Lucia
It's 4:53 am. It’s not yet light outside. I’m inside my camper, which was cold before I started the stove burner for my morning coffee. It’s still flickering in the dim light for warmth. I’m parked on an old logging road a quarter of a mile off the ALCAN in northeastern British Columbia. My traveling companions, Archie and Lu, having completed their breakfast and are out exploring. Hopefully no bears nearby. Archie, our yellow lab, has made this trip once before when he was not quite a year old. Lu, short for Lucia, a great Pyrenees, is along for the adventure. What am I doing with a Great Pyrenees puppy? Good question! I discovered Lucia more than a month ago on a family trip to our small ranch in northwestern Colorado. We awoke one morning to hair raising howls coming from the mountain south of our yurt. It turned out to be a lost Pyrenees puppy. All the land surrounding the ranch and for miles and miles around is open grazing land. The shepherds, who incidentally are Peruvian cowboys, move huge herds of sheep to higher and higher terrain as summer progresses. So, after much coaxing we retrieved the lost puppy, fed, and watered her. She fell asleep in our camper and slept for hours from exhaustion. Our plan was to get her in a little better shape, find the herders, and give her back. This seemed like a good plan because Fran, our daughter from Spain, was visiting and could effectively communicate with the cowboys. A couple hours later we spot a cowboy on horseback winding down the mountain, an entourage of sheep dogs following along. We assume he’s looking for the puppy. We’re all a little sad because the puppy is snuggly and so dang cute and by now, we’ve bonded, at least, WE think so. We all load into the UTV and go to meet the cowboy. We watch as Fran communicates in Spanish, emotionally preparing to hand over the puppy. Fran finishes her conversation and approaches the UTV with a surprised look and slight smile, “They don’t want the puppy!” Apparently when a sheep dog has a litter while on the job, if the puppies can’t keep up, they’re abandoned. Everyone clapped and let Lu know she was now a Sunn. I thought about pee, poop, and chewed furniture. But I’m a lot like Moon, I have a tender place for stray and abandoned dogs. So much so, Lu is wreaking havoc on her way to Alaska. She’s barking at the camper door with a mud caked face. I only have 1,400 more miles to Anchorage! Stay tuned.