Let me back up a minute to tell you that before we reached the shelter on Day One, we came across this stray dog (a young beagle) who followed us some and would then leave us to walk with Ozark Society group.
This dog had two collars on it.....one with owner's info and the other was a shock collar. I guess this dog was out on a training session and got away from its owner. Judging from the way his ribs were sticking out, this pooch had been in the forest quite a while.
Well, when we pulled into the shelter to eat lunch, the dog was no where to be seen, apparently following the other group up the trail. But a couple of hours before sunset, he reappeared and proceeded to wreck the place....jumping on the picnic table, knocking off water bottles, raiding our food bags.
We hung our food bags just to keep him out of it. Then he would jump into the shelter on our sleeping bags which were on top of air matresses. Just what we need a punctured mattress or ripped bag.
We could barely roast our hot dogs with this dog buzzing around us getting into the bun sack. Finally we fed him our leftovers and this seemed to satisfy him a little. Of course, once we fed him, the dog adopted us and he was with us for the night.
When it was time to retire, I offered him my fleece jacket to bed on just to keep him off our bags. (At the time we had no cell phone reception with which to phone the dog's owner.)
But we had a plan for the following day as this dog was destroying our camping experience.