Ammi Midstokke: Canine catastrophes are hard to avoid

When my family moved to the back woods from the paved paradise of the Silicon Valley in the 1980s, they brought with them a wilderness naïveté that extended to their children and their pets, both of which were allowed to roam free among nature’s hazards.

Our property was perched on the canyon ledge of a creek that ran mostly year round, and backed up against thousands of acres of state land. Elk herds roamed freely. Coyotes and cougars were more curious than afraid of us. The raccoons pilfered our dog food or whatever crumbs I’d left in my bedroom –which was just a tent in the yard.

We had three dogs, because dogs seem to be a smart thing for impoverished homesteader wannabes to collect. One was a rescue from Sacramento who would crash through windows during thunder storms, but he looked like a wolf so we figured he belonged. Another was a tiny black dog my dad swore was part fox, because she was tireless and fast and still chased the car two miles down the road dragging a broken leg in a cast (and kept up). Another was an even smaller dog, part dachshund, part rhinoceros.

This motley crew followed us everywhere and are likely the only reason we ourselves did not get eaten. In the summers, we’d walk to the lake at night and a cougar would follow us all the way home, the high-pitched echo of children’s chatter a siren’s call to big cats. Once, I was sleeping on my cot in the yard and woke up staring one in the face just as the dogs began to bark. I watched its sleek body disappear into the cedars, but no one believed my hysteria about almost being eaten.

We thought the dogs were getting nature-smart until they got into their first porcupine, and the second, and third. Our angry-black-fox came home with over three hundred quills in her snout, a veritable porcupine herself. My parents tried pliers, not knowing better, until they gave up after a single doomed event and took the dear to the vet. It took them months to pay off the bill.

My father thought it was the same problematic neighborhood porcupine, so he caught it in a box and drove it deep into the woods on his motorcycle to let it go, only to realize later he’d just made a circle and dropped it in the back yard. Like the dogs, we were neophytes in every sense of the word. It was only a matter of weeks before they were back, though with fewer quills. I can’t say if it’s because the porcupines were getting bald or our dogs were getting smarter.

The smallest dog was the first to disappear. He just didn’t come home one day. He was a stout thing, and not fast because his legs were no longer than the palm of my hand. The fox and the wolf, they learned to stay close to home as they got slower. They lived until they were old and other younger dogs had appeared to terrorize the skunks and bears and even a distant neighbor’s llamas.

Now I’ve raised my own dog, trained her not to chase anything but squirrels (because, as we know, those little things are chronic instigators, what with their chirpy name-calling and pine cone tossing). This can be problematic, because when we once ran into a cougar, she howled dramatically like a hurt puppy and hid behind me, and it was me who had to bark at the big cat. When we see bears, she tucks in behind my knees. The moose she seems to think are giant, leggy tree-dogs, and she just wags at them and wanders by. She is no guard dog, unless I pet another dog, naturally.

It’s the sticks that are her nemesis. For as smart as this furry friend is, she cannot stop ramming the things through her body. Her impaling statistics are so poor, I’m browsing pet insurance websites in search of low deductibles. Preferably with de-skunking and de-carcassing coverage, because her shampoo spa days seem to be a regular.

Last week, a declining dog mood and sagging tail had me thinking she was depressed, until the random yelping began. Back and forth to the vet we went in search of the mystery malady until she took a ketamine nap, got intubated, and the culprit was found in the recesses of her palette: A giant abscessed puncture stuffed with sharp shards of some organic material.

At 0-3 in favor of sticks, I figured she’d learn her lesson eventually. But the first day I took her back into the woods, she was after the squirrels again and chomping her favorite outdoor snack of punky wood.

Never mind that I’ve been slow-cooking homemade meals of brown rice, chicken, and bone broth so as not to irritate her injured throat. Or that she’s been asking to sleep in my bed every night, as if some new precedent has been set. Or maybe it’s the regular gourmet treats she gets (stuffed with antibiotic capsules) several times a day. Or the gentle jaw and neck massage to help her lymph drainage.

It would be easier on all of us if she’d just fake a limp for a few days, really.

Ammi Midstokke can be reached at ammim@spokesman.com.