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Jan 1, 2025
ATTENTION: I’ve obfuscated just about every place and person’s name in this story to protect those pristine places from nutjobs like you and your lawsuits. So don’t try to find the places I mention, and for the love of Balthazar, please don’t email me if you think you know where one of these dog-friendly places is.
When Liana and I moved to Pownal from Dedham, we were worried we wouldn’t have all the “opportunities” to exercise our growing army of dogs in the off-leash way in which they were accustomed. Pownal being so close to civilization and all.
We settled into Pownal and we were amazed at all the off-leash dog walking places. There were snowmobile trails that went for miles and miles. Incredibly, you could get all the way up to the snowmobile trails in Dedham on them. Then to Canada through a customs checkpoint. This is completely true. We didn’t have a snowmobile or want to go to Canada with our dogs, yet. We just wanted plenty of off-leash trails right in our literal back yard.
We loved letting our dogs off-leash. They expended a lot of energy. They socialized. They explored and rough-housed. And Liana and I socialized, too. We got to know Dan who owned Daphne I and Daphne II, the Newfie sister duo we all adored. Then there was Evan, a Jack Russel Auggie would fetch with for hours. Auggie even wrote a story about Evan and their rivalry in “Supreme Fetch Dog Throughout All the Land.”
Sometimes we’d agglomerate 3-4 people and about a dozen dogs on one of our short, simple walks. I can’t recall a single major problem with them. Sure, there were minor kerfuffles, barking, and rivalries, but nothing violent or noteworthy from the dogs.
It was therefore tacitly known to us local people that these places were OK for off-leash dogs. If your dog couldn’t be off-leash, you didn’t bring them there. You just exercised them at one of the dozens and dozens of places that required your dog be on a leash. It was that simple. And there was no shame in walking your dog at an on-leash area. Everyone respected the rules. The system worked.
And it was therefore doomed.
Then things started to change.
The first thing I noticed was the biscuits and gravy at the local breakfast joints got very bland. Then I noticed the traditional Tabasco hot sauce was no longer on the table. You had to ask the staff to bring it.
And they didn’t bring a bottle of Tabasco anymore, either. When they brought hot sauce, it had a pretentious name like “Zeus’s Olympic Thunderbolt Full-Bodied Hot Sauce,” or “Truffle Harbour’s Governor Marmalade Reserve Hot Sauce.” They were all owned by two bearded guys and had overwrought stories about their company’s immaculate inception right on the bottle. They (both the sauces and the bearded guys) were infused with fair-trade mangoes from some little rockpile off the coast of Nicaragua, or saffron from Imelda Marcos’s recovered hoard. And they (the bearded guys) gave half their profits to causes like “Native American Beard Rescue.”
The sauces were, without exception, sweet, smoky, and salty. But they were never hot. Or even lukewarm. I began collecting those small little bottles of Franks Red Hot my military friends discarded from their MRE’s and brought them everywhere (the bottles, not my friends).
We Mainers ignored the bland gravy to our peril. We ignored the other warnings until it was too late. When we finally came up for air, there was a vast influx of smug, self-important, litigious, late-middle aged, suburban transplants in control of our breakfast restaurants. And they did not deign to have their senses affronted by something as plebeian as spicy sausage gravy or hot sauce that was actually hot.
And if they did have their senses affronted, they would contact their lawyers they had on a hefty retainer. Their lawyers would then file more injunctions against the restaurant than there were stars in the sky regarding “…the macing effects resulting in the excessive 1/2 teaspoon of ground pepper in the sausage gravy…” or “…medieval-like torture chemicals far in excess of 100 Scoville Units stored on the very dining room table customer’s food is served…”
The restaurant, being independently-owned and without adequate corporate legal representation, would have to cave in even if they were right.
With blood in the water, The Transplants began attacking more important Maine issues. Like forcing poor Mainers to spend 5¢ per plastic shopping bag at the supermarket. Then they assessed 5¢ to every recycled paper shopping bag to drive Mainers into using “Reusable” shopping bags they had to carry around with them everywhere in their cars.
Then COVID hit and supermarkets banned Reusable shopping bags because they could spread the virus. They handed out new plastic and paper shopping bags free of charge.
When things got back to normal, they insisted we go back to using Reusable bags despite the fact that most Reusable bags were buried in the filthiest far reaches of peoples’ cars and were capable of transmitting a multitude of far more dangerous diseases than COVID.
