I know mothers are supposed to love their children equally, but I also know in their heart of hearts they have their favorite. I have four Labradors that I love dearly, but it is not hidden by any stretch of the imagination that Finn is my heart dog. Sometimes I feel like he takes up one half of my heart.
There is little room for the others that want to show me in their uncomplaining way that they can love me as much as Finn does. That they will work just as hard, just as long, and just as completely as he does.
When I got Cora as a little 9 week old pup from her breeder, she was second to Finn because he was still in the prime of his working career. We still had our adventures in New Orleans after Rita and Katrina and the doomed trek through the jungles of Guyana in front of us.
Cora at 10 and 14 weeks
She and I worked steadily through her training. Taking Finn out when the calls came, and leaving her at home. We trained through her little idiosyncrasies that, only with consistent training, will I come to understand and become a partner to her.
She easily breezed through her certification process, with only one hiccup: at her first time for her above ground test, she ate one of the gauze pads a source was on. I was mortified, since she never gave me a clue she’d do something like that. The evaluator, on the other hand, was about to toss her cookies thinking that Cora was going need surgery from a blockage from the gauze. However, that too, shall pass! I was able to reassure the evaluator several days later that she didn’t need to worry any more.
Everything else was perfect, so we went home to work on that little problem (I believer it is genetic, because her son had the same problem with his first test!) She and I got some real life training before she finished her certification when, as an exercise, several cadaver dog handlers were called to help find the rest of a decomposed body in southside Virginia. The police already had all they needed and we were offered the chance to get some real work. Three weeks pregnant with her first litter she made her first find, a clavicle and part of a shoulder blade!
We finished up her certification when she was about to turn
three.
But, I still took Finn first when we got called. Cora was
always back up. Around 2008, Finn was
still recovering from several nasty shoulder injuries and wasn’t quite back up
to speed. So with Finn 8 years old, I
finally had reality give me a hard slap. My yellow dog wasn’t
indestructible. Time to give those
waiting patiently in the wings a chance to shine.
And shine she did.
The first search I made the very difficult decision to run Cora first, was a publicity rodeo. We were briefed
that this was a search under the radar; that we should be able to get into and
out of this small construction site quickly.
It was just me and another dog handler.
She was going to run her dog in the half constructed buildings and Cora
and I were given the task of the mud pit outside of the half built frames. It was a half acre site surrounded by chain
link fencing, enormous earth moving equipment parked helter skelter, piles of
construction debris (lordy, do I hate rebar…), mounds of other scary stuff and
pools of water that could very easily cover deep pits.
Me and the other handler park at the site, and I get out
Cora to give her a potty break. I get no
more than three steps away from the truck and I’ve got a police officer stuck
to my side like glue. He informs me that
“this isn’t a very nice neighborhood” and I really shouldn’t wander off without
some assistance. Hm, this is turning out
a little more interesting than I thought.
The two of us were standing on a large mound of dirt next to
the construction entrance, when we both look up at the sound of “whoop, whoop,
whoop”. What should we see, not one but
TWO news helicopters and then all the news vans start pulling up next to the
chain link fence surrounding the site. Not sure how that can be considered under the
radar anymore:
The other handler and I look at each other, and we
shrug. She gets her dog out first and
heads for the dwellings. And I get Cora
out, put her search collar on, shake the bell a little and “Go Find!”
Thirty seconds later, she plops her ass on the ground, WTH? and I throw her the ball to fill her mouth so
she can’t bark.
I don’t want any of the cameras pointed towards me until we
figured out what just happened. Me and my walker turn to each other open
mouthed. This was supposed to be a burial situation and she never made a move
to dig. Our minder is completely unfazed.
Cora’s a cadaver dog and she’s supposed
to find dead people, so what’s the big deal?
Come to find out that a man had been murdered on that spot,
knifed and bled out, 3 weeks prior. We
never found what we were looking for though. And the guy is still missing.
Falling down buildings, dark crawl spaces covered in
cobwebs, junk, debris, back firing cars, heavy equipment, crowds now that is
her element. The more noisy and
distracting the environment, the happier she is.
I trust Cora implicitly now.
And it started with that search in North Carolina. She has slowly, steadily and consistently
shown me that she is just as much a partner in this world of search and rescue as
Finn. I still miss having the yellow dog
along with me, but I don’t feel like I am “missing” anything when Cora gets out
of the truck.
She’d finished all the big tests in May, but
we still had to jump through the rest of the hoops of obedience, agility and
temperament testing. I was dragging my
feet because once Darcy was certified, Finn would really be retired and I
wasn’t sure I could actually handle that.
Anyway, as Hurricane Irene was moving up the coast in August my team,
Blue and Gray SAR Dogs, were put on stand-by for possible deployment. I couldn’t go unless Darcy was certified;
that was all the incentive I needed. At
lunch, the Friday before Irene was scheduled to hit Virginia Beach, Darcy and I
were getting the last little check mark we needed to finish our obedience. The five minute stay. In the parking lot of Steven Toyota, in
Harrisonburg.
Darcy is not a patient dog.
Particularly not with cars buzzing here and there. People walking to and fro. And especially not with the bushes rustling
next to her. Thank God we didn’t have to
do the AKC sit stay. Because, she laid
down, sat up, laid down again. And sat
up again. But didn’t move from her
spot. The third time was the charm for
her (this was the third time we were trying to get that five minute stay check
mark), and she and I passed.
