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CLOUDY Temp: 54 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Thursday, October 3, 2002 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend September 12, 2002 A dog’s own incredible journey By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Ann Schroeder’s stroll Sunday through her 17 acres of backwoods seemed like the idyllic afternoon dog walk she shares regularly with her two canine companions. A thin wind slipped through the madrone grove. Wild turkeys pecked on the hill behind her. Her yellow lab Jordan ambled down Schroeder’s dirt road just in front of her. And her pal Stanley, an old black terrier-dachshund mix, sniffed at roadside grass a few paces ahead. Then Stanley yipped. The lab froze. Schroeder shrieked. Two pairs of coyote eyes stared back from the grass. Beneath one pair was the black, limp body of Stanley dangling from its jaws. And before she could yell drop the dog, the coyotes were gone. "Poor little Stanley was like a rag doll in its mouth, and they just trotted away," Schroeder said. "It was like watching a horror movie. I’m thinking, ‘Am I really seeing what I’m seeing?’" Seeing predators turn pets into prey is a stark reality for those who live in the rural world like Schroeder, whose home west of Central Point borders forest land thick with hungry critters. Sometimes it’s a cougar after a pet goat or the 4-H pigs fattened for the fair. On rare instances, it’s an owl with a cat in its talons. Coyotes, though, are the greatest of forest opportunists and the most common bandits. They linger near chicken coops and back porches for an easy dinner of a penned hen, a lounging calico or a wayward dog. At 5:30 p.m. Sunday, on Schroeder’s road, it was Stanley’s turn in the forest food chain. "I couldn’t believe it ended that fast, right in front of my eyes, and after all that dog’s been through," Schroeder said. Stanley was not your average yipper. Schroeder brought the wiry-haired mutt home in 1986 as a companion for her 7-year-old daughter, Molly. Stanley already was a year old and fully grown to 14 pounds, with terrier hair cloaking his tubular body. "He kind of looked like a Dr. Seuss character," she said. "And he instantly thought he was king of the hill." Stanley was more terrier than wiener, willingly roughhousing with nearby black-tailed deer and insisting upon eating and sleeping outside. Stanley liked to go on forest walks and regularly rode shotgun when a neighbor used a grader to smooth their dirt roadways. For 8 years, Stanley lived the high life. Then fate started to turn against him. First, while Molly was in high school, a teenage friend sped his pickup down the gravel driveway and accidentally drove over Stanley. He took both tires right over his back, yet somehow lived. Then, when Molly was away at college, Stanley limped home bleeding one afternoon. He had been shot with a .22-caliber air rifle, with the bullet going clean through his body but missing vital organs. Shortly after the gunshot healed, Stanley was late meeting the neighbor during one of those road-grading projects. So the dog took a shortcut through a neighbor’s pasture to catch up to the grader, only to be mauled in the pasture by a German shepherd. A veterinarian’s X-rays revealed a cracked spine that eventually healed. And just last month, he had a cancerous toe removed. "It’s not like we’re abusive parents or anything," Schroeder said. "He just gets himself into fixes." But Sunday was the biggest of fixes, right in front of Schroeder. "Unfortunately, that’s the way it happens," said Mark Vargas, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who regularly fields calls about pet-killing coyotes. "Occasionally, we hear about coyotes eating people’s pets right in front of them. They jump out, snap and off they go." For Schroeder, the image was sickening. She walked back to her front porch, sneaked a cigarette and sobbed. "I kept expecting to see Stanley trotting up the road," she said. Then neighbors came by 2½ hours later, and she told of Stanley’s fate. The neighbors, however, looked puzzled. They just saw Stanley down near the road. Schroeder bolted to her Subaru parked in the carport, then stopped. There was Stanley, with fang marks on the top of his head, a hole in his throat and eyes as big as buckets. Schroeder cleaned the wounds with peroxide, picked a few dozen burrs off his fur and hauled Stanley to the vet for treatment and antibiotics. The punctured esophagus has left Stanley with what sounds like a smoker’s hack, and Monday’s vet trip revealed a weak heart as well. "He’s going to make it," she said. By Tuesday, Stanley had gotten back some of his swagger, but he rarely ventured far from the carport. "This doggie has nine lives, and he’s used up four of them," Schroeder said. "Well, four that we know of." As for exactly how a dog that beat a Toyota pickup, an air rifle, a German shepherd and cancer also got away from the jaws of a coyote, no one knows. "Usually, the dog gets a few good shakes and that’s that," Vargas said. "Normally, they don’t come back." Schroeder believes the coyote put Stanley down to eat him, but the wire-haired wiener seized the opportunity and somehow darted into a hiding place. "He’s pretty quick and thinks he’s invincible," she said. "Obviously, he is." Molly Schroeder’s explanation is less palatable. "I think he just tasted like ----," she said. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search M Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright 1997-2002 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy web master feedback A D V E R T I S E R S