As it is with a lot of invaders, breakfast and shopping bags were just the first things on The Transplant’s agenda. Apparently, there was a lot of Maine that needed to be civilized before The Transplants could feel at home here.
They needed people to stop walking across their multi-million dollar beachfront despite approximately 15 generations of the Maine public engaging in it. They filed charges against clammers for “trespassing” on their land, whilst the clammers were only trying to access their clam flat livelihood like they had for literally hundreds of years. They called police on age-old restaurants with live music in the summer for decibel-level violations. They razed nice, neat old neighborhoods like Munjoy Hill and plugged the remains with cloned chain franchises and cheap, antiseptic condos. They clogged our passing lanes on I-95 and I-295 with Lexuses, BMWs, and various shitboxes that introduced us to road rage. They defaced our watering holes with precious things they called “martinis,” but were, in fact, only fruity, shaken vodka drinks served in martini glasses.
And don’t get me going on all the hipster microbreweries. At first there was only Gritty’s and Geary’s. Then we were inundated overnight with places like Shipyard with it’s 1,000’s of trite brews like “Pumpkinhead,” “Smashed Pumpkin Ale,” and “Smashed Pumpkin Bourbon Barrel Aged Ale.” It was enough to make a Mormon chug a warm tall boy of Black Label.
The Transplants were building up in Maine like little annoying globules of cholesterol in the throbbing veins and arteries of Alex Jones’s neck. It was only a matter of time before the whole shithouse was going to catastrophically blow. And it was anyone’s guess as to what would set it off.
**
The Transplants didn’t come to Maine to make money, raise children, or to pay taxes. Quite the opposite. They made their fortunes in miserable suburban blights. So when their kids abandoned them for college and other suburban shitholes with career potential, The Transplants gathered up all their cash and moved north. Why would they stay in Saugus when they could trade their nondescript 3-bedroom ranch on 1/64th of an acre for a 2-acre waterfront house in Maine?
With most of their lives behind them, they weren’t interested in building a sustainable community or investing time in their new surroundings. Like in volunteering, being on the PTA, or using their work skills to teach kids at the local high school.
They moved up here for a simpler life and a safe place to pass the waning years of their lives before the pole vault into their waiting graves. That grave was usually still located in their state of origin for tax reasons I still can’t comprehend.
They fought like rabid honey badgers against anything that would raise their taxes or cost them extra money in any way. I personally witnessed a Transplant couple berating a young teenage girl through the Soft-Serve window at Pats Pizza in Yarmouth that the price of sprinkles shot up to an “outrageous” $0.50/dip over the winter.
Not only did The Transplants not want to pay for anything in their new communities, they absolutely refused to understand anything about them. Who was the local High School Principal? Who should they vote for in the next election? What are the bond initiatives about? Who cares? Just vote for the party you voted for back home, and vote against any bond measure or construction project that might increase your mill rate. They just didn’t care about their new home as long as there was someone to hand them lobster rolls and ice cream in the summer, and plow their driveways in the winter.
And if something reared its head that offered Mainers year-round, blue collar jobs with benefits, The Transplants would have to hastily shoot it down out of hand. Things like offshore windmills in the Midcoast, LNG terminals in Eastport, or a whisper of anything going on at Sears Island were trampled with Endangered Species legislation as recklessly as someone bringing an Emotional Support Hippopotamus on an American Airlines flight.
And of course there’s the decades-long fiasco of the Wiscasset Bypass that defies description.
Furthermore, The Transplants didn’t care anything about the history of the ground they now occupied. They were only excited about their property values going up and their property taxes going down. They cared naught for how they were displacing traditional Maine coastal people and industries like fishing, boat building, commerce, and agriculture with their giant, uninspired, unfurling McMansions.
I asked one of them at the bar one night what he thought the impact of his atrocious new home had on the local families who had lived here for 400 years.
“I BOUGHT THAT LAND FROM THE OWNER, FAIR AND SQUARE.”
**
Then Covid happened, and thousands upon thousands of litigious cholesterol globules flooded into throbbing Maine arteries with their air-fryers, and fresh-out-of-the-box Bean Boots.
Maine was ripe for a massive heart attack.
It is with that preamble…
At a trail in Freeport, Max and I encountered an older couple walking in the opposite direction. They didn’t have a dog. And everyone I had ever met on that trail was dog friendly. I didn’t think anything of Max running forward to see if he could get his fat head rubbed.
