THE FLYING DUKE

Yesterday Ken and I had a geocaching outing. First we went out near the Waha area on the road into Redbird. Idaho Fish and Game has acquired some land in that area and there are now two geocaches in there. One was a two-step cache and the first leg was quite unique. The coords took us to a thick bushy clump type tree with thorns. After searching for some time I a saw a camo colored arrow stuck in the center of the tree with the coords of the final leg written on it. My nose was about a foot from it before I saw it.

But I digress, the real story is an event involving the last cache which was located in Spalding park. For those who aren’t familiar with the park, there is an old abandoned concrete bridge about 150 yards long in a rainbow design that spans some railroad tracks and bottom land and brings the old road down into the park from above. The cache was located on a ledge over the side of the bridge, but that’s another story. Ken and I had Duke and Nellie with us on this outing as you might guess. While I was walking up the bridge with a long stick to knock the cache off, Ken was down below so he could catch it. Duke was with me on the bridge and Nellie was down below. Ken whistled for Duke, not knowing where he was. I answered that Duke was with me so he wouldn't keep calling him. When he whistled Duke looked up and down the bridge for Ken and not seeing him just walked up a little in front of me. Then all of a sudden as if he thought, “Hey, I’d better get down there pronto”. He suddenly all in one motion sprung upon the 4 foot concrete guard rail and launched himself off the side of the bridge. You can't see through the guard rail because it is solid so apparently he hadn’t realized that we had been gaining elevation and were now about 25 feet above the ground. It was like a bad dream happening that you can’t do anything about. As some of you know, I lost a dog years ago that jumped over a cliff after some flushing quail.

Miraculously, he didn’t break anything. He wasn’t able to straighten his back but he was walking and not spitting any blood. We took him to the vet to confirm there was no permanent injury. Although neither of us saw him hit we think his shoulders took the brunt of the impact. Needless to say, when he moves at all, ol’ Duke is moving very slowly today. Those German Shorthairs are some kind of tough!

Sorry I didn’t get any pictures but things happened rather quickly.