Our Lab guest this weekend in Maine is obviously a "city dog." We arrived about 8PM and took both of the boys out for a pee. Our little Lab was so overwhelmed with the scents of thousands of woodland creatures that he was literally vibrating and panting. We're situated on roughly 5 to 7 square miles of woodlands facing a lake (not our house, the whole area). Early evening is when many woodland creatures are active. We have rabbits, foxes, chipmunks, deer, moose, skunks, you name it, they live there. We even have a very occasional Maine black bear.
Maine black bears are notoriously shy. Most Mainiacs will tell you to just yell at them and they will run away. One night several years ago, Keeway started making a huge fuss in the middle of the night. We were half asleep and sometimes he'll do that if he has the runs and REALLY need to go out. So we let him out and he takes off like a rocket. About 10 minutes later, he comes prancing back, tail wagging and a load of brown crap on his head. We can smell him ten feet away. NOW we realize what just happened. He heard a bear and chased it off, then treed it and as Keeway was barking at him from the bottom of the tree, he scared the you-know-what out of the poor black bear. Which of course landed on Keeway's head.
So at 4 AM, we had to give Keeway a very thorough dog washing. What a blast that was!
