…my huckleberry friend…

My brother has stopped in Houston on his cross-country road trip and was just telling me a story about the late Bailey, pictured at left in 2008. One year David and Bailey were hiking with a group in the mountains outside Bozeman, Montana, when the guide explained that it was huckleberry season. She told them to be on the lookout for this tasty fruit, and indeed, now and then they’d come upon a bush with a few scattered berries on it, not really enough to sate anyone’s appetite. (Maybe the grizzlies had gotten there first?)

Finally my brother looked up the slope and saw Bailey pulling and dragging at some kind of bush. When he went up to check it out, Bailey was “shopping” from a bush containing hundreds of huckleberries. Smart dog: The guide dubbed him Huckleberry Hound. I guess Bailey thought he was in the Hanna-Barbera family, considering how his human dad was dressed one long ago Halloween:

Far right, a generic version of Quick Draw McGraw.

Also on that trip, the group decided to go tubing down the Madison River. Because the river is fed from within the geyser basins of Yellowstone, the water is warm. It was my brother’s idea that while they tubed, Bailey could run alongside them on the bank. But once they set off, Bailey, of the Schipperke water-traveling breed, plunged into the river and swam to my brother, who then had to complete the trip with a wet dog sitting on him.

Bailey still travels with David. Right now he’s hanging out with the first dogs of The Compound, Pete and Stevie. I guess some people might think my family is a little strange, but I think we have a sense of humor and perspective about bonds of love that are never really broken.