Wyoming to Utah to Boise

This morning we woke from a hard sleep to the telephone ringing. 6:15am. It was the desk clerk, and he was with a police officer who wished to see us downstairs. We were both up and dressing right away, hoping the dogs were just barking and fearing it might be something more.

Cathy was out the door and down the stairs before I was, and by the time I exited the hotel into the cold Wyoming morning, the sun had just poked up, and Cathy and the cop were walking back toward the building. Everything was fine. Someone had called to say there were some dogs in the back of a U-Haul that were barking. They were concerned--understandably so. Really, we've been more troubled by people who didn't question what the hell we thought we were doing than by those who did. And this, plus a good deal of mud and mess, is what he saw back there:
















As I approached the officer was telling Cathy about his own pets, 2 dogs and 2 cats. Then he wished us good luck and said he'd call ahead to the State Troopers to let them know we were coming through. A very pleasant man.

So, awake as we were, we got down to business. We moved the truck to the back side of the parking lot next to the hotel, behind the pharmacy next door, and started the long work of letting the dogs out for their morning constitutional. It was cold and muddy, but just knowing (or hoping) that this would be the last time we went through this ordeal kept the mood lighter. Even the dogs seemed to know it, as they seemed less anguished and more in tune to the routine. They also put up a little less resistance when being shoved back into their crates.

Still, though, by the time we were done we were caked with mud and smelling none too great from the 2 cages that needed cleaning. One of them, a skinny black labby dog, waited until his turn was next before he let loose. If only I'd let him out before the dog in the crate on top of him. He was so close! How torturous for him, though, to hang on until he couldn't hang on any longer. Poor guy. This is the dog in the crate on top of him:



We call him Big Head. He's horribly cute.
















We went back up to our room and cleaned up a little, grabbed some coffee and a McDonald's breakfast (I know, I know), and hit the road. We had a long way to go, but our spirits were lifted by getting to Rawlins alive the previous night and the thoughts of getting home this evening. All that stood between us and home was about 9 hours of driving.

Unfortunately, we had to start this off in Wyoming. The wind was brutal as ever, though at first the roads were relatively dry. As long as we headed into the wind we were ok. But when the wind came from the side, everything changed. The truck lunged and bucked its way across I-80, keeping its grip on the road but making me think we would tip at any moment. It was pretty bad, and made me wish we had lots more weight in the back of the truck. The higher we got, the thicker the clouds got, and by the time we hit the next pass we were in hard-blowing snow and ice, visibility down to about 100' or so. It was rough, but the surface wasn't slippery, and I crept along about 55mph and kept my eyes forward and my chest pinned to the wheel.

The next pass was not so bad, and when after a few hours we rolled through Rock Springs, we knew we had but one big one to go. We'd heard lots about how horrible the pass into Utah was, and it was indeed windy and crowded with trucks driving at their usual and annoying accordion hill-climb style, crawling up the hills then flying down them, playing leapfrog with me for a good hour.

On the way down from the final pass, we crossed into Utah, and the effect on the weather was all but instantaneous. The wind slowed to near-zero effect, the traffic thinned a bit, and the scenery turned from bleak to beautiful, the red rock and jagged peaks tipped with snow making us feel much better about the world.

We felt so much better that Cathy brought old Flat Stanley up into the cab to better enjoy the ride. Up with us, he was an entirely different dog. This little shepherd mix, who in Kansas at the Pizza Hut I was convinced wouldn't survive to Colorado, was alert, bright-eyed, engaged, affectionate, and interested in every single thing that passed the windows of the truck cab. He kept trying to lick Cathy's face, and kept trying gently to get to me in the driver's seat, but C kept control of him and eventually he sat on her lap and just stared out the window.

This is Flat Stanley:
















It was a long though uneventful haul across Utah, and I've never been so happy to see the Welcome to Idaho sign. It was hard to believe we were so close. The miles dragged by, taking forever, our eyes fixed firmly on the horizon and our hometown looming in the distance.

We got to the shelter in Boise about 6:30pm. There was a news camera truck in the parking lot, but the place was closed, so it took us a while to get someone's attention, and for them to open the doors. They late shift crew took the truck around back and started to unload. We just sort of stood there, not really knowing what to do with ourselves.

The folks from the shelter were taking the dogs off the truck, removing the crates, cleaning, putting dogs in cages inside. Everything was under control. But we couldn't leave. We helped unload, we helped put them in their new temporary homes, and we stood around a lot, wondering what to do next.

