I have at least 30,000 pictures of him. He thinks having his picture taken is just a normal part of life. I wish he could see the photos of him, and appreciate how beautiful he is. All dogs are beautiful, of course, but Tino is very photogenic. The picture above, from today’s celebration, ranks among my top ten favorites. Below are nine more, although it is hard to choose ten favorites. I have a folder of just my best pictures of Tino, which has 105 right now.
Tino was born three years ago today. He had such tiny ears. He was the size of a large burrito. I wasn’t even planning to keep him. Three years later, I can’t even begin to describe how much I love him. As a search dog, he has had ten walk up finds already. He has saved the life of Puppy, the giant white dog, twice. He plays with all the dogs, all day, everyday. Since he was three months old, he has gone to sleep every night with his spine against my chest. He is definitely crazy, and hard to handle sometimes, like his mother, but he is perfect in every way.
I have at least 30,000 pictures of him. He thinks having his picture taken is just a normal part of life. I wish he could see the photos of him, and appreciate how beautiful he is. All dogs are beautiful, of course, but Tino is very photogenic. The picture above, from today’s celebration, ranks among my top ten favorites. Below are nine more, although it is hard to choose ten favorites. I have a folder of just my best pictures of Tino, which has 105 right now.
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Tino searched for an eight pound chihuahua this morning. The scent trail didn’t go very far. It appears he hopped in a car. Because we finished while it was still early and cool, we went for a hike at Wallace Falls, which was fairly close. It was a nice hike, about 4.5 miles round-trip. Tino liked playing in the river and cooling off. On the way down the mountain, he actually didn’t pull very much, which was a relief. I think that one of the hikers caught a glimpse of him through the woods, and thought he was a bear, because he was clapping his hands and making noise until he came around the corner and saw that it was just a black German shepherd.
I like clouds, because clouds rock. What’s not to like about them? They are the best thing in the world, and they are free to everyone. I don’t need a reason to like clouds. Maybe it is a bit unusual that I have hundreds of pictures of clouds on my phone, and that I have a separate folder for the best cloud pictures. I’m sure I’m not the only one. I know there is a cloud appreciation society. I wouldn’t need any justification for enjoying clouds and taking pictures of them. However, today I listened to a podcast that talked about measurable benefits of connecting with nature.
Hidden Brain is an NPR podcast that is sometimes interesting, sometimes helpful, and often idiotic. I would recommend listening to this podcast, but only if you are prepared to skip over the idiotic ones. This particular episode was illuminating. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?i=1000446746820 It wasn’t all new to me. I had already known about forest bathing for many years. I was surprised to find out that just seeing nature can have benefits to physical health, mental well-being, and even crime statistics for a city neighborhood. Perhaps my habit of looking at clouds and taking pictures of them isn’t only due to the fact that clouds rock. Maybe, without realizing that I was doing it, I was healing myself by connecting with nature. A specific quality of clouds that appeals to me is that, wherever I go, even in the most polluted urban environments, I can usually look up and see clouds that are not soiled with human fingerprints. I will also look at clouds when I am in the middle of a search. A search for a lost cat or a dog can be very stressful in a number of ways. There are a lot of demands on my attention. I need to focus on the search dog’s body language. At the same time, I need to be aware of possible evidence, I need to communicate with the owner of the dog or the cat, and I need to watch out for environmental and safety hazards for my dog. While focusing on those many critical components of the search, I also need to sift through my memories of past searches to remember what happened in a similar situation and what data or results might be applicable in the current situation. Also, I need to try to not fall on my face as my dog drags me over uneven terrain and slippery slopes. With all of that business in my brain during a search, you would think that I might have enough to pay attention to without taking time out to look up at the sky. According to scientific research, it appears that my metal function improves by taking these 15 second breaks to notice the clouds. I thought I was just weird, which is fine, but it turns out that I may have been improving my mental performance with this quirky behavior. When I went for a run this morning, my body felt tired, and I knew that I wasn’t going to be running as fast as I had been recently. I made a conscious choice, before I had even listened to the hidden brain podcast, to choose a trail through the woods for my run in order to at least enjoy nature, even if it wasn’t going to be the best workout. I did enjoy flying through the trees along the trail. I am certain that I benefited from not ingesting the typical car fumes on city streets. As I was going to sleep, with all of the dogs packed around of me, I wondered if the health benefits of having pets were due to the same sort of thing. Scientific studies have shown that having a cat or a dog in your life can provide measurable health benefits. I wonder if it is the same sort of effect, connecting with nature, connecting with the sorts of environments that we evolved in. During my typical day, my pursuits require me to communicate with hundreds of people. This is unnatural from the perspective of evolution. For millions of years, humans only knew a handful of people. Now, my Facebook group for lost dogs has 14,000 people. I will typically talk to a family member or two, several friends, and about five people in crisis because they’ve lost a family member. All of that talking to people is a drain on my mental energy even if they are people I enjoy talking to. Being around dogs and clouds and forests rejuvenates me. As we went to sleep in a comfortable bed, I scrolled through the pictures of clouds and dogs on my phone. I turned it off, and in the darkness, as I listened to Mu snore, and I felt Tino’s heart thumping under my hand, I imagined that we were in the middle of the forest, with no walls, only stars and clouds above, and the laughter of the owls. I was surrounded by my wolf pack, safe and secure. My goal every day is to take a picture that is good enough to add to my folder labeled Best. Currently this folder has 523 pictures out of 75,000 on my camera. I really like this picture we took today, for many reasons. Primarily, Tino is beautiful and I love him. I was trying to add visual interest by having him in front of the sculpture, but it actually worked out much better than planned. The angles of the bars echo the angles of his ears, and the triangles on his chest. The reflection in the water turned out better than it appeared to the naked eye. My iPhone chose just the right aperture to keep Tino’s whole body in focus and blur the sculpture. Without the blur, it could have seemed like his body was being pierced by metal poles. The visual separation of the blur makes Tino distinct, and the sculpture echoes his angles without detracting from his beauty. I was trying for a good photo, but it accidentally turned out much better than planned. Hence the 75,000 pictures and 523 Best.
