Goob, Fozz, and I hiked down around another switchback in the trail. We saw a family that passed us higher up on the mountain. A dad, his three kids, and a dog. I saw the dad standing there, blocking the trail. His son sat on a rock with his two sisters standing beside him.

As we got closer Dad said, “He’s not doing so good.” I assumed he meant his son.

I walked up and then saw the dog. Their golden retriever was lying on its side in the trail and panting. I thought: We’re part of this now.

Dad said, “His stomach is super hard, too.” I reached down and felt the dog’s stomach which had swollen up bigger than his ribcage. It was firm.

The Dad explained that the dog chased something and got all riled up. I can’t remember if he said it was a squirrel or another dog. But it was after the dog’s frantic chase and barking that he started to swell up.

“I think his stomach has flipped over,” I said.

Dad looked at me, confused.

“This happened to my dog when I was a kid. My dad called the vet and he said to shake him by the lower legs. My dog farted like crazy and it worked.” I moved around to the downhill side of the trail.

“Protect his head for a second,” I said. After nine hours of hiking a 14,000-foot peak in Colorado, I stood there and vigorously shook a stranger’s sick dog by the hind legs.

* * *

We were in this situation because Goob, Fozz, and I carved out time in our various schedules to go to Colorado together and climb a Fourteener. We found a suitable 3-day window and met up at the Denver airport. Like true middle-aged dads, we rented a minivan. We drove to a little rental house in Leadville, Colorado which is already at 10,000 feet. When we planned the trip, we picked Mt. Elbert. If you’re going to go all the way from Minnesota to Colorado, why not climb the state’s high point which also happens to be the second-highest peak in the Lower 48?

We followed the glow of our headlamps out of the trailhead and up the mountain through the evergreens. We saw a beautiful sunrise just as we got above the tree line. The trail went up and up, weaving through boulder fields and past an alpine lake. We got near the summit and, thanks to YouTube videos the night before, we knew there were two significant false summits before you got to the real one. Thank goodness we were prepared because that last half-mile or so was hard enough without getting mentally tortured. We huffed and puffed to the top and took the required pictures. We ate our sandwiches and drank some water. There were a dozen other hikers at the summit. A helicopter buzzed by while we rested and looked to the horizon in all directions. It was a magnificent day with just a few clouds and very little wind. We flatlanders felt lucky to get to the top after some serious oxygen debt.

Goob, the author, and Fozz on the summit of Mt. Elbert before things went wrong.

Coming down was easier and quicker. Even so, we were in our ninth hour of walking when we found the dog and his family. I hike with a GPS watch that has a heart rate monitor. After this was all over, the last hour of data showed it was the hardest hour of the whole day, even more than the last stretch to the summit.

* * *

Shaking the dog didn’t work. The fact that my dad successfully shook my dog as a kid probably meant that my childhood dog had a distended stomach, but not one that was flipped over. The American Kennel Club website refers to this dog’s condition as gastric dilatation-volvulus complex, also called bloat. It’s a medical emergency and unless the dog gets surgery, it’s fatal. The massively swollen stomach cuts off blood flow to the organs and causes damage so great the dog may not survive, even after a successful surgery. The dog needed a vet and fast.

None of us knew this information at the time. Dad said the right thing anyway: “We have to get him out of here.” He was a skinny guy, but he lifted the big golden retriever up on to his shoulders: front paws and head to the left and rear legs to the right. He walked down the trail and, as the dog squirmed, Dad tried to calm him down. “It’s okay, Watson,” he said. The dog was pissing and shitting down the Dad’s right side. After a couple of dozen paces, he put Watson down, gasping and exhausted. I got ready to take a turn carrying him when Fozz jumped in.

“Let’s make a stretcher,” Fozz said. There was a gray, fallen trunk of a small, dead evergreen along the trail and he grabbed it. “Give me your backpacks.” He was a fireman earlier in life and now he demonstrated his rescue experience.

Goob and I took off our backpacks and laid them in a row, strap side up. He ran the pole through the straps of our three packs as if the pole was the shoulders of each hiker. Then, I ran over and grabbed another fallen tree trunk, also about 4 inches around. It was too long, so I swung it against a tree like a bat and broke it in half. Fozz pushed that through the straps.

We lifted Watson onto the stretcher. He pawed at us and squirmed a little. He was panting. Urine leaked out of him. Fozz and I took the front two corners. Goob and the Dad took the back two and we scrambled down the trail. Somewhere in this flail, I asked the Dad how heavy Watson was and he said 85 pounds.

Carrying Watson out. (Photo by Thomas J. Rendulich)

We struggled to keep going without dropping our cargo. It was brutal. My dad used to tell me stories of Search and Rescues he did for the U.S. Forest Service in the mountains of New Hampshire. He said that carrying a person out of the woods was one of the hardest things he ever did. Judging from carrying this dog, the four of us probably couldn’t have carried a person, at least not very far.