Then we waited and waited and waited for the word to get on
the road to the shore. Thankfully, Irene
was being the typical fickle woman, and only side swiped the Beach rather than
hitting it head on, so we weren’t needed.
So we waited more for that first call out.
On October 2nd, Deacon and his mom Cora where
with me at Hone Quarry doing some water training.
While we were training that Sunday, an unlucky private plane
was flying close by on a course from southern Virginia over the Allegheny
Mountains to its final stop in Pennsylvania.
It was raining that day and the trees in the higher elevations of the
mountains that ringed the quarry lake were rimmed in ice. Quite pretty to look. Deadly for the plane. It disappeared from the radar around the time
we were finishing up and loading the boat on to its trailer.
We got the call Tuesday evening to meet with the rest of the
team and other dogs and handlers from several other Virginia SAR teams at 7AM
Wednesday morning in the northwest corner of Rockingham County. There was only a skeleton crew available for
planning, and none of them were dog savy.
Then the head guy got a bright idea and snagged a few dog handlers from
each team, told us what we were going to be searching, then left it up to us to
plan the dog tasks.
Our search area was the entire Gobblebark Mountain. We split the mountain we were to search into
smaller areas, 8 task areas in all. The
easy task I’d devised first, was snatched up quickly by another dog team and I
was left with the task at the very other end of Gobblebark Mountain. According to the map we had, there should
have been a two track we could drive on that would get us close to the start of
our task. This little piece of short
lived joy just reinforced the lesson we were taught as young orienteer’s- maps lie. Especially about man-made stuff. There wasn’t a road, let alone a two track in
the area; there was just a path. A
boulder strewn, tree blocked path that not even an ATV could get through.
Do you see a trail through here?
We had to hike to the end of this “path” to even start the
task. Darcy was overjoyed that she got
to run free for the whole time. She
found the teams that started before us several times. She ran up the side of the mountain to find a
team that was already in their sector.
And she kept stealing one of my team mates gloves out of his back pocket
when he wasn’t paying attention.
We had no radio communication, even with Civil Air Patrol in
the sky to relay for us. We did our radio
check at our trucks, had one short communication a short distance in and then
nothing until we got back to the trucks seven hours later. However, we could hear what was going on over
the radio at certain points. Actually,
we mostly heard what was going on in West Virginia and their search operations
near Peru (pronounced PEE-rou J
). We even could hear the Hardy County
sheriffs office. But nothing from our own base. Twice during trek to just get to
the start of the task, a Medi-vac helicopter was needed to extract two
searchers on the West Virginia search teams.
One was heart problems and I think the other was a broken leg. Thank goodness we didn’t have any injuries on
any of our teams.
Two and half hours later we finally got to the GPS way point
that showed us the drainage we needed to start up. And up and up and up we
went. All the way to the top. Then all the way down to the bottom into
Hardy County, in West by God Virginia.
The trip to the top was breath taking. Literally.
I had to stop about 5 times to catch my breath. Darcy on the other hand, probably ran up and
down the mountain 3 or 4 times in the time it took me and my team to reach the
top. I had two skinny country guys from
our local ground pounding team and one VA State Police officer with me. The skinny guys ran circles around me and the
police officer. The police officer
didn’t have to stop as much as I did, but he wasn’t running up the side of the
mountain either.
Darcy having fun "finding" my walkers
This guy could run circles around me, while climbing the mountain
Even out in the middle of nowhere, there was always evidence
of a human presence. There was a broken
down cart with bicycle wheels, the ubiquitous glass liquor bottles
and even this little trail marker up on top of the mountain:
We ended up sliding down Gobblebark into Hardy County,
WV.
It is not easy walking a contour
line in that kind of elevation. As much
as I wanted to skirt around the back of the mountain to the other side, my
aching ankles and knees told me it was going to be easier leaf skiing down into
the hollow and find the right drainage to go back over the mountain. Darcy was still bouncing between me and my
team mates, just out of her skin excited she got to be the only dog out with
three humans to watch her strut her stuff.
This search ended up being about 7 hours long. We travelled about 6-7 miles, had over 1000
foot changes in elevation, and only were active in our task area for about 2
hours.
The plane was eventually found near Peru, West Virginia. Ironically, the end of our sector was closer to the crash
site than it was to our trucks.
I was dead, but Darcy… she was ready for another 7 hours of
fun on the mountain. Not bad for her very
first search.
I’ve been stepping up the pressure on Deacon as we get
closer to his certification tests.
Deacon has got many flashes of incredible brilliance,
interspersed with times of a southern California surfer dude attitude. That’s the attitude where “I’ve worked long
enough, it’s time to go home”. Not what
you want when you are in the middle of the woods, two hours into a five hour
task.
Just about every one of my dogs hits this stage in their
training. This is when training changes
from fun and games into a job that has to be done. I call it hitting the wall. The tasks move from being able to fall into a
scent pool to tricky scenting conditions like swirling breezes, overlapping
scent pools, buried sources and trying to extend the time between placement of source and the
actual running of the task. I do this to start making Deacon think. To make him start developing some problem
solving ability. I also move from just
one or two sources to many multiples because, contrary to popular thinking,
dogs know how to count. And Deacon
got to the point that after locating two sources, his brain went into neutral.
