Animal World
Wesley, a mohawked Labrador-chow mix, chased behind my red Saturn station wagon as I drove down the Buttermilk Road. It was winter 2010, and I was housesitting in Bishop, California, for Wesley’s owner, taking the 70-pound lionesque dog to the boulders and then “walking” him afterward—OK, redneck-running him. Being at the boulders with me four days a week helped Wesley stay fit and happy. Happily wagging his tail behind me, he’d spend his days at the blocks doing dog things—sniffing, running around, sleeping. Nine years ago, the Buttermilk Boulders felt empty, and it felt reasonable to have an off-leash dog. Today, with the crowds, it would be chaos.
Though generally friendly, Wesley liked to wrestle with other dogs. While this created a few fiascos in the small canyon of the Happy Boulders, it was less of an issue at the more open Buttermilks, where Wesley often joined the other dogs in a pack that dashed from one end of the boulders to the other, chasing each other or tearing after rabbits, getting into dust-tornado-causing fights. At times, other dog owners complained about Wesley’s rowdiness, but I brushed off their criticism. Spot pooped just as much at the Tableland Boulders, and I’d seen Mr. Peanut Butter steal lunches and chew climber shoes below High Plains Drifter. How was Wesley any worse? Dogs, I thought at the time, belong at the rocks—even rowdy ones like Wesley.
I was in denial.
Wesley terrorizing the Buttermilks.
It’s easy to think that we can look after our pets’ needs at the cliff, but the reality is we can’t—the rugged, often-crowded venues make it nearly impossible. “That was the worst belay of my life!” Hayden Kennedy griped in 2009 after I lowered him off Omaha Beach, a 5.14a out the Madness Cave in the Motherlode, Red River Gorge. I couldn’t deny that I’d short-roped him three times, once for every time a pack of four unattended dogs ran around my feet. The owners had let their hounds play wildly, fighting at the crag base and causing a huge distraction. I’d had difficulty focusing on belaying, worrying that one of the pooches would scarf my food or upend my chalk bag. I neglected to say anything to their owners, given that they were already the type of clueless/inconsiderate people who let their dogs cause chaos at the crags so would probably say something like, “He’s not normally like this,” or, “He only gets aggressive around people wearing climbing shoes because of crag trauma as a puppy”—or get indignant. And I worried that I’d just come off as some animal-hating sociopath who strangled puppies and punched kittens.
The same winter that Wesley roamed the Buttermilks, Gus, a prize-winning show pug, followed dutifully behind Cedar Wright on the 25-minute hike out from the Monastery, in Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado. Cedar fell into a heated discussion on bolting with his partner, and then looked behind him only to see that the flat-faced, mouth-breathing canine had disappeared. Gus—all 15 pounds of him—spent a week in the Colorado alpine, eating berries and hiding from mountain lions and eagles. He eventually found his way to a nearby porch, 15 miles from the Monastery, escaping the epic and bumping his Instagram account to 14.6k followers.
Earlier this winter, Gus, now a wizened old man of 14, came bouldering in Roy, New Mexico, with his “mom,” Nelly; my girlfriend, Nina; and me. I pulled on to Upper Mesteño Canyon’s highball Ergonomicon, pushing through the big opening moves to a pair of crimps at 15 feet. I stabbed for a sloping jug then fell, nearly landing on Gus, who sat cluelessly on the pad—our fault, really, since we’d forgotten to move Gus off what to him must have looked like a giant dog bed. While Gus avoided being smushed, dogs have been injured or worse by falling boulderers. To rest between tries on Ergonomicon, I walked to another boulder. When I came back, another dog barked at me, baring his teeth as I approached my bag. He wanted to protect his owner.
