Good Dog-Paddle Improves Panhandling on the River

The middle of the Colorado River is the last place you’d expect to be panhandled--unless you’ve met Blender the hound.

He doesn’t carry a sign saying, “Will Paddle for Food.” But he swims up to rafts floating down the river into Moab, Utah, looking exhausted, and cons his way aboard.

“People feel sorry for him because they think he’s going to drown. I know he’s had lunch with us quite a few times,” said Dena Merrill of Western River Rafting Expeditions.

Nickey Hazlett of World Wide River Expeditions said Blender’s owners told them that “if he comes by one of your boats, just whack him over the head with an oar and send him back home.”

It’s happened so often that John and Nancy Hauer’s answering machine provides another number in case someone calls about their dog and they’re unavailable.

Blender recently swam 19 miles down the river, which was still swollen by the heavy runoff of late spring snows.

“If he could ride a bicycle he could be a great triathlon athlete,” Hauer said.

When he gets tired, Blender swims out at river launch points and tries to bum a ride.

“We have agonized over what to do about him,” Hauer said, adding that he thinks putting Blender in a pen would be too cruel. “I guess we will keep on like we have and hope he is lucky enough to get too old to keep up his pace.”