Southwest Sierra #56 — Wild Dogs

As previously mentioned, one of the only neighbors we had near the Golden Bear Bunkhouse, was Gary Arnold with his Malamutes. His dogs were not “kid friendly”. The male Turk was huge. He probably weighed as much as Gary, maybe 125 lbs. The female of Gary’s breeding pair was named Mick and she had to be close to 100 lbs. An interesting thing that happens with dogs in the woods is that their pack animal instincts start to kick in. This does require more than one dog. In my experience, northern breeds like Malamutes and Huskies are more prone to this, but even Ruby and Thunder, my family’s beloved dogs, became hunters.

We’d been living at the bunkhouse for about a year when Ruby and Thunder started working as a hunting team along the mountainsides. When they got the scent of a deer or other prey, Ruby (who was smaller) would move uphill above the prey while Thunder remained lower running parallel to Ruby. Ruby would chase the prey downhill to Thunder who would attack first. I witnessed this action more than once and made the mistake of coming home upset one day after witnessing them take down a fawn. (Prior to that, I don’t think my parents were aware of the hunting). We all knew in our bones that once the dogs started hunting like that, nothing could break them of it. My parents weren’t too worried, until shortly after the fawn incident, we found a dead baby calf in the front yard. It was a newborn with part of the birth sack still attached. It may even have been stillborn because mother cows will fiercely protect their calves. I doubt if Ruby and Thunder would have stood up to an angry cow.

Not long after that, I was invited to Tom and Donna Lee’s house in Goodyear’s Bar for a few nights. Allen Power, the mine owner, had purchased both a snowmobile and an ATC90 for winter transportation. During the summers I often drove the ATC90 by myself to Tom and DL’s house 9 miles away. They lived at the bottom of Mountain House Road, so no pavement driving was required to get from the bunkhouse to their log cabin on the river. No helmet, no form of communication, just off I went! I did feel privileged and grateful and FREE.

After I’d been at the Halls for a couple of nights my parents and two younger brothers came over. I sensed immediately that something was wrong. Mom and Dad told me that they had taken Ruby and Thunder to the pound! They said that they knew they had to do it without me there. They took both dogs because they did not think I could pick just one to keep. The thought that was if the hunting team was broken up, the remaining dog wouldn’t be able to hunt as effectively. I threw a royal tantrum! I told them that I would have picked Ruby if it came down to it, because she was my “sister”. She had freckles like I did, and I always said that she was my sister, (as a child with only brothers I often yearned for a sister). No amount of tears or begging could convince my parents to go back to see if Ruby was still at the pound. Possibly they weren’t telling me something, I don’t really know. I do know that I had a broken heart, and even thinking about it now, makes me sad.

Thunder had made puppies with Turk before she was taken away, and my consolation was supposed to be the fact that we got to keep one of the puppies. I named him Pierre. It helped a little to have him, but he was as smart as a box of rocks. Eventually he started running all the way to Forest City to kill chickens. He ended up on the wrong end of a shot gun. We had fair warning from the chicken owner that if the behavior didn’t stop, this is what would happen. Chaining him up seemed crueler than letting him run. We didn’t have the means to fence him in, especially when the snow got deep. I was surprised that I wasn’t upset when he got shot. I was never emotionally attached to Pierre, like I was to Ruby. Pierre was the last dog that my parents ever owned.

According to the California Wolf Center (californiawolfcenter.org) there were no wolves in California from the 1920s until 2011 when the wolf tagged OR-7 traveled over 1,000 miles south from Oregon. However, during the winter months from 1978 thru the early 1990s, there was a pack of wild dogs in our area (between Alleghany and Downieville) that we assumed contained at least a few wolves. We never saw them, but we often heard them howling at night and we would see their tracks in the snow and the signs of their kills. Several of Gary’s Malamutes went feral with the “wolves”. Tom and DL’s Huskies (they had two) also eventually ran into the woods with the pack. Now that I have a Husky (after swearing I would never get a northern breed), I understand that Huskies’ DNA is the closest to that of a wolf of any domestic breed. Were there wolves here before OR-7 or just a pack of feral dogs? Where did they go every spring? Guess we’ll never know.

About the author: Rae Bell (aka Pauline) grew up in the Ruby Mine area. She currently resides in Alleghany proper and can be reached at raebell44@gmail.com or PO Box 919, Alleghany, CA 95910.