When my dad and I plunged into a hill country ranching enterprise in 1958, we signed a lease on 5,200 acres of mountain rangeland on Elk Ridge, owned at that time by the Samuels-Waddington Estate. This land is located to the south of Myers Flat and west of Garberville, on the divide between the South Fork of the Eel River drainage and the Mattole River drainage. The fact that there was very little active ownership on three sides of the property, and that it bordered on government land toward Gilham Butte and Panther Gap on the west, translated into perhaps fifteen thousand acres of unfenced mountain country.

We purchased some three hundred head of mountain cattle resident on the ranch and were immediately met with the problems inherent in locating, herding and gathering animals that were, in many instances, more “wild” and more cunning in their ability to evade men on horseback than the numerous blacktail deer. These cattle would hear us or catch our scent long before we knew they were around, and quietly disappear. Our dogs provided the only opportunity for finding and controlling these elusive cows and their calves.

My dad had experienced this kind of challenge some forty years before, but I was a greenhorn with only a basic awareness of the tactics required in such an enterprise. The “rodeo” that occurred the first time I witnessed a band of these range cattle in confrontation with a couple of experienced cow dogs was truly a rowdy, incredibly noisy scene. It soon became abundantly clear that gathering these mountain bred cattle was possible only with the help of stock dogs possessing an irrepressible instinct to “do battle” with the animals.

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My overwhelming wish since childhood was to be a horseman, but for all my love of horses I could not come away from the Elk Ridge experience without incredible admiration and respect for the loyalty and dedication of some of the stock dogs we encountered. Without their assistance the gathering would many times have been impossible. It was a continuous process of acquisition and training, sometimes resulting in amazingly productive work by these dogs, but often ending in their terminal experience.

In 1958 we had really only one shepherd with enough experience in herding livestock to be of much help. He was a forty-five pound McNab, mostly black with a tiny snip of white on his nose, a band of white on his chest and two white feet. Zip was instinctively a “header” — that is, when we encountered stock and they attempted to move away from us, which they nearly always did, he would get in front of them and stop them.

Most mountain cows came to learn that they had to be aggressively protective of their young calves. When gathering we could always depend on the cows stopping to engage in battle with any dog. Zip was particularly adept at teasing the cows into charging him, at which point he would stay just far enough ahead to ensure his safety until the cows stopped their charge and returned to their calves. Zip was what I would call a “double-header.” If the stock moved away from him after first contact he would head them again until they stopped, go through the same teasing routine and continue to head them until he was ordered to cease the “game.”

The great advantage that a good lead dog gave us in gathering was that the dog could quickly travel to places that a man on horseback might not be able to reach for several minutes, if at all. Zip was invaluable in such situations because he loved to herd stock and would run immediately to confront the cattle and continue to head them, essentially not allowing them to go anywhere until we could get there. Of course there were always occasions when an animals performance might have left something to be desired, but the overwhelming percentage of the time they made the difference between success and failure. Once “dogged up,” or bunched, cattle could usually be driven in predictable directions with the help of a dedicated header who would always work on the off side of the cattle. A rider could determine the desired direction of progress by positioning himself opposite that path and “ride drag.”

The work was physically difficult and dangerous, particularly to pups who had not yet developed the discipline to adequately protect themselves. Maintaining the dogs feet was a fairly constant challenge. If the dog had hair between his or her toes, it became a catching place for foxtail. During the dry season, a nightly task involved pulling the injurious grass stickers from between the dogs toes with a pair of tweezers, before the sharp awns could penetrate the skin. Once that occurred it became an extremely difficult downhill task to keep the feet healthy. Even after the foxtail was removed and the puncture healed up, the scar would perpetually remain an entry point for grass stickers.

Zip was prone to flopping into available water holes during fall gatherings where he would soften the skin between his toes, making him particularly vulnerable to the foxtail problem. He often had a series of open holes between his toes that got clogged with foxtails daily. At times tweezers had to be forced inches into the dog’s foot to extract the invading seeds, causing the dog to react to the pain by attempting to bite his assailant. Too much of this activity would leave the dog lame and crippled for weeks at a time.

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We would often run a pup along with an older, experienced dog to help the pup learn the ropes. If the young dogs had a strong herding instinct it was at times difficult to keep them out of trouble and prevent them from getting injured.

One year I got a couple of pups from Henry Milsap. Henry was a bear hunter and a true mountain man with a reputation for breeding dogs with guaranteed hunting and herding instincts. These two males were gifted with an insatiable desire to attack any problem with ferocity. They were from the same litter but probably sired differently. Both had relatively long hair but one was all black and the other was brindle. The brindle pup (I can’t remember the name we gave him) was so driven to do battle with the stock that I could not save him one day when we were driving a bunch of cows up a steep backbone to the Dixon Butte corral.

I had hold of my gelding Goldie’s tail, allowing him to pull me up this steep hogback close behind the cows. These pups were milling around, heeling anything they could get hold of, when I heard a solid smack and saw the brindle pup come whimpering back down to me with a bloody nose. I caught him and talked to him. I had no way of restraining him and he seemed okay so I let him go. A few minutes later the pup came gyrating past me, fully airborne, and landed in a patch of poison oak below me. He had gone right back in to grab another cow by the hind leg and was knocked senseless. He had to be put down.

The other Milsap pup, named Hank, stayed with me longer, and we experienced several encounters with livestock. Hank was more athletic than his brother and fast enough to avoid the inevitable charges and kicks. He lacked nothing in the desire to bite cows. Unfortunately I was never able to get enough obedience from Hank to make our attempts at gathering anything but a huge frustration. Nothing would deter this pup. He would charge the cattle, immediately biting anything he could get hold of. If it were a small band they would usually scatter like a bunch of quail, never to be seen again that day.