Our frieds Will and Chuck were there, Will to help us out and give us a ride home, Chuck to help out and take a hound home with him. Trina, as she's now known, was one of our favorites, a skinny young female hound with a front foot that had broken and healed wrong. But, by all indications, she's headed for a great life. And, she's already had her first experience with snow!
















As you can guess, the thought of at least one of these dogs going to a home with people, especially these people, hopefully starting a new life, has made us very happy. But still, it was hard to leave there. It was hard to grasp that this long intense trip was now over, and that these dogs were no longer our responsibility.

But, we did eventually leave and go home, and were duly inspected (and then snubbed) by Gus and Henry. God, did they look fat.

Wyoming, Part 1

Driving up through Colorado was uneventful, but crossing Wyoming would not be.

It was a windy drive across Kansas, the traffic not too bad but the motion of the U-Haul in that stiff crosswind a bit too rocky for my liking. Not exactly aerodynamic, those boxes on wheels. Still, it was a pretty easy stretch. And the way northwest through eastern Colorado was a breeze, relatively speaking. The weather stayed fair and the traffic never got too bad. The midday feeding went off with only slight frenzy, and there was only one crate to clean out, so we counted ourselves lucky.

Heading into Wyoming, the weather started to liven up and menace a bit more. It was getting dark and the wind picked up considerably, with thick clouds forming off to the west. Things were ok until we hit Cheyenne and headed west on 84. The U-Haul was suddenly battered around by heavy gusts, and traffic--especially semi trucks--was thicker and faster. Both got progressively worse as we entered the Medicine Bow National Forest and headed up toward the pass. It started to rain, and before long we were trudging along at an unsteady 50mph, blinded every 20 seconds or so by a semi screaming past at 70 or more. With every gust I fought to hold the truck steady, and it wasn't so easy. I expected to skid off the road. I'm surprised, honestly, that we didn't.

My dad tells a story of he and us kids fishing for salmon on Lake Michigan one weekend when the weather got nasty and the waves got big. He said we came in slow, jumping and dipping with the huge swells, easily the worst weather he or this boat had endured, and he found himself praying for us to make it in, that he wasn't entirely sure we would. I remember that day, but I don't remember it in that way. Now, though, I understand what he means by it.

I'd been feeling a bit less than good all day, and the worse I felt, the more dire the weather seemed. It was a damned terrifying drive from Cheyenne to Laramie. This was one of the very few times in my life where I found myself in a situation that I wasn't all that sure I could handle. Thinking you're in over your head and it's not just your own ass on the line is a scary thing. I wanted to stop. I didn't want to be responsible for this truck and all these dogs, miserable in the back, not to mention Cathy in the seat next to me. I just didn't want to do this anymore.

Of course, that's just stupid. We made it to Laramie and over dinner changed our minds 7 times or so on whether we should try to press on and get to Rock Springs, or at least to Rawlins. We finally decided not to, and we began the process of letting all the dogs out for the last time of the day, resigned to the trip not ending until Sunday (the horror!), when we got a visitor. I'd just sprung the Rott from his giant cage in the back of the truck--he became always the first to go after his big accident of the first day--when a youngish guy rolled up in a wheelchair, saying "Well, you've got a lot of dogs there." He was burly, with a beard and long hair in a ponytail and glasses. The Rott made for him immediately, and before I could properly hold him back he had his head buried in the guy's lap, shoving slightly for attention. It was pretty amazing. So I stood and talked to him for a while about the roads and the weather and our plan, and he offered to drive home and check the radar and come back and tell us what was going on.

He returned about a half hour later (we were not quite halfway through with the job at hand), saying that the storm looked to be breaking and it wasn't cold enough between Laramie and Rawlins to freeze. He told us that we could take route 30 around the Elk Mountain pass and avoid both the big elevation and most of the traffic--and all of the semis--at a loss of only a half hour ro so. So, we took his advice and set off, grateful for the help when we really needed it.

We made it to Rawlins after a much calmer ride of 2.5 hours or so. It still rained on us and snowed at our highpoint, but the roads weren't slick and the wind was not as severe, and there were no trucks. We got a room avertising AAA and free high speed internet. We got $2 off and a counter kid who didn't know we needed a code and couldn't figure out how to get it.

I took a shower, fan running, door closed, and swore the whole time I could hear dogs barking.

Somewhere in Kansas

It's a clear, sunny day and we're on the way again. Even though we've settled into a routine of sorts, the journey's still incredibly trying, and I'd be lying if I said I was handling it as well as I thought I would. It's hard to hear those dogs screaming and baying so hard and so long. It's horrible to have to shove them back into their cages after 5 or 10 minutes of freedom. It's tough not to lose your faith in humanity when you reach down to pet one of them and they hit the ground flat like you're about to beat the hell out of them. It's hard to just keep doing it, to keep going.

