Lucy the beagle
Notes about Lucy:
Lucy was born on May 16th 2006.
Terrie Johnson of Orofino was Lucy’s breeder.
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Lucy came into my life at some point in June of 2006. For years, Jami and I had agreed to get a dog
once we had a house of our own with a fully fenced yard. When we first bought our house, the back yard was not fully fenced. We were oh so close to being proper dog owners. The very day the fence was finished, a tiny puppy showed up. Life as I knew it changed as the adventures and life with Lucy began that day.
One of my first memories of puppy Lucy was on a hike we took out in the Owyhees near Wilson Creek. The moment we got out of the car, we let Lucy out and she took off for everything she was worth. At that very moment, maybe a hundred jackrabbits took off in every direction. I had never seen anywhere near that many rabbits at once before. She knew they were there well before we did. The hilarious part was that she was far too little to run down even the slowest of the bunch. It was quite the scene to watch her try so very hard with those tiny legs. We nearly fell over laughing.
That summer, we took her on her first backpacking trip. Four miles each way with a fairly good trail to an alpine lake seemed like a pretty good introduction for this little fur baby. The limited number of down logs and large rocks we had to cross were virtually all too big for Lucy’s tiny legs. The effort to try to get over them was something to behold though. It was pretty much the last time she ever struggled getting anywhere. Her endurance was becoming quite apparent even at such a young age. Given that was also my nature; I fell in love with that little badass quickly.
Sometime shortly after her first backpacking trip, Jami and I had her out on a hike in the upper sections of Hulls Gulch. There is a sign that still exists today that tells the mileage of various loops in the area. It is a big sign that is made of railroad ties and looks almost like a giant cross. Lucy looked up to the sign, must have seen it as a giant monster and high tailed it back down the trail. We laughed uncontrollably and then had to go rescue the scared little puppy. There were very few times that I remember Lucy being truly scared of anything.
The first winter in Lucy’s existence brought an unexpected new trait, a love for water. Yeah, I didn’t see that one coming either. We were soaking at a hot spring one day when it was well below freezing. Lucy was still little and had to run around to stay warm. Eventually, it was becoming obvious that she wasn’t winning the battle to stay warm. When she came near us, I grabbed her and put one paw in the water. Her eyes grew with excitement and to our surprise, immediately hopped in. She snuggled up and fell asleep. This turned out to be a trend that would last the rest of her life.
To avoid delving into things too deeply, I’ll cut straight to it. About a year after getting Lucy, Jami and I split. This resulted in Jami keeping Lucy. Often, I would go pick Lucy up and take her on adventures. Many times, I kept her a while afterward and never really wanted to take her back. I was hoping to make her my own. Jami moved abroad and eventually made the decision to stay abroad in 2012. She offered Lucy to me permanently! I jumped at the opportunity. This was some of the best news I had ever received. I remember the moment that she was offered to me like it was yesterday.
When Lucy came to me full time, she was quite overweight and under-exercised. She had been spending her days with Jami’s in-laws who were not taking her out enough to stay fit. Also, Lucy’s life goal was always to be as fat as possible. She clearly had a mental disorder towards food. It was the see food diet… she saw it, she ate it. She even licked the floors. Her obsession with food was kind of crazy. Anyways, the excursions that I was taking her on leading up to this point were not enough to keep her trim or fit.
At the time, I worked a swing shift. This allotted a good amount of time in the middle of the day to take her out and run her alongside the mountain bike. We lived near a section of the greenbelt and Boise River that wasn’t yet paved. It was perfect as there was virtually nobody on this section of the greenbelt at that time of day, so she could run off leash to her heart's content. When she got too hot, I would stop and let her swim in the river. During this time, she learned that I would wait for her if she stopped to sniff something in the middle of our ride / runs. I probably shouldn’t have let her figure that out. She utilized that trick for the rest of her life. Either way, she became a very fit beast in no time flat.
She steadily got better at going along with the mountain bike. She even got so good that I started taking her out on the foothills trails. That is saying something for a beagle! A handful of times, I had the chance to ride behind her as she tried to keep up with other people riding with us. It was quite the show to see her use some entirely different running technique to try to keep up at high speeds downhill. She splayed her hind legs out in a fascinating way that I wish I had footage of. She looked kind of like a rabbit running for its life at full throttle.
Sometimes, she would still fall behind even with all of that effort and fitness. When she realized that she was not catching up and steadily being left further behind than she was comfortable with, she would make a frantic howl that was both hilarious and a bit sad that she was terrified to be left behind. We never left her so far behind that she would truly be out of a safe range.
