Reggie and Brooks' Great Journey Part II of Camping

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Ahhh, my dear dogs. Reggie just turned 1 year old on August 1st and Brooks will be 2 years on September 3rd. And that puppy still lingers inside of them.

Their camping experience was quite adventurous. Of course they proved to be of little protection from the racoons, they proved to be all nose in the morning after they caught a whiff of some strange animals that may have been invading their spaces by the trees.

Reggie tore up much of the brush around his tree in an attempt to find sticks in which to sleep with and those little twigs just wouldn't cut it, he had to tangle himself up in all of the brush for that perfect branch. I can't tell you how many times we had to untangle him from the brush and what a mess he left at the campsite with chewed up sticks, not-so-perfect little 6 inch twigs lying all over the place.

Brooks would spill his water the second we put it down, he shivered each morning until sunshine would hit and take up a camping chair at night to sit by the fire as he has such a pampered life here at home. Brooks is a total baby as is Reggie although Reggie has much thicker fur. Having the dogs with was more work than all six of us combined and they were the easiest to pack for. Brooks has gone on camping trips with us a couple of times but this was Reggies first and it was like a whole new playground for him.

With my previous post, you all read how Reggie swims, what great protectors they are but I neglected to put in the highlights of this trip with our animals. Brooks being a beagle, well, that is enough for anyone to know that he is a runner. He LOVES to run from home. Reggie, my big oaf, well, he loves to follow and doesn't really understand that Brooks can run and run fast.

On Wednesday, Pat and I had taken our little guy down to the river for some nice relaxing fishing. One of our daughters was trying to take a nap in the tent and our older two were playing volleyball/soccer at the playground which is smack dab in between our campsite and our fishing spot. Pat and I had left the dogs with the younger one who was trying to nap, tied to their trees and sound asleep when we left.

About an hour into our fishing, our napping daughter comes down with this mopey look on her little 10 year old face. I asked what was wrong and she remained quiet and gave me this very desparate look. I had to ask her maybe three times what in the heck was wrong. She of course went into this loooooooong, drawn-out explanation of how things went down ending with, 'and the dogs got loose and it's all my fault!' followed by tears.

Now this park is roughly 34,000 acres of very dense woods. At this point, the dogs could've been anywhere but Pat and I continued to fish as our daughter continued to give excuses, tell us how it was all her fault, trying to get us to be angry with her two older sisters for not helping but I honestly don't think that Pat and I actually registered that the dogs were on the loose or something because we just kept on fishing for absolutely nothing but little minnow size small mouth bass with our son.

It was a wierd moment as we pondered what we should do. Maybe it was because we were really enjoying ourselves, the quiet, the tranquility of the river, who knows. But the two older girls were searching frantically while the younger one continued to look for some sort of reassurance from Pat and myself and all we could do was tell her to get her a** up there and start looking and that yes, it was her fault.

She was attempting to walk Reggie, the 90 pound dog to the playground so she could take her nap in peace as both dogs were whining. She had Brooks in the tent with her and had neglected to zip up the tent all the way. I bet you can see where this is going. Reggie, being such a big dog and weighing in at roughly the same weight as her, well, he had managed to yank himself from her grip and got loose. Brooks heard the commotion and well, he found the opening in the zipper and they were off. Running, running, running.

About 10 minutes went by and Pat and I relunctantly decided that we best get our butts up to the campground and start looking for the mutts. We were not mad at anyone, just mad in general. It was one thing after another with our dogs and this just added to it. In a big way.

We left the two younger kids to stay at the campsite in case the dogs may, for some mysterious reason, return. Our older two had already scoured the entire campground and told everyone they could find about it so we had many people on the look out for our dogs. Pat and I hopped into the van and began our search. Because the older two had done most of the ground work, him and I were completely at a loss as to what to do.

We were only able to fit our 6-year old son's bike into the van for the trip so our oldest was cruising around on that and our 10 year old's scooter was being used by the other daughter. We came upon our oldest, Pat stopped the van and told me to take the van and he took the little dirt bike and the two older girls hopped in the van.

I had no idea where to begin. So many woods to look through. As I was driving down the road, I saw our youngest daughter talking to this tall, bald man. I stopped and asked her what was going on and the man yelled that another camper had seen the dogs running down the highway towards the ranger station which is about 3-5 miles from the campground. I must note that the drive into this campground is about a 15 mile drive down a wooded road that is a called a highway.

So, I stepped on the gas and drove and drove and drove with no sign of the dogs. The older girls were in the back silent as could be and as we were driving we all heard a clanking clamor and the sound of brush. It should also be pointed out that I was driving about 45-50 miles an hour down this road. I slammed on the brakes after we all asked eachother if the other had heard that and backed up. Thank goodness there was no traffic.

I pulled to the side of the road to where we had heard the noise and we all called out Reggie's name. Miraculousy, that is exactly who came out of the brush, very slowly, tail barely wagging and looking like he had been beaten or something.

Upon getting closer to him, we looked at his hind quarters and he had porcupine quills sticking out of his butt, a lot of them. I was relieved and felt the urge to laugh at the sight of my dog with quills sticking out of him but at the same time beside myself with anger, worry, fear and whatever else because there was no Beagle with him, he had quills sticking out of him and I thought for sure we would have to find a vet or something.

Brooks was called but did not come. I of course was thinking the worst, my legs began to shake and we all climbed back into the van in search of a dog that I had thought got eaten or something horrible.

We were less than a mile from the ranger station at that point so I dropped off our oldest who went to tell/ask the rangers about our Beagle and drove about another mile with no success. We turned around and my second oldest was near tears because Brooks is her baby. She adores him and I didn't know what else to do.

As we were driving back towards the campsite, we happened upon Pat just a little past the Ranger Station on our sons little bike. Comical sight in all the chaos but we told him what happened, he got in the van and we stopped back at the place where we found Reggie.

Him and I got out of the van and walked further into the weeds and called Brooks' name over and over. He stopped and said he had heard the clanking of his tags, shhhhhhh! We listened really hard and called Brooks again. I couldn't hear nothing. All of the sudden, we hear brush, tags and see the weeds moving from about 40 feet away. It was Brooks! Whew! We both let out a sigh and continued to call the dog who came with his tail wagging and not even a quill on him.

I know how lucky we were to find them in the end but those dogs certainly don't know. We got back to the campsite, Pat pulled out our fishing pliers and began pulling out the quills stuck in Reggies behind, a couple on his jowels, quite a few in the back of one of his paws and one precariously shot right near the family jewels. All told, he had 20 quills stuck in him.

On Thursday, Pat and I needed to make a trip home to pick up a couple of things and decided to bring the dogs home for the last two days of the trip and put them in their kennel. This park is only an hour from our house which was good for this. I do think the dogs learned a good lesson from their journey though.

Reggie is much more apt to hear things in the woods, much more quick to stand at our side and look out for us and bark if we show a sign that we are worried and really much more appreciative of our loveseat and our bed. Brooks, well he hangs around the yard now. Isn't as quick to take off.

Ironically though, when we got back from our trip, the tags on both of our dogs' collars are missing. We have scoured their kennel and the yard and they have just vanished. Reggie's were attached with an actual key ring that would take some strength to break off and Brooks were attached with the ring that is given with the tags.

We know they were on them when we brought them home though. If not for those tags, we may never have found our wonderfully curious dogs. They are their signature sound aside from their yapping. We think that someone may have stolen them for some odd reason?

Written by louie0768 .