loved that old dog. He was all stove up with arthritis and a bunch of other ailments like an ongoing ear infection that would cause him to shake the night away, medicated but still endlessly aching and uncomfortable through sleepless nights and days spent in tenseness to exhaustion. Finally, I broke down and brought him into the vet’s office for our final good-by. I just broke down into a cry that I couldn’t stop as I walked him down the hallway to that room. I’ll never forget holding him in my arms, all eighty pounds of him, trembling but trusting me, and all of us there together, in his final minutes. I’ll never forget, my arms holding him, right there at the end, feeling all that tenseness leave him. For the first time in months he felt soft, like a pup I thought at the time. Later that day my son and I buried him atop this little hill behind our house. I said a little prayer for him as the Sun went down. Thunder was a good dog. It wasn’t long after Thunder went his way that Pax came into my life. Friends found him in the woods unconscious, only about two months old they’d guessed at the time. Max, his big brother was barking out a constant alarm, remaining with the weaker Pax, protecting his apparently unconscious and much weaker sibling. These little guys had been abandoned to die out in the wildness of Winston County. And they would have all to soon had it not been for a nurse and her physician husband, Paula and David Brassie. They had heard the yelps of a near helpless himself big brother pup Max. With all the wind that day it was a miracle they even heard him at all. They’d been out canoeing along a remote passage of Rock Creek. Max’s persistent barking had saved them both. It was obvious Pax was at least part retriever. His coat was mostly white but those ears were as golden as they get. When he was about seven months old I took him out to the park, to a big open field and let him loose. Showed him a bright yellow tennis ball and after he got a good nose of it I threw it as far as I could. Just as I guessed, it was a textbook example of instinctual behavior as you would ever see. As fast as he knew how Pax was lick-ed-ey split after that ball and grabbing it on the run, rolling over with it in his mouth and gaining his feet and as fast as his legs could carry him he darted back past me in a flash. What fun for both of us! Our ball playing seemed to naturally evolve into trail running. Actually, as I walked the beautiful trails at the park, Pax would run circles around me. I figured for about every mile I walked, Pax would run three. He loves it, we both do, and this week we took another step together. Pax cocked his head sideways, looking a little puzzled as I un-racked my mountain bike from the back of my car and started pulling away from him. “Come on boy, let’s go!” and that quick we were headed down the trail through theses beautiful woods. Even with me on my bike Pax still easily runs circles around me, packing it up and down the sides of these hills, running beside me and dipping into the streams we pass along our way. I think about old Thunder,…knowing he’s at peace. Then, I think to myself for a moment, about what a morning in heaven might be like for a dog. That thought made me smile. Wayne Lankford |