We got a nice rain this morning, light and steady, lasting several hours. While it was great to walk in the rain, it would have been really nice to have this rain yesterday, when Tino was too hot during the search.
This morning we searched for Ginger in Redmond. We didn’t have much luck. We found plenty of her scent, but it looped around in circles. Also, it was too hot, 63 being the overnight low. One of the last searches I did with Kelsy was in that same area, when I first noticed her toes dragging. I love working with Tino, but it was a frustrating morning, with the heat and the difficulty. Tino did the best he could.
Buddy is a gorgeous boy, also very challenging. Animal control asked for our help because he was too smart to go into their trap. He had been running around near Lake Meridian for more than a month. I brought the big trap there, and he watched me set it up, which took about half an hour. He really likes the homeowner and will accept treats from her hand. Once the trap was ready to go, we put the food in the back, and he went in within a few minutes, and was trapped. He didn’t seem particularly alarmed or upset. I was in a hurry to go to another appointment, and I planned to come back a little bit later. As we were driving away, about three minutes after I had left, I got a call that he had escaped. He had climbed up the interior, and he tore a hole in the canopy covering the top. I didn’t know that was possible. It has never happened before.
Buddy came back around a little bit later, apparently not too upset about the incident. He still takes treats from the homeowners hand. He likes to go to the neighbors yard, where he jumps over their fence, and visits with two of their dogs. One of the dogs that he visits looks identical to him except about 25% larger. It seems pretty obvious that Buddy came from that yard and has been escaping. The owner of the other two dogs claims that Buddy is not his, probably because he doesn’t want to be blamed for any trouble that his dog gets into. We are still working on catching him. Once we do, the next challenge will be deciding what to do with him. I was sitting on the couch. Sky had the other half of the couch. Fozzie was sitting beside me with his front feet on me. Tino and Mu were running around the house at 90 miles an hour, in circles. Instead of turning to run in circles as he had been doing, Tino launched himself at the couch from eight feet away. He slammed his feet into the back of the couch, turned, and sat between Fozzie and Sky, without killing anyone. There definitely wasn’t room for a 93 pound German Shepherd there, but he parked himself real pretty, with no scratches or dings.
20 years ago, my dad ended up in the hospital because of a heart problem. It was a rare occurrence, called an aortic dissection, where high blood pressure drilled a hole in the inner lining of the aorta and blood was pumped up between the inner and outer lining, closing off the carotid artery, and giving him symptoms of a stroke. Since that time, he has been in and out of hospitals, and he has been disabled to various degrees, unable to work, unable to take care of himself. Although he certainly did some things that contributed to his condition, such as smoking for 20 years, his condition was radically harmed by at least four serious medical errors. There’s probably not much we can do about a series of doctors and nurses robbing him of 20 years of his life.
What I can do is to take steps to make sure I don’t end up in a hospital, as I approach the age when he began to have trouble. Last year, in mid-December, my heart wouldn’t beat right for about 12 hours. I didn’t go to the hospital because, first of all, I didn’t want them to make things worse, and also I seemed to be fine other than the erratic heartbeat. Since that time, I haven’t had any other issues with my heart, that I’m aware of. I have lost 25 pounds. I’ve started running again, and I am in better shape, and I plan to continue getting stronger. I’m sure there are procedural solutions to medical errors. As Neil deGrasse Tyson recently pointed out, in a typical 48 hours, 500 people die of medical errors, compared to 40 who die by handgun violence. One thing we can all do to cut down on medical errors is to stay in better health and stay out of hospitals. If we decrease the demand for healthcare services, theoretically, providers would do a better job in order to compete for your business. At the very least, and individual can reduce the chances of becoming a victim of a medical error by staying in the best possible health and staying out of hospitals if possible. Which is not to say that everyone who ends up in a hospital did something wrong. My cousin was a fitness instructor, in perfect condition, who died of cancer in her mid-fifties through no fault of her own. If I ever ended up in a hospital, I would suspect it was due to my addiction to jalapeño potato chips. There are certainly steps I can take to reduce the chances I will be the victim of a medical error. I have a stronger motive to stay out of hospitals than just my hatred of being there or the real possibility of serious medical errors. I have five dogs that depend on me. If I ended up in a hospital, or disabled, or dead, who would take care of my dogs? Who even could take care of my dogs? They are all crazy, and they would not be easy for someone to take. If they were split up, which would be a crime, someone could probably take care of Fozzie without too much trouble. Mu is a great dog, but in certain situations he could get into trouble. Tino, is also a great dog, of course, but he would probably kill someone who wasn’t up to the task of managing him. Sky and Viktor have persistent behavioral problems stemming from their time living on the streets, and they require a lot of patience and understanding, and special care. No one would want to let their dogs down by dying and forcing them to find new homes, but in my case it would really be a disaster. My heart doesn't belong to me. It belongs to them. I need to take care of my heart in order to be the best human I can be for my dogs. I also need to have a strong heart in order to handle the hard times ahead, some day. When Kelsy died, I was really surprised at how much it affected me. I had been through the loss of great dogs before, and I was expecting to experience the usual amount of grief. Losing Kelsy was much harder than anything I had experienced before. Months after Kelsy died, I read about something called broken heart syndrome. It is a real thing, not just in the imagination of people. The heart is actually weakened and damaged by a traumatic loss, to the point where it can be physically measured. I don’t doubt that the loss of Kelsy was harmful to my overall health. Knowing how hard it was to lose her, I have to expect that I’m going to have to live through similar waves of grief with each of my current five dogs. I’m going to need the healthiest heart possible if I can expect to live through those losses. If I lost all five of my dogs, I probably wouldn’t be too opposed to dying at that point. It might be a relief to join them in the earth. By the way, if you are reading this, and you survive me, please note that I wish to become compost after my death. It’s a new service available in Washington state. I’m actually looking forward to becoming compost, in a way, and giving something back to the earth. But if all five of my current dogs died, for one reason or another, I would still want to live, for them. For Kelsy in particular, I have at least four books in my head that I want to write about her. I want Kelsy and the other dogs to live for ever, in books. I’m going to have to stick around for quite a while to get all of that done, plus the books I’m working on for Fozzie and Mu. No doubt, I will want to write a book or ten about Tino some day. My heart doesn’t just belong to my five dogs. It also belongs to all the dogs and cats that I can help with my knowledge, experience, and services. If I can help a lost dog or cat, if I can save a life, in some ways it would be a crime if I didn’t. If I’m not helping a lost cat or dog, I feel like I’m letting them down. On the other hand, I do need to take some time away from it. Every day, I deal with people in crisis because they have lost a family member. It can have a toll on me. To protect my heart, to be better able to serve lost cats and dogs in the future, I need to step away some times and let others shoulder the burden. I need to go for a run in the woods, along a winding trail, in order to stay healthy for my dogs and for everyone’s dogs. Talking to people usually drains the energy from me. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy talking to people sometimes. It’s just an effort for me. For some people, talking to other people gives them energy. For me, talking to people wears me down. On average, I talk to 10 or 20 people a day, depending on the work load. I want to help people, and I want to talk to friends, but it’s not always easy for me. If I don’t respond to someone as quick as a good friend ought to, I hope people will understand that all that talking is an effort for me, sometimes. I need time with my goofy dogs, time away, time in the mountains, in the wilderness, to regenerate and to do my work the best I can. I’m prepared to say that my heart, my knowledge, and my abilities don’t belong to me. They belong to my dogs, my family, and my community. When I take time for myself, to workout, to relax, to read, I’m not being selfish, I hope. When someone calls me about their lost dog or cat, I want to give them the best chance at finding their lost family member, working hard and working smart with the search dog, and giving clear advice based on experience and collected data. I’m not always going to respond to everyone as soon as they would like, and I will work on being better about that. I hope people know, even when I don’t respond right away, I am either currently working on helping a lost pet, or I’m working on maintaining or improving my knowledge and abilities, so that I can do a better job. I saw this amazing cloud today. I caught a glimpse of the edge of it, and I almost didn’t pull over to look because it was merely interesting in that corner. I decided I would pull over to get a better look, and I’m glad I did. I had to drive to the elementary school to find enough sky without trees or power lines.
I’ve never seen a cloud quite like this, and it’s hard to imagine the physics, the heating and cooling and wind, that would create such a shape. As soon as I saw the whole thing, my first thought was, Flying Spaghetti Monster. I’m glad I was able to snap this picture and bear witness to his noodle appendages. |
James Branson
Principal at Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue, volunteer at Useless Bay Sanctuary, author of A Voice for the Lost Archives
December 2019
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