There is such a thing as mental endurance, or as I read
somewhere, nose time. It is the time a
dog is effectively using its nose to detect the target scent. This also plays into the “hitting the wall”
scenario.
To me, developing physical endurance is the easy part. It's the mental endurance that is difficult. Deacon has good physical
endurance, he can run beside a bike for two miles, can hike three to fours
hours or go on a fast trail ride with me on the horse for a couple of
hours. However, when I first started
pushing him, he was only effectively using his nose for about 30 minutes at a
time. The 30 minute timer went off and, boom, it was like a switch
got flipped off. To the uninitiated, he
continued to run around acting like he was actively searching. To my eye, though, he really wasn’t
working anymore. His whole demeanor changed.
He would work a bit manically, his nose was on the ground, snort like a
pig pretending he was working, but he just wasn’t getting anywhere. Just running around frantically, pushing his nose under this log or that clump of grass.
And that is what hitting the wall looks like. It is messy and ugly and sometimes you just want to throw your hands up, march your dog back to the truck and head home. The job was no longer fun or easy, it was WORK. Almost every dog gets to this point in their
career. And almost every dog comes
through the other side with a renewed devotion to the task, to the point that
finding that source is the be all, end all, of their life. It may not be “fun” anymore, but it becomes
an avocation, a passion that they would rather do with their human partner
under any kind of circumstance.
This change in attitude does not come quickly nor does it come easily. It
takes a dedication on the part of the human partner to remember the spark that
made them pick this particular canine partner.
To remember what their tired confused canine partner was like, to coach
them, and condition them. So the dog can come out the other side. During this time is when the true partnership develops. You see how your dog learns, and you develop training strategies that compliment his style. Your dog trusts you.
Ultimately, it is remembering how exciting this journey is
going to be with your canine partner at your side. That is what keeps you plugging away. Through the ups and especially through the
downs. It is tedious and it is boring, this training to set a work ethic. But, it will come. That excitement, that joy, that devotion to
the job. We will get a partner that
works WITH us, not FOR us.
By sticking with it, when it is work and not fun, showing to our dogs that we will stand with them no matter what, we get a
dog that will perform in the rain, the snow, disasters, the heat, brush so
thick a human couldn’t walk through it upright, all night, then all day the next
day. They want to do this with their human
partner because it is the reason they live, to find the source and show it to their partner.
I love fall. I love
the crispness that comes with the cooling temperatures. Such a relief from summer’s oppressive heat
and humidity. This year though, fall is
acting like a recalcitrant two year old that doesn’t want to go to bed. September 21st was the first day
of fall with equal amounts of daylight and night time. Once those nights get longer, though, Mother
Nature is by turns grumpy and glorious.
What I don’t like, especially for my horses, are the wild
swings we’ve had so many of this season.
From 80 degree days to 25 degree nights.
This time of fall they aren’t ready for that. Fall starts for the horses around the end of
August. Their coats lose the slick shine of their summer do and edges towards a
soft velvet plush that hints at the thick hairiness of their winter coat. Horses don’t grow their coats in response to temperature;
rather their coats thicken in reaction to the amount of daylight.
So in October, they don’t have their full coats and if it
starts raining or snowing when the temps dip below 30 degrees it can be brutal
for them.
Even more so because they won’t use the run in shed to stay
dry. That I will never understand. They’ve lived on pasture for the past 5 years
and haven’t seen the inside of a stall that entire time. You’d think they would have figured out by
now that: roof=dry and dry=not
freezing. But, nope, they’d rather
shiver standing under a pine tree.
I guess that’s what happens when a 1500 lbs body is paired
with a brain the size of a grapefruit.
This past weekend though, was just a little over the
top. Thursday it was in the mid to
upper 60’s, sunny and a sparkling fall day.
On Friday, Mom Nature got a little grumpy and on Friday night she had a
full blown temper tantrum. In the 30’s,
6 inches of snow and to top it off, no electricity. And by Sunday, back into the 60’s and snow
almost completely melted.
Saturday during Mom Nature's temper tantrum
Sunday, after she smiled again:
I really, really, REALLY hope this is not a harbinger of things to come. It would almost make me want to move back into town.
There comes a point in your working partners career when it is time to hang up the collar, put away the bell and let the youngin’s take the lead. Sounds easy. But it is a soul wrenching decision for me.
Finn came into my life, as a bouncing, rambunctious and annoying 9 week old puppy, after my old boy, Ben, destroyed his suspensory ligament in a back leg. I didn’t want Finn, didn’t need Finn and certainly didn’t think Finn could take Ben’s place. Finn didn’t take Ben’s place, because nobody could, he just squeezed himself into another part of my heart.
Matter of fact, I think he took over most of it. He and I have been through so much together, starting young. He was less than a year old when very early one morning, too early for the sun to be up, he crash landed on me while I was in bed. I was about to yell at him to get off of me, when I looked at my bedroom window and saw something my sleep befuddled mind couldn’t make sense of. The sun shouldn’t have been up and it certainly shouldn’t have been shining thorough that window… No, those were flames from the other side of my duplex that had made their way up the vinyl siding of my neighbor’s side. Good Morning!!
He got me up in time for me to get dressed, call 911 and make it out of the house with all the dogs. The house was completely destroyed, lost both of my cats and all because of a mentally deranged wanna be rent-a-cop. He poured a can of gas on my neighbors side of the duplex and lit it on fire.
