Time for calf measures

Think Pawsitive • by Gretchen Ammerman

One of my first Pawsitive stories was about Ron Storms, who rode a bike across the country, towing a trailer carrying his beloved black Labrador Onyx, to raise money and awareness for the service dog organization Canine Partners for Life.

Recently, the gumption that got Ron from Lincoln City to Pennsylvania was called into service locally.

“I was at home working on my truck and my neighbor, Bill Huffman, came over and asked to borrow my boat,” Ron said “He wanted to try to save a calf that had fallen about eight feet down the side of an embankment and was stuck on a ledge next to the Siletz River. Bill had seen it the night before, and when the tide was high, the poor thing was submerged up to his neck.”

Ron was more than happy to lend his neighbor whatever he needed, including himself.

“While we were getting things together, Bill mentioned that he has a pretty healthy fear of water,” Ron said. “I said that I was more than happy to go with him.”

The conditions were challenging from the start.

“The wind was blowing hard in exactly the wrong direction, so we were already having to fight to paddle,” Ron said. "By the time we reached the calf, I could see he was pure white, including his nose, and in pretty bad shape.”

The men managed to get the boat parallel to the bank, then were faced with the uncertainty of how this undomesticated and likely terrified creature was going to react.

“When we got really close to him, I put my hands out and he rested his head on them like a dog,” Ron said. "It just about melted my heart. But he was ice cold and shaking and you could see he didn’t have much more in him, so we knew we needed to get him to safety as fast as possible. I rubbed him for a few minutes to try to warm him up but also to get him calm enough to get him into the canoe. When we got him in, he just flopped down.”

The men had the goal of getting the precious cargo to a good-sized landing dock a few miles away — if they could make it there.

“My fear was that when the calf warmed up, he might start moving around,” Ron said. “That would have been very, very bad news — this guy was little compared to a grown cow but still weighed easily over 100 pounds.”

The heavily-weighted boat started off, with Ron in the front facing away from the other two passengers:

“So we’re in the middle of the river, and I start hearing scuffling and scraping,” he said. “Then I heard Bill saying, ‘He’s getting up, he’s getting up!’ The boat really started rocking, so Bill laid down on him, which helped, but I knew we weren’t making it to that planned landing. I saw a small dock and we stopped there. Then, as we were getting the calf up on to the dock, my canoe decided to drift away.”

Ron ran along the bank of the river after his boat until it got stuck on another small dock, then pulled it for roughly 200 yards back to find that Bill’s wife had arrived with their SUV. As Ron carried the calf to the waiting vehicle, he could feel a familiar movement.

“I looked down and saw that he was wagging his tail and Bill’s wife saw it too — it was like he was wagging it saying, ‘I’m rescued, I’m rescued!’”

At this point, cold and exhausted but happy, Ron was pretty much done with the river. But he still had to get his boat back home.

“It was so windy I wasn’t even going to attempt to paddle it back,” he said. “It’s plastic and built tough, so I just dragged that thing down Highway 229; cars were driving by laughing. My legs were like rubber. Carrying that calf had been like carrying a 200-pound bag of Sakrete.”

Meanwhile, the Huffmans had been able to get the calf, who had been laying in the sun under blankets, to drink water and he started showing signs of improvement. They reached out to a friend with a farm, who agreed to adopt him.

I asked Ron why they didn’t just bring him back to the area where he was found. I was not, apparently, the only person to ask that question.

“We could have brought him back there, but we couldn’t be sure he would make it if we did,” he said. “And there was no way for us to find the mom. I think he’s in the best place he could be, he’s safe.”

 The next adventure

Ron still has plans to do another long-distance fund-raising venture, partly to appease Onyx’s fans, who regularly ask Ron what’s next for the duo.

“He has so many followers and people asking what’s next, that once it’s safe to do so, I have to do something good.”

Follow “Team Ronyx” on Facebook at Onyx’s Great Adventure to stay updated.