Let’s start with a story problem: Two rafts and one cataraft launch from Boundary Creek with five people and three dogs. The Middle Fork is at four ft. and flowing at roughly six mph. The group has 180 river miles to travel. Assuming that everyone makes it to the end, what are the chances that anybody would bring their dog again?

We launched from Boundary Creek on June 5th. We got the permit because of a last-minute cancellation, and the presence of dogs was due to the “last minute” nature of the trip and because no one said, “No dogs.”

The people were… well, people. Two couples, including my wife and I, and a guy from Salt Lake City. The canine crew was more interesting. It consisted of our year-and-a-half-old, black German shorthaired pointer who was rescued from an animal shelter on Black Friday and had been subsequently named Friday. A similarly young Portuguese water dog named Kevin who was more like a Portuguese (please no) water dog. And, finally, a 16-week-old Irish setter puppy named Ash.

Naturally, the dogs were a hit at the boat ramp. People fawned over them and took pictures. Many of them missed their own dogs who were back at home (safely back at home, I will add).

I wasn’t really apprehensive about bringing Friday for our 11-day Middle/Main trip. My wife and I had taken our late dog Rusty on a number of river trips. He was essential on the Rogue, where he kept black bears out of our camp. And despite the earliness of the launch date, the river level was at a “friendly” 4 ft.

As for Kevin, he seemed solid and capable. Perhaps all of us had some concerns about the puppy, but the puppy’s owner was the permit holder and he hadn’t been able to find anyone to watch the dog. We reasoned, aloud and in our heads, that Ash would stay on his owner’s cataraft and everything would be fine…

You can probably see where this is going.

Trouble started within the first few miles. The upper Middle Fork is fast, shallow, and continuous. I had rowed it five times previously, and I had a rock chewed oar blade hung up in my garage to remind me of the dangers of not minding the downstream oar. Ash’s owner had no such experience and, despite the warnings, he snapped an oar shaft. Shortly thereafter, the other couple, Kevin’s owners, got hung up on a rock above a rapid. I barely had time to say, “I told you so,” before I planted an oar blade into a downstream rock and snapped my brass oarlock—a far worse situation.

My wife, dog and I were “careening” down the river. At some point we scraped a few rocks and Friday decided he wanted off of the out-of-control raft. He leapt onto a rock but could not scamper up the smooth face, and so now we had an out-of-control raft and a dog in the river.

I limped the raft close to a steep bank. My wife and I were able to stop the raft and retrieve Friday, who had been swimming frantically to catch up with us. The rest of the group stopped and we regrouped.

Unfortunately, my extra oarlocks were back in my garage several states east. But with some spare straps, I rigged up a makeshift oarlock. The puppy, Ash, was wet and shivering, so my wife offered to him on our raft, which would be less splashy than the cataraft. My wife did not quite understand how “makeshift” my oarlock was.

It failed just above Velvet Falls and my oar fell into the water. I watched helplessly as the other couple rowed hard to get to the right side of the rock that now dominates the middle of the new Velvet Falls. Despite my one-oared flailing, we went left. The rock sucked us towards the swirling eddy behind it. I thought we would flip. We didn’t, but that didn’t mean we were okay. The whitewater orbit of the rock spit us out towards the river-right boulder just yards downstream.

“High side!” I yelled.

My wife tried but she had hold of two dogs. The raft rode up the sloping side of the rock, and the dogs and my wife all toppled out of the boat and into the rapid. I hung on. I tried to pull her into the boat but she still held both of the dogs.

“You have to let go of the dogs,” I said.

She let go, and I managed to pull her into the raft. Then we pulled Friday in and Kevin’s owners rescued Ash.

***

We had been assigned Scout Camp at mile 13 for our first camp. Thanks to our day-long shitshow, we barely managed to make it to Trail Flat at mile 7. But if the people were frustrated, the dogs were just happy to be on dry land.

As I write this piece, I can almost hear both the dog people and the non-dog people grinding their teeth and getting ready to launch into a private or public scolding regarding dogs on a river trip. And that’s fine. We might deserve it. But I also want to counter that this piece is meant to be a cautionary tale. Thankfully, no dogs were (too seriously) harmed in the making of this story.

While the subsequent days didn’t approach the dog-drama level of the first day, the dogs’ presence continued to change the nature of the trip. The running joke was that the dogs turned this class IV stretch of river into class V. And it wasn’t just the rapids.