The woman started wailing and screaming hysterically when Max was about 40ft from them. WTF was going on? Had Max knocked this woman down? I started yelling for him to “COME” in my most convincing voice. I saw him stopped about 20ft away from the man. Max was looking at the man with his head cocked. The man had a ski pole he was using as a walking stick.
And he was advancing on Max menacingly with the ski pole. Even though Max was being a good boy and not coming any closer. The man used his ski pole like a sword. It was clear he wasn’t trying scare Max away. He was trying to hurt him.
I’ll never forget the look Max shot back to me. He was confused. He hadn’t ever experienced this kind of strange Biped hostility before. He was dumbstruck. He was flabbergasted. He was gobsmacked. He was a lot of my favorite words.
When I saw the Man advance on Max with his makeshift sword and Max’s stalling incomprehension, it became clear what was going to happen. I ran up and got in between them.
The man screamed, “YOUR DOG ATTACKED MY WIFE! YOUR DOG ATTACKED MY WIFE!!!!” His head was purple, the veins in his forehead were pounding. He yelled at me, waving his ski-pole blade menacingly like an Olympic fencer. His wife gibbered and moaned in the background.
I dissociated my rational self from my emotional self and gathered up all the inner peace I could muster and said evenly, “If you even graze me with that ski pole, I will defend myself. And I will prosecute you for assault with a deadly weapon.” Our eyes met and he backed off a little bit. Max backed off even further behind me, judging this strange, loud, menacing Biped was something to avoid.
“YOUR DOG IS A DEADLY WEAPON AND IT ASSAULTED MY WIFE!!!! I WAS DEFENDING HER!!!!” he screamed after a second.
“My dog never came within 40ft of your wife,” I said.
The woman bent down and grabbed her ankle and moaned.
“SEE!?! SEE!?! HE ATTACKED HER!!! THEY’LL PUT YOUR DOG DOWN!!!! YOU LET HIM RUN AROUND OFF LEASH!!!! IT’S YOUR FAULT!!!” he said swinging his blade around like he was “The Star Wars Kid.”
“DOG AT LARGE!!!” he screamed behind him, presumably to any law enforcement back there. Then he backed up a little bit, covering his retreat with his mighty blade. I backed off a little too. No blade necessary.
I gathered my wits enough to notice they didn’t belong here on the trails. He, in his corporate-embossed windbreaker and sneakers, she, in her blouse and light footwear. It looked like they were walking the Boston Common except for the splattered mud, sweat, bug bites, and harried demeanor. They weren’t even a half-mile into the 5-mile trail.
I turned around and started walking down the path from whence we came. I listened intently for any footsteps of The Purple-Headed Suburban Swordsman running up behind me, but there were none. Max stayed close to me and kept looking at me to make sure I had his “back.” From that day on, Max was a little more cautious before running full-bore at random Bipeds again. Thank Dog for that.
I was sure there would be an emblazoned, nasty letter in one of those Yarmouth free papers, or on the town’s Facebook page, but there was nothing. And we never saw that couple on the trails again. In retrospect, I’m sure these Transplants had their lawyers inundate the Parks & Rec Department with flaunted imaginary injuries, exaggerated tales of horror, and possible litigation surrounding their harrowing encounter with my wild animal, Max.
They demanded The Park change its primitive ways. They demanded their inviolate rights be defended.
And with the dam breached, The Transplants began.
Then Freeport required all dogs to be on leashes at Hedgehog Mountain. Falmouth banned dogs at all their beaches. Then the Maine State Parks system connected the Tryon Mountain trails with Bradbury Mountain State Park trails and plastered the new avenue into the park from Tryon Mountain with “NO DOGS – $150 FINE” signage.
But the worst was when Freeport started constructing the colossal sports complex over all the low-bush blueberry fields on Hunter Rd.
I’d take the Dogs to those fields in mid – to – late July along with any visiting friends when the blueberries were big and ripe. The dogs would drop their heads, open their jaws and run through the fields like a swift, 4-legged blueberry rake. They’d chomp and chomp away on the twigs, sticks, insects and blueberries for hours. My friends and I would eat our gluttonous portion as well, although with less insects.
When the development was finished, all that remained of the original 30 acres of blueberry fields was about half an acre. And they left an existing Tri-Town Penguin snowmobile trail passing to the west of the complex.
The final product was an enormous, sprawling sports complex with dozens of menacing signs that said things like;
I was tempted to print and put up a sign that read, “DO NOT READ THIS SIGN UNDER PENALTY OF LAW!”
