Blackjack

A strong name for a strong dog.  A dog that should have had his strength celebrated.  But he wasn't.  He was tied to a box at the back of the property.  The only reason I was there was someone in the family had finally stood up to the owner and said enough was enough.

People tell me that putting a beloved pet down must be the hardest part of my job. It's not.  It's the old dogs chained to a box at the back of the property, forgotten, except to have food thrown at him occasionally.  Those are the ones that hurt.

Last Friday was a miserable day.  Cold, raining and he was my last appointment of the day. As I pulled up to a neatly kept double wide, I scanned the yard for the dog.  Because I wasn't sure this was the right place.  Then I saw the box.  And the worn circle of dirt that was this dogs' existence for 16 years.  A circle of flooded mud, with a heavy chain staked in the middle.  The box a collapsing homemade affair of plywood.

I stomped up the stairs cursing the rain, angry that I had to do this.  The woman that opens the door tells me that her daughter, the one who finally made the appointment, wasn't here yet.  I didn't care, I was starting no matter what. 

The skies opened up as I was walking back to him.  And I started grousing to myself about how wet I was getting.  Suddenly, I realized it didn't matter.  If he could endure years of this, I could honor him by staying with him during these last moments of his life.  I could go home to dry off and get warm.  He never could.

He should have been wary. He should have been suspicious.  He should have been a resentful dog.  But, he wasn't.  

He hobbled over to greet me in the typical Lab fashion, on legs that were riddled with arthritis.  Backbone showing.  Eyes cloudy with age. And bumped my hand for a pet. 

I loaded up my syringe and unclipped his chain, a chain big enough to tow a car with, because he needed to be free one last time.  

It didn't take long, releasing him from his hell.  I stayed with him, whispering what a good dog he is, the best really.  Then the rain stopped and I went home.

Ode to a