We staggered down the path in the hot sun while the two Daughters and the Son were on their cellphones. One kid called their Mom and said the dog was in trouble. Another kid figured out the location of the closest veterinarian office. It was in Leadville, which was the nearest town. The kids cried Watson’s name and told him to hold on.

I knew there was a bridge that crossed a stream near the parking lot. I kept looking ahead, hoping the bridge would show up. My GPS said we were close, but the bridge stayed hidden. We stopped repeatedly, put Watson down, and switched sides to use fresh arms, and then kept going.

Around that time, since we were going slow with the stretcher, two Young Guys caught up to us and asked, “Hey, do you need some help?” I practically shouted, “Yes!” They jumped in and replaced me and Fozz at the front. They never took a break from there all the way to the parking lot. The four of us older guys rotated through the rear positions on the stretcher.

During one of these stops, I put my hand on the warm, yellow hair of Watson’s chest and tried to feel his heart. I couldn’t tell if it was beating or not. He was no longer lifting his head and squirming around. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth.

Finally, we crossed the bridge over the creek and shortly after that we saw the cars in the parking lot through the trees. Dad ran ahead and unlocked the rear doors of his quad-cab pickup truck. We gently put Watson in the back bench seat. Suddenly, a Woman jumped in the back of the truck and started chest compressions on Watson. I thought it was the mom of the family, since the kids were calling her with their phones as we stumbled down the trail.

The Woman called the Son up into the truck and showed him how to perform chest compressions and the kid took over. The Woman got out of the truck and walked across the parking lot to join her hiking buddy at their car. She wasn’t the mom at all. She was a stranger.

We shouted at them to buckle up as they drove off. The dust rose from the dirt parking lot in the hot afternoon sun. Meanwhile, Goob, Fozz, the two Young Guys, and I all sat on some rocks in the shade and tried to collect ourselves for a few minutes. We thanked the Young Guys, who now looked as tired as we felt, and gave them kudos for the fact they never took a break.

We threw the logs from the makeshift stretcher into the trees, grabbed our backpacks, and headed up to our mini-van. We climbed in and slumped into the seats. We got on our phones and found the veterinarian’s office in Leadville. We decided to drive by and see if the truck was there. We wanted to know.

We pulled into town and eased our way into the parking lot by the small building. The kids were milling around the lot. One Daughter sat on the pavement, hugging her knees to her chest with her head down. I could see Watson’s rear legs sticking out of the rear passenger side door.

We got out of the car and I walked up to the Dad. There was a kind looking, gray-haired vet standing next to him with some brightly colored glasses partway down his nose.  I don’t think I even asked the question as I shook Dad’s hand.

“You were right,” Dad said to me. “His stomach flipped over.” The vet pressed his lips together and nodded his head.

We all shook Dad’s hand and said we were sorry.

When I climbed back into the van, I looked at the Daughter who sat on the hot pavement, sobbing into her knees. That family loved Watson. I saw them all carefully giving him water during the climb to the summit that morning.

Later that day, as the sun set over Mt. Elbert to the west, the three of us had a nice supper in Leadville at a local restaurant and watering hole. After we ate, we decided to have “just a thin one” as we passed the bar on the way out. We raised a glass and said, “For Watson.”

A local old guy came up to us and asked us what we’d been up to that day.

“We climbed Mt. Elbert,” we said.

“Man, some people live here their whole lives and never climb that thing,” he said. We laughed and then he said, “Where you fellas from?”

“Minnesota,” we said.

“So, you came in a week ago to acclimate?”

“No, we flew in yesterday,” we said, with goofy pride.

Shocked, he half-shouted, “You guys should be dead!”

We laughed. We all looked at each other after he left and silently acknowledged that there was a death.

It was a big day. But the joy of summiting was hard to savor when the day ended so tragically.

* * *

Over the past few months, I’ve started to feel something else. This will sound like I’m patting myself on the back. But in the moment, on the side of that mountain, I felt like I was watching everything from outside myself. So, bear with me. The scenario on the mountain started to feel like a rare case of instant teamwork. So rare, in my experience, that it felt like a minor miracle.

The three of us came upon Dad, the two Daughters and the Son. Everybody tried to help Watson. I shook him. Dad carried him. The kids solved problems with their phones. Fozz’s firefighting experience helped us build a stretcher. We all carried him. Two Young Guys helped us get to the lot. A Woman jumped into action to try to keep Watson’s heart pumping. Everyone pitched in without hesitation in order to save a dog’s life. Spontaneous selflessness from strangers. It was beautiful and ephemeral, like a sandcastle.

And then, everybody went their separate ways, driving away from the trailhead trailing rooster tails of dust. The whole thing lasted about an hour. Like a sandcastle, the little miracle dissolved. I never even learned anybody’s name.

I’m sorry we couldn’t save you, Watson. But you saved a little piece of me.