Dog’s river garb gets credit for survival

AGNESS, Ore. – Pete Pollard walked up the remote trail through the Lower Rogue River Canyon with the melancholy of a man who knows his one missed oar-stroke killed his daughter’s dog.

The day before, the 57-year-old Talent man mis-rowed while rafting the wild Rogue’s Blossom Bar, pitching himself, two others and two canines into the river for a perilous bounce downstream.

All were rescued within minutes of the accident except for Ali, a 15-pound Boston terrier. Now, a full day later, it was time to recover the last victim.

“I was looking in the eddies for his body,” Pollard said.

Then a twig snapped just off the trail. And another. “Oh, geez,” Pollard thought. “Now I gotta deal with a bear.”

But out of the bushes popped Ali, still sporting his blue life vest.

“That little tyke came walking down the hill like it was no big deal,” Pollard said of the dog’s June 28 rescue upstream of Blossom Bar. “He swam two rapids, got out of the canyon on the correct side of the river, walked upstream, survived the night, and walked out like it was nothing.”

“Wow,” he said. “That was a great feeling.”

By living up to his namesake as a fighter and survivor, little Ali now has earned a few minutes of fame as the new poster-puppy for canine life jackets.

The neoprene life jackets, which cost from as little as $20 to more than $100, fit snugly to the torso. Most sport a back strap made for hoisting an overboard dog back into a boat. While not required anywhere in the United States, they have become commonplace on waters throughout the country.

“They’re hugely popular,” says Chris Edmondston, director of safety programs for the Maryland-based Boat Owners Association of the United States.

Casual boaters tend not to buy them, but whitewater boaters and others sometimes are more inclined to jacket-up their pet than themselves, he says.

All three people and two dogs in Pollard’s raft wore life jackets when Pollard oared his raft into the first maneuver June 27 through Blossom Bar.

The first move is to pull left-to-right across the upstream side of a string of partially submerged boulders dubbed the “Picket Fence.”

Pollard missed a left oar-stroke. The raft hit the Picket Fence and flipped, sending everyone and everything overboard.

“I’ve done the lower Rogue 60 times, and it’s the first time I’ve flipped,” Pollard said.

His wife, Deb, and fellow passenger Bonnie Dial, of Medford, floated through Blossom Bar and were pulled to safety by others in their party.

Duke, the family’s 80-pound, pit bull-Labrador mix that also was wearing a life jacket, swam through Blossom Bar and the next rapid, called Devil’s Staircase, before reaching shore.