So, to share the bear story…
It was on Wednesday evening, which at Eagle Falls Lodge equals barbecue chicken night. Most guys went back out after supper and at this point everyone had made it in for the night. It was pretty much dark out; some people were hanging out in the main lodge, and some guys cleaned fish in the fish house. A few had already snuggled into their sleeping bags.
Cosmo had spent the entire afternoon aggressively chasing squirrels and occasionally running down to the dock to cool off with a swim. He was hurting. He was stiff and sore and favoring his back right leg. We had checked his paw to make sure it was fine, but chalked it up to overuse and old age. Travis was letting him out for the evening one last time (probably about 10pm – which is kind of way past Cosmo’s bed time) and had barely opened the door when Cosmo started doing his “angry bark” and shot out of the lodge like a rocket.
It was getting pretty dark, but Travis could see a big black bear right next to the grill, but it quickly turned and was chased into the woods by Cosmo. Cosmo circled back, marked his territory, and when he came back into the lodge he wasn’t putting his back right leg down at all. We checked it to make sure there wasn’t any type of exterior wound and tucked him in. Travis (with a few guests that were there for “back up”) headed back out the door with roman candles and cameras. The bear hadn’t made it very far, and was over by the top part of the boardwalk that leads down to Red Lake. They yelled and shot off their roman candles to try and scare it away for good. Unfortunately it was too dark to get any good pictures.
We wheeled the grill inside for the night, just in case.
Cosmo spent the whole night whimpering and moaning and didn’t even get out of bed yesterday (Thursday) morning. Definitely not his usual self. When he did get up to eat he absolutely wouldn’t step on that back leg and was keeping it tucked in real high and tight. Not good.
We put a call into our vet who is having some puppy pain pills overnighted. Based on our phone consultation, he thinks it might be a partial or full tear of a ligament in his leg somewhere. We are going to watch it for the next week and limit Cosmo’s activity to see how he does. As you know, he is pretty near and dear to us, so we sure hope he is okay! The closest vet is in Dryden, so it would certainly take some creative effort to get down there for any type of x-ray or procedure. Right now we hope to keep him comfortable and let him rest.
We will keep you posted on his progress!