One day we approached about fifty head on the north side salt ground. As usual Hank raced into the middle of the herd biting at everything he could reach. He actually started and moved the entire band with no cooperation from me. If nothing else, he could really move cattle.

One day we were transferring about forty head from the Dixon Butte corral down to the headquarters. We used a drift fence that had been constructed from the base of the butte directly down the mountain in an easterly direction into the home corrals. Most of the way the fence adhered to gulches grown with willow, pepperwood and buckeye.

The cattle had moved into the shade onto a little buckeye flat against the fence while we rested the horses on a rise to the south. Abruptly a slick red-jawed crossbred heifer came charging back toward us on a dead run. As she drew nearer we saw Hank riding up on the critter’s withers, biting the tortured animal up and down her back, every place he could reach.

The pup rode the heifer past us, over the next rise to the south and out of sight. He returned about half an hour later with his tongue out about a foot saying, “I guess I took care of that heifer!” I didn’t see the heifer again for several months. Since I was unable to expect any obedience from Hank, I thought it was about time to retire him from the training process, as he had a tendency to make the cattle he encountered even wilder than they were before.

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The situation was hard on most dogs. I had a little black and tan female named Sue. Although a little excitable, she had a great instinct to herd and was learning obedience. When we started out horseback in the morning, she would get so excited that she would run in and heel my horse just as I was trying to mount up, causing the horse to jump out from under me. I often carried her in the passenger seat when trucking back and forth to the valley. She would get so excited when she saw any large vehicle approaching us on the road that she would jump at me across the seat attempting to attack the oncoming vehicle, often grabbing my arm above the elbow. The practice was a little disconcerting when I had my hands full staying on the road and keeping the load stable.

One summer we were helping a neighbor, Ernie Manhart, gather some of his cattle for market. He owned about 1500 acres that he principally used as a hunting ground, on a south slope across Salmon Creek from Elk Ridge. We gathered nineteen grown bulls that day that had never seen the inside of a corral, but that’s another story. I was following some cows along below a stand of tan oak brush when I saw Sue come flying out of the brush rolling over in the grass in apparent pain. Upon closer examination I saw she was totally covered with yellow jackets. I tried desperately to get the bugs off her with my hat and my hands until she was able to quiet down. I babied her at Hydesville for two weeks. She developed large abscesses on each side of her rib cage and was gone in another week. Sometimes there wasn’t much one could do to protect these animals.

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Our nearest neighbors Bill Thomas and Rae Wright both had excellent herding dogs. Adrian and Florence Thomas had moved down to Weott and Bill and Elvie Thomas lived and ran mostly sheep and a few head of cattle on the old family ranch to the far eastern end of Elk Ridge. Rae ran sheep only on the Harry Hine ranch known as Sunnyside, across the main Salmon Creek to the north and east of us.

Bill’s dog Rowdy was a mean little black McNab that would sneak around and bite any stranger unless specifically restrained by his master. Bill perversely enjoyed these little attacks and once bitten I could expect to be laughed at and told I’d better stay on my horse. At the end of the day. Rowdy could not be faulted when it came to handling cattle.

The remarkable Patsy. Photo courtesy Ricky Wright via the Humboldt Historian.

The most remarkable dog I encountered in that time, though, was a black and white McNab that Rae Wright had trained. Rae was good with dogs and this female, Patsy, was truly amazing. Rae also had a little red kelpie that would circle around uphill to jump up and ride on the saddle with him, but Red was a plaything alongside of old Patsy. She was a one-person dog, continually on guard against anyone touching or even coming near Rae’s property. She habitually rode in the passenger seat of his old Chevy pickup and woe to anyone who might try to get too close to the cab. She stood guard over his boots until morning where he left them on the porch at night.

The intelligence, dedication and obedience of this animal were truly exceptional. Rae’s sheep would periodically stray across the creek onto our northeast slope known as the Burnell. He would locate them with binoculars, ride over in the afternoon and I would try and help him return them to Sunnyside. One afternoon we located about eighteen ewes and a number of lambs on the Burnell. Rae had sighted another little flock a mile or so further west. We sat and traded lies for a few minutes and then Rae simply said in a quiet tone of voice, “You stay here, Pat.” And we rode off. I think we were gone about two hours and returned with the other little flock to find Patsy patiently holding the original eighteen ewes in exactly the same spot we had left them.

Patsy knew to change her herding methods for sheep or cattle, being much more forceful when that force was needed for the larger animals. One day when we gathered some of Mr. Manhart’s cattle, I was amazed by the performance of this dog. Bill Thomas was there with his Rowdy, and my dad and I were there with Zip. When we first encountered them, the cattle plunged into a thicket of tan oak brush and weren’t seen again for a good mile. Rae had put Patsy ahead of them and we followed as best we could, not really knowing where the animals were. Once in a while we could hear a dog bark somewhere up ahead of us. We could neither hear nor see the cattle. When we came out of the brush near Ernie Manhart’s makeshift corral. Patsy was waiting, with the entire band under control.

Babe Demello, an active livestock trucker at that time, had his truck and trailer up on Sunnyside one day to haul out a load of sheep. Patsy fell asleep in the road behind the trailer. Far from the motor noise of the tractor there was nothing to awaken her and Babe, unaware of her presence, backed over her. Not only was it the loss of a trusted companion, it was like the loss of at least five experienced men in any mountain herding situation. When I came up to speak with Rae he was looking into the distance with tears in his eyes. These dogs were irreplaceable resources and loved members of our family.