Last night, in a rest area in Kansas east of Hays, I lost my shit. Just lost it. I was tired and hungry, it was cold outside, we had earlier dealt with a dog in serious GI distress, shitting purple liquid and vomiting green foam, and hosed his crate out in a covert move behind Pizza Hut. It was a lot of work to feed and water the dogs. It took quite a lot out of me. Then a few hours later, in the cold and dark and windy Kansas night, it was time to let them out.

My frame of mind was bad. I was doubting whether all the dogs would survive the trip, the sick one especially, and I had to start the process by letting the Rottweiller out. He dragged me around for a while and did his thing, and then I tried to put him back in his crate. He didn't want to go. This is a dog that has the sweetest temperament, the nicest big lug disposition, and seemingly loves everyone. I pushed, and he held fast and turned to gave me a look that scared me to the bone. I backed off a bit involuntarily, and I grabbed a handful of food and tossed it into the crate. He followed it, and I closed the door, but it really shook me.

And there were still 15 dogs to go.

We did it, one at a time. Cathy had taken out the sick one, now called Flat Stanley, and tied him to a table where he sat silent and patient, watching us, uncomplaining, heartbreaking. There's a shiny little male black labby dog, tiny and stumpy and quiet, who is very good and calm when I take him out. He darts around sniffing, constantly looking up at me for approval or reproval, I'm not sure which, and when he does his thing, he gets a bit excited. So, squatting and fully and painfully erect, hunched over and spiny, totally freaked out, he's staring up into my face, his eyes wide and whites showing, a look of hesitant wonder on his face. When he finally finished and moved a few steps, I gathered the spare leash in my hand and bent and reached to pet him with my other hand and tell him good boy. As I reach, he squints hard and dives quickly to his right shoulder, paws raised in defense against the beating he was surely about to get.

"No, no, it's ok," I said, and he let me pet him and slowly loosened his muscles and opened his eyes. That's when I lost it. The tears came as I crouched down to dog level, petting the dog gently and steadily, saying "It's ok, no more hitting, it's ok, no one's gonna hit you anymore." And once I started, I couldn't stop. I said it was ok over and over, to myself as much as to him. I walked him a bit more after gathering myself, then led him back to his cage and put him in. No resistance, all resignation, and he turned in his cage, which was on the second tier, and pressed the top of his head against my chest in a very Henry-like gesture. He stood and I petted and stroked his head, and he let me, no fear this time.

And I still had 5 dogs to go.

I got back to work, releasing one dog at a time, taking them out, running and walking, petting and playing, occasionally getting choked up and hollow-eyed again, wearing down my spirit as much as my body.

When we were done we drove on, not getting very far before we stopped for dinner and for the night, around 10:30. I've never been so happy to see an Applebees. Steak and shrimp that went down like nothing, with a pint of beer behind it. Drained, we got a room and went straight to bed.

This morning, we were up and at it again at 7am, though we didn't get on the road until 10. Another long day ahead of us.

Texas to Kansas

The ice in the crates was a good idea. But, a mess to deal with. Ice turns to cold water turns to warm water, after all. Up in the cab of the truck, we knew that the dogs would be sitting in puddles, some of them water only, some of them water enhanced by fear and bad digestive systems, and we knew that we would have to clean out all the crates. This was not an attractive prospect, but it was unavoidable. So, at a rest area about 35 miles east of Dallas, in total darkness, we strapped on headlamps, opened the back of the truck to the usual cacophony, and set to work.

We released one dog at a time, Cathy taking the dog out into the grassy area to walk them and let them do their overdue business and to give them some personal attention, while I untied the crates, one at a time, and carried them out of the truck. Slippery, smelly, and dark, my headlamp the only thing allowing me to do this job, I'd set the crate down on the edge of the truck, jump to the ground, and then carry the crate off into the grass. I'd dump it out, clear out any rubbish or nastiness, give it a last shake, and then set it down, in line in order, and go back to the truck. I'd get out the next dog (no mean feat this, as they without exception charged the open door and required holding back in order to get a leash on) and lead it out into the grass on a leash as Cathy finished up with her dog and put it into a clean crate. Then she'd take the next dog from me and I'd go back to fetch its crate. Again and again, 16 times, we did this, one side of the truck at a time. When one side was complete and 8 dogs waited in the grass in their clean crates, we'd start to reload them, one at a time, tying them in as they were and checking their steadiness. Then, when they were all back in place, we moved to the other side of the truck and started again. This whole process took about two hours and gained us many strange looks and not too many friends among the truckers attempting to sleep about 100 yards away. We sent up quite a racket.