I can’t begin to describe how my dogs look at what’s left of those fields now. The best I can muster is “unblinking incomprehension.” Like when their dinner is late by 10 minutes. Where the hell were all the blueberries?
The remaining half acre of blueberries eventually died out after the town was too cash-strapped to mow/burn the up-growth. It all reverted to tall grass and scrub bushes.
One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen was watching a mournful Auggie forage for blueberries in the tall grass and not finding any.
He was so hungry.
So very, very hungry……
As The Transplants advanced and systematically ruined every off-leash area in Freeport and Yarmouth, The Locals began to feel the pressure. They moved in smaller and smaller circles. They were confused as The Transplants drew proverbial line after line in the sand regarding the trails.
As someone who experienced it firsthand, I describe this as “The Freeport Cauldron.” It was rather like The Eastern Front in WWII where vast armies were encircled. These encirclements were called “cauldrons” and they were violently compressed, starved, bombed and terrorized until the encircled army surrendered.
A less dramatic metaphor would be that The Locals were driven into smaller and smaller off-leash circles by a group of Vain, Reactionary, Lowest-Common-Denominator Transplants.
Then The Locals executed a brilliant move. They simply abandoned their beloved off-leash places in the Freeport area and drove their dogs out to more rural places like Pownal, Durham, and Lisbon Falls.
True, The Locals escaped with their lives. But eventually The Transplants followed them out to the hinterlands. The Transplants were giddy and felt like they had discovered a whole new continent ripe for exercising their thousands and thousands of rights. And they fell in love with the “ruralness” of it all. It was an unexpected development and it complicated things enormously for The Locals.
That, and the fact The Transplants began getting dogs of their own.
But having a dog wasn’t enough. The Transplants simply couldn’t get ANY dog. Not like the common local rubes had, anyway. Heavens no! They needed a dog to reflect the excellence and acumen they bathed themselves in. No Golden Retrievers. No Labradors. No Hounds. No simple, cute, shelter dogs…
Why did The Transplants get dogs? Scholars and anthropologists don’t agree, but there are several schools of thought:
Theory #1: They wanted to attenuate the sins they committed against their own children by bringing up a well-behaved dog. That way at Thanksgiving, when their children brought up the fact that their parents locked them under the kitchen sink and used the garbage disposal non-stop for 3 hours until they finished their lima beans, the parents could point to the dog and say, “MICHELANGELO NEVER COMPLAINED WHEN I LOCKED HIM UNDER THE SINK! NOT EVEN AFTER HE WAS NEUTERED!”
In this case, they got a hard-case dog from the shelter to nurture back to health. Not just any dog from the shelter, but one that had severe behavioral and/or physiological problems The Transplant could only summarily understand, and could never adequately address. They felt their good nature alone over the period of about 2 weeks would be enough to turn a horribly abused dog into Lassie.
That would really show their kids that they were nurturing parents.
Theory #2: The Transplants had become disillusioned with Maine life and needed a diversion from the swarms of biting insects, dull local news, brown snowbanks that seem to linger forever, and scarcity of Mongolian Grills, The New York Times/Boston Globe and The Atlantic magazine.
And all those disturbing Maine seniors missing front teeth were still out there just walking around without a clue.
In this case, The Transplant got a Labradoodle because it was “hypoallergenic” and didn’t shed. NOT A POODLE that was also “hypoallergenic” and didn’t shed. But a Labradoodle that didn’t call anyone’s masculinity into question and was much cheaper when purchased from a ruthless backyard breeder than an actual responsible, respectable AKC Poodle breeder.
Theory #3: They didn’t get enough attention from The Locals with their Cybertruck because conspicuous consumption is frowned upon in Maine.
In this case, The Transplant got a rare breed like an Ibizian Hound, Azawakh Dog, or some rip-off, like a cross between a Great Dane and a Pug (a Preat Gug) that needs in-vitro fertilization, C-section, and has a cost in excess of $17,500 (plus shipping costs, handling fees, training, boarding, etc). That way, they could enthrall The Locals for hours on end with their expensive dog stories whether The Locals asked them to or not.
Theory #4: The Transplants began to go insane from the pressure-cooker that is Maine and began to think dogs in the media were real. Or they were just dumb to begin with. They’d get dogs like Dalmatians from “101 Dalmatians,” Chihuahuas from “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” Beagles from “Peanuts,” and Dachshunds from “Crusoe.”
