The first time I buckled the blaze orange vest on Hank in the kitchen, he stood perfectly still, looked down at himself and then up at me like a crossing guard who'd been assigned the wrong corner. Then he walked over and lay down by the back door in it, which I took as acceptance.
Minnesota's firearms deer opener is this Saturday, November 8. Bow hunters have been out since September, but opener weekend is when the woods and field edges around here fill up with people in orange, and we change how we walk for a couple of weeks. A lot of our neighbors hunt. We'd like everybody, including our dog, to have a nice, uneventful season.
The gear: $36 total
We bought two things this year, both at Fleet Farm.
A blaze orange dog vest, $22. Hank is a golden-colored dog, which in a November woodlot is about the same color as every dead leaf and every deer. The vest is a simple pull-over shape with a buckle around his chest and a reflective strip down the back. We got a large. It sits snug without pressing into his armpits, and I can get two fingers under the chest strap. He stops noticing it once he's walking, which is the most I ask of any dog gear.
A clip-on collar light, $14. Since the clocks fell back on Sunday, it's dark before five, and our weekday walks land squarely in it. The light clips to his collar, glows steady or flashes, and charges off the same kind of cord as my phone. I can see him from the far end of the backyard now, which I couldn't say about a golden dog at dusk before.
For me: an orange knit hat and an old reflective vest. If I'm going to be on a road shoulder in November, I'd like to look like a construction zone.
Where we don't walk
In summer and early fall, our favorite long walks are on the gravel roads east of town, past field edges and woodlots. For the next couple of weeks those are off the list, along with anything that borders public hunting land. We stick to in-town routes instead: the river trail, the sidewalks around downtown, the long loop past the school.
We also shift when we walk. Hunters are most active around dawn and dusk, which are exactly the hours Hank would pick. Weekend walks move to the middle of the day. Weekday walks after work stay on lit sidewalks, with the collar light on.
And Hank stays on leash, full stop. He's always leashed outside the yard anyway, because of his squirrel situation, but a deer crossing the road is a squirrel situation times a hundred. After opener there are also things in the ditches that a food-motivated dog shouldn't find, and Hank finds everything.
Opener morning
Hank is afraid of thunder and fireworks, and distant gunfire on opener morning lands somewhere in that same family for him. It isn't as bad as the Fourth, but last year he paced and panted from first light until about nine.
So Saturday morning stays quiet. Breakfast goes in a puzzle toy, a frozen Kong comes out after, and the white-noise machine runs in his basement den, with the blanket over the crate if he wants to tuck in. Potty breaks happen in the fenced yard. By late morning things usually settle down, and we'll take him for a midday walk in town in his new vest.
The small mistake
The collar light died on the second night. I charged it once when it arrived and assumed it would last the season. It does not. It lasts about a week of evening walks, and it doesn't warn you, it just quits somewhere in the middle of a dark yard. Now it charges every Sunday night next to my phone.
The vest hangs on the second hook of the mudroom bench Caleb built in September, right beside the leash. That's the whole system, really. If I can grab the leash, I can grab the orange.
