Because there are not any sort of kennels/pet hotels anywhere near Norway House, RD is always our traveling buddy on our trips south. For a better part of the trip to Winnipeg, there is not much to see; basically the road is cut through the dense northern “bush”.
The only thing of interest to him on the gravel road portion is a black bear that hangs around a certain area during the summer. The bear has obviously been fed before because he runs onto the road when he sees a car. (Side note: Please do not feed bears. It only causes trouble for them because they eventually become the “problem bears” that you see bugging people and then they are killed by humans, the species that got them in trouble in the first place.)
Anyway, we had the windows cracked during one of our trips and low and behold the bear is sitting there in the middle of the road. RD smelled the bear before he saw it, and he FREAKED OUT. I have never seen him so vicious. All of his hair was standing up and he was frothing at the mouth while growling and snarling. The bear heard him and starting RUNNING AFTER THE JEEP. We were definitely not the calm-assertive dog owners we should have been at this point. I was yelling at Ryan to speed up while he was yelling at me to get the windows rolled up.
Other than that, after the landscape opens up a bit to the prairie/farmland of southern Manitoba, RD gets mad at different things that he is not used to seeing, like hay bales, horses, and cows.
On the particular trip that is the center of this story, I had to drop Ryan off in Winnipeg as he was going on a weekend trip with some friends while I continued on south to my parents’ house in Grafton, ND. We had our friend Justin with us on the journey as he was going with Ryan for the weekend. I was to drop them off at a main building of their work to meet friends, which happened to be on the busiest street in Winnipeg.
RD was already worked up because he does not like driving through the city. He becomes overwhelmed by strange sights and smells and gets almost frantic. We arrived at headquarters and the guys were unloading their bags while I stood with RD on a leash. He was doing just fine until I felt him start to struggle against the leash. I looked over and there was a woman walking with a dog. They had just crossed the busy street and were walking by us on the opposite side of the street we were parked on.
Fate must have felt like sneering at my expense that day, because somehow in his excitement, RD twisted and dodged in just the right way so that his collar slipped right off of his neck. For a split second that felt like an eternity, I stood on the sidewalk still holding the leash attached to the collar. RD BOLTED. Head low and tail straight out behind him he tore across the street towards the woman and her dog. I had no idea what he would do because as he has had some bad experiences with other rez dogs (like in the rollerblading story), he sometimes was not friendly to new acquaintances, especially big males. At that moment I thought for sure that 1. RD would attack that dog because of fright and then he would have to be put down immediately, 2. He would get hit by a car, or 3. He would be long gone and we would never see him again.
I managed to scream at Ryan who was in the midst of taking bags out of the back and he bolted thanks to quick cop reflexes. I was frozen in sheer terror. Justin was not about to get involved in the mess. After I got some of my senses back, I ran across the street just in time to see RD reach the woman and dog and Ryan reach RD. All of a sudden, he just stopped and started prancing around wagging his tail. He just wanted to get over there lickidy split to show off for the cute gal. We started apologizing profusely to the woman; I couldn’t even look up to meet her eyes. She was too sweet, she said not to worry and that her dog got out of her collar “all of the time.”
After we got RD back in his shackles and my heart stopped having a heart attack, we regrouped back by the vehicle. It was still too soon to laugh about the possibly tragic incident but we went over the details. Justin said that he did not see the woman and dog at first and just thought RD was heading for the hills. He also told me that the dog was a SEEING EYE DOG. The woman was blind. I could just imagine the headlines if things had turned out badly: “Cop’s Dog Attacks Woman and Her Service Dog.” The police hating press of Winnipeg would just eat that up.
It now made sense why she never flinched when RD ran towards them. Also, I’m sure her well-trained service dog gets out of her collar “all the time”.
Riding in the Jeep
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