chapter 11
My latest acquisitions are two geese. Goosilla and Gandergog. Aren’t they eminently suitable names? . . .
The cat had kittens—their eyes are just beginning to open. She wanted to have them in between the quilts but I got her in a box just in time. So that is where her three only (thank goodness) still live. Ma goes out at night and I have to have the little things in bed with me to keep them quiet.
This past winter the ewe had lambs in the cabin. The first batch that never froze. I’m trading the ram lamb for a goat in milk. He is v. cute—I call him In-the-Pot. His Pa is Rameses the Second. I’d like to get rid of Rameses this fall. He has a marvellously aristocratic nose—only his horns grow into his eyes. In-the-Pot has long horns already about 6—8 inches long. The ewe lamb is Alexandra. The telephone lineman had a son Alexander Jay the same day as the lambs arrived so Alexandra is named after him. I didn’t think it would be v. good to name the ram lamb Jay since he was destined to go into the pot.
—Extracts from a letter from Ginty to Hilda Thomas
The first wwoofers to arrive that spring were an Austrian couple in their thirties. They had been in Canada and the States for a year; Ginty Creek was to be their last wwoofing place before they went back to Europe. They arrived at the beginning of April—about two weeks earlier than Ron and Claire had come the year before—but the much lighter snowpack meant that the ground was all but clear. The wwoofers were able to drive their van down to the trailer right away. It was still pretty chilly at night but since the previous spring I had scrounged an old tin stove from a disused trapping cabin. It was not in very good shape, but with aluminum foil stuck into the worst holes it would work well enough. It would provide some much-needed heat in the trailer. First, though, we had to make space for it. The bathroom was useless to me; we ripped it out—the tub, the toilet, the sink and cabinets—and fitted an old insulated chimney piece through the skylight. The stove was too small to stay alight for very long but it made a big difference to the comfort of the trailer.
On April 8 we went down to Bella Coola. We planned on being back the same day so we left at first light. It was snowing on the Chilcotin and we had a great sighting of a group of caribou crossing the wintry-looking road. Down in the valley, spring had sprung and it was hot. I had to go to the dentist and shop (a couple of the stores in the valley have pretty decent vegetables), and it seemed that wherever I went I ran into someone I had not seen for a long time, so it was necessary to spend time catching up on the news. All of this made for a very long day. The dogs were brought out of the van wherever possible and given drinks, but they were distressed at being cooped up and kept on a lead for so long. They were enormously relieved to be let out of the van to run along the telegraph road as we travelled the last few kilometres home. It was almost dark by the time we reached the cabin. I waited about half an hour before I fed the dogs, but I was very tired after the long day so gave them their dinner and went to bed.
The next morning Raffi seemed reluctant to get out of his kennel. I have always encouraged the dogs to chase squirrels off the bird feeder and usually just the word would be enough to send Raffi tearing around the cabin, but he walked over slowly and looked uninterested. He seemed bloated. Perhaps he needed a walk. He came with me but stayed at my heels. I phoned the vet. “Bring him in right away,” they said. The vet was in Williams Lake, over three hours’ drive away.
I threw together a sleeping bag and some food (my dietary sensitivities meant that I could rarely buy meals that I could eat). The Austrian couple were having a day off at the trailer. I ran down and told them the news and gave them the Neads’ phone number. I had no answering machine so I couldn’t leave a message for the wwoofers. I would call Dave and Rosemary, and the wwoofers could come up to the cabin at suppertime and phone them to find out what was happening.
My favourite picture of Raffi.
The drive along Highway 20 seemed interminable. The receptionist at the vet’s told me to have a seat and I waited two more hours. The prognosis: Raffi had a twisted gut. This affliction is apparently common with large dogs that have big chests, and is particularly prevalent with Rottweilers and crosses. It happens from the age of six and up (Raffi was in his seventh year) and especially with dogs that inhale their food (which Raffi did.) The excessive exercise at the end of the long, hot day and the late feeding probably contributed to the situation. The X-rays showed that, even if they operated, it was unlikely they would be able to cure him. I was going to have to have him put down. He was sitting there, on a mat, in the back area of the vet’s. He looked puzzled, more than anything. And resigned. I was heartbroken.
So now I had only Nahanni. She was already showing her innate instinct to roam. The caretakers across the river were planning to leave soon, but they were still looking after four horses and two dogs that belonged to the French/English no-longer-wannabe shepherds. The minute Nahanni was given her freedom she would go over there to visit.
Raffi had been an excellent pack dog but I had yet to try Nahanni with a backpack. The day after Raffi had been put down, I slid his pack over her head. It was empty; it was meant to get her used to the feel of it. Most dogs have no problem with packs and I would have thought that Nahanni, already experienced in harness, would have accepted it easily. She hated it. The second time I put it on her she disappeared for two days, causing me all sorts of worry, but she came back and the pack was still on her. I tied her up for a while and she put on her pathetic look. She would sit there, staring at me mournfully, with drooped ears and one paw raised. I made a lot of fuss of her and took her for walks but the minute she was let off she was gone.
