Above, I saw the path Merle had taken:
He’d slid some 700 feet down the up-
per snowfield, fallen off a 40-foot cliff,
then rolled down another 100-foot cliff
to the lower snowfield where I now
stood. “How did he walk away from
this?” I thought.
I returned to the crack, leaned in,
and called his name again. Inside, it
smelled wet. After a decade of archery
hunting, I knew the scent—it smelled
like death. I spent another hour
crouched outside the cave, until the
jingle of the collar and Merle’s deep
breathing stopped.
It was late afternoon, and I wor-
ried about losing daylight. I was on
the wrong side of a
big mountain, many
miles from home, and
not prepared to spend
the night outside. I
packed up, traversed
the basin, descended
a slushy snowfield,
then found my way
to the base of the
chute I’d come down.
I climbed the melting
snowpack as quickly as I could, reusing
my kicked steps from the descent.
When I got reception, I phoned Susan.
“I’m OK, Sus, but I’m walking down
alone.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yeah.”
Then I ran away, back down the
trail. I didn’t know that Lily and
Axel had heard me through our car’s
Bluetooth system. After I hung up,
they burst into tears.I
’ve always owned dogs. They ac-
companied me into the mountains,
where, bounding off-leash, they
seemed protected by an invincible
athleticism. Merle was bred for the
trail. I had assumed the rugged Aussie
would take to the high alpine trail in-
tuitively. But the reality is that almost
no one thinks about training their
dogs for the mountains.
In potentially deadly terrain, it’s
critical that humans help dogs under-
stand their limits, says Amber Quann,
who runs Summit Dog Training in Fort
Collins, Colorado.
She helps owners
and dogs prepare for
outdoor adventures
through relationship
building and body-
conditioning classes.
Dogs can’t talk to us,
but they have other
ways of communicat-
ing that we need to
pay attention to. It’s
up to us to learn their idiosyncrasies. Of
course, it’s difficult to tune into a dog’s
subtle behavior changes when you’re
listening to a podcast or chatting with
your climbing partner. “It’s as simple
as putting your phone down and being
present in the moment,” Quann says.
That communication leads to trust,
which is the other part of taking a dog
into the mountains. “You have to trustI spent an hour
crouched outside
the cave, until
the jingle of
Merle’s collar and
his deep breathing
stopped.rd.com 87Drama in Real Life Reader’s Digest