The Dog that Broke My Heart

At the end of the night, Dan and Bonnie brought out blankets to me in the barn to help pad against the hard floor, and Dan whipped out a propane-powered heater to set up by me for the night! Luxury does not get any better than this on the trail.

I slept warm and good all night.

The next morning, the cold temperatures had finally passed into something comforting moderate, and Dan and Bonnie continued their generous trail magic. Bonnie had real milk to go with my cereal, and put out muffins and bananas and all the fixings to make myself a sandwich for lunch. Wow.

I got a late start on the trail, sucked in by Dan and Bonnie, not leaving until 10:00 in the morning, but it was worth it.

The trail continued on, not nearly as scenic as the previous four miles, but happily free of cows and cars.

When it came out near a trailhead, though, my good luck finally came to an end. An adorable little dog trotted up to me on the trail. At first I looked up the trail for its owner, then I realized.... there was none. The dog was alone.

Oh, the dog was adorably cute and friendly, the tongue hanging out and the tail wagging, seemingly happy to see me.

I tried to ignore it and passed it on the trail, not daring to pet it in fear it would never stop following me.

But it didn't work. The dog started following me. "Shooo!" I told it, waving my arms around wildly. "You don't want to follow me."

But the dog continued to follow me, though at a distance further back. I gave the shoo speech again, apologizing for not being nicer, but the trail was no place for this dog.

Finally, the dog sat still when I continued on.

I went about a quarter of a mile, before I realized it took a shortcut and was ahead of me again. I hadn't lost the dog.

That cute, adorable little face. I could so adopt a dog like that, but I couldn't take this dog with me. Who knows what sort of wild animals would make it dinner.

I had to get this dog to stop following me. At the trailhead, perhaps someone could give it a ride into town and give it a proper home, or find the owner. With me, nothing good could possibly happen.

And I finally figured out how to ditch the dog once and for all. The trail followed alongside a barbed wire fence, as much of the trail along this section does, but this particular fence also included chicken wire near the base so small animals--such as a dog--could not get under it.

If I put the dog on the other side of the fence, it wouldn't be able to follow me anymore.

I started waving the dog closer to me, then petted it, in tears at the betrayal I was about it do. Told it over and over again how sorry I was, but he couldn't keep following me. Then I picked him up--he didn't resist or anything--and pushed him out to the other side of the fence (at that point, he did resist a little).

He dog landed on the other side, turned around, and watched me, seeming to ask, "Don't you like me?"

I started to cry all over again. "I'm sorry--you can't go with me." I was more than a little upset the owner of the dog had lost it out here in the first place.

The trail followed alongside the fence for a short ways, and the dog followed along the other side with me.

"I'm already feeling guilty you stupid dog!" I told it, crying some more. I felt like I was giving it a death sentence, leaving it to fend for itself, but I figured its chances had to be better near the trailhead than with me.

I finally lost sight of the dog for good at what appeared to be a small house or building of some sort. It appeared well taken care of, in the middle of a busy farm where I could see people off in the distance, and I hope the dog found someone there that could take better care of it than me.

I almost wished I was miserable again instead of feeling so damn guilty.

The rest of the day was rather non-eventful. The trail passed into Avon Air Force Base, where I signed my life away on a form at a kiosk at the entrance. The next 12 miles I pushed through as quickly as I could, wanting to reach the northern border of the base by dark, which I did, about 25 minutes after sunset.

I could have camped on the base, but I planned to meet Amanda the next day at River Ranch, and I wanted to get as close to it as possible to meet her there when she arrived. I still would have a long 14 miles to River Ranch, but it was a huge improvement to the 19 miles I'd have to cover if I camped at the last designated campsite in the base.

So I pushed myself through the base, a relatively nice walk despite the cows grazing, and reached the northern border just after sunset, setting up camp a few minutes later in an open area among a field of palmettos.