This past weekend Japhy and I headed out with a friend to do another short section of The Colorado Trail (the last “short” section between here and the finish). By “short” I mean 13.8 miles; however, because we arrived late and it was dark and hard to see much of anything other than the washboard gravel road we were driving on, we unknowingly parked the car 1.6 miles from the actual end of the segment, so we really only hiked 12.2 miles. The first section Japhy joined me on was 10.6 miles and we camped on that trip, splitting the mileage into two days. It was his first time backpacking with me, and it was a perfect introduction to see how well he would do. I’ve always been pretty adamant about not letting my dogs do more than 10 miles in one day, but this particular section was pretty easy (only 1447 feet of elevation gain across the entire 13.8 miles of mostly open jeep road hiking), and we had reached our planned location to camp within 2-3 hours of starting, so we decided to just keep going. We started at 8 a.m. and had reached the car by 2:30 p.m. That’s the fastest I’ve done any section of this trail since I started it in 2016!
But more to the point: I’m so impressed with how well Japhy is doing on the trail. His demeanor around other people, dogs, mountain bikes, and wildlife—and during storms that drop everything from steady mist to marble-sized hail on us—is impeccable, really. You’d expect the natural canine tendency to chase wildlife. You’d expect some anxiety during a hail storm that’s accompanied by random intense crashing thunder all around. You’d even expect a little bit of resistance to walking into the wind during a steady cold rain. Japhy cares not about walking in the rain. He cares not about the loud claps of thunder or the marble-sized hail (except for wanting to eat it). He cares not about mountain bikes, and with the assistance of an e-collar he’s learning to behave around the wildlife. More about that later. First, the two photos below are from early in our hike this weekend: Pretty Blue Boy getting adjusted to leash-walking on the little bit of single-track we encountered on this section. It’s harder than it looks to hike single-track with a dog on-leash, because the trail is narrow and often rutted, and so you either walk side-by-side and try to fit on the single-track or when the terrain allows it, the dog walks next to the single-track, or—our preferred method—the dog goes first and you try not to step on paws. It’s complicated, but once in a groove it works pretty smoothly. Japhy does struggle with this just a little bit, but overall he does OK. For the first day or two, Mani would always pull me down the trail before she settled into a groove. It’s to be expected with all of the excitement of being out in the wilderness where there are so many neat things all around.
Off-leash on Trail
I mentioned the e-collar earlier. I’d bought a cheap one on Amazon some time ago at the recommendation of a friend, and we had been doing some off-leash training with it that was going really well. Then when we spent a few weeks at my folks’ place in rural northwest Missouri, I quickly discovered that the cheap e-collar was not made for real-world scenarios where clear and precise communication is required with a dog whose prey drive has just kicked in as a white-tailed doe darted out of a corn field 25 yards away. The cheap e-collar had a range of 33 feet. THIRTY-THREE FEET. I should have known that wasn’t going to cut it for any real off-leash work. But it was a good start. The first deer he saw come out of the corn field was the last one he chased on that cheap e-collar. I couldn’t call him off that deer, and he ran full-speed all the way to the edge of the forest before the deer was far enough into the forest that he opted to turn back. He was well beyond the 33-foot range of that collar in no time. So, while at my parents’ house, I bit the bullet and ordered a Dogtra e-collar that has a 3/4-mile range. One of the dog trainers I’ve followed on YouTube is sponsored by Dogtra and that’s the only reason I knew anything about it (he also offered a great discount code). The only e-collar experience I had prior to this was via friends who used them with their hunting dogs. Before now, I’d had my mind set against ever using them with any of my own dogs. Now that I’ve used one with Japhy and have seen the results, I feel bad that I didn’t use one with Mani or Bella and offer them the opportunity to be safely off-leash more often. Each dog is a very new learning experience. And Japhy is teaching me so much already.