Finn always worked WITH me, never FOR me and certainly never for himself. I trust him with my life, if I couldn’t quite make out a trail at night while it was raining and the fog moved in, I could follow his glowing collar and he always got me home. If I was cold he always curled up on my right side to keep me warm. If I was nervous, he leaned against me in comfort. When he is in the truck he’s got an unblinking stare that could put off the most determined of car jackers. He is bomb proof and nothing put him off his game.
He is a very serious dog. Not given to the normal rowdiness and silliness that marks the behavior of most Labs. However, he does have a game he likes to play with people that are afraid of dogs. When they aren’t looking, he’ll rush up behind them barking like a hound of hell, tail wagging and one ear cocked back at me. He wants to see how high he can make them jump. He can’t do it often, because they obviously don’t get the humor like he and I do, but when he does it is quite spectacular.
He did this to one of the porters that was carrying my gear in the jungles of Guyana, when he and I were down there looking for a lost plane. I finally had to yell some pretty explicit obscenities at him to make him stop after he made the poor man jump for the third time. It would have been completely in that porter’s rights to just dump my pack and make me carry it.
His first find was drowning that the police had been looking for more than three days. He found him in less than 10 minutes. His last task was in April, when he was just about to turn 11 years old, looking for a despondent in Goshen, VA.
But, now he slides a little too much coming down an embankment, and he is less sure of himself when working the pile. It is hard for my heart to agree with what my mind sees when he still goes on two mile bike rides, likes to go on trail rides and can still find cadaver sources quicker than my young ones.
So when the calls come, Darcy and Cora get in the truck with me
Cora
Darcy
and the old man has to stay home, breaking my heart and his.
I’ve tried I don’t how many different times to write another entry for this blog after posting the one about Teagan.All have gone in the virtual circular file.It’s been 3 ½ months since she passed away and so much has happened here at Glendair, but I just haven’t had the heart to write about them.
I still miss her dearly and keep expecting her to come home from the trainers anyday, but my heart breaks just a little more each time when I remember she can’t come home again.
In August, the Deacon man got his chance to become a certified HRD (Human Remains Detection) dog for VDEM (Virginia Department of Emergency Management).He was amazing.He was spectacular.He was confident.And he was fast.He found the first source in a two acre task area in less than 3 minutes.
Then promptly brought back to me.That is an epic FAIL.
One thing we have drilled in our heads, is crime scene preservation.It does no good to find the remains and then move them around so the police officers can’t tell what happened.And it really doesn’t help if your dog does that and you then have to answer to the defense attorney.Yikes!I’d hate to see that dog handler.
Deacon is almost ready.Actually, after all the work I’ve put into him for the past 6 weeks I think he is ready.He hasn’t picked up a source in over a month.But, if I really think he is over that little problem and I feel over confident that he will NEVER do that again, Murphy will hit me smack in the face and undoubtedly, it will be another epic fail.
There is a reason Deacon is a Labrador RETRIEVER… and if he can he will.
On June 27th, 2011, my heart was split in two. My diva, my hard headed, independent beautiful little girl, Teagan, passed away in the night. She was 15 months old. The most probable cause was mesenteric torsion.
She was opinoniated, bossy, independent. She could do a mean alligator death roll when she didn't want to do what you asked her to do. And had an ego that knew no bounds.
She was only 15months old, but I remember more stories about her than all my other dogs combined, the trouble she would get herself into. As a young pup, maybe 10-12 weeks old, she decided that she didn't want to be walking over the creek on the bridge, she'd rather be in the creek. Problem was the bridge was about 4 feet above the creek bed. And there was no water in the creek. Not only did she jump, she leaped exuberantly high up in the air. The look on her face on the way down was priceless: Oh s**t, this is gonna hurt. Splat she landed, got a mouth full of rocks, shook it off and race off into the pasture to chase the big dogs.
She could play stick like none of my other dogs. Darcy is world class, but Teagan ran circles around her.
She and Deacon got real good at reducing reusing and recycling socks. He'd eat one, throw it up and she'd swallow it back down. Socks...mm, mm, good
She was fearless when it came to the retrieving games. The only problem was, she thought that since she worked so hard to get the bumper that it was her's. Unless there was a long line on her, you weren't getting it back. So she was sent off to big girl camp to learn that there are consequences for ignoring momma...
The first report I got from the trainer was all good. The second, kind of funny and glad I wasn't the one having to deal with her. She thought she could get a way with the crap I put up with. Unfortunately for her, the trainer is a former Marine Drill Master. At one point he told his wife to shut doors, close the windows and ignore what she heard coming from the kennel.
Remember her alligator death roll ability? The second day she was there, the trainer gave a leash correction, a little pop on the leash and collar. She threw herself on the ground and pitched a hissy fit that would have done a New York City fashionista wannabe proud. She rolled around and around and around on the end of the leash, until the trainer told her in no uncertain terms she was being stupid and that wasn't going to fly with him.
She still tested him though. One of the first things a retriever is taught is the "hold" command. The trainer opens the dog's mouth, places a wooden dowel in her mouth, closes her mouth and repeats "hold". Sounds simple, right? Try opening a dogs mouth when she is gritting her teeth together as hard as she can.
