We brought a Costco size bag of cheese out to a dirt road for an off leash training session with Mallow. Every time she naturally wandered back into our area, we’d give her some cheddar and praise. Whenever she wandered out of sight, we called her back, rewarding her with more cheese and pets. 

“Mallow, come,” I called, and Jaden whistled. Her ears popped up from behind a Mormon tea bush and she came trotting back with her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth. 

“Good girl,” I said as she sat in front of me, waiting for her beloved cheese and a pet behind the ears. Impressed with her ever improving recall, I smiled. 

“She’s doing better today than normal,” I said, and Jaden nodded.

“She’s such a good girl,” Jaden said. “And she’s getting better at staying closer.” 

Finally, I thought. What a relief.  

“That’s a strange looking rock,” I said, pointing. The rock was rounded like an egg with bubbly holes at the base. The top was smooth with divots in the middle for water pockets. Dry now without recent rains, but cracked dirt sat in the divots, letting us know that water gathers here and evaporates quickly. “There’s nothing like it anywhere around here,” I said.  

The egg shaped rocks were uplifted in a rolling field of sand that led to crumbling side canyons on all sides of us. The rocks were oddly brown in this land of red, orange, and pink sandstone. Mallow wandered behind the uplifted eggs, weaving through the tunnels and archways carved by wind and water. An ideal hunting ground for lizards and kangaroo rats.

Jaden and I crested the hill and walked out onto the dark rocks, leaving the dusty two track behind.

“Mallow, come,” I whistled, then I jumped because she was right behind me. Then I jumped again because it was only Jaden’s shadow. 

“That tricked me too. I thought I heard something move,” Jaden said, doing a double take to look behind us. 

“Mallow!” I began to call more frequently when she didn’t reappear from out of the rock tunnels. Normally that means she was digging a hole, but it was too quiet for comfort. Jaden whistled again and we waited to hear her labored breathing and the sound of her paws pattering on the rock. Nothing.

Standing on top of the egg rocks now, we looked down below us, where a bench of cryptobiotic soil and black brush spread out before dropping dramatically off into an unknown depth. I hoped below the rim was another bench and only an illusion of a big drop off. Canyons can be tricky like that, where it seems like over the edge will be a 1,000 foot drop but it’s actually just another stack of rocks gradually falling off into the canyon floor. Across the canyon, the rock turned vertical quite quickly after the rim we were standing on. I bit my lip, wondering where Mallow could possibly be.

“Oh,” I said, grabbing Jaden’s arm. We both saw it at the same time. A lady bighorn sheep ran across the valley below us, but Mallow wasn’t chasing her.

“Oh…baby,” Jaden said, pointing behind me. I turned around to see a little baby bighorn sheep watching us from a top one of the egg shaped rocks, not more than a few feet away. The baby sheep with floppy ears cocked his head to the side as if to say, “Can you help us? Your dog is terrifying my family.” 

“I’m so sorry,” I said to the sheep. Then, I turned my voice to the wind and called out Mallow’s name once again.

Jaden, Baby Bighorn and I watched each other for a while, none of us knowing quite what to do. I expected Mallow to pop out at any second and try to chase this little baby bighorn, but it was oddly silent. 

Turning my back to the baby, I scanned the bench below us, trying to pick out movement among the Mormon tea. At the last second, I caught a glimpse of Mallow’s tail disappearing below the rim. 

“I think I just saw her tail go off-“ I started to say but fell silent as the baby bighorn jumped off the egg rocks and ran across the bench, following its mamma up to the road. 

My left toe was injured from stubbing it the other day. It was swollen and bruised, creating a limping situation already, so Jaden started walking down to the rim.

“I’m going to stay high, in case she runs back up here,” I told him and he nodded. From my vantage point, I could see the lady bighorn and baby bighorn still running away, their bodies perfectly outlined on the horizon before they disappeared down the into the neighboring valley. 

“Mallow, come here girl!” I shouted again. Reaching for the cheese bag to crinkle loudly in the way she likes, I realized that it was in Jaden’s pocket and not mine. He was nearly at the rim.

“Do you see her paw prints anywhere?” I yelled down to him.

“Not yet,” he shook his head. 