Of course this was without recognizing or caring that Dalmatians needed strong exercise at least 2 hours a day, Chihuahua’s are one-person dogs who can’t talk, and Beagles howl loudly and repeatedly until your condo neighbor hired a hitman, and Dachshunds are escape artists who bark incessantly.
Unfortunately, lots of these dogs ended up in the shelter with lightning speed.
Theory #5: Deep in my corrosive heart of hearts, I know The Transplants just wanted to get dogs to show the primitive Maine locals how “It was done.”
And lots of them tried to show us with Huskies and Bulldogs- two of the most stubborn, hardest dogs to train.
That was funny. Wasn’t it?
No. It wasn’t.
The Transplants considered themselves akin to missionaries in Borneo. Only instead of encouraging The Locals to eat fewer human beings, they encouraged The Locals to gaze upon their dogs– the crescendo of Modern Canine Perfection– the crystal-pure extract of extreme canine excellence in their possession.
Haha! Just kidding! For all The Transplant’s education and wealth, they couldn’t be bothered to thoroughly research dog breeds, dog behavior or dog training in any depth. Maybe they devoted a half-hour to Googling it on the toilet, but that was all. They were the self-proclaimed smartest people in Maine, so why would they spend any money on dog behavioralists or trainers?
No reason.
No reason at all.
**
It was a fine, warm spring morning way out in the hinterlands, and I had all four dogs- Max, Aug, Coal, and Buddy. There were no cars in the parking lot. We were all looking forward to a nice, long, off-leash hike with perhaps a nice swim at Pratt’s Brook at the end. For the dogs, although I admit I was jealous.
I let the boys out of the car, grabbed the poop bags, a leash, and the ball launcher.
Everyone and everydog was in a great mood as we crossed the first snowmobile bridge and began walking up the opposing bank. I saw a woman with a leashed dog crest the bank. She saw me and my four dogs and screamed. Not a squeal or yelp, but a full-blown screech.
If my four dogs were disinterested before, they took notice now and began advancing happily towards her. They thought the woman was calling them to play. They wanted to say hi. They were Labs, after all.
The woman dropped to her knees, grabbed her 60lb dog around the neck and screamed again. It looked like she was going feral. And her dog was definitely freaked out by her body language and screaming.
I yelled at all four of my dogs to “STAY,” and they stopped dead in their tracks. Even Big Dumb Buddy.
They were confused. I was confused. I called my dogs back. Only Max malingered, as was his wont despite the ski-pole lunatic all those years ago. Eventually he came running back to the rest of us and set up behind me. This lady was bonkers. Best vacate and let things settle down.
Then I noticed she was crying. Not just tearing up, but blubbering uncontrollably and clutching her dog’s neck. And this, of course, made her dog officially REALLY FUCKING FREAKED OUT.
I just wanted to get on with our hike. I figured I’d just let her and her dog pass and go on with our day.
I whistled for my dogs to come and pulled them a good way off to the side and way below the snowmobile bridge abutment. I yelled over to her that she could come over, and waited for her to pass.
And waited. And waited. And waited….
Finally, I yelled over, “I’d really like to get on with my hike, if it’s all the same to you.”
She slowly gathered herself and her dog and strode forward with her chin and dignity up. After she was halfway across the bridge, she leaned over and shouted, “DOGS ARE REQUIRED TO BE ON A LEASH HERE!!!!!”
“Wrong,” I said tiredly. “They only need to be under my control. Which they clearly are.”
“MY DOG IS AGGRESSIVE!!!!”
“Thank you for having him on leash…”
Her dog looked more terrified than aggressive to me. Just like me and my dogs. And we were terrified because of her. Not because of her dog or any of my dogs.
Once the woman was over the bridge, she began running back to the parking lot.
That was the trouble with The Transplants. They couldn’t tell a serious dog fight from harmless dog play behavior like “Bitey Face.” Everything was a serious dog fight if it involved their dog. Ironically, their terror of a dog fight whipped their dog into a frenzy that encouraged dog fights.
The writing on the wall was clear. The Transplants were ruthlessly expanding their territory into the Freeport Hinterlands.
And there was no stopping them.
The Locals had a little more stroke on private land.
There’s a place near Pownal I’m not even going to allude to, lest you Transplant dog-owning invertebrates ruin it. It’s still in the Freeport off-leash category, but us locals never share its location with anyone. Not even with our own spouses.
There is a medium-scale farmer who entertains no nonsense from either The Locals, nor The Transplants. He has acres of silage corn, a largish sand/gravel pit, snowmobile trails, and he harvests wood from his forest. And he’s the saltiest dog I know.
I met him when he and his son were tilling the ground one spring. He thought my Labs were drugged because they didn’t run right up to him and knock him down. When I gave the OK, the dogs swarmed all over him. No doubt because every inch of him smelled like cow shit.
@twosaltydogs walking the dogs in the tall corn. Auggie, Marz and Zinnie. #dogwalk #gooddog #maine #labradorretriever #blacklab #yellowlab #chocolatelab #mainedog #pownalmaine
♬ original sound – twosaltydogs
He asked what I was doing on his land. I pointed to Coal wriggling on his back in the dust happily and we both laughed.
When Coal was done, we started walking and talking. He hated The Local ATV owners who chewed up his fields impetuously. He was OK with the Local snowmobilers, The Tri-Town Penguins – they treated his land respectfully.
He said he thought I was The Transplant woman who kept calling him up and complaining about everything on his property. He had no idea how she got his number. She complained incessantly – off-leash dogs, people shooting skeet, people target practicing for hunting season in the gravel pit, loud machinery, how his fertilizer smelled terrible and her dog got sick from eating it, how the corn pollen fueled her allergy attacks…
“From-Away Nonsense,” he gruffed and put an unfiltered Pall Mall in his lips. Then he fired up his excavator. He had some boulders to pull out of his gravel pit and load up on a truck for delivery.
I walked with him a bunch of times over his land. Sometimes he had his Redbone Hound “Gus” with him. I asked him whether Gus was named for “Augustus,” like Auggie. “Nope,” he said, “Just Gus.” He named all six of his hounds over the years “Gus.”
He showed me where he buried all his Gusses with small rocks carved with the numbers 1 through 5.
My dogs, past and present, are grateful to him for the use of his land.
Me too.
In 2012, I was looking for a career that didn’t involve being a geotechnical engineer 150ft under failing earth dams. Don’t get me wrong, it was lucrative. But spending 12hrs/day, 7days/week for 3 months in a 5ft-6in x 5ft-6in failing diversion tunnel was a bit much. The worst was that I am 6ft tall, so I developed awful “cricks” in my neck because I couldn’t stand upright. I also lost all sense of daily and seasonal time. That and the diversion tunnel could blow in at any time and wash all my bits clear out into the Sargasso Sea.
The Boothbay Region was incredibly dog-friendly. The Boothbay Region Land Trust (BRLT) Trails were phenomenal. The Dogs and I walked one of their dozens of trails every day. We walked them all except for Damariscove Island, which was several miles offshore and no dogs were allowed because of the sensitive seabird habitat.
Shop owners in town left water bowls out for dogs. Restaurants let dogs eat with their owners on their decks. The Railway Village let dogs in. We were immediately delighted with it all.
We saw a door in the Boothbay Region opening whilst the door to the Freeport area was closing. At least Dog-wise. Liana and I saw a market for a pet store. So we developed a business plan, pitched it to the bank, and became the brand new owners of Two Salty Dogs Pet Outfitters, and a tremendous amount of debt.
It was 2012. The Aztec Calendar said the world was going to explode. Or implode, or be engulfed in flame or something like that. I forget, but I remember thinking the coming end of the world was a relief when I owed a bank all that money. I might have even been cheering for the end of the world at a couple points after our start-up.
Liana and I set out giving The Boothbay Region Land Trust grateful personal and business donations as soon as we were financially viable. Then we “adopted” The Gregory Preserve.
Occasionally, I’d see these out-of-place Transplants on the BRLT trails with their Abercrombie & Fitch ankle weights, brand-new North Face gortex windbreakers, power-walking in their bright-colored track suits with matching ear buds.
I was so happy to be escaping The Cauldron of Lowest Common Denominators in the Freeport area, I didn’t realize I was just whistling in the dark in Boothbay. And I forgot a cardinal rule; “If you saw one Transplant, there were thousands upon thousands of others hiding under the sink and in the wainscoting.”
Or was that cockroaches? No matter.
To my horror, I realized the situation was lost when I was confronted with languid gravy at every single breakfast spot in the Boothbay Region except for T&D Market. In the classic example of awful military leaders, I had gained clarity of the situation at the expense of control over the situation.
Soon, The Transplants were amassing and assaulting our little off-leash dog peninsula. They were well on their way to subjugating us to their mild-gravy-filled bellies, self-righteous indignation and byzantine litigation.
