Yellowstone Terror
As I mentioned, we did our touring in a rented SUV. Rather
than leave Shane in the motorhome alone all day, we took him along with
us on the drives. We regularly walked him and gave him water since the drives
took most of the day. We also made sure to leave the windows open so he
had plenty of airflow when we walked around without him.
Dogs are not allowed on the trails in the park, and in
particular they are not allowed anywhere except in vehicles around the geysers
and hot springs. Shane sat patiently in the car with a window down all the
way while we waited for Old Faithful and watched a movie about the park.
Our next stop was Midway Geyser Basin, the home of a group of colorful hot
springs. In the image below you can see there is a boardwalk above the springs,
a series of boiling pools and little geysers. The water from the springs
flows down into a cooler stream just below the orange.
We were walking along another part of the boardwalk and turned to come back when we saw Shane running full tilt down the boardwalk shown above towards an area with a large pool. This dog lives to swim, and we all instantly feared that he was heading straight for the pool ready to jump in. The boardwalks only occasionally have railings, so there is no protection from him doing exactly that. We all started yelling his name and running back that way fearing the worst. Luckily some other people grabbed him before he got to the end.
When we got to him he was his usual happy and oblivious self, and he was soaking wet from swimming in the cooler creek below. I dragged him back to the car and sat with him there. It was clear that he had jumped out the window, still open enough for him to fit through. There was a ranger in the parking lot who was kind enough not to lecture me about letting our dog run loose in the park. She did tell me though that at least one dog a year dies from jumping into the hot springs - usually labs.
We're still processing this whole event, seeing our dog potentially kill himself while we can't do anything to stop it. The bit of solace I have though is that I think he was running up to find us, the direction he was heading is where he would have last been able to see us. He had already been swimming in the stream and would have stayed there if that was his only motivation, and I don't think he necessarily would have known that there were pools up higher. But we'll never know for sure.
The windows from then on have been left open only two to three inches.
We were walking along another part of the boardwalk and turned to come back when we saw Shane running full tilt down the boardwalk shown above towards an area with a large pool. This dog lives to swim, and we all instantly feared that he was heading straight for the pool ready to jump in. The boardwalks only occasionally have railings, so there is no protection from him doing exactly that. We all started yelling his name and running back that way fearing the worst. Luckily some other people grabbed him before he got to the end.
When we got to him he was his usual happy and oblivious self, and he was soaking wet from swimming in the cooler creek below. I dragged him back to the car and sat with him there. It was clear that he had jumped out the window, still open enough for him to fit through. There was a ranger in the parking lot who was kind enough not to lecture me about letting our dog run loose in the park. She did tell me though that at least one dog a year dies from jumping into the hot springs - usually labs.
We're still processing this whole event, seeing our dog potentially kill himself while we can't do anything to stop it. The bit of solace I have though is that I think he was running up to find us, the direction he was heading is where he would have last been able to see us. He had already been swimming in the stream and would have stayed there if that was his only motivation, and I don't think he necessarily would have known that there were pools up higher. But we'll never know for sure.
The windows from then on have been left open only two to three inches.