Frankie Vonquillsbury below El Capitan
The cat sunk its tooth into my hand between my index finger and thumb, then extracted its bloody mouth and hissed. I held the cat while three other climbers restrained the dog that had been mauling it. We were at the Hueco Rock Ranch in 2007, and an itinerant dog had been chasing the barn cat, catching it, shaking it violently in its mouth. The other boulderers had pulled the dog away while I tried to save the cat. Scared about being attacked again, the cat bit me, leaving a deep puncture. Then it died in my arms. Without insurance, I worried that the wound would become infected, or that I’d wake up feverish in the night, desperate to lick milk out of bowl and eat mice. In the end, the wound healed, though I was unable to pinch with that hand for the next six days.
“Look, Pika loves you!” my friend Julia MacKenzie said on the eight-hour drive from Santa Cruz to Bishop in 2006. Julia had decided to bring her cat on our bouldering trip, and so I’d ended up sandwiched in the back of the Volvo next to the litterbox and the cat bed. After Pika did her business, she’d jumped onto my lap, the pungent smell of cat shit wafting through the enclosed automobile. There’s currently an obsession with bringing cats to the crag. They’ve been spotted on leash at Indian Creek where one owner exclaimed, “Why are all these dogs barking at my kitty?!” Another friend brought his kitty, Norman (named after Norman Clyde), to the Bishop Pass camp where he was doing trail work. Norman had spent around 50 days in Owens River Gorge, summitted a few Thirteeners, and logged three seasons on the High Sierra’s backcountry trails. That days, some passing hikers thought Norman was lost and brought him home with them to LA. My friend eventually got Norman back, but the whole idea of crag kitties seems ridiculous given how escape-prone, small, and unfit for the outdoors domestic cats are. A 2013 study in Animal Cognition showed that cats recognize their owners when they call them but choose to ignore them. So science has shown that your pet will ignore you, and yet you still insist on bringing it climbing?
Another time, after a day of toproping on The Freerider on El Capitan, I had my partner bail on the summit. She didn’t have time to help pull up the ropes because she had to head home and feed her cat—as if the damnable creature couldn’t wait another 15 minutes—leaving me to the onerous task. As I tugged on 200 meters of heavy cord, I felt myself becoming impawsibly frustrated.
Emiko thinks of eating a marmot at the alpine boulders.
Pets also impact wildlife. In Yosemite, I’ve watched Kuna, a ranger’s dog, chase squirrels in Camp 4. Emiko, a sassy Shiba, has killed marmots at the high alpine boulders of Colorado. Other dogs chase cattle and deer. In Roy, after one pooch dug into my chalk bucket to eat $30 worth of Friction Labs, he excavated a huge hole under a boulder to lie in and digest his meal, creating an unsightly impact.
It’s easy to point to animals’ impacts and why they should be left at home, but these reasons often fall on deaf ears, so deep is the owners’ love for their pets. It’s not the end of the world if Barley runs around the corner of the Blasphemy Wall at the VRG, eats human shit, and then gives you a big, sloppy kiss. He’s cute. But really, who wants to huff dog-breath/shit-breath while shoeing up for Fall of Man? My girlfriend, Nina Williams, brought her hedgehog out to Red Rock, to Rifle, and to other climbing areas when she first got the prickly little creature. The tiny animal spent most of the day curled up inside Nina’s hat, hiding. Eventually, Nina started leaving Frankie Vonquillsbury at home. Even this self-sufficient, minimal-impact animal required time and energy that Nina realized could be better spent climbing. Plus, Frankie ultimately enjoyed being at home more, with her heater, tunnel, and warm blanket. Though I’m not a pet owner myself, back in 2010 when I had Wesley I slowly began to shift my thinking.
After Wesley rolled in an unburied pile of climber shit for the third time that season, I had to leave the boulders early to take the poop-covered dog home and wash him. Wesley’s poop I could pick up and carry out. But taking the feces-covered dog home early and missing out on a half-day of climbing stunk—literally. Why am I bringing an animal to the crag? I asked myself. What’s the point? While Wesley enjoyed being outside, the impact he had on myself, other climbers, and the boulders created serious concerns. The small bits of impact added up to a meowtain of problems for cats, dogs, and climbers at the rocks.
First published in Climbing 367