The canyons and campsites on the Middle Fork of the Salmon and the Main Salmon are covered by “cheat grass.” The long hair between Kevin’s pads began collecting the sharp spiky seeds. By the time Kevin’s owners discovered the seeds, they had burrowed into his skin. Instead of relaxing around camp, Kevin’s owners had to police Kevin and try to stop him from treating his paws like pawsicles.

Friday’s short, coarse fur protected him from the cheat grass, but his curiosity and need for exercise got him into other trouble. After a day on the boat, my wife or I would take Friday for a hike. On one such hike he stepped over a rattlesnake sunning itself on the trail. The snake ignored Friday and only coiled and rattled as I approached. Then he stepped near another rattlesnake in another camp. Again, the snake ignored him. We meant to get him the rattlesnake vaccine before we left… just like I “meant” to bring a spare oarlock, but it hadn’t happened. So now, Friday was being protected only by dumb luck and apathetic snakes.

Of course, all the dogs became poison ivy paintbrushes. Many of the camps on the Middle and Main are near creeks where moisture-loving poison ivy thrives. The dogs would go barreling through the three-leaved canopy, often before bedtime, when they would be sleeping in tents with their owners. Dogs, it turns out, are mostly immune to the effects of poison ivy. But people are another story. About 85% of people react to poison ivy, and the other 15% are probably liars or have never been outdoors.

Unfortunately for Kevin, one of his owners had never been exposed to poison ivy and really wanted to keep it that way. Nightly, she bathed a reluctant Kevin in the cold river.

The rambunctious dogs also meant that tables and chairs were frequently in danger. The kitchen mat was the arena for Kevin and Friday’s rowdiest behavior. Ash, to her credit, just wanted to sit in someone’s lap.

Nothing was safe. Not even tents. “Releasing the hounds” had to be a coordinated activity. Early in the trip, my wife let Friday out of the tent in the early morning and fell back asleep. We awoke to a cacophony of expletives coming from Kevin’s owners—people we had otherwise never heard swear. Kevin had spotted Friday loose in camp and, without waiting for the tent flap to open, blew through screen mesh in a cartoonish fashion.

Beyond the hazards, the dogs created additional labor. Feeding time required vigilance. Friday scarfed his food, but Kevin ate slowly. Friday would absolutely try to eat Kevin’s food and both Kevin and Friday would try to eat Ash’s food. But this vigilance was nothing compared to pooping time. Watching for and picking up dog poop took the place of beach games. So much poop and we still probably didn’t get it all.

“It must be like taking kids rafting,” the other couple said one morning.

“No, it’s not like that at all,” I replied. “I never had to follow my kids around wondering where in camp they pooped.”

Nor, I will add, did they jump off the raft in the middle of a rapid to harass some geese.

As the trip moved into its final days, the people and the dogs adapted, or, in some cases, simply resigned themselves to river life. We were now on the Main Salmon and the river was larger but less technical. The camps were also larger with more room for the dogs to roam. Even Ash, who had spent most of the trip hunkered in a raft or on someone’s lap, began to run and play. To indulge in some anthropomorphism: maybe Ash saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Or in river parlance: the boat ramp at the end of the run.

A couple years earlier, I had been on an early season Middle/Main trip during which what was already high water got bumped up to “scary” high water by two days of steady rain. At Chittam, our group flipped a raft, but the group behind us drowned a dog. Early in the trip, I told everyone this story; not just as a startling anecdote, but also as a reminder of the worst-case possibility of our choice to take dogs down the river.

Despite, or maybe because of our anxieties, our group did fine through Chittam and then Vinegar and downriver to the boat ramp at Carey Creek. Boat ramps are a uniquely unsuitable place for hard questions. So, we waited for Riggins before we discussed our answers to the opening story problem. 

Kevin’s owners were split on whether they would ever bring Kevin on another rafting trip. “Maybe with booties for his feet,” his dog mom suggested, but probably not. Ash’s owner was a hard “no.” Sixteen weeks is just too young. Our answer for Friday was a qualified “yes,” if he were the only dog on the trip. Friday, we’ve decided, is a bit too much for other dogs.

So, should you take your dog rafting? 

It’s a complicated problem with few constants and a shitload of variables. My lame response is that everyone is going to come up with a different answer. But I will leave you with this final image.

Just as we were leaving the restaurant, a woman who had been sitting at the bar noticed our dogs and decided to show us hers. She reached under the bar and grabbed her purse that had been hanging on a hook. A miniature Yorkie popped his groggy head out. I hope the dogs took note. I know I did.

Maybe the river is not so bad. It would seem that there are worse ways to spend your time.

***