Maybe she would stay at home more readily if I found her a companion. I needed another hound for the mountains in any case. Spring book-promoting travels took me to the Okanagan among other places; whenever I got to a town, I would check out the SPCA. In Salmon Arm I walked in and said, “I am looking for a large, strong dog with a good coat that doesn’t bark unnecessarily and is friendly with people.” The face of the woman behind the counter lit up. “Have we got the dog for you!” she exclaimed.
They called him Reno. The staff raved about what a great personality he had. He was at present on a hike with a volunteer but would be back in a few minutes. Every one of my dogs, its seems, gets a little smaller. When Reno appeared dragging his handler in I could see he was shorter than Nahanni, but he was very wide. Apart from his stocky build, he was also fat and had a very long thick coat. My first impression was of a hairy barrel with legs; he waddled like a badger. He was billed as a Rottweiler cross shepherd cross Lab cross . . .?? He was Rottweiler coloured; people since have suggested he might be more of a Belgian shepherd but I didn’t care what sort of a mutt he was as long as he was suitable. First we tried him with Nahanni. The dogs seemed indifferent to each other. “How long have you had him?” I asked. “Eight months!” they replied. This was somewhat surprising for a dog with “a great personality.” “He doesn’t like men,” they confessed. Apparently he was beaten by young guys in baseball caps. He would not attack men—he simply growled and stayed back. I could see that would not endear him to a lot of families. “All you’ve got to do is get the man to give him a cookie and he’ll be fine,” they told me. I thrust a cookie at his face. I was deliberately not being gentle as I wanted to see how he would react if a stranger did the same thing at Nuk Tessli. I discourage people from feeding the dogs but there are always some who will do it and I needed a dog who was not going to bite their fingers off. Reno took the cookie with a bored expression on his face. He ate it but you could almost see him shrug at the banality of it all.
Badger.
Reno (now called Badger) was delegated to the area behind the dog barrier in the van and Nahanni rode like a queen in the front. I drove the four hours to 108 Mile House where I was going to spend the night with Patricia. In the back, Badger had thrown up: he had unfortunately been fed just before I picked him up. I hoped he was not going to have that kind of problem. I had already owned two different dogs who had been carsick. I don’t drive a lot, but when I do go anywhere it is always a long journey. When I was unloading him, somehow Badger’s collar came undone and he got away from me. Off he went around the 108 subdivision, me in fast pursuit. The faster I ran, the wider the distance between us grew. This was a potential disaster. How was I going to catch him? Would anyone be able to? With no collar on, no one would be able to identify him. There was no shelter in 100 Mile House. All strays were taken to Williams Lake. I went back to Patricia’s house to see to Nahanni and fill a bucket of water from an outside tap. Water! Badger ran right up behind me and stuck his head in the bucket. He didn’t blink an eye when I snapped the chain on him.
That afternoon I picked up another wwoofer from the bus station. Ben was from Australia. By now the dogs were tied in Patricia’s backyard under a big fir tree. As soon as Ben walked round the house, Badger growled fearsomely and backed off. Although the SPCA had warned me of this behaviour, it was the first time I had seen it. Entreaties made no difference. Uh-oh, I thought. Is this going to work? I had bought a bag of cookies in a grocery store and gave one to Ben. He approached, good man that he was, gently but firmly. Badger stopped growling, eyed the cookie, took it in his mouth, and Ben was his best buddy after that. As Badger grew used to me and was able to spend the bulk of his time off the chain, he began to accept most men without a problem. Just once in a while he will take exception to one. He can pick a pure, dyed-in-the wool redneck a mile off.
At first, Badger’s “great personality” seemed to be mostly indifference. One trait came to the fore right away, though. As far as other dogs were concerned, he was very possessive with food. I tied both dogs up to feed them. Nahanni was outside, Badger in Raffi’s place in the porch. Both dogs had finished eating when I let them off but I had not picked up the dishes. Nahanni sashayed in like she owned the place—and Badger turned on her and beat her up enough to draw blood. That, I had not expected. Nahanni still considered herself the boss, but after that she never got over being frightened of Badger in enclosed spaces, including the van.
Badger was very good at finding old bones. A number of animals must have died on the place; there were goat and cow skulls, and various other bones both large and small; all were well cleaned of flesh but Badger spent hours chewing them. If Nahanni so much as looked at them, she got a warning growl.
Ben, and later Nathaniel from England, cleared up my logging mess at the new building site. The propane pickup had now been replaced with a 3/4 ton Chevy old enough to have a carburetor. There was something seriously wrong with the choke and it took a massive amount of pumping to get the motor to fire, but once it was warmed up it performed well enough. The wwoofers hauled some logs with it, but mostly they carried short lengths of trees on their shoulders and piled them, and all of the brush, in heaps scattered over the knoll. The building site was clean and orderly, and ready for Gin and Tonic and Vodka and Lime to build my house.
I took the wwoofers down to the Precipice for the cattle drive party and left them there; they would work for Dave and Rosemary and the rancher for a while. It was time for me to go into the mountains.