And after cutting their teeth in the Freeport area, they weren’t in the habit of giving any quarter to The Locals.
I won’t bother regaling you with the rapid build-up and slow decline of the off-leash Boothbay Region. Suffice to say that it roughly followed the same pattern as the Freeport area: Creepingly Bland Food, Touchy Transplants with definite ideas on how to save The Locals from themselves, Litigious Transplants with rail cars full of their Executable Rights, Grumpy Seniors Who Know Best About Everything in Everyone’s Life, etc…
The degradation was clear when I was asked literally hundreds of times in 2022 whether I sold “Service Dog” vests. My response was always the same, “You’d have to think I was fucking stupid to alienate myself from all the restaurants and businesses in this small town by selling your barely-trained dog something reserved for people with actual handicaps. And your dog just shit on my floor.”
But I can’t blame The Transplants exclusively for the Dog Friendly demise of The Boothbay Region. The Locals had a lot to do with the banning of dogs from the BRLT trails:
Then there were complications associated with thousands and thousands of entitled short-term tourist “Karens” and their willingness to call the manager if the tiniest thing interfered with their “guaranteed” magical time in the Boothbay Region.
One hot August day, Auggie and I were on the Oven’s Mouth West Trail when we ran into three tourists coming towards us. We were almost done with our hike and hiking uphill. The two men and a woman were hiking down. They looked to be in their late fifties / early sixties. They were clearly in trouble. This hike was probably the most difficult in the The Land Trust’s collection, and these people were gasping for breath, swatting black flies with sluggish abandon, and sweating profusely despite hiking downhill for approximately 10 minutes. They had no water. They had no anything. And they were just a tiny way into the trail.
They were frustrated.
When I saw them, I called Auggie to me and he fell into a perfect heeling position as he always did. Then I began to bushwhack around the three hikers about 20ft into the woods.
They started screaming, “LOOSE DOG! DOG OFF LEASH!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!” and trying to run down the trail with their hands over their heads in terror. If it were any other dog than Auggie, it would have made a beeline for these people, thinking they wanted to play. But Auggie was the best-trained of all our dogs. It took a lot more than that (and a treat) to tempt him into disobedience.
I won’t lie. I was marching uphill. I was also being bitten by insects. I was irritated by them. Instead of walking on by them, I came back down the trail and asked calmly if they needed assistance. Auggie remained welded to my side, confident I wouldn’t put him in any harm’s way. The two men picked up sticks and shrieked, “GET AWAY!! GET YOUR DOG OFF US!!! CALL HIM OFF!! YOU HAVE TO HAVE YOUR DOG ON A LEASH HERE!!!
I corrected them, “You mean I need to have my dog under my control here,” I said, “Which he clearly is, and you clearly are not.”
They ran down the trail and past us. Aug and I continued to slog up the trail.
They called the BRLT to complain. They were very angry. Their hike was ruined by a rude local (me) and a pack of off-leash dogs(!) running roughshod over them. They weren’t going to give another dime to The Land Trust, and they were going to report everything to the Attorney General of whatever state they were in. They were going to give lousy Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Facebook, X, and TikTok reviews. They would file a compliant with the BBB and in the local paper. Their lawyers said there was grounds for a massive, seven-figure lawsuit…
And on and on.
How do I know this? The Executive Director of the BRLT is a friend of mine and he took the call from The Karens. I went to talk to him about it. I don’t envy his job. He was, and still is, the most patient man I know. I felt sorry he had to deal with me winding these Out of State Weirdos & Loonies up.
“They said you had four dogs off leash and they needed sticks to defend themselves…” he said. “They also said you were cursing them out…”
He knew the truth about my well-trained dogs and my sewer-mouth. I said I only had Auggie, and yes, I was colorful with the language I chose.
Again, The BRLT Executive Director was, and is, an extremely patient and good man. But he and his staff didn’t have all day to answer phone calls from Karens complaining about dogs and surly locals. And his field crews didn’t have time to perennially clean dog shit off the trails. I understood that. I commiserated with that. They took enough phone calls from lost people trying to get to a trail somewhere up in “Boothbay Harbor National Park.”
All I could do was shake my head. The writing was on the wall. The BRLT was going to either require leashes, or ban dogs completely on some, if not all of its trails.
At that moment, it struck me. It was all a losing game. There was no way to reclaim lost ground in this fight. The Transplants would continue their march north, devastating perfectly good biscuits and gravy and off-leash dog trails. All the while loudly complaining about everyone else’s dogs.