In September of 2010, Lucy had one of her many brushes with death. I was in search of a new kind of adventure in a canyon out at Three Forks Oregon. At that point, I only knew about the long way to get to it that led us right through prime rattlesnake territory. The first of three encounters had me convinced that Lucy was going to be bitten repeatedly. From a vantage point of about fifteen feet away and five or so feet above, I could see a seriously pissed off rattler ready to strike. Lucy went within a foot or two of it many times and completely disregarded all of my calls. She was always the independent sort. To this day, I still wonder if she just messing with that thing. Eventually, I got the bright idea to just leave the area and she would follow. It worked. No three hour rushed drive with a venom infused pooch.
In the summer of 2011, I took Lucy on a 23 mile backpack trip along the Elkhorn Crest Trail in Oregon. On day three, she saw something well before I did. Families of mountain goats up on the hillside were her direct target. As it turns out, Lucy was quite a bit faster than they were. As she was chasing, I called and called for everything I was worth. She paid no attention what so ever and she thought it was her best chase of all time. Little did she know that it could have ended very badly. Luckily, she must have sensed their aggression as she got closer. She was very close to momma when she slowed down and turned around. She came back and seemed quite proud of herself. Just another day in the life of Lucy.
One of her biggest challenges ever was to the highest peak in Idaho, Mount Borah at 12,662ft. This was quite the experience. To get ready for this one, I got her a real harness and rope that I could lower her over the big drops (up to about 10ft). This kind of stuff was new to her, but she handled it with ease. Getting past Chicken Out Ridge went smoothly in both directions. She seemed to be a natural at this kind of thing. The rock is quite sharp and wrecks many dog’s pads. Lucy had tough pads and was only a tiny bit worse for the wear. She was six her first time up. She performed this same feat once more the very next summer.
During an extended cold snap one winter, a group of us decided to go visit Smith Creek Falls. This place is quite spectacular when frozen! Lucy joining us on this adventure nearly cost her a paw. We let the dogs out when going to look out over the canyon cliff. Moments later, we heard a blood-curdling howl that Lucy only made twice in her life that I know of. The sound was consistently coming from the same place so I thought she had been attacked by something. When we got to her, her paw was stuck in a coyote trap. My first thought was that her paw had been completely destroyed. I was hysterical but quickly pulled myself together to focus on getting the trap undone. The trap was popped open and she walked away unharmed. The trap snapped directly on the smallest part of her paw. We got lucky that day! We went on to explore the frozen falls and were treated to absolutely breathe taking sites.
That same winter, Lucy had an encounter with a big cat, swam in water that had an inch and a half of ice on top of it and tore off a dew claw all in one day. This was the first time I had been through the far upper section of Jump Creek. For some crazy reason, three of us and two dogs decided to try this in the middle of winter. We humans put on eight millimeters of wetsuit to go through the cold water. The dogs, well, they shook off the water each time and kept on trucking. Just as we were suiting up, Lucy disappeared up the South wall of the canyon. Almost exactly the moment I finished putting on my second wetsuit, I heard the craziest sound I ever heard come from Lucy. It was unquestionably her, but it was the strangest sound I had ever heard a dog make. My immediate thought was that she was being killed. It was not the kind of sound you want to hear your dog make. I took off as fast as I could possibly run up that hill, which turns out to be really hard in eight mm of dry wetsuit! When I got about two hundred vertical feet up from the bottom of the canyon, I found what looked to be a den between a few big boulders. I was yelling for Lucy, but she wasn’t responding. She was hot on a trail. I saw her white flag of a tail pointing straight up in the air maybe 20 yards away and dashed for her. She clearly wanted me to follow. I wasn’t in for this game, so I grabbed her and took her back down to the start of the canyon. She seemed bewildered by the fact that I wasn’t helping her track down the big cat she had clearly pushed out of its den. There were scattered bones of all sorts no more than a tenth of a mile up at an opening in the canyon. Luckily, Lucy’s bones did not get added to the pile that day.
Somewhere in this time frame, my old roommate left the backyard gate open while I was away at work. Lucy, being the perpetual wanderer decided to take off on an adventure. There was bad decision making on my part as well. This happened to be during a time when Lucy had been scratching at her collar quite a lot so I decided to just take it off of her that day. She was on the loose and without any identification. Man, I should have known better than that. Well, I had a predicament on my hands. After taking off work early, I rode my bike all around, up and down every street in the vicinity calling her name. She was nowhere to be found. Not cool! Finally, I had to go to bed, stressed out to the max. I posted what happened in an ad on Craigslist with a few photos of her. At some time around 9am the next morning, I got a call from the dog catcher saying they had found Lucy and to come get her before she made her way to the humane society. I met up with them and learned that a woman a few blocks away found Lucy wondering around and took her in for the night. She had enjoyed the company of this lady’s golden retriever and a new kind of dog food for the night. It ended up being just another adventure that ended well for little miss Lucy.
