Sadowsky: Dog day afternoon

Up near American Lake, both dogs bolted and vanished into the jungle. Atlas, the very, very big white wolf and his admirer, 13-pound Dachshund/terrier/chihuahua David Folkenflik did with criminal intent break from their humans’ grip on Saturday, June 24. It was weird when they didn’t come bounding right back like always.

Hikers from below started telling of a huge, white dog-thing loping down to the trailhead with a wiener dog in tow. So, we gave chase. It’s very hard to chug it downhill on the American Lake trail. Painful.

Reports of a ghost wolf petered out, and after a while, we had to believe the dogcatcher netted them. But it’s wilderness up Castle Creek — there’s no darn dogcatcher.

We descended to phone range and, soon enough, got a text from Aspen Animal Shelter that both dogs were in the dog tank. We sincerely wish to thank the anonymous (to us) person who scooped up the odd couple, put them in her car, and did exactly the right thing.

Atlas is 100% harmless, but he’s a wolf. He’s got those eyes. Not everyone would have had his rescuer’s presence of mind, compassion or courage. (Some people think it’s cool to shoot wolves.)

God bless the Aspen Animal Shelter and the nice rescuer for unintentionally getting cast in “The Incredible Journey … Aspen.”

Funny footnote: The real David Folkenflik is in town covering Ideas Fest. It would have been hilarious if he’d gotten the call: “Dude, we got your dog.”

Dan Sadowsky

Carbondale