Mort and the Dog Pack

In the 1970's, Colorado Springs was a rapidly growing, up and coming city. It still had a population under 300,000 and was surrounded by open grassland and working ranches. I lived on the outskirts, on the northeast side, in a brand spanking new example of urban sprawl, Village Seven.

If Mort and I crossed about 8 miles of prairie, picked up Templeton Gap Road and headed due north for another 4 or 5 miles, I would be in my ultimate fantasy land, Black Forest. It contained everything a girl could want, my riding club, a hot boyfriend and miles of gorgeous horse property buried in a deep forest.
It was out in the country, but still tame enough to not completely intimidate a wild-haired suburban girl rampaging through life on her first horse.

Colorado Springs is primarily built in the prairie and butts up against the foothills of the Rockies. The Black Forest is part of a 1000 miles of scarce timber that trickles down from Divide. It had recently been broken up into parcels of a minimum of five acres and filled with horses, horses and more horses. There were people and houses too, but I was a teenager and didn't care about that stuff. Once romance entered my life, it wasn't unusual for me to make the trek to the dark line of trees crossing the horizon.

I loved riding in "The Forest." There were horse trails everywhere, following the mandatory easements between properties. Cruising  through the deep shade on a hot summer afternoon, with Mort flying along in his ground eating trot, was life at its finest. The ground was level, soft and deep with pine needles, not steep and rocky like our Palmer Park, and the stands of mixed conifer forest were tall and thick, instead of  the grudging pinons and junipers I was used to.

That sunny afternoon we met a surprising danger on those trails - dogs.

Any rider who has spent enough time riding outside an arena has encountered them. Dogs love to bark at horses. They like to try to make them run and nip at their heels if they do. They can scare the crap out of a horse and the rider too. Dogs think they are pretty damn funny sometimes.

Mort and I had a pretty good defense. While my rangy gelding tolerated our dogs at home, he became savage if he was bothered by dogs which hadn't received his personal stamp of approval.

I had learned to confront loose dogs head on, at least I learned to sit deep and grab some mane, Mort was the one who knew to turned on our loud mouthed attackers. I soon realized most loose dogs were quick to scoot back home when we spun and Mort charged, his front legs and teeth flashing with intent.

One sunny, late summer afternoon we were taking our time along the shadowy trails. It was cool under the trees and I wasn't in any particular hurry to end my ride, having nothing more important to do than flirt with the boyfriend. In my infinite horse girl wisdom, I thought I'd look pretty bitchin' trotting bareback up the road to the boyfriends house in my cut-offs and a halter top. We ducked under the trees about a quarter mile from his street and I noticed I was looking and stinking about as horse-sweat sticky as I felt.

"Nothing says romance like the smell of hot horse, fly spray and day-old girlfriend, huh Mort?"

Mort snorted, loud and booger loaded, but I took it with a grain of salt. He wasn't impressed with me finally finding my hormones. I wasn't riding as much, and he spent way too much time hitched to fence posts at various strange places, waiting for me to show up, rumpled and breathless, from my latest clandestine meeting with "that boy."

Of course it was Mort's own damn fault. He wouldn't tolerate long trail rides carrying us double and distracted. After he had dumped us, first with a buck, again with a bolt into a goat shed, and finally scraped us off on a low lying limb, he got to stand tied.

I picked up my legs, one after the other and it felt like they'd been glued to the vinyl front seat of a locked car in July -- and a hairy one at that. I gazed at the thick line of goopy muck and horse hair stuck to the inside of my leg, knowing it made a perfect horseshoe across my butt and down the other leg. Oh yeah, I was smokin' all right. My Jon Boy's brick house. Sheesh.

It wasn't hard to decide to meander through the woods and at least cool down enough so my crazy hair could dry. When I got all sweaty it stuck flat to my head from part to ears, then sprung in wild, frizzy coils straight for the sky. The stubborn curls would tangle too tight to let me drag my fingers through it. I always ended up with double handfuls of damp snarls. If I flipped my head upside down and gave my scalp a good scrubbing, right before it was dry, sometimes I could get a semblance of the wind tossed curls I wanted.

Waiting to dry out a bit also gave me a chance to scrub some of the dried salt from my temples and let the half moons of embarrassing boob sweat dry.Then maybe, if I offered to let him hose me off at the spigot, the boyfriend wouldn't notice I had also forgotten to shave my legs. One could always hope.

Lost in my musing, I got a half-second of air time when Mort spooked and spun to the left and barely managed to keep my seat. I grabbed a handful of sparse mane and centered myself, leaning forward to squint into the shadowy ground under the trees. He was tense, veins popping on his neck, his legs and back so tight we rose a couple of inches in the air.

