A helping hand for man’s best friend

We were over a mile from the truck and the only way out was either back tracking or continuing our loop through this large covert. Three inches of very wet snow fell the night before and it covered everything.

Within the first 250 yards of this trek, Lexi pointed two woodcock and my hunting partner’s dog, Curtis, pointed one. This just charged Lexi up, and despite not even hearing another bird, we hunted on for almost two hours. She started searching farther and faster. She was as wet as a dog can be. The air temp was about 35 degrees with water dripping like rain from melting snow.

Lexi came in and just looked off. She stopped hunting and collapsed. We had no idea what was going on. This dog’s drive had caused my hunting buddies to nickname her “The Kraken.” She was shivering and couldn’t stand.

This is a problem that far in while grouse hunting. How do you get your dog out? It’s a long way to carry a 55 pound dog and gear with bad knees and back. Fortunately I wasn’t hunting alone.

One of us carried her fireman style and the other carried the guns. When she first went up on your shoulders you could feel the wet cold. After a quarter mile she started becoming lively and wanted to get down. It came to the point we had to let her down. I leashed her so she wouldn’t run off and she walked for about a 100 yards before she collapsed again. My buddy insisted on doing most of the dog carrying. His reasoning was he could carry the dog out of the woods, but couldn’t carry me if one of my knees gave out. Now she wanted to get down about every 200 yards and walk a hundred which is how it remained.

Using systems like OnX and our Garmin dog tracking systems, a buddy of ours a couple miles away was able to determine that the trail we were on would pass within a road at 150 yards before turning east towards where my truck was parked. He knew of a deer trail off that road and met up with us. We then cut cross country to his truck and drove to mine, saving us a quarter mile of carrying.

By this time we knew that hypothermia had something to do with this, so I fired up the heater and put her on a heated seat. We were about 40 minutes from a vet and she was doing much better by the time we arrived. The final diagnosis was that she had run hard enough to burn off all the glycogen in her system and due to being wet and cold, her liver couldn’t create enough fast enough for her to maintain her body temp. Therefore, she became hypothermic and possibly hypoglycemic.

Had I been alone this would have been a huge problem. How would you get the dog out under those conditions? I’m sure my shotgun would have had to have been left in the woods. I have had many guys come up with “ideas.” Like make a stretcher with our vest and the two of us carry her that way. We tried and that didn’t work. Sticks cracked. We didn’t have a saw and we didn’t have enough cordage.

A couple of months later I saw an ad for a dog rescue harness. It was called Pack-a-Paw. It slings the dog and you carry the dog like a back pack.

Jump forward two years and Lexi runs into a steep bowl and tries to jump across it. A downed tree top made for a bad landing and she sustained a back injury and couldn’t use her hind legs.

This time I had a Pack-n-Paw and into the sling she went and out to the truck. She had regained most function of her legs by the time we made it there and an hour later she was doing really well and a few days later at her baseline. The Pack-a-Paw made carrying her a breeze through rough terrain. It weighs nothing and stays in a small pouch in your vest, pack, or clipped to your belt. The dog remains safe, comfortable and restrained by the sling pack.

I say all this because training season for bear hunters starts soon and bear hunters have dogs that develop issues way back in the woods too. It makes a horrible situation much easier to handle. I recommend it. It can be found at mountaindogware. com.

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CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN