On our walk over,

I hear the coyotes again. And I look up

and I see two little heads.

And I'm like, looking and

those coyotes are kind of weird-looking coyotes.

Our first thought was,

“Somebody has to be up there.”

So we start calling for the hikers:

"Hey, hey, is anybody up there?"

And so there was kind of no hesitation.

Brody decides,

"I need to go up there and see what's going on."

I'm trying to orient myself, I'm like,

"This has to be where the dogs were,

but I still don't see the dogs."

And I'm like, "There's no way they're all the way down here."

And I'm just about to give up

because I don't see anything,

but I decide to walk like

10 more steps.

And that's when I see this shaded cave.

And I start downclimbing that whole section again

and I end up back where I can see the dogs with all my gear

and I start talking to them.

This is my initial contact with these dogs.

For a second, I just kind of turn off

my climber brain and I'm just like,

"Oh, I love dogs so much!"

And I get over to them.

Both of them start giving me kisses right away.

I'm, like, using all of this gear

that I brought up with me to make

dog harnesses.

And so I rig myself a rappel,

I rig the two dogs for their own safety lines.

By the time we got to the overhanging point,

which means my feet are no longer touching the wall,

I'm floating in space from the rope,

one dog sat on each of my legs

and I'm able to use my hands to

manage the rope while having my arms around them.

So I'm down at the bottom

preparing for the arrival of our two new friends

who I quickly named

because our own dog is named Spaghetti.

We very quickly abandon all of our climbing plans for the day

and we start heading down

from the cliff to our car

and we put Parmesan in Brody's

climbing backpack.

We carry Meatball.

And we walk down to the car.

And by some chance,

a ranger happens to drive by at that moment.

We start driving into town

with the ranger so we can get some service.

I have Parmesan on my lap.

Brody has Meatball on his lap.

We were on our way to a work trip

and we couldn't take them with us.

We drive down to the shelter.

We had to say bye to them and that sucked.

It was really hard for me to leave the two dogs

at the shelter. But

having that experience with them and knowing what sweet

and wonderful dogs they were,

I knew that they were going to find homes.

We got an update a few weeks later that

Parmesan and Meatball

I think that our experience with Parmesan and Meatball

was really a beautiful lesson to us about,

you know, the hope that there still is out there

and that you can do good things and that we can