Big Sky Summer

Be sure to bring sunscreen, mosquito repellent, a hat, long sleeve shirts, sunglasses and drink lots of water and that's just for the dog!

How is everyone getting on? Once again, thank you for your patience while I’ve been straightening out my health issues. It’s a long story I’m afraid but my ability to concentrate and think clearly have improved, so I decided to try and tell you a story. Let’s give it a go and see what happens!

The heat of a Montana summer takes many tourists and even residents by surprise. I think that the tourists see with wonder, the beautiful vistas that Montana is famous for in magazines or online and they look indeed idyllic, but there is never a thermometer in the picture. The sun is more intense at our elevation and heat related injuries are common at local emergency rooms.

For residents, the abrupt change in our seasons crash down on us like an avalanche. The most shocking shift in weather usually occurs in the spring as we head into summer. Every year, spring creeps along in fits and starts. It rains, then snows, then the sun will pop out for a few days. On those sunny days, the grass erupts into an emerald, green carpet, beloved by grazing animals for the change from their winter diet of dry, brown forage and by ranchers who will cut the grass for hay to feed their herds next winter. In garden beds, both in the country and towns, the daffodils glow bright yellow. Hostas and bleeding hearts brighten up the shady places by the house. People throw open their windows for the first time since last fall to air out the house while putting away winter clothes. The spring smell lures them outside to garden, camp and fish. But it’s a trap.

No sooner do you plant some annuals or pitch a tent along a pretty mountain lake then it will snow and cover everything with inches of heavy, wet, frozen, water. The sun will make another appearance, melt the snow and turn the corrals to cold, sticky yet slippery mud. (Yes, sticky and slippery at the same time. I shudder just thinking about it.) Then it will rain some more, and the mud gets deeper making outside work almost impossible. People put their heads down, staring at their coffee at the Frosty Freeze and mutter bad words but out loud try to be philosophical by declaring, “We need the water.” That’s true but it doesn’t make anyone feel better.

 After a few days the sun comes out and the corrals get foggy as the ground dries, but it will rain or snow again. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve irrigated hay fields on Memorial Day in a blinding snowstorm and sunburned my head a few days later.

This pattern goes on for the months of May and June. During those two months we become entrenched in our miserable wet and muddy existence. Then July arrives. In a blink of an eye we have hot, dry, days and nights. The sun bakes the landscape, sucking every drop of moisture out of it.

This is fire season. Dry lightning, careless people and accidents start wildfires that roar through grasslands and forests covering us with thick gray smoke that holds in the daytime heat and make the air hard to breathe. We are in that pattern right now and the smoky heat reminded me of the time we tried to burn up our first gun dog, Seamus.

It was a beautiful day in late June when Kerry and I decided to take the boys and the dogs for a short hike up Grouse Creek. This was the same trail that I wrote about awhile back about a day when the weather was very different, and my quixotic quest for an elk could easily have killed me.

That June had been exceptionally cold and rainy, keeping us inside with bad cases of cabin fever, so when the sun made an appearance and the boys were out of school, we packed up the outfit and headed up the Boulder valley to the trailhead. The air temperature was about 70 degrees which was nice, but we were both surprised at the lack of humidity when we got out of the truck. Apparently, it had not rained as much here as it did back at home.  The dogs and boys leapt from the back seat, eager to get started. Seamus was about five years old and Molly, our new pack member, was one or two. You couldn’t ask for two dogs, both Red Setters, to be more different in temperament or hunting style. Seamus took off to search either side of the trail in long loops covering lots of ground. Molly searched closer, staying within fifty yards of us weaving back and forth carefully covering the ground Seamus stormed through like the wind. The boys, Jack and Michael were up ahead, leading us to the gate that opened onto Forest Service ground while Kerry and I brought up the rear. It’s all uphill, sage brush covered ground starting at the parking lot. We felt the air rapidly warming up around us but we weren’t particularly concerned about it. We knew that once we got through the gate the trail winds under the trees and Grouse Creek tumbles down close by so we could luxuriate in the shade for much of our planned walk and everyone had access to water.