They got through the rough start and when I went to visit her, she most eager to stay with the trainer because she got to do a lot of fun things with him.
She was an awesome cadaver dog-in-training. More methodical and patient when trying to find the source than her older brother and her mother. I still remember at one training, only being able to see her butt as she tried to wiggle her way down into a pile of rocks to touch the source.
I will miss her. I will miss the incredible journey she and I were about to embark on. I'll miss seeing her get her first orange hunt test ribbon. I'll miss the satisfaction of her find some poor lost soul and give at least some peace of mind to a victims family.
Most of all I will miss her in the quiet of the evening when she falls asleep in my lap, belly up, feet stuck straight up in the air, and her head hanging over the arm of my chair, snoring gently as she recharges for her next adventure.
Good bye my fireball. You burned bright, hot and way too fast.
When out searching, I am always on the lookout for all the big beasties that can harm me and my canine partners.Lions, tigers and bears, oh my!Cora has the habit of finding bear dens, and once found one that was occupied!My teammates won’t let me live down what I looked like running away from the den.And all the occupant was doing was snoozing peacefully, its humungous head resting on its crossed paws.
We’ve run into a few snakes, and saw a few bobcats on the way to tasks.
But, it’s the wee beasties that drive me insane, especially in the summer time.There’s gnats, yellow jackets, black flies, deer flies, big black horse flies, little green horse flies, spiders, centipedes, millipedes just to name a few.All laughing at my attempts to prevent them from invading my eyes, my nose, biting my flesh, and drinking my blood.Over the weekend, as I was hiding for a team mate, I put my hand down as I was sitting next to a tree.And immediately felt like I’d stuck my hand in a flame. Pulled my hand back and it was already starting to swell.Fortunately, it didn’t go much beyond my thumb and now I have a pretty rash!My team mate and I think it was this that got me:
I’ve had one search where I couldn’t search a major portion of my sector because we kept running into yellow jacket nests.On that same search, one of the walkers had to be transported to the hospital after getting into a nest of them.Just last week, I moved my portable mounting block to get on my horse and started running as fast as my fat little legs would carry me down the driveway.It appears that a nest had taken up residence under the block and didn’t appreciate the move to a new locale.The whole nest seemed to come boiling out in a black cloud of anger, just looking for a victim.All of us were fortunate and didn’t get stung, much.
Right now though, my least favorite wee beastie is the gnat.I could be swimming in a vat of 100 proof insect repellant, and they’d still figure out a way to get in my eyes, up my nose or inhaled.They are just wretched.The only thing that works for me is a branch snapped off of the nearest tree that I can wave around like a mad woman. I’ve often wondered what my dogs are thinking when they are coming back to me to indicate and find me furiously waving round this leafy frond over my head.
Then my least favorite wee beastie of them all, the tick. There are so many different kinds, the dog tick, the lone star tick, the deer tick and on and on.I hate them for a myriad of reasons.They are useless blood sucking disease carrying parasites that serve no useful purpose in the grand scheme of things.I might be a little biased in my thinking after having to deal with many a dog dying of Lyme induced kidney failure or the fact that my Finn almost died from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
Mountain Laurel in its full glory is beautiful to behold. You can turn a corner on a hiking trail and be stopped in your tracks by the sight of acres and acres of it tumbling down the mountain side like white water river rapids.
rushing towards you
and tumbling down hill
As you get closer the subtle fragrance tickles your nose.The buzzing bees, attracted by the flowers, are industriously collecting their nectar.The bell shaped flowers, delicately veined in pink, are beautiful in their simplicity.
However, I rank Mountain Laurel and her cousin, Rhododendron, right up there with ticks.
My very first search EVER, after certifying my first dog Ben, was looking for a lost 9 year old girl in a vast tract of harvested timber.Pine trees planted so close together I could barely walk through them. I was able to walk the top of my sector along a two track. Then plunged into the woven thicket of pine branches and Virginia green wire. After spending, what I thought was most of the night bushing wacking through that, I was never so happy to see the far boundary.We broke out of the mess and breathed a sigh of relief (ha!) at the open ground under the set of electrical transmission towers that marked the boundary of my sector.They were set on a slope so steep most of the way down Ben and I were skiing on old leaf litter.We were spit out at the bottom of the sector into a creek bottom.Whew, I thought, we can do some real searching, since it was night time and the scent should be dropping into the drainage.
Oh what a naïve newbie I was.For in front of me was this vast mat of tangled branches of old growth Mt Laurel.
a small smattering of mt laurel
I stopped my team for a moment.Gave Ben some water and a little food.Readjusted my pack, made sure my head lamp was on straight, and had my clippers ready.The Gods of Fate were probably having a good laugh at my expense, because I really had no clue of what I was getting into.
I boldly strode into the Mt Laurel and was stopped short no more than 10 feet in. Head check right, head check left. Headlamp just showed more Laurel, no path, no nothing. Even the stream was clogged with its branches. Got my trusty pruning shears out. The Gods of Fate laughed again.
When I say old growth laurel, there are branches as thick as my wrist and trunks as big around as my leg. All the pruning shears were good for that night was to scratch an itch.
The end of my sector was supposed to be 3 drainages in or about 300 meters.There was no navigating skill I could use to find the end of the sector.The laurel blocked my ability to see the drainages.And in order to pace count 300 meters I had to be able to pace.I am not exactly sure what my pace count is when I am belly crawling under, over and through this crap.
