As promised, I'm writing the story of Friday, April 15th as it happened according to me(I put that in because Chris will argue with me about it later). Anyway:
We run a stretch of the Virgin River 3 blocks from our house pretty often in the springtime. It's was a nice balmy 85 yesterday so we decided the River would be fun. The stretch that we do was completely obliterated in December by a huge flood. We didn't think it'd be THAT different, and we were wrong. We were careful to watch for our take-out point. We found it okay and pulled our air mattress(yes I really did just say that) onto the beach. There was a dog on the beach that was in a tattered old doggy argyle sweater barking at us. He was matted and he looked pretty ragged. We kept our distance at first, I didn't want to get bitten by a rabid dog. The beach used to be a big sand hill with a gravel road coming out to it. It is now a dry river bed with piles of sticks and remnants of someone's home(that's for real too). We could tell the dog had been there for a while, his tracks were all over the place. He(we decided to call him Chewy because he was big, old, reddish brown, and matted) figured out that we weren't out to get him and eventually let me pet him and check his tags. I knew a dog with an argyle sweater and a tag would be missing his family. I read the tag and it said: Carson City NV dog license, with the phone # to the Carson City offices, and Chewy's license #. I told Chris that we were taking him home so that I could call the owner. Little did I know that getting home was going to be the hard part....
We always hike out on a dirt/sand road into a little subdivision in Washington Fields. We didn't worry about taking water or a phone because that stretch of the river is very short. The road is about 15 feet above the river. The flood had apparently risen that high because the part of the road we could see was completely covered in old standing water from the flood 4 months ago. It was 1-2 feet in most places.. Deeper in others. I told Chris: I am not walking in that @Q#$%(sorry for the language but it was nasty). It looked like there should have been gators in it. We walked around, hoping to find a dry road, but there was new undergrowth from the water and no road to be found anywhere. We knew that we couldn't trek in the undergrowth without getting hurt and lost, so we just went for it. It wasn't the worst thing I've hiked in(Terral and Mary will know that one), but it's in the top 3. Poor Chewy was struggling. I hung back with him to make sure he would follow me. There was muck as far as I could see and I was afraid if we left him behind he would just give up and never get out. I could tell he was either old or had been through some sort of ordeal. I figured since his tag said Carson City it was the latter. We eventually saw houses so we went straight for them. Houses mean streets! We walked through someone's backyard(You have to picture this first: I'm in a bikini and Chaco's, Chris is carrying an air mattress and an air pump, and we have Coby with a life jacket, and Chewy in torn sweater and matted hair) from there we found our car - thank heaven! We had taken a different route out that led us a lot further south than we had anticipated. I'm still feeling the dehydration effects, but it's wearing off. We put Chewy in the back of the 4Runner. We were planning on how we were going to take care of him. When we got home I opened the back and he was just lying there limply. Chris brought a bowl of dog food to him and he ate it right away. I left the back hatch open so he could jump out if he wanted to. I went back out to check on him about 5 minutes later and he was asleep with his head in the food bowl. I called the Carson City office and gave the worker Chewy's licence #. The worker said his name was 'Moose' and he was 14 years old!! He gave me the owners Cell phone so I called him. He lives in Carson City, but has a home in Washington. Moose had been exploring weeks ago and never came back. Ron, Moose's human, had to return to NV without him because of his job, but he had just gotten into town to look for him again. Moose recognized Ron's truck as soon as it drove up. We shook hands, and said you're welcome. He asked if we wanted anything for brining him back. I said absolutely not. I would hope that if anyone found Coby they would call me straight away. He said he was so worried that his 2 sons on missions would never see their childhood dog again, but was now so relieved. It was lucky that we just happened to be marooned out in the desert in the middle of nowhere and found this lost pup.
Later, Chris and I went to run some errands and when we came back Ron was at our door. He had a box of Ghirardelli chocolates, a thank you card, and a bouquet of flowers. I'm eating one right now. It's delicious. (The flowers are outside because they make me sneeze). What we did for Moose seemed so simple to me, even though we were totally lost, but Ron's gratitude will stick with me forever.
The End.
