Ronnie took us to a little human house in the mountains. I figured it was the Ranger’s cabin he told the shelter lady about. Sure enough, he told me it was our cabin and showed me a dog bed. The cabin had a dog door and it was getting dark so I decided to use it and look around outside. Ronnie told me to stay close and be careful. I smelled some big animals out in the woods, so I think he was telling me to not get eaten. I did not intend to get eaten.
There were a lot of trees around the cabin which looked like US. I think Ronnie liked them and that’s why he had their picture on his truck and shirt. I sniffed around for awhile and did my stuff and went back inside. Ronnie gave me a treat and some food. It tasted like chicken. After we went to bed, I heard some coyotes hunting for their food in the woods. I don’t like coyotes. They kill helpless little animals and then yell and scream all night about how brave and tough they are.
When Dan and me were hunting birds one time in the tall grass I saw a pack of them kill a baby antelope. Its mother had gone to find food and had to leave it hidden by a little bush in the grass. The coyotes smelled it out and killed it. Baby antelope can’t run or fight or even walk but the coyotes seemed to think they had done something really big by killing it as it lay there.
Dan and me never killed baby birds. And he never pointed his killing stick at a bird on the ground or sitting on the water. The birds always had a chance to get away. And many of them did. For some reason that seems different to me from what the coyotes did to the baby antelope. But I don’t know whether it is or not because I am just a dog. When I saw what the coyotes did I was in the truck and couldn’t get out. I do know if I could have I would have gone out and broke the coyotes necks just like they did to the baby antelope.
There were lots of other sounds in the woods that night and I knew it was going to be a good place to live and be a helper dog, whatever that was. I even accepted the coyote sounds as just another sound in the woods with animals and birds just being what they are. And they don’t have a good human putting food in a bowl for them to eat. When it was light again and I woke up I began to get a feel for what a helper dog is. Ronnie talked to me a lot. He showed me things and told me what they were in human words. As time went on, I learned many things.
The woods we were in were called the Rocky Mountains. There were more animals and birds in the mountains than I had ever seen. It was a rough place but it looked and sounded and smelled really good.
The long killing stick Ronnie had in his truck that looked like Dan’s is called a gun. Ronnie had a small one he could hold in his hand. He sometimes carried the little one on his belt. I noticed when we were out in the woods we saw many birds and Ronnie didn’t kill any of them. I don’t think he liked to eat birds.
We sniffed around in the woods almost every day. Sometimes we walked. Sometimes we went in the truck and sometimes in a little truck Ronnie called ATV. Almost every day we saw humans. Ronnie talked to some of them and just watched other ones with two little bottles he held up to his eyes.
Some of the humans who came to the mountains were good like Peanut and Daisy. Others were bad like the brown dog called Rex at the shelter. I could smell the difference and I think Ronnie could too. He had a good nose for a human. I could tell Ronnie did not like the bad humans. I don’t know why he didn’t just shoot them. He had lots of guns and he could shoot them really good.
Anyway, I could tell he was trying to keep the bad humans from hurting the mountains without shooting them. I think shooting them would have been a lot easier but that was up to Ronnie. When Ronnie was talking to a bad human, he always had me sitting by him. The bad humans kept looking at me and just for fun I sometimes showed my teeth. This always made them take a step backwards. This was fun for me and I think it helped Ronnie. He probably told them that I wanted to eat them but we was giving them another chance to be good. I was with Ronnie when he talked to good humans too. I would sit and Ronnie would pet me while he was talking. If they had human puppies, Ronnie and me would let the human pups pet me. That felt good as long as they didn’t pull my ears. Even if they did, I didn’t say anything, I understood they were just puppies.
Ronnie taught me a game called find. It was a little like finding birds but different. He would let me smell some human clothes and I had to go find more of the same one in the woods. He must have got the clothes from another human because they didn’t smell like Ronnie. The first clothes I did this with was called a sock. It was a lot easier finding the sock in the woods than finding a bird in the tall grass. The sock didn’t move around or hide like the birds did. It just laid there.
Then the socks got smarter. I would find a place where the smell was strong but it had run away and I found it farther in the woods. I could smell Ronnie along the way and I think he was moving the sock around to make the game more fun for me. Anyway, I learned to find socks, shoes, shirts and other human clothes in the woods, starting from the truck or ATV. I even learned to find human things in the woods without smelling them first. Ronnie would tell me to find sock and I would hunt until I found a human smell in the woods. If that wasn’t the one he wanted I would keep hunting. It was a fun game and it made Ronnie happy when I found the things. And the treats he gave me when I found them were good too. Later on, I learned how this could be a really good thing to do, finding socks and shirts on humans that were really scared or hurt when I got to them. And we did this for bad humans as well as good ones.
Another thing I learned was to bark when I smelled smoke and to take Ronnie to the place where it came from. He seemed really happy about this. He always put water and dirt on the fires and made them stop smoking or burning. We sometimes did this at places he called campsites. I could smell other humans had been there and I didn’t understand why they didn’t put out their own fire instead of me and Ronnie having to do it. I always smelled smoke before Ronnie did because as I had said we have really good noses. And we hate smoke. It was hard to go toward a fire and I didn’t do it unless Ronnie was there. Later on, I would lead Ronnie to some fires that were so big he couldn’t put them out. When we found those fires we had to run away and Ronnie called other humans on the truck’s talking box to help put the fire out. I always worried about the other animals left in the woods with those fires. They didn’t have a human like Ronnie to help them get out. And I always hoped no good humans were left in the fires. I figured the bad humans were probably the ones who started the fires and Ronnie should have shot them before they started a fire anyway. I guess I still didn’t want them to burn up in the fires. I didn’t understand these two feelings coming together at the same time but I guess that is because I am just a dog.