I had to sling my pack underneath me.If I’d kept it on my back, I would have been so tangled it would have taken a bulldozer to get me out of there.I even had to take Ben’s vest off because he kept getting trapped by the snarl of branches and trunks.Once he was free of the vest, he was able to slip and slither through with no problems. Especially when he was in the creek bed.
When I and the rest of the team could finally stand upright, I made the executive decision to head up hill and back to the truck.We weren’t accomplishing anything and could realistically become part of the problem.
That hike back to the truck was a whole ‘nother mess.Some of us were having hallucinations from lack of sleep (I was working on 60 hours of searching with only 5 hours of sleep). My own special hallucination was some weird floating head that looked like it could belong to some long ago mountain man, following me just on the edge of my peripheral vision.
From that very first search, I learned to hate mountain laurel and rhododendrons with a passion. And, yep, a lot of my searches end up in patches of those evil plants. At night. In the rain. And sometimes with fog.
Last night I went on my first search mission with out the alpha dog. And I only lasted through one task, before I was too overwhelmed to go on.
Since Finn is 11 years old and is still recuperating from major thoracic surgery, I've been forced to retire him. Finn is actually my second air scent dog, the first one being Ben. He was found wandering the streets of my home town. I am not sure how much he counts, since he was only operational for about 2 years before he suffered a career ending injury to his suspensory ligament in one of his rear legs.
Finn has been my do everything, go every dog. The places we have traveled to and people we have helped are uncountable. Everything I asked him to do, he's done. But my favorite thing is his attitude: "Come on! Let's go see whats around this corner". If I was turned around, which happened more than once when we were out searching in the dark, fog and rain, all I had to do was follow his glowing collar and there was the trail. He is my partner, my protector; he is a part of me.
So leaving him at home brought forth an amazing array of emotions. A part of me is missing and I was unsure in the woods with out him there to guide me. I don't trust another dog as much as I trust him. There was heart aching sadness and with that came the irrational feeling of wanting to quit everything. That I couldn't do this without him.
I wonder how long I will feel like this. Darcy, my new dog, shouldn't have to labor under the unfair load of trying to live up to Finn. She is her own dog and needs to have the chance to write her own story. Just as Finn wrote his own incredible epic.
On his way home from Guyana in 2009 after thoroughly pissing off a fashionista-wanna be by jumping up on her plane seat and leaving his beautiful golden Lab hair all over it.
I know my alpha dog, Finn, is getting old. I see him slowing down. I even have a young dog coming up quickly through the ranks to take his place. In my mind though, he is immortal.
Just two weeks prior to what I am about to describe, he’d spent several hours in the mountains near Lexingtion, Va on a cadaver search. And was sounder, both mentally and physically, at 11, than my younger cadaver dog was when the search was over. This was all in the back of my mind when my search team, Blue and Gray Search and Rescue Dogs, were called out to assist in the search, rescue and recovery mission after the devastating tornadoes that flattened Glade Springs, Virginia at the end of April. Finn is an old hand at disaster work. He’s spent time in New Orleans after Katrina and knows how to navigate jungles, both the green ones and the steel ones. So he was the first one I got out of the truck.
He and I were walking down to the first rubble pile we were assigned, and he stumbled on smooth ground, doing a face plant. That had me a little worried. Then when he didn’t want get on the pile; this from a dog that climbed 30’ piles hour after hour in the 9th Ward, I wasn’t just worried, I knew there was something very wrong.
The following Monday, Finn got up on my picnic table, reluctantly let me hold off a vein and I got two tubes of blood to send into Antech. I don’t remember what I was expecting to see, maybe elevated BUN and Creatinine. Indicators of failing kidneys. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see a blood calcium level of 17.3. When the normal high is only 12.
Calcium is delicately held in balance by two pairs of parathyroid glands on either side of the thyroid glands in the neck:
Too high, cardiac arrhythmias occur. Too low, seizures and tetany occur. Both easily lead to death. Low calcium is something most dog breeders are very aware of. Bitches can develop low blood calcium when they are nursing a large litter and develop eclampsia. However, there are very few things that cause the blood calcium to go high, all of them devastating. In school I was taught when there is a high calcium level it is time to search for the tumor that is causing it.
I can deal with mayhem, destruction, broken bones, HBC’s and other assortments of catastrophes as long as it isn’t my dog. When one of my dogs ends up with even the most minor of problems, I become the veterinary client from hell. Irrational, illogical and very emotional. However, a small rational part of my brain was still working and it pushed me to start researching how to figure out what was happening to my heart dog.
As a veterinarian, I belong to a wonderful resource called Veterinary Information Network. With the click of a button, I can get questions answered, research obscure clinical signs, and get help putting all the pieces together. So that is where I started. First, I had to determine if the elevated calcium was a true number and not lab error. That required an ionized calcium level. If that was elevated then it truly was an accurate number and I need to continue to find the source of the elevation. This test requires a lot of special handling of the blood, the most important being the blood has to arrive at the lab frozen. Luckily, I have a lot of ice packs to use for my vaccine cooler and several were sacrificed to the cause. It only took a day to get those results back, and unfortunately it confirmed the levels as being a real number and not lab error.
