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Canine Companions Survive Harrowing Journey Through Bob Marshall

In July 2015, a pair of mother-daughter English cocker spaniels spent more than two weeks alone in the wilderness

By Tristan Scott
Crews with the Montana Wilderness Association's trail stewardship program help pack out two lost dogs in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Courtesy Montana Wilderness Association

It was mid-July 2015 when the pair of trail-weary English cocker spaniels loped up to a volunteer work crew deep in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. Alone and about 15 miles from the nearest trailhead, the canine companions were dry, thirsty and famished.

At first, nobody was sure what to make of the little black spaniels. Foot sore and skinny, the dogs had clearly been through an ordeal, and when their human owners didn’t come trailing along behind them, the crewmembers began to imagine the worst-case scenario.

Had the owners been injured in the backcountry? Did the crew need to mobilize a search and rescue effort?

The trail crew was five days into a nine-day hitch, working on a section of the Continental Divide Trail near Bowl Creek repairing a rotted out turnpike — an elevated trail that crosses swampland — as part of the Montana Wilderness Association’s volunteer trail stewardship program.

After letting the dogs rest and feeding them cheese, sausage and other trail snacks, the crew began to cobble together a plan to pack them out.

“It was pretty easy to tell that something was wrong,” Greg Schatz, a backcountry horseman and packer, said. “They were emaciated, they hadn’t eaten, they were pretty much skin and bones and their pads were all torn up. These weren’t trail dogs or mountain dogs, and they’d been through a lot.”

The dogs were too tired and sore to walk any further on their own accord, so Schatz, who has been outfitting and trekking in the Bob Marshall for nearly 30 years, decided to get creative.

Having hauled all manner of gear across the rugged chunk of country, which spans more than 1 million acres, he admits that canine cargo was new to him, but he had an idea.

Equipped with canvas gravel sacks, Schatz rigged up some saddlebags and slung them over his horse, much to the delight of the exhausted pooches, each of whom weighed about 30 pounds.

“Actually it worked out great. The dogs were thrilled to have a ride,” Schatz said. “They could have easily jumped out, but they stayed put. The younger dog had her head sticking out of the bag and just watched where we were going as we rode along. When we got back to camp the dogs just wanted to lie down on your lap. They wouldn’t budge because they didn’t want to get left behind.”

One of the dogs, the younger of the two, was still wearing a collar and nametag, identifying her as Molly and listing an emergency contact number.

Back at camp, crew co-leader Nick Burkland radioed the Schaefer Meadows Ranger Station and reported finding the dogs. The ranger called the number on Molly’s dog tag and later reported back to camp that he had reached the dogs’ owners, who couldn’t believe the dogs had survived.

It turned out that on July 2 both dogs had gone missing from the owners’ family cabin on the other side of the Continental Divide, near the West Fork of the Teton River — 15 miles and 1,800 feet below the crew’s location. It was now July 14, meaning the dogs had spent the better part of two weeks traversing a wild, mountainous expanse of the Bob, crossing the Rocky Mountain Front, either by trail or by clambering over the Lewis and Clark Range at another location.

Features like Wrong Ridge and Washboard Reef stood out as towering obstacles between the family cabin and the trail crew, and Schatz couldn’t venture a guess at the gnarly terrain or the distance the dogs had covered.

“It was 15 miles by trail but who knows in dog miles,” Schatz said.

Using the radio, the crew made arrangements to meet the owners, Jim and Traci Cain, of Conrad, after they’d finished their hitch.

On the final day, with the horses fully loaded with the remaining gear and supplies, the crew cut two lengths of lodgepole pine and slung the gravel sacks over the makeshift litter to haul the dogs out the remaining five miles to the trailhead.

After about a mile, Molly decided to jump out and cover the ground on her own, but the older dog was happy to accept the free ride.

As the crew hiked out, they observed wolf tracks on the trail and marveled that the two dogs had survived two weeks alone among grizzlies, black bears, mountain lions, and other predators in the Bob Marshall.

When they arrived back at the trailhead, Traci was there to meet them (Jim was on shift at his job with BNSF Railway). She informed the crew that the name of the older dog that had lost her collar was called Abby, and that she was Molly’s mother.

Overjoyed to see the dogs she didn’t think she’d ever see again, she insisted the crew accept a $500 reward she and her partner had posted for finding Molly and Abby. The crew unanimously decided the money was best spent as a donation to the Montana Wilderness Association’s trail stewardship program.

Contacted recently at his home, Jim Cain said Molly and Abby are doing fine, although Abby has gained some weight and is on a diet. He explained that on the morning that the dogs went missing, he’d let them outside to go to the bathroom. After a while, he realized they hadn’t come back and struck out looking for them.

“We have 35 acres at our place and I give them pretty free rein, but they always come back,” Cain said. “Something about this time was different.”

When he received word that Molly and Abby were alive and well, he was overjoyed.

“I had totally written them off by then and I was absolutely amazed and thrilled that they had stayed together,” Cain said. “Molly could have left Abby at any point, but she made the conscious effort to stay with her mom. They don’t think of each other as mother and daughter anymore, they’re just a couple of dogs. But I think they have kind of a bond because they’re buddies and they are with each other all the time, so it became natural for Molly to hang around and wait for Abby. I thought that was cool that they stayed together. It sure made for a happy ending.”