Jax: Good Dog, Bad Dog

I really like to hike with Jax. He's an amazing climber. He picks what for me are the most unlikely routes and climbs them like it's nothing. Then he comes back down a different way to check on me and see what's taking so long, then goes back up a different way giving me three options for climbing the obstacle.

Jax has a dream to be a cattle dog. One time he saw the cattle dogs nipping at the heels of the cattle and the first time I got out of the truck to open the gate that was surrounded by cattle he jumped out and went over and started nipping at their heels to drive them away from the gate. It was bedlam.

Jax has another dream that one day, his idols, the ultimate climbers of the canyon lands, the big horn sheep, will play with him. Back in January and February there were several instances where he got within five or ten feet of the herd and then they ran off and he looked crushed that they left him behind and wouldn't play.

Thursday we're out hiking. We're doing the finger canyons to see if we can find the leftovers of a big horn or deer that the mountain lion might have taken earlier in the week.

I'm taking some pictures of the amazing scenery and then when I look down Jax is gone. That's never good. I see him shooting across the rock to play with one of his friends. Except, they don't think of him as a friend. I'm very thankful the big horn are so gifted. I was afraid Jax's enthusiasm to play with them was going to get this one hurt.

For the next 45 minutes or so we continued to hike through the fingers but each time I'd glance over the big horn hadn't moved and didn't appear to be coming down until we left and that in fact turned out to be the case.