Back to VIN I went. The next step is determining if the elevation is due to the parathyroids having a fit or if there was a tumor inducing the calcium levels to elevate. There is an interesting test from Michigan State University vet lab called the hypercalcemia of Malignancy Profile. It measures two specific hormones, the Parathyroid Hormone (PTH) and the Parathyroid Hormone related protein (PTHrP). PTH is the hormone that keeps the calcium levels, well, level. PTHrP mimics PTH causing the calcium levels to elevate. If the PTH is elevated, then the parathyroid glands are working over time. If the PTHrP is elevated that means a tumor is producing it making the calcium to go up.
Finn’s results were difficult to understand because not only was his PTH zero, so was his PTHrP. His parathyroids weren’t working and the tumor wasn’t producing PTHrP so what was making his calcium go so high? I’ll probably never know for sure, but all the specialists said to continue looking for a tumor.
In intact male dogs there are two places malignant tumors are most commonly found: in the prostate and in anal sacs. I couldn’t palpate a mass in either one of these places. And none of his external lymph nodes were enlarged (the first place lymphoma likes to pop up). But there are lymph nodes internally that aren’t readily palpable. The next step in this dance was chest radiographs and an abdominal ultrasound.
While I was doing office calls, my two technicians were able to get 3 views of his chest (which is standard when looking for tumors in the thorax). My heart almost literally stopped when I looked at the first radiograph. Sitting right in front of his heart was the tumor. An ugly malevolent mass taking up the first 1/3 of his chest. The first thought that went through my head was he had lymphoma and I only had my boy for another 2-3 months. The next thought was how in the hell can he still feel good enough to continue working? I mean he was just on a difficult mountain search not 2-3 weeks prior to this.
He still needed the abdominal ultrasound done, but I couldn’t stand to be around when it was done. I don’t think I could have held it together in front of all my co-workers if nastiness was found in Finn’s abdomen. So I left.
While Finn had his ultrasound done, I took his rads to the internal medicine DVM at Veterinary Internal Medicine Practice of Northern Virginia for an unbiased evaluation of what was in his chest. By the time I got back to the clinic the u/s was done. I asked them to just fax the results to me, because I was sure all his abdominal lymph nodes were enlarged and I wanted a few more hours of ignorance. Finn snored in the back of the truck on the way home, oblivious.
I got a call from the wonderful Dr. Deppe at VIMP before I even got home. He confirmed that it was a mass. But he gave me some hope when I told him that none of his external lymph nodes were enlarged, that we need to consider a thymoma. A benign tumor of the thymus. He opened up an appointment for my boy the next afternoon to try and get a fine needle aspirate of the mass. There was even better news sitting on the fax machine at home: his abdominal ultrasound was clean, even his spleen looked normal.
Turns out Finn is a grumpy drunk! He needed to be sedated for the ultrasound guided fine needle aspirate of the mass. Not that I am complaining, though. I didn’t want him moving while they were sticking a needle into his chest so close to his heart. But boy was he rumbly grumbly when I picked him up. I soon had the samples winging their way via FedEx air to Colorado State University lab for cytology and also to have a PARR test done. PARR is a test that helps to determine if the lymphocytes are reactive and come from many different lines or if they are neoplastic and all come from the clone of one lymph cell. It’s not cheap but helps with treatment options.
More good news when the cytology and PARR results came back. Cytology was suggestive of a thymoma and the PARR results also pointed in the direction of a thymoma. If you want an explaination of the PARR test click here: CSU PARR test
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I was ecstatic, Finn just wanted breakfast.
The results showed up on Monday morning. By Monday evening, Finn was scheduled for surgery Wednesday morning with Dr. Bradley at Veterinary Surgical Referral Practice of Northern Virginia. His clinic is in the same building as Dr. Deppe’s clinic, and I’ve referred many of my own clients to him. He is a surgeon with an unbelievable work ethic and astounding talent.
I was 95% sure I wanted to do this. But there was a small part of me that questioned my motives for doing such a massive, invasive surgery on an elderly dog. But he was healthy otherwise and there was an excellent chance that the tumor was benign. Combine all that with the fact that Finn has given me his all every time I asked him, quieted those doubts.
I had to be at Dr. Bradley’s by 7AM, so in the pre dawn light of Wednesday morning I loaded up Finn in the truck for the 2 hour drive to the clinic. I won’t lie and say I didn’t shed any tears on the way up there. My mind going to the worst case scenarios, all ending in death. And the little doubts that I thought I’d come to grips with were rising up and throwing themselves at me, making me so very conflicted. He just looked so healthy that the irrational part of my brain made me doubt there was really anything wrong with him. I couldn’t stop from trying to touch him the entire way up there. Finn on the other hand, got impatient with me, hurmphed at me and moved to the back of the truck to continue his snooze like he normal does when we are on a road trip.
Dr. Bradley explained how the surgery was going to go. He does his thorocotomies from the left side, and not through the sternum, because he feels they recover more quickly. The difficulty of this surgery was the mass was so far forward, he was going to need to make the incision farther forward than he normally does. That meant that the muscles of his shoulder were going to be involved, not just the intercostals muscles. But, I trusted him when he said that he’d get better exposure to the tumor and was more likely to get it all. As I was walking Finn back to his surgery cage, in the cage next to his was a dog that was going home that morning after her own thorocotomy for a lung lobe abscess. Seeing her made me more comfortable with my own decision to go ahead with Finn’s surgery.