Afterward, thoroughly tired and coated in sweat and all manner of dog matter, we set out to try and get past Dallas. We did, negotiating the speedy traffic on the 6-lane highway through town, past Outback Steakhouse after Outback Steakhouse, and we spent the night in a Motel 6 north of North Dallas, sleeping like the dead with the dogs in the truck, the door propped partway open for air. The weather was nice at night, so we didn't worry about the mutts. We did worry about our fellow motel guests, but we asked for a room in the back and we got no complaints, so no one could have been too disturbed.

This morning we woke to the sound of dogs barking. Imagine that.

We were up and packed and out at 8, letting the dogs out two at a time, walking and running and drinking and crapping and doing what dogs do when released from a crate. Namely: going slightly nuts. These are all good dogs, all very happy when free, some very skittish, some incredibly thin, bags of bones and skin, but all good dogs. We're learning their personalitites already, and I can tell it's gonna be hard to drop them off and have them out of our lives. When it gets tempting to get mad at them, or yell at them to shut the hell up already, all it takes is a quick thought of what they've been through, how they may have been abandoned to the storm, and how they may have managed to survive, to quell the rising blood. We have no idea what hell they've endured, and when they look through the bars into our eyes, or they mash themselves up against our legs when we walk them, it's all I can do to hold it together and keep from turning into a blubbering idiot.

Now, they're clean(er) and dry, and we feel good about the shape they're in. As I write this Cathy's driving into Kansas, the dogs quiet in the back. It's 4pm, and in about an hour we'll stop and feed them. After that we'll give them some water and take off again. Then, after a couple hours, we'll stop again and let each of them out for a quick walk and some relief, then they're back in the crates for the night. We'll drive as far as I can manage, then stop for the night. We were hoping to make Denver by this evening, but everything seems to take longer than we've imagined, and I don't think we'll get there. I have a feeling it'll be late Saturday when we get home. That's ok, I suppose. It'd be nice to get back Friday, but we hadn't planned for it to be so hot yesterday or for tending to the dogs to take as long as it does.

New Orleans

Yesterday, for the beginning of this grand and somewhat ill-conceived adventure, we couldn't have timed things worse if we'd tried. Our flight to Houston at 7am went ok, except for the fact that one of our 6 missed the connecting flight in Phoenix. From the Houston airport we even got to the U-Haul joint ok, the 5 remaining drivers in a mini-van cab. From there, though...

First of all we followed Yahoo! directions, which I advise no one to do. From 45 south we took the beltway paralleling the tollway into the middle of town, then turned back along 290 east, then realized we missed the ramp we needed, so went back and tried it again, but missed the proper lane, now in rush hour traffic in a very steady rain. Another lap around and we got it right, just in time to hit the parking lot of traffic. If there's one thing you don't want to do in a 17 foot U-Haul, it's get stuck in Houston rush hour traffic.

After braking and lurching our way through town, which took just this side of forever, we finally got out of there, and then had to negotiate a series of construction projects that had concrete barriers lining the lane, right where the lines should be, with no margin for error. In the dark, still raining, in a veritable convoy of semis. Nervewracking, to say the least.

The one good thing was that we stopped outside of Houston for some cajun food, Cathy tucking into a blackened snapper and grilled shrimp and me putting away a catfish po boy and a bowl of seafood gumbo. Delicious. And it'd be our only cajun food, even though we were going right into New Orleans.

Of course, we got to New Orleans right around midnight. The drive to the city was harrowing enough--dense fog, shit roads, a nasty drive in the middle of the dark night--and once we got there, it was just creepy. The city's under curfew and appears largely abandoned, so it was empty and dark, with few streetlights working and no road signs to speak of. The pea-soup night air made it all the moreso, though it did keep even the cemeteries out of sight. We didn't see much flood damaage on the way in, because we couldn 't see much of anything.

We got into the tent city around 12:30 after another call to a guy there named Raymond.



I stayed up a little while talking to Rick from Montana, who'd been there for about 6 weeks, since before the Guard got there. He told me of how New Orleans, wth all its destruction, was but a triopical storm compared to parts of lower Mississippi, which you won't hear about on the news. Towns obliterated, dead cows in trees, now hides and bones, along with houses, trucks, and coffins. Coffins, in trees. Amazing.