I couldn’t think of anything that would stop their juggernaut.
Unless it was the Canadian border.
In the fall of 2024, I traveled to Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia Canada. Twice. Once with Fudgie, once with Auggie.
Dog-and-otherwise, I was extremely impressed. People are hugely dog-friendly, and the sausage gravy indeed spicy. And I should say I think French Fries should be served with malt vinegar, so bite me.
Fudgie and I spent the night in Truro NS. The hotel let me bring Fudgie right into their bar and they gave him a slew of treats. In the morning, we went into a bunch of stores. They gave him a hero’s welcome at a well-stocked local pet store.
The folks at the pet store recommended I take him to Truro Dog Park. I’m glad they did. It’s absolutely huge and is probably the best dog park I’ve ever even heard of. It has grassy paths through wooded areas, level stone paths for the handicapped to walk their dogs with their wheelchairs, a nice little BBQ area with grills and picnic tables, separate enclosed areas for senior and small dogs, several huge fields for fetching, lights along the main paths for night use, free poop bags and garbage cans everywhere….
And probably the best thing: friendly locals with socialized dogs to just burn the energy out of Fudgie.
On top of that, the Truro Dog Park probably has the best rules of any dog park I’ve ever seen:
Fudgie and I had another 8-hour drive to get to our place at the northern tip of Cape Breton Island. I had never seen him this exhausted before. He limped his way into the back seat of my truck and immediately started snoring grotesquely.
As I drove, I found myself coveting the Truro Dog Park more and more. I wondered why Maine, as part of the TGNITHOTE (The Greatest Nation In The History Of The Earth) couldn’t have anything like it. And that gets me depressed.
Even if a brand-new Truro Dog Park was magically put in a place like Freeport or Boothbay for free, it would only be a matter of time before it was carved asunder. This is how I see it happening:
I was getting pretty depressed whilst driving up to our VRBO in Cape Breton. But only because I was projecting back to the ruin of Boothbay Harbor.
At least in the off-leash dog concern.
My outlook immediately changed when we got there. It seemed like the whole peninsula was dog friendly. Maybe not in the larger supermarkets, but the small stores that dotted the land would let me bring Fudgie right in.
These Canadians were the most dog-friendly people I had ever met.
And then it struck me. With this piece, am I directing The Transplants here? Was I destroying this haven? Was I that stupid and callous?
Fudgie and I got out of the truck at our VRBO in Cape Breton. He immediately started playing hide-and-seek with the rabbits. There were acres of low-bush berries. The cabin was on an 80ft cliff over the ocean. We were both ecstatic. We were looking over the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the huge tankers and freighters as they plied their way the Atlantic. We were here for the next 4 days.
I brought everything inside the cabin and put it away. I stopped to look through the picture window. I thought to myself, “Who could hate this? Who would want to change anything about this spot?”
Not me. Not in my worst self.
Marz chased all the rabbits around the lawn. For hours. The rabbits were much more clever than he. And he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t actually want to catch one. He just wanted to run around like a maniac for hours.
And like an idiot, I hooked up my laptop and went to the place’s VRBO page and looked up the lowest review:
“Seems much larger online. The sound of gulls and other birds go right through the closed windows making it hard to sleep. Waves crash all the time, and there is some kind of horn buoy in the harbor that sounds like it’s right next to your ear HOO– HOO– HOO– all day long! Even in early September, there are no good restaurants here, no shopping, and the general store can only make doughy pizza…”
“Fuck You,” I wrote in response and poured myself another whiskey.
This is the reason I was moving in smaller and smaller circles on the internet.
To hell with it.
-Don (Not a Dog)
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5 replies on “BLUEBERRY FIELDS FOREVER – by Don”
I love your story and your style of writing. We visit your shop in BBH when we are on vacation. Your dogs are beautiful! I felt like I met a celebrity when I met you and saw them! Happy New Year to you and yours!
I love reading your stories! They are full of laughs and truth. Makes me miss my three black labs.
Thanks for reading, Velma! I have a blast writing them!
I read every word and loved it! You pretty much nailed why we moved to Montana this year. We believe it’s a state law that every vehicle in Montana have at least one dog in it at all times. Granted, some folks view dogs a bit differently than maybe I do – they ride in the back of trucks, serve as guardians for herds, are trained to hunt bear and mountain lion, but hey, they’re pretty much welcome everywhere. My guys are in heaven!
I’m in heaven with you, Stacy!!