So you want to take your fluffy mini-hikers on a short overnight backpacking trip to the river? Don’t. Just don’t! Ok, I’ll qualify that. Don’t take your three virgin camping pups out for a short backpacking trip. “But it’s just an overnight!” True, but it might end up being one of the LONGEST nights of your life. You just never know.
Before I jump into the challenges, I want to preface them by saying that all in all the trip was still enjoyable. The company was great and the kids had a great time (during daylight hours) exploring the desert landscape. BUT, I definitely could’ve set them up for success better… and we’ll be doing that before our next attempt at backpacking.
The plan
Who: Me and my fluffy crew of three, three girlfriends (one with a 7yo daughter) and their collective five pups.
What: Backpack in ~a mile, camp the night at the river, let the pups explore and play in the water while the Moms relax and enjoy the cool’ish night and an almost full moon.
The reality.
Got to the trailhead late… and it was hot. It may only be May, but the Arizona summer has settled in and it was mid-90’s when I put my (too heavy) pack on. Met up with Ashley, Izak and Fiona and off we go. I’m not in the best of shape these days, so the going was slow, and hot, but the fluffies were happy to be on the trail and were delighted to find fresh horse poo to pee on, eat, or roll in (depending on the fluff). The trail is wide, and Ashley was in front of me, so I was fairly comfortable with them offleash, but keeping an eye up for predatory birds, and down for rattling snakes — as well as trying to keep them on trail to avoid cactus spines… made for a more ‘stressful’ than enjoyable hike. Three pups are a lot to pay attention to when they can outpace you… I was already questioning my decision to bring all three.
We meet up with Katie from Trust Your Trail & Kerri from Dusty Desert Dogs and begin the descent to the river, where we quickly notice a couple of sheriff’s vehicles at precisely the place we were planning to set-up camp. Katie was first to reach them and discovered that our site had become a crime scene.
Oh no! Turns out that somebody had committed suicide at the site. Terribly tragic, and definitely not something we expected to encounter. With that site obviously out for camp consideration, we continued to hike up river to try and find a suitable Plan B. Fortunately it didn’t take long, and we got the bonus of crossing paths with the wildhorses along the way. In short order we were back ontrack with tents set-up, pups playing/exploring, campfire going, and MREs prepped.
The respite was shortlived. Shortly after dinner Kerri went back to her tent and came quickly racing back squealing “skunk! skunk! skunk!” Yep, turns out we had set-up camp in a skunk’s territory. We didn’t love the idea, and knew that we’d have to keep a closer eye on the pups with him around… but we figured that if we stayed away from it, he’d stay away from us, right? Wrong!
We were tired from the heat and hike so we went to bed early and for the first hour or so all of my pups slept like seasoned campers. We were startled awake when Katie cried out at Chipper and Izak and a flurry of commotion ensued. Come to find out that they charged after the skunk from WITHIN the tent, and promptly found themselves OUTSIDE of the tent when the tent wall tore at the base. Who DOESN’T want to sleep in an open tent in the desert (with scorpions, tarantulas, rattlesnakes AND have to worry about keeping your dogs in the tent? It’s pretty much the stuff of (my) nightmares. I had a moment of gratitude that my kids were too small to charge through tents, but I quickly discovered they had other (equally annoying) skills.
Now that Liv was awake, she realized that the ‘stinky cat’ was happily moving around outside our tent as if we didn’t exist, and that was thoroughly unacceptable. Liv “the 7lb watch dog” was now on duty! She was determined to keep that skunk away from our tent with terrier barks like none I’d heard from her before. She’d scream bloody murder when she caught a glimpse of Sir Skunk (and set Murphy & Enzo off), and when she’d startled it back into the brush, she and the other two yahoos would drop into low, restless grumbles. At about 1am it was cool enough to put the rainfly on, and while that helped with the consistent grumbling by reducing visibility, the outbursts were still at regular 15-20m intervals, and now they incurred an even bigger risk because the skunk was actually closer when she did figure out that he was there… and a spray was therefore much more likely. THAT was fun to worry about. It was also at about this time that the coyotes piped up and nocturnal ducks made their way down the river… all of which Liv took great offense to. Because of the full moon that night, my guilt consumed me when I could read her body language, knowing how worried she was by the environment. Needless to say, it was a sleepless night for all of us in the camp. Miraculously however, we made it through unsprayed and without any further confrontations with desert wildlife. And when I say miraculous, I mean miraculous. It was a long, loud, sleepless night.
The Lessons Learned
When the sun finally rose, we stayed for just a few hours and then broke camp and trekked back. The return trip was uneventful and I had some time to think about what I’d do differently to make the next backpacking experience more enjoyable for pups and more restful for me. It really came down to one thing… take it slow. I should’ve eased them into camping outdoors with at least a few car camping trips. I couldn’t have predicted skunks, and nine out of ten camping experiences in Arizona are devoid of wildlife, but if they’d been familiar with the tent and camping concepts, they’d probably have been better able to cope with a wandering skunk. Hindsight 20/20 moment! I’ll also be dividing and conquering one or two pups per trip, but that’s more for my peace of mind than theirs. Here’s to less eventful camping/backpacking trips this summer!