In the morning, at 6, after a night with not a single minute of sleep, we made our way to the shelter. Bleary-eyed and tired, I was ill prepared for this. Hundreds of dogs in makeshift runs, barking and baying and raising a racket unlike many I've heard.

We started to set up the trucks, loading crates into the back and tying them down in whatever system we felt best. Rope and bungee cords everywhere. It was a web of tie downs holding down a city of crates. How the hell would the dogs survive this trip? I had no idea.

Cathy made the rounds of the shelter, checking out the dogs, finding out who'd be coming and who would not, talking to the volunteers, while I busied myself with readying the crates. To be honest, this work kept me from confronting the scene behind the shelter where all the dog runs were. I took a walk back there when we first arrived, and I had a hard time of it. Beagles and hounds and Rotts and shepherds and all between, old and slow dogs and litters of new puppies, some emaciated and some healthy looking. So many dogs waiting to be claimed, to get out of this chain link nightmare and just friggin go home already.

Much to our pleasure we learned that we were to take all dogs at the shelter who were not already spoken for. Many had owners who had come already, found and claimed their dogs, and left them in the shelter's care until the time they could get back into their house, or get into a new place, or secure a trailer from FEMA where they could live and accomodate a dog. It must have been horrible to leave a dog behind here, but at least their dogs were alive and well and waiting for them.

The three trucks all departed separately, as once one was loaded up, all dogs accounted for, the paperwork had to be done. This took a while, but Dr. Hebert did a good job of keeping track of everyone and making sure the dogs would be counted and looked after. Medical history and all else were in this file, which we carry with us now.

We were the last truck to depart, and it was about 11:00 by the time we took off. This did not bode well, as when the fog burned off, the air got hot, and the back of the truck resembled nothing so much as an oven. It'd be slow-going, stopping about every hour to open the truck and air them out. At one point we put a bag of ice in each kennel, which did well to keep them cool for a couple hours, but also left a big puddle in every crate. Quite a mess, but in the end worth it, as each required cleaning anyway and this made it nothing more than dumping out some unsavory water and tossing the empty bags.

It was a long day with many stops, the frantic need to get north and away from the heat stymied by the incessant need to stop. But, there was no choice in the matter, so we settled into a frustrating pattern and chugged on.

Why Not Us?

This week, early tomorrow morning, Cathy and I are embarking on what might be one of the biggest adventures of our lives. Here's the backstory:

http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051105/NEWS01/511050338/1002

And here's what sealed the deal:













This past Saturday morning, Cathy read a story in the paper about a temporary shelter in New Orleans that is about to close. It's in a senior center, and they need it back, so the animals--loads of them, dogs, cats, and apparently all other manner of critter rescued from the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina--have to go. Some were starving, some blind, all in poor health, and the intervention of the National Guardspeople who retrieved them and brought them to this place saved them from certain death.

When the shelter was slated for closing, these folks along with the Humane Society organized a massive relocation plan. They've found places for the animals in new homes or in shelters. They got donations for vans and for plane tickets and hopefully for food and lodging. All they needed was people to do the driving.

It took a single phone conversation between Cathy and Sgt. Mike Spickelmier to convince my amazing wife that we were just the people for the job. I was skeptical, of course, but a single look at the photo above was all it took to convince me of the same.

No matter the questions about expenditure of resources or consequences to local pound populations or anything else: the thought of just abandoning these dogs, who have already been through so much, just because it's such a huge undertaking to relocate them, is not acceptable. I think of Henry in this dog's position and try to imagine him going through this and there's really no choice to be made.

We both called our bosses at home on Saturday and, miraculously, we got them on the first try. They agreed that this was important enough to do some schedule juggling. And that was that.

So, we fly to Houston Tuesday morning. There we'll pick up a van and drive it to the shelter in New Orleans. Says the Sgt: "We'll put you up in a tent and give you a hot meal before you leave Wednesday." So we have that to look forward to before taking off on a 3-day drive cross country with a truckload of dogs.

Neither of us really knows what to expect. What are bathroom breaks gonna be like with 2 people and 16 dogs? Can the dogs stay in their crates in the truck overnight? Or will we have to drive straight through? Are these animals strong enough to make the journey? We don't know any of these things, but we're going in prepared, and we'll figure it out as we go along.

This is an incredible opportunity to help, and we're very glad to be taking it. We're bringing a camera and a laptop along, so I hope to blog it as it happens. If not, I'll do it when we get back to Boise. So check in here and see if we've found wireless connections along the way.