Pay Attention To Your Dog When In the Wilderness

[banjomike]

Something happened. Almost all dogs are too domesticated to ever go wild.

Hard to say what happened; lost dogs are picked up and adopted, wild animals get 'em, and if not picked up or killed, runaways most often starve to death.

Most will usually find their way back to the place their owners were last and stay put right there. it can take some dogs weeks to do it, while others never go all that far out of earshot or eyesight. A hound will keep running until it finally wears out, while another breed will just be 30 minutes away for their owner.
Hunger and fatigue stop them all. But they loyalty never runs out.

If your friend didn't keep going to that spot repeatedly, he may have missed his chance to get his dog back.

A dog's experience in the country counts for a lot. If a dog knows his area, he'll often find his way home.

My Grandfather once had a favorite female dog he left behind in his winter pasturing area because she had a litter of nursing pups. He left her with a friend. She stayed until her pups were weaned and then went on the road to find her Boss.

It took her 5 months. She covered about 250 miles and was down to skin and bones when she showed up. Grand-dad figured she must have walked almost steadily all the way, only stopping to drink and sleeping only when exhausted.

Since the sheep bands were all on open range, when in their seasonal pastures the bands are always moving too, so she was slowly gaining on their motion, following them a week or more after they had moved on and catching up a mile or two a day.

She was never left again. Grand-dad always made sure she and any litter she had were loaded in a truck after that. The human bond is very strong in some dogs.

[redwood66]

We have a marmot living next to our shop under some stacked pallets. I don't know if s/he has a family or not but it was out today and one of the barn cats was near it making it chirp like mad. He didn't move away from me when I went to see what the heck was going on, just standing up in the pallets chirping at the cat. I don't see it often and the dogs never bother it. I do try to make sure it doesn't burrow in the pasture where the horses are because we don't need any broken legs.

[banjomike]

Yup. Marmots stand their ground longer than other rodents. It might be a female; if so, she would have a mate around that you haven't seen. Or maybe you have seen them both, one at a time. Typically, if your cat made a run at the marmot, it would scurry down it's burrow hole.

That's normal behavior, so I wouldn't worry they have the plague. I'm no expert, but from what I've seen, when the plague comes, all the critters go to their burrows and don't come out. The lack of seeing them doing their regular scurry is the first sign to me.

You cat may hunt it at night. Domestic cats do that. For all I know, they might be old foes who know each other very well. If you spot any injuries on the cat, the marmot might have won a fight.
Once down in their burrow, marmots will fight hard, and they're large enough to discourage an average-sized housecoat.

[f5fstop]

Watch those marmots in Siberia....kid died of bubonic plague after having one for dinner.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-eating-marmot

And a squirrel in Morrison in Colorado was tested positive for bubonic plague.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bubonic...test-positive/

So fully cook those squirrels and Marmots.