Editor’s Note: Lost Puppies, Stray Cattle, and High-Tech

by Carla Schroder
Managing Editor

This is one of those heroic days where I keep my nose to the
grindstone even though my life is falling apart and I do not want
to work– my dog went missing this morning. Naturally she is not
your ordinary run-of-the-mill mutt. Layla is the smartest,
prettiest, best dog on the planet, and I say this with a complete
lack of bias. See for yourself in this charming photo of
Firecracker and Layla taken on our last hike.

How can you not love dogs who swim across rivers whether you
want them to or not? And then pose for photos on picnic tables?

One moment she was here, and then she wasn’t. It was an unusual
morning because we had a gaggle of hot air balloonists come to town
and put on a splendid show. Naturally I took some pics.

Everyone assumed that she got scared and ran off. That’s the
least likely scenario. My favorite theories are she either ran off
with some balloonists, or the jerk neighbor that everyone hates
dog-napped her. We’re doing all the things you do to find a lost
pet- flyers, radio ads, and talk to everyone. It’s a small
community and word spreads fast.

High-Tech Critter Tracking

I got to thinking about high-tech methods of pet-tracking. You can
have a microchip implanted in dogs that contains contact and ID
information. This identifies the dog after it’s found, like in a
shelter. Providing they have a compatible reader, that is, which is
not always the case. As far as I know there are no tiny implantable
GPS trackers for dogs, so you still have to find them the
old-fashioned way.

One of my rancher friends had a Big Idea a couple years ago. He
leases grazing land during the summer up in the mountains, and his
cows roam free and unsupervised until the fall roundup. Which to me
is like asking for them to evaporate and disappear, but that’s how
it’s been done ever since cattle came to these shores. He rounds
them up the only way you can in rough country, on horseback and
with dogs. It’s fun and a good excuse to ride around in the
woods.

But even the funnest fun palls as one ages, especially when
years of falls and injuries start reminding you that you’re not as
young as you used to be, and you consistently lose one or two prime
beef steers every year. Never a young calf or an old cow, no,
always, by an amazing coincidence, just the succulent ones. So the
Big Idea was to purchase a bunch of GPS trackers made especially
for livestock. Why not? Hunters and hikers use them all the time in
the same terrain and they work great. Find your cows in no time,
rather than days, and spend those days dozing by the fire instead
of tramping up hill and down dale in all weather, trying to herd
cows that like their freedom and don’t want to do what you tell
them.

It was indeed a splendid plan, but with one fatal flaw: the
trackers hung on a strap around the cow’s necks. At a cost of a
couple hundred dollars each they were prime thief targets, and
every last one disappeared within a couple of weeks. Once again
technology fails before a simple, non-technological attack. My
friend was very sad, but not discouraged– I’m sure he’ll come up
with a better plan. Probably not one that involves actually keeping
an eye on his cows, in the way that normal people do with their
possessions. How many of use drive out to the wilderness, drop all
of our valuables on the ground, drive away, and then expect to find
them all in the same general vicinity four months later? I daresay
hardly any of us, but cattle ranchers are different.

Anyway, if you see my dog please send her home.