 Molly impressed us with how savvy she was. When she got too hot she dove under some juniper in the shade and rolled around exposing the cool earth. Seamus was not so smart about it. He came back for a quick drink from our water bottles but would blast off again. Looking back, we would have been more concerned but the gate and shade were so close we ignored the warning bells in our heads.

The boys and Molly met us at the gate, but Seamus wasn’t with them. We gave some whistle blasts for recall and waited for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, we could hear him coming. His breathing sounded like a chugging train as he slowly trotted up to the gate. He was foaming at the mouth and his eyes looked a touch sunken. He came to a halt in front of us and quivered trying to maintain his balance.

“Uh oh.” Kerry said as she squeezed water in his mouth and on his belly and ears. “We need to cool him down right now. He is in trouble.”

“Boys, find the creek and a good spot deep enough for us to dunk Seamus in.” I said and scooped up our very hot dog. Normally he would protest and wiggle in my arms to get away but not this time. He lay still, panting away. I hustled up the trail as fast as I could while holding on to 55 lbs of dog all the while cursing myself for being so stupid. We may have fried our good boy’s brain by not paying attention to the heat. We have seen it before. Molly was telling us how hot it was with her seeking shade every ten minutes, why didn’t we listen?

“Over here!” yelled Jack waving his hat. They had found a good spot. Very brushy and in deep shade the creek formed a nice dog sized pool. It was also mosquito heaven, but we never noticed them swarming us as I stepped in the water and lowered Seamus down into the cold water that came right of the snow topped mountain. The water came up to his belly which was perfect. We used hats to pour water all over the setter making sure he got wet down to his skin. He was still panting terribly hard and foaming but what really worried up was that he wasn’t drinking. Molly waded into the water and laid own right on the bottom with just her head sticking up above the surface. She slurped up water for a while then got off and shook off to go explore upstream. I told the boys to keep an eye on her which also gave them an excuse to get away from the mosquitos.

Kerry was rinsing out the dog’s mouth with a squirt bottle and trying to get him to actually drink. Dogs can’t sweat. They cool off by panting. They also dissipate heat from veins near their skin’s surface like their ears and bellies. Seamus needed fluids but for some reason Kerry couldn’t get him to drink. We swirled him around in the creek continuously wetting him down when we noticed his foaming had stopped and the panting calmed down. The boys came back with Molly to check on us and Seamus acted like he wanted to get out of the water to join them, but we stopped him. He took a few laps of water from the creek and his tail started a slow wag. Then more drinking and the wags got bigger. We let him come up on the bank with us and he proceeded to shower us all with creek water with an epic full body shake.

We made him lay down in the soft cool grass next to the water. His ears were cool now as was his belly. No more panting. He looked normal.

“I think he is alright.” Kerry sighed petting his wet and muddy head. “We should pack a thermometer in the dog first aid kit from now on so we can check their temps”

Seamus suddenly stood up and walked back into the creek to luxuriate in the cold water and drank some more. The skeeters were dancing on his exposed head and nose but he didn’t seem to mind.

Now that the crisis was over, we became aware of the bugs and backed out of the brush to spray ourselves down with repellant. The clouds of mosquitos reminded us of a backpacking trip we did B.C. (Before Children) on the AT out by Dartmouth in New Hampshire and we were laughing at the memory when our good boy came out of the bushes, shook off and seemed to want to know what we were going to do next.

“I’d like to hang out for a while until he pees so we know he is not dehydrated anymore.” Kerry murmured checking the dog all over one last time. She dug around in her day pack and had some small dog treats we feed when hunting. Seamus was quite happy to munch down a few.

We spent the next hour walking slowly next to the shady creek so the dogs could drink when they wanted. Seamus finally started peeing and marking every tree he could find so we figured all was well and we could head back to the truck and air conditioning.

We kept both dogs at heel all the way back to the trail head. The sun had become intense and I’m sure it was above ninety degrees. The dogs fell asleep in the truck almost instantly, Molly in back between the boys and Seamus in front curled up between Kerry and I.

“We really screwed up today.” I said out of the corner of my mouth to the Head Dog Trainer.

“I know.” Kerry gently ran her hands over Seamus’s soft head and ears. “Let’s not do that again.”

And we never have. Oh, except for this one time…