Kobae, Third Time

I'm trying to decode to go through Wendy's, McDonalds, or Taco Time on the way back from town Thursday, which is all of our choices. Phone rings and Teresa says Kobae is missing. He hasn't gone on any long walks in a couple years though he tried last week. She tells me all the places she's looked and it's almost all of them. Got to go. Coming down Hurrah I call Teresa on the walkie and there's no answer. She forgot to take one in the search, not likely, or she's in a canyon somewhere. We park at the lodge and get a faint walkie that she's in the canyon by Hull's Place. Jax and i switch to a side by side and head next door. I see Kobae's footprints and Teresa's going in to the valley where Jax and I got swept in the flash flood years ago. I feel much better knowing Kobae went into the canyon. Rounding the bend in the valley Teresa is yelling to hurry up. I'm not concerned as I've spent many a day in that canyon with Kobae and the only way out is the way he went in. Teresa points in the general direction of where he is and I tell her I got it. She returns to the lodge after a 3.5 hour hunt to locate him. I walk around in the valley but I don't see him. Oh shit, he's not in the valley he's up above on the very sleep, slippery, slope above the valley and picking an impossible spot to get down. It's a rough climb to get to him. Now I have to use Jax as bait to get him to follow Jax so I can pick the path to get off this slope. Sometimes it works, sometimes Kobae thinks he knows better, and sometimes Jax finds something interesting and no longer cares about participating in keeping Kobae alive.

In the 20 years here I would say this is the third time Kobae has had a 50/50 chance of dying. Years ago he slid down the hill by the dinosaur tracks and nearly plummeted over the side. Linny and a couple people working here got up on the slope and pushed him back up to safety. One day Kobae wandered well into the Colorado River and we couldn't get him out. I spent much of the night in the river holding him up to keep him from drowning on the bank until we got him out the next day and now today. Kobae wants to get a close look at every steep drop off before he rules it out and he's just barely hanging on without going over the side.

In time I find his tracks of where he came down from the top in a very dicey move and eventually I get Jax to go up it. Kobae see the spot and it's very difficult angle. I'm also struggling to keep from disappearing down the slope while trying to assist in pushing him up. He makes it and then sets there for ten minutes as if realizing how close it was. He follows Jax and I back on the fire road about the Last Hurrah hogans. It's a ight the whole way. It gets dark. Teresa brings us headlamps and he follows the headlamp light which is all he can see in the dark.