A pair of golden eyes and the wide grinning mouth of a chow mix poked his big head and powerful shoulders through a tangle of scrub oak and weeds. We squared off, but the look in the dogs eyes made me hesitate.
His eyes were cool and calculating, not the usual goofy, barking, "Hey guys, watch what I can do!" I was used to seeing in trouble-seeking dogs.

He was thin, matted and muscled. He was serious.

I heard a rustle behind us. An eager shepherd mix and a beagle made their presence known. Lots of barking and howling going on. We spun around and faced them. Mort took one look at their excited, goofy  faces and spun back to keep an eye on the chow-thing. He had moved forward a few paces and was joined by two more dogs.

There had been a story circulating all summer, comprised of sightings, rumor and dead farm animals. In the Black Forest area, a pack of dogs were attacking, killing and partially eating goats sheep, foals, calves and area dogs in broad daylight.

It was out of the Humane Society's jurisdiction and the county sheriff had been unable to find this mysterious pack of dogs. Newspaper accounts told of anywhere between four and fifty dogs. Theories abounded - these were coy-dogs, or attack dogs turned loose by an unethical owner. Maybe they were rabid, or strays, dumped by city-folk who assumed the dogs would find a "good country home." Nobody had a solid description.

The fact was, there was a trail of dead goats, sheep and chickens. There were a few wounded horses, a partially eaten new-born foal, and some cattle, bitten and run through fences. Some of the animals were eaten, some were chewed up, some were just dead. Nobody seemed to be able to get a handle on where the dogs were. The newspapers hinted it was a bunch of baloney. They labeled them "Ghost Dogs."

Turned out the dogs were certainly real, Mort and I were making their acquaintance.

I didn't know how many, it seemed to me, there were a lot of damn dogs. I heard the clink of dog tags and saw too many well groomed and fed critters to think these were all mangy strays.

Truth be told, I didn't have enough time for more observation. Mort and the chow thing had decided it was time to parlay.

Mort went after the big dog hard, his head was low and snaky and his front legs were pounding the ground, intent on mowing him down. Chow-thing came to meet us, then feinted off to the side. Mort grunted and hesitated for a split second. The cacophony rose around us and several more dogs closed in. Mort squealed in anger and fear, and I felt more than saw a dog leap at my legs.

I heard a dog scream when Mort threw out a double barreled kick with his back legs, but had no time to look, he gathered and leaped forward towards Chow-thing. We didn't stick around to deal with the dogs. This time he ended up plowing right over the top of Chow-thing and smashing him hard into the ground. Then we ran.

We shot through the woods and towards the boyfriend's house. The dogs followed for a few yards, but didn't leave the safety of the trees. We flew up the road and skidded into the boyfriends yard like hell itself was on our heels. He came from the garage, followed by his Dad, wiping his hands on an oily rag. Even in my panic it registered this must be a car repair day.

"You're bleeding," He said and offered a hand so I could slide to the ground. I ignored the hand and jumped down to inspect Mort. He had a tear over a tendon on his back leg and a solid bite on his shoulder.

"Got to meet the damn Ghost Dogs," I said, talking tough to cover my panic.

The boyfriends dad went to call the sheriff and boyfriend opened his arms wide in an unspoken offer of comfort. I side-stepped him, almost as neat as that effing chow-thing had and hugged Mort hard. He wrapped his neck around me and there I stayed until our shaking stopped.

epilogue:

The cut on my thigh proved to be from a tree branch. Good thing, or it would have been rabies shots for me.

Mort's wounds healed nicely and he was back to dog stomping in no time.

The county decided to temporarily ignore the law against firing a gun in housing areas, at least in Black Forest.. They also ignored complaints from owners whose dogs were shot if they were off their property.
It turned out the Ghost Dog pack was primarily caused by the flood of country-ignorant city folk buying up their five-acre piece of heaven. They left their much loved house dogs loose while they went to work. Perfect pets while their owners were home, they joined in with area strays to become the pack from hell from 9 to 5.

Several dogs were shot and killed over the next few years, but the killing of farm animals didn't stop until somebody nailed the big chow-mix. Nobody stepped in to rescue him, nobody declared him alpha, nobody screamed "breed prejudice."  Somebody finally shot him though, and the roving, day-time dog pack was done. Poor dog. His brains and bravery got him killed. Whatever dumb bastard dumped him on the roadside  was the one at fault. I don't think anybody shot him though.