In the summer of 2012, a couple friends and I decided to do a quick backpack trip to Hyndman Peak, the ninth tallest peak in Idaho and the shortest of the “12-ers.” Hyndman isn’t very technical, more of just a workout in the woods, Lucy’s favorite kind of adventure. Along the way back down, she decided that some smell was worthy of getting lost for. She failed to pay attention to where I was for long enough to lose my track. We were in the middle of a battle of wills and I just kept going, expecting her to catch back up. That never happened. Somewhere around a mile and half further down the trail, I finally realized that she wasn’t going to catch up. I ran back up sans backpack to find her still sniffing whatever had caught her attention. Her will won out that day, no doubt.
That same summer, Lucy and I were out on a hike on Eastside Trail up by Bogus Basin. Lucy and I spotted a coyote at about the same time. For whatever reason, she thought it was a good idea to chase it for everything she was worth. I knew exactly what was going on as there is almost always another one or two just down the hill out of sight. They lure a dog to where they can attack and kill their next meal. That meal was going to be Lucy if I couldn’t chase hard enough on foot myself and convince her to stop. She wasn’t always the best listener. She was a beagle and all. Well, she must have finally recognized the terror in my voice and looked back at me bewildered. She couldn’t have been further away than 20ft when she finally looked at me. It was just enough of a stop for me to catch up to her and drag her away. Sure enough, there were two other coyotes just down the draw from where we were. I had to keep her on a leash for the next mile or so as they continued to follow us.
In late 2013, I was introduced to a group called the Hash House Harriers. The Boise hash used to be a pretty fun group! Typically a couple hares leave before everyone else and lay a trail with flour dashes every so often for the rest of the hash. A check, an X denoting to look in the other three directions than you came from, can lead you on a wild goose chase until somebody finds the three dashes in a row that denotes true trail. At the time, the Boise group was setting some great trails through the most unusual places. Shortly after starting such shenanigans, I realized that Lucy would enjoy it as much as I was. Wow, was that ever a correct realization! She learned to call out the on-on’s with her howls. She also earned herself her own hash name.
Around the same time I started hashing, I was also out running in the foothills fairly often. I would let Lucy run freely with me. She had gotten pretty good at staying with me for the most part. One night at hash that started at Camels Back Park, I decided to see what would happen if I let Lucy run freely with all of the hash. That turned out to be a bad choice on my part. With people running every which way, she quickly got distracted and followed the wrong people. She lost me entirely in under a mile of running. When I finally caught up with the front runners, I realized that she wasn’t with them. I ran back along everywhere we had been and found no trace of her. Finally, I decided to check my car to see if she was there. Sure enough, she tracked down the car and was hanging out waiting for me. It was kind of funny, but it could have ended differently. Thank goodness for not losing her that night.
She was building her confidence being alone on trail. In the past, I had waited at least a little while for her when she stopped to sniff out whatever it was her nose led her to. Little by little, I was pushing her to figure her own way back to me if she stopped to sniff too long, a routine issue. There finally came a day while out running in the trails behind my place on Bogus Basin Road that she lost me entirely. She knew these trails extensively, so I felt confident that I would find her back at the house when I got there. Whatever she found to sniff must have been pretty good. She wasn’t home when I got back. I called for a few minutes and went back up the trail to look for her. She came barreling down the trail in hopes she would beat me back. This became a thing in the future as she got more comfortable with that trail system and knowing where to find me if she took off on an adventure. I eventually resorted to bringing along doggy snacks and giving her pieces as we went. That changed her attention span dramatically!
Somewhere in this timeframe in Lucy’s life, I decided that she could make it through Smith’s Crack cave. I’m not really sure what I was thinking that day. Sure enough, we handed her off through all of the hard parts alright. She added an element to the challenge, no question about that. She surely questioned my rationale that day as well. She was on all fours maybe half of the time in there. She was well adept at being handed up over boulders and cliffs throughout her life, that’s for sure.
While I was gone on a technical canyoneering trip in Utah (not dog-friendly), a friend of mine named Nikki took Lucy to a hash at the Navajo Room, a local dive bar. At this point in Lucy’s life, I guess she had decided that it was ok to take a dump in dumpy bars because that is exactly what she did that night. She was always bold to do whatever she felt like. That night, she next leveled things.
