A number of years back Gary had a heart attack. Luckily we were in Missoula at the time and he was rushed right into the hospital and all is good.
At the time we were still racing and giving tours, so we had a large kennel with two full race teams.
When Gary first came home from the hospital, it was early spring. Most of the snow was gone so moving around the kennel was fairly easy, but the temps were still cool. Gary had been going out to the dog yard with me to help feed, clean and mostly spend some time with the dogs.
One evening Gary decided it was time for him to go and feed the dogs by himself. It was still getting dark early, so he had his headlamp on, we got the buckets ready to go and I went upstairs while he went out into the yard in the dusky evening.
A few minutes later my phone rings and it is Gary. I figure he forgot something. I answered my phone and all I heard was panting. Holy crap….
I ran down the stairs threw on a pair of boots, grabbed a jacket and ran out the back door. I look out into the dog yard and I see Gary’s headlamp bopping along and can make him out with the bucket feeding dogs.
So as I try to get my heart rate down, I try to calmly walk out to the dog yard. “So where is your phone?” Gary starts patting all of his pockets, no phone. Hmm…
I call his phone and I can hear it faintly ringing. So we follow the sound and find it buried in the straw in Boomer’s house. This was back in the days of flip phones. Somehow, with only a few teeth marks, Boomer had opened the phone and managed to hit a button that dialed my phone.
Miss you Boom…