In 2000, after a decade of summer vacations backpacking, mostly solo and without my dogs, in the wilds of Alaska and Russia and before I was to assume a new position in Russia, I decided to treat my 13-year old dog, Sonntag, to one last road trip, my first road-camping trip ever. I looked at a map, saw that the longest road journey one could take from D.C. was to the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and off we went. That 12,500-mile, 42-day journey was later published as the featured piece in the January 2002 National Geographic cover story under the heading, Incredible Journey. It was later included as the featured piece of the dog stories in the National Geographic's first-ever special edition on cats and dogs (May 2012) and the story appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, books, and blogs for over a decade.
Seven months after that journey, Sonntag had to be put down. Seven weeks after that, Leben and Erde became the newest members of my pack. Two months later, the three of us piled into my Defender to return to the Arctic in Alaska to scatter Sonntag's and his sister Kassie’s ashes over the tundra at the site of the NG photo of Sonntag and me on the Dalton Highway just south of Prudhoe Bay heading into the tent at night during a snowstorm. On the way to that site, we also drove up to the Arctic at Inuvik, Northwest Territories (Canada), along the Dumpster Highway, the only other road in North America besides the Dalton that crosses the Arctic Circle. That trip was 45 days and covered 14,500 Miles.
In 2002, having already driven to the end of the road in the northwest, I decided to take a road trip to the end of the road in the northeast to a little hamlet called Northwest River in Labrador. Besides the state-side sites we camped in, we spent a week in Nova Scotia, a week in Newfoundland, and a week on Prince Edwards Island, among other places.
For reasons too long to explain here, there were no long road trips in 2003 to 2010, although we did spent almost a year at a friend’s cabin in the Shenandoah Mountains sand a week camping on the Atlantic at Assateaque during most of the other years.
In 2011, itching to get back on the road again, he three of us we set out to reach the ends of the road in both the northeast and northwest, a trip that would have been about 17,000 miles over 66 days, but after reaching Lake Superior following the end of the road in Labrador, we had to head back home for a couple of reasons, one being my concern about Leben's difficulty when running.
In 2012, my concern about Leben deepened and motivated me to take him to a neurologist who ordered him an MRI in July. The MRI confirmed my worst suspicions, that he had two disc ruptures. Hopeful that surgery would ward off any further decline that might result in paralysis, which looked certain without some intervention, Leben, who was still walking just fine, was operated on July 17th. Unfortunately, when the vet opened him up, he discovered that the two disc ruptures were old and had calcified, and were both seriously compressing the spinal column, so he could did little except chip away at that calcified stuff for 4.5 hours hoping to relieve some of the compression and prevent further decline. After the operation, I took Leben to a friend’s cottage in southern Virginia to recover. Unfortunately, Leben never got back to where he was the day of the operation. With the vet’s approval, after eight weeks, we set out in mid-September to pick up where we left off on our road trip the year before. Then, three weeks later, just one day shy of where we turned around the year before, Leben’s recovery failed completely and he became paralyzed. The next day, at Thunder Bay, we so we headed home, where we both prepared to manage him as a paralyzed dog, just as I had with Sonntag a decade before.
Not to be set back by Leben’s paralysis, we prepared to get back on the road again in mid-July 2012 to reach the Arctic in Alaska. But on the day before we had planned to leave, I noticed that Erde had developed an ear infection, so I took her to the vet to have it checked out. In examining her, the vet discovered that Erde had a mass on her upper left gum, which the vet recommended that we remove right away, so the trip was postponed. In the process of removing the mass, the vet discovered that the growth was actually a cancerous tumor, and that it extended beyond the gum to the palate and maybe beyond. A visit with the oncologist the following week convinced me that Erde’s treatment could wait until after the trip without changing the treatment needed, so we set out for the Arctic in mid-August, reaching it on September 10th, before we headed for Denali National Park, Vancouver Island, and then home, a trip of 13,600 miles over 52 days. Just days after we arrived home, Erde had an MRI done which indicated that surgery might be successful, and so she was operated on two days later. So far, nine months after her surgery, the operation appears to have been 100 percent successful.
And so, this brings us to OTR7, our trip for 2014, my seventh road trip with my dogs, my sixth with Leben and Erde, the recording of which is the purpose of this blog.
Afternote: Just weeks after I wrote the above posting, my beloved Leben was put down, as I explained elsewhere on this blog. His sister and I will take some kind of a road trip starting in late August or early September, mainly stopping at camps the three of us stayed in over our five road trips together. Leben will not be with us physically on this trip, but he will be very much a part of it, in my memories and in my heart.
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