Since using the Dogtra with Japhy, things have changed radically. He has already proven to be a dog that is more about staying with his humans than running off and getting lost somewhere, but there is always that element of canine prey drive that can’t be 100% trusted. Since the first deer chase and subsequent purchase of the new Dogtra e-collar, we’ve worked off-leash a lot. I’ve been regularly taking him out to rural dirt roads to work off-leash with the e-collar. We’ve successfully stopped (mostly within a few steps) one subsequent deer chase, two rabbit chases, and countless ground squirrel chases. So this past weekend while out on the trail, I looked at my friend and said, “I may regret this, but....” and I unclipped the leash from Japhy’s collar. He was wearing the e-collar, and I had the remote controller in my hand with finger resting softly on the button as I hiked, ready to press it if necessary. I had planned to call him back and leash him right away if it seemed like it wasn’t going to work. I’m extremely sensitive to unleashed dogs approaching me on the trail (or anywhere), so I wanted to make sure I had complete control over Japhy when other people approached before they got close to us and/or before Japhy had the chance to approach them. As I sit here typing I am still utterly amazed by this dog. He did GREAT off-leash on the trail!! I was hyper-vigilant about watching for potential issues. And I’d given my friend the second ‘hands-free’ remote in case something happened and I wasn’t paying attention (not a likely scenario, but not impossible). Nine times out of ten he came right back to me when I called without using the e-collar to reinforce my request. When a person came up behind us, or approached from in front of us, I called him, he came, and I leashed him back up until the person had passed us. I let him off again as soon as it was clear. He never ran ahead of us more than a few yards, and on blind corners where I couldn’t see who or what might be around the bend, I had him “heel” (off-leash) until I could see that it was clear. Toward the end of the hike, when he was finally starting to get tired, he actually walked, off-leash, right between my friend and me in an absolutely beautiful heel. For me—someone who has only ever had dogs that wanted to immediately sprint off out of sight when off-leash—it is a truly remarkable thing to have this dog who just wants to walk beside me, and who even when walking in front of me stops and looks back every five seconds or so to make sure I’m still behind him. It makes my heart swell. Maybe that’s silly, but it does.
Below are some photos of Japhy off-leash on the trail this weekend. I’m very very proud of this boy.
Late in the hike, Japhy found a stick that he liked a lot...so much so that he didn’t want to leave it behind. He carried this rather large chunk of tree branch for what seemed like a very long time. When we finally stopped to take a quick break, he laid down to chew on it. Then when we came within eye-shot of the car, he decided that the car was of much higher value, and he left the big stick on the trail behind us in pursuit of the car instead.
The photos below were toward the end of our hike this weekend. Lots of wide open space. Japhy was intrigued by the skull he found on a fence post and by the countless cows that we encountered. Every time a cow mooed he’d stop and look with endless curiosity. I leashed him as we walked through the cows, as they are particularly protective of their calves and a few of them had rather menacing looks about them as we walked by.
The last three photos were made after telling Japhy that the car was “just over that hill.” That’s the farthest away from me that he ever got while he was off-leash. And since the first backpacking trip and the trip back to the midwest to visit my folks, he has fallen absolutely crazy-in-love with the car. Incidentally, he’s also very protective of the car space while we’re in it.
After summiting the hill and seeing the car, Japhy wanted to run for it. I kept him close to me until it looked like it was clear for him to make the run. Based on my experience taking him out to rural West Texas dirt roads, he will simply hang out by the car until I catch up. And that’s exactly what he did.
Since we finished the trail so early, and we weren’t far from Great Sand Dunes National Park (and my friend had never been before), we stopped there on the way home. I expected to just drive in, take a look around, and drive out, since typically dogs aren’t allowed to do much of anything in national parks (I actually mostly avoid them for this reason). But as we paid the entrance fee at the gate, I asked if dogs were allowed on the dunes, to which she replied “They’re allowed on the first ridge of dunes only.”
Weee!! Japhy got to go out on the dunes! We didn’t stay long, as even with the cooler late August temperature, it was still hot with the sun glaring down on that sand, and Japhy was soaking it all into in his dark coat. So we hiked out to the first ridge of dunes and back, got some photos, and went on our way.
Both Bella and Mani went crazy over sand dunes. I have photos and video somewhere of both of them at Monahans Sandhills State Park in Texas playing and digging in the sand. Japhy wasn’t so impressed. He was more interested in (or perhaps concerned about) the people on the second ridge of dunes who were screaming as they slid down the dune in sleds. But we can add hiking the sand dunes to our list of adventures now, and we have some photos of that, too.