To stick with the Lucy was bold theme, there was a cake incident. One night at a friend’s house, there was a cake baked for a graduation party. I pretty much gave it away already with that last line. Yeah, you guessed it. Lucy got it and annihilated it before anyone caught on. She was always a garbage gut, but that day she scored something a little bit tastier.
Another day that Lucy scored big in the food department involved a burrito. It was well wrapped in tinfoil. It was in a paper bag. I wrapped a blanket around the paper bag. Surely it was safe to leave in the car as I made a quick run into a convenience store, right? In under two or three minutes, Lucy had the bag opened, the tinfoil removed and most of the burrito ingested. As I got to the car, her inhale pace increased to mach one. It was a sight to see for sure! I’m certain she didn’t even regret it as I launched her into the back of the car as punishment.
Between her nose and her appetite, she managed to find many a “tasty” morsel during her life. One time, it got her quite literally stuck in a bad situation. She had been around chickens all the time at the place I lived when I first got her. She wasn’t one to chase them, but she was always interested in their food which we always kept her out of. She did eventually find a different chicken coop that she could get into though. While visiting my Dad, I heard Lucy howling from a distance down by one of his neighbors. Lucy had never really been a random howler, she howled for a purpose or with me when I got her going. I knew something was up. I followed the sound to quite the scene. She had managed to get into the coop and ate their food in excess. I don’t mean a little excess either. She had gotten so fat from eating that she could no longer fit through the fence to get out. Her belly was enormous! While her food-obsessed mind probably never regretted that decision, it probably should have. What happened to the yard over the next few days… ‘nuff said!
A funny bit of Lucy’s history included her fear of the Time Zone Bridge just outside of Riggins. Throughout her life, Lucy always loved watching out wherever we drove. She would pay attention for hours on end. The one place that always got her was that damned bridge. Every single time, she would cower as if we were going to smash into a wall and die. Sometimes, she would even turn around and face the seat as if she didn’t want to see as we died a fiery death.
Lucy’s last long backpacking trip was at the age of ten. It was the first time I had ever seen her struggle. It was a four day, 42 mile trip through the Bighorn Crags. It was quite clear that she was beyond exhausted at the end of the trip. It was not easy for me to see as she had been a monster in the mountains whenever we hit the wide open trails in the past. I blamed it on the garbage she got into in a fire pit at the beginning of the trip. Looking back at it, it was age beginning to rear its ugly head. The trip was not over yet, though. We had planned to hike up the trail for Goldbug hot springs, a really special place! Lucy was unable to walk any further. She wouldn’t follow. I loaded her up in my backpack and packed her up with us. What I’d give to load her up and take her along anywhere even just once more.
In her last year of life, we were driving up North to visit my Dad and family for Christmas in a crazy snow storm. Jen had just gotten her Subaru. The brakes shuttered and bounced. The tires were a little bald. There were three little girls and two dogs in the back seats. My stress level was pretty high as you could probably guess. At around four hours into the five hour drive, Lucy started ripping some awful farts. One might think, maybe it’s time to let the dogs out to see if they have to go. In the fight with the snowstorm, this never crossed my mind. Not long later, the smell wouldn’t go away with the windows down and was quite a bit ranker. Yeah, she couldn’t hold it and literally crapped in the car. As if I didn’t already have enough to deal with. Luckily, most of it went on the rubber floor mat and the snow outside cleaned it up nicely. That was a crazy experience for all involved.
In Lucy’s final few months, she struggled to get through even our most calm hikes in the foothills. I knew I was going to lose my best friend soon enough. All of these good times together were coming to a close. It was incredibly hard to watch. There were multiple times when she seemed to be on her last legs only to get better and fool me into hoping for at least another year.
Over her last few days, she made it very, very clear that she wasn’t going to weather this last storm. Even writing these words drains me like the loss of strength I saw from her. I miss that little beast terribly.
I was near or next to Lucy her entire final day. In her last hour, I put her bed outside in the sunshine and gently laid her down in it. The hope was that she could enjoy a little more time outside. Somewhere in there, all strength had left her and she stopped moving her head to follow my whereabouts. With about five minutes to go, she was wildly moving her eyes around to find me. Luckily, I caught this in time to say goodbye. I sat down with her knowing she wanted my attention. With maybe 10 seconds of life left, she used up every last bit of what was left in her to lift her head and look me in the eye. She wagged her tail ever so slightly. A moment later she seized up and died. A little piece of me died that day. I hope you enjoyed your time with me as much as I did you. The many hundreds of amazing photos and memories of you are all that remain.
Goodbye, Lucy.
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