His surgery was scheduled for 10AM and was supposed to be done by 12 noon. Dr. Bradley called me at 12:05 to tell me that it was a text book surgery and Finn was in recovery. I start letting everyone know my boy is doing well, and I am over the moon! My heart heads back to where it is supposed to be and not in my throat.
Everything comes to a crashing halt when I get another call from Dr. Bradley too soon after the first call. And the nightmare begins. Dr. Bradley is very specific when he says he’s going to call, and is never more than a couple of minutes off. If he calls at another time, he really doesn’t need say much, I already know Finn is either dead or dying.
He’d gone into respiratory arrest.
For some reason his lung stopped working and started filling with fluid. He couldn’t breathe, his lungs were so filled with fluid no oxygen could pass. They tried to pull off some of the fluid with Lasix, but it didn’t work well or quickly enough. So they put him on a ventilator. Later, both he and Dr. Deppe came up with a few reasons why it happened: re-expansion injury or neurogenic pulmonary edema. His radiographs really didn’t match up with either one, but there is not a lot of data on those conditions in dogs because they usually die. All we could hope for was that it was a solitary event and that the ventilator would keep him alive long enough for his lungs to repair themselves.
I called back shortly after Dr. Bradley's first call because I really couldn’t process what he told me during that phone call. Not surprising, after going from a high of him coming through surgery to having him put on a ventilator. Dr. Bradley didn’t give much different information from the first call, but at least now my brain had a better chance of trying to understand what was happening. Didn’t make it any easier though. My precious Finn, my heart dog, my partner, was dying and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.
I went around to the rest of my house calls, but I am not quite sure how much sense I made. I think I helped the vomiting dog and the diabetic cat, but I don’t remember. I was just waiting for the call. “The call”. I never wanted that call. I’ve had to make that call to my own clients, but it was shear torture being on the other side. My phone was now enemy number one, but also a life line. I didn’t know whether I should just throw it out the window or just sit and stare at it.
I finished my housecalls around 5PM, but I couldn't go home. He wasn’t there, might never be back there and I wasn’t prepared for empty hole that was there in his place. I tried distracting myself at Barnes and Noble, but kept getting strange looks as I wandered aimlessly around, picking up books, putting them down and the occasional tear. I finally left. There were 4 hungry dogs at home that needed to pee.
I almost made it home before I broke down. Driving and texting can’t hold a candle to how dangerous it is to drive when you can’t see the road for the tears. I don’t recommend it. Dr. Bradley had asked me earlier if I wanted to come up and visit with him. I just couldn’t do it. I wanted to remember him as I walked him back to his cage, tail wagging, talking smack to the dogs in the cages as he walked by (he’s good at that), not with tubes in him. That wasn’t him, just a facsimile of him.
Thunderstorms start rolling through as I was sitting at the computer in my office, aimlessly wandering around the internet, when Dr. Bradley’s number pops up on my phone. He was not supposed to call until 10PM when he went into check on Finn, and it is only 9:15PM. I didn’t want to pick it up, just stared at it and it wouldn't stop ringing. Surprisingly, my voice was actually half way normal when I finally answered the ring, when all I wanted to do is throw up. Nor did I drop the phone.
The thunderstorms that had rolled through my town, ended up in Manassass, where the clinic is located, knocking out power to the clinic. Two very quick thinking LVTs ran a power converter from a pick up truck in the parking lot into the clinic, plugged in an extension cord to it and attached the ventilator to the extension cord. Good Lord! A power failure, just makes the whole thing so much easier. Dr. Bradley was just calling after the fact to let me know what happened. His blood oxygen saturation never went below 85% and one of the LVTs hand bagged him until they got the extension cord set up. Ironically, the week before the clinics started a search for a generator large enough to power both clinics in case something like this happened.
I was told not to call before 7:30AM on Thursday. The fact that I got no further calls from Dr. Bradley was a little comforting. Again, I was surprised that I could hold the phone when I called, my hands were sweating and shaking so much. An interesting sensation, to be sitting a chair and feel like you've run a hundred yard sprint there is so much damned adrenaline pumping your body. My heart felt like it was about to explode.
Dr. Bradley calmly told me he’d taken Finn off the ventilator at 6:15 that morning and continued to breathe on his own, maintaining normal blood oxygen levels on room air. And that he continues to recover normally from anesthesia. Normally!
When I went to visit him on Thursday evening, he was weak and unsteady, but who wouldn’t be? He ate like the Lab he is when I was there. While laying on the floor next to him, the LVTs and I talked a little about what happened. More light was shed on what happened, especially the detail about the power converter and the extra tidbit that Finn had turned an ugly shade of purple before he got on the ventilator. No one there really expected him to make it, including Dr. Bradley. Me either. Of all the dogs I know of that ended up on a ventilator, Finn is the only one that lived.
He never looked back. He came home on Saturday with an OMG huge incision on the left side of his chest. And other than a too fast drop in his blood calcium that I am supplementing right now, the biggest issue he’s got is pain from the cut muscles. The anti-climactic news was the biopsy confirmed it was a benign thymoma.
He is sleeping at my feet right now, and nothing is better than that.
My team mate Misty Sampson made this video of Finn working the 9th Ward after Katrina. It is one of my favorites:
