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If by CONSERVATIVE you mean an irresponsible, lazy, heartless oaf who threw up his hands when the government wouldn't do it for him and left the dog to die, not even caring enough to get his butt back up there to retrieve her remains for a proper burial, then you're mistaken. It's a moderately strenuous hike and clearly a well traveled trail. Summer snowstorms are not summer snowstorms below 8,000 ft or so. He was not on the summit. He had an able-bodied 19 year old with him. There were passing hikers who overheard his conversation. There were numerous calls from concerned hikers for days, to the point that, finally, concerned total strangers got a group together and went to do what this man should have done the very next day at a minimum.

Chest thumping? You have no idea what you're talking about. Had that been me, the dog would have come down with me if I had to beg for help from passersby. Slung across my back most likely. But, it wouldn't have been me because I would have turned back with the first bleeding paw, not kept going until the dog was a bleeding, lame mess that could go no further.

Maybe you're different, more... utilitarian about such matters. I hope you have no animals in your care if so.

I just ended 13 months of helping a dog with degenerative myelopathy up and down and outside to potty, sometimes when I had to literally lift her 80 pound self with the feebleness of my own 100 pound self, [bad discs, arthritis and all] simply because, other than not being able to walk very well, she was happy, bright, alert, ate like a pig, loved her physical & massage therapy necessary to keep her legs limber and had a decent quality of life.

That quality ended on Monday and she let me know.

Thursday night, the vet came and she ‘went out’ even before she got ‘the second shot’.

I -felt- her leave and she slipped from her now-useless shell with such ease.

She knew why the vet was there and for the first time in her 10 year life, she did not fear him.

I spent 3 hours with her before he came, cradling her big goofy-silly head and we shared cheese, memories, love and tears and she was so much stronger and fearless than I was.

I carried that dog for over a year.

If carrying her down one lousy mountain would’ve saved her, I’d have done it, no matter how much it hurt me.

I’m sick of the excuses being made for this bastard.