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When we were living in Santa Fe years ago, late one spring we pointed the car north for a Road Trip to Colorado’s upper San Juan River valley, a few miles southwest of Wolf Creek Pass. We’d run across a horse ranch along the river there where the owners supplemented their equine income by renting housekeeping cabins to folks like us. The property included a lake in one of their pastures, which served as a haven for ducks and Canada geese, and their half-mile of private river frontage looked like prime trout water.

When we arrived, we were greeted by Opie, a young, energetic Golden Retriever whose life appeared to revolve around functioning as a sort of concierge for the guests. While he wasn’t very good at giving directions to area attractions or making dinner reservations in town, he was quite adept at providing guided tours of the ranch, all the while picking up sticks for us to wrestle away from him and then throw for him to fetch. Definitely not a house dog, he was nonetheless quite friendly and even affectionate. And he managed to stay remarkably clean for a long-haired, outdoors dog, perhaps because he liked to help us guests fish. He would lie down in the river, wait for something to drift by, and snap at it. Or perhaps he stayed clean from just crossing the river a lot to check out all the interesting stuff on the far bank.

While we were there, it rained. Hard. For a longer time than we would have liked. It rained so much that the river rose to a nine-year high. We managed to work in a day of hiking, up to the falls on Four Mile Creek, only to get snowed on for our trouble (springtime in the Rockies, after all).

When the river finally went down a bit, we tried fishing, and Opie came with us. It wasn’t surprising that his attention span was a little shorter than ours (he was young, after all), so when he got bored with the slow fishing, he went exploring.

How he ended up across the river wasn’t entirely clear – it was still running much too high for us to want to wade across it – but there he was, wandering the other side, rooting around in the underbrush. Well, we figured, it was his home and he could take care of himself.

And take care of himself he did. After a time, we saw him strutting around over there with a strange, Z-shaped stick – he’d found a special one for us to throw, it looked like. A big one.

But then he obviously wanted to come back across. He paced the far bank, looking for a likely crossing point, and finally he just plunged in, crooked stick and all. Paddling furiously, head held high above the torrent, he made it with ease, or at least with more ease than either of us would have. And then he pranced off toward the house with his new stick, head still held high, proud of his find, obviously going to show Mom and Dad the prize.

But he didn’t get that far. Walking back, we found him off in the bushes, gnawing on his new stick. The one with the hoof at one end and the ball joint at the other – an entire hind leg from a deer carcass, possibly a lion kill.

It made us feel better about not giving him treats – he’d clearly learned that guests were easy marks, but we’d been resisting. And it made us glad that he wasn’t the face-licking sort of lap dog that some people have. Even doggie breath mints wouldn’t have made that OK.

Enough years have passed that Opie has long gone to that great horse ranch in the sky. But when we revisited the ranch this past Labor Day weekend, we were introduced to his successor, a middle-aged Golden named Richie. Richie had taken over the tour-guide duties, and he showed us around the place just like Opie had so long ago. And he’d seen enough years to be content the rest of the time with naps on the porch – our guest-cabin porch, which, given his girth, he’d clearly figured out was far more lucrative in terms of treats than the porch of the main house.

Ah, the idyllic life of a High Country ranch dog.

Howard Hanson’s “Road Tripping” offers twice-monthly observations about exploring Colorado and the southwest. Comments to roadtripper80517@gmail.com are most welcome.

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