I had just cut the third bolt on a warm-up route on a rock called The Shire when I heard screaming below me. The ruckus shattered the idyllic calm of a Kentucky spring day. Red River Gorge, one of the most iconic climbing areas in America. I looked down to find my insurer yelling at another party. Unbeknownst to me, their dog had searched our equipment and eaten our lunch.
“Haha, you little rascal,” said the dog’s owner. “Isn’t he cute?” Dogs will remain dogs.
I quickly climbed to the top of the route and cut the chains. My partner got me down and I started to assess the damage. Their puppy had pushed my backpack, so the roller rolled out and ate my sandwich and all my snacks off the rocks. He had chewed half of my friend's quesadilla before she alerted the dog's owner.
We had driven seven hours from school for a weekend of climbing. Our day was ruined by a dog owner's failure to be responsible on the cliff. We didn't have enough food left to continue climbing, and the cliff was a long enough walk and drive from our campsite that it wasn't worth returning after a resupply. We climbed until our bellies hurt, then headed back to Miguel's looking for pizza.
I've been a climber longer than anything else, and I've encountered every kind of cliff dog imaginable. The sleepy ones, the hyperactive ones, the defensive ones in rocky places that bark until their owner returns to the ground. Here's what I've learned over the last 15 years: There is no good reason to take a dog onto a rock.
Of course, I met some good dogs. But the problem isn't with the dogs or their behavior. It's the fact that I can count the number of good dogs the owners I met on the one hand. Now, I'm not here to tell anyone that they don't love (or don't exercise enough) their puppy. But almost no one the trains their dog enough to expect him to behave at the foot of a rock.
My dog knows how to sit and stay. What is the problem?
Here's the problem: Dogs can't take information and generalize it like humans can. The training that applies to climbing does not translate for dogs to skiing, hiking, or anything else. Take for example my friend Liz Morrow, a K9 handler for King County SAR. She wanted a super smart, easy to train puppy to join her local search and rescue group. So she found a breeder specializing in working dogs and acquired a German Shepherd with a particularly keen sense of smell.
Morrow worked tirelessly with his dog Lyla to teach her to remember in an emergency, to stay on a leash and to stay calm in high-stress situations. This dog can find living people and dead bodies in the woods and is the sweetest, most respectful dog I have ever seen. She is incredible. And Morrow, a climber herself, always leaves Lyla at home when she goes to the crag.
Training a dog to stay out of trouble on a cliff is different from search and rescue, she told me. “I think Lyla would be a total mess on the rock.” She went on to tell me, “We put in thousands of hours of training with Lyla, and if we had focused those hours on rock dog skills, my answer might have been different. » But the training does not cover all scenarios.
No amount of “He’s friendly!” » screams at 100 feet will make me feel comfortable with your husky off leash charge me jumble. It's not cute to steal food from the bags of broke college students, and it's certainly not endearing to watch your dog erode rock or tear through crowds of belayers trying to concentrate because he has saw a squirrel.
People who love adventure sports love being outside and assume their dogs do too. But most people bring their dog because it's convenient, not because they're actually focused on the dog's needs. “Does the dog really like being there?” Morrow asked. “Are people meeting the dog's needs or is the dog suffering from the heat and overstimulated by unmet needs because it suits the owners?”
What does it take to train an adventure dog?
People love recommending working dogs to people who go hiking because they are intelligent and have lots of energy. They can follow you. But dogs in the herding group are bred to be very sensitive to movement. They are genetically coded to want to control how you – and anyone else on a rock – move through space by barking and upsetting. Meanwhile, a Lab doesn't even think about barking at a stranger.
And sure, you can control these behaviors with hours of hard practice, but the second you lose your game with history of reinforcementBy being consistent in how you reward or discourage your dog for certain behaviors, the dog no longer has a clue what you want.
Morrow is a cross-country skier and likes the idea of one day teaching Lyla to ski with her. But dogs can't generalize their skills or knowledge the way humans can. When she takes Lyla trail running, she wants the dog to stay by her side. But for skiing, the rapid movement of metal edges in 3D space, she doesn't want Lyla near her. “I can put a plot “I spend hours training new skills, where I don't have a great time skiing – I'm training dogs and I happen to be on skis,” she says. “I can develop position commands and then generalize them to snow and prove its movements to it. Or, I can leave it at home until I'm ready to do it. This is the part that most climbers miss.
Few recreationalists seem to realize that they can leave their dog at home for a few hours while they practice their outdoor sport. If you can't do it out of fear of what the dog might do, why would the dog behave better on the cliff?
Dogs are not just a nuisance, they are an ecological disaster
The town of Alta, where I lived, has one of the strictest dog policies around. This is because Little Cottonwood Canyon is an important watershed for Salt Lake City and dog droppings can poison the water supply. “Feces from dogs and other domestic animals are washed into streams and tributaries throughout the watershed,” a news release from the City of Alta said. “These streams and tributaries feed directly into your drinking water tap. In fact, it can take less than 24 hours for the water you see in a stream high in the watershed to be treated and reach your drinking water tap in the Salt Lake Valley.
Some of the best climbing in the country takes place in river-cut gorges. The water flowing through the Owens River Gorge, a world-class rock climbing destination near my home, provides a third of Los Angeles' tap water. Bishop climbing rangers constantly post reminders about climbers not picking up their dogs. In addition to being a source of all kinds of worms and parasites, leaving dog poop on private land, such as the popular Happy and Sad Boulders, which is on the other side of the gorge and whose parking lots are owned to local water and electricity utilities, can lead to landowners revoking access.
“But my dog is so good!” I hear you. But just because you have a good dog – which in this case would mean a dog so lazy that he falls asleep as soon as you arrive at the rock and doesn't wake up until you leave – doesn't mean he there's a reason to take him. Building a well-rounded adventure dog that can perform well in a variety of environments takes many thousands of hours, hard work and a firm commitment to a consistent diet. To be honest, it's a lot more work than most people can do. This is why I, a dog lover who climbs and skis, won't adopt a pet until I know I'm ready to work. So please, do me, my friends, the soil, the water quality, and the serenity of the great outdoors a favor and leave your dog at home.