Hmm. That must mean she’s still up here. Maybe it wasn’t her tail that I saw disappear below the rim. Maybe it was another sheep. And maybe she did jump off the rim and maybe she was dead on a rock some five hundred feet below us. Deep breath. 

Unclenching my fists, I began to check around the egg shaped rocks, hoping Mallow was just stubbornly digging a hole in the sand. Then, I heard Jaden’s voice yell, “Mallow, no! Leave it!” 

I looked down at the bench below and saw Jaden take off running. 

“What’s she doing?” I yelled, but Jaden didn’t respond. He kept running. To hell with my toe, I took off running too. 

She’s alive, but she’s fucking with a wild animal and may not be soon. 

Running down a sandy wash, I hopped from rock to rock so I didn’t crush any cryptobiotic soil. Once I picked up the tracks of a baby bighorn’s hooves and Mallow’s paws, I followed them to the edge of the rim where I could still hear Jaden yelling, “Mallow no! Mallow leave it! Mallow come!” 

She was not listening, but at least Jaden had eyes on her. She must be in full on predator mode. By the time my limping running hopping on rocks to avoid the crypto got me to the rim, Jaden was within a few inches of Mallow. He was holding out a handful of cheese and reaching for her collar. He got her! Finally clipped and leashed, his shoulders sank with relief. They walked up to the rocks that I was standing on, the three of us breathing hard but not as hard as Mallow.

Rocks clattered behind me and I turned to see another baby bighorn looking at us, a few rock layers below us.

“Let’s get out here fast, this baby is separated from her mamma,” I said, remembering the lady bighorn that ran up the road and disappeared into the next valley. I grabbed the backpack that Jaden dropped while running after Mallow and we headed toward the road.

“There’s another adult on the bench below us,” Jaden said. “Mallow was standing on the rock right above her…” he trailed off. Cursing my toe, I wish I had seen what he saw.

“That was…wild,” Jaden said, but I couldn’t keep up with his walking pace. Looking down, my toe looked angrier than ever. Puffy and blue, I was limping more dramatically now, widening the gap between us. Jaden stopped walking and waited for me to catch up as he explained, “She had this look in her eye, like her thinking brain was offline. She kept looking back and forth between me and the sheep, like she had these glimpses of hearing me but kept turning back to the sheep.”

Shaking my head and exhaling, I focused half my attention on his words and the other half on every step, favoring my right foot. Once we reached the two track, we stopped to give Mallow water. Her heart was beating fast and her pupils were huge, overtaking the blue completely. She guzzled down more than half a liter and was still panting. 

After sprinting, I couldn’t walk all the way back to the car, so Jaden left me with the backpack and took Mallow out of the scene of the crime. We wanted to give the sheep as much space from Mallow as we could so they could feel safe to reunite.

Mallow and Jaden took off toward the truck, and as soon as they were out of sight, I dropped my pants to pee on the road. Road is a generous term for sand, rocks, and a faint general direction of travel. More than an hour from any town, all was quiet and we hadn’t encountered any other humans that day. But as soon as my ass was exposed, low and behold a Jeep crested the hill and started descending slowly toward me. There was nothing for me to do other than keep peeing and wave as the tourists from Oregon drove by, enthralled by the desert sights to see.

Aye, aye, aye, I thought.

Sitting on a rock now, I waited for Jaden to return with the truck and I watched, hoping to glimpse the sheep one more time. But they are quiet and evasive and I didn’t have the best vantage point, so instead I laid on my back and watched a raven fly overhead. 

When Jaden returned, he looked frazzled. 

“That was a whole nother thing,” he said, getting out of the driver’s seat.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Half way back, Mallow refused to walk anymore. I think she had an adrenaline crash. She just sat there and refused to move. So I picked her up and carried her for a bit, but when I set her down she still wouldn’t walk. So I put her over my shoulders and fireman carried her all the way back to the car,” he said.

“Oh jeez,” I sighed, shaking my head. “Some guys from Oregon saw my butt.”

“Oh jeez,” Jaden laughed. Mallow was leaning out the window with her tongue flopping out of her mouth, smiling.

I never understood why my dad thought it was so funny to name a dog DD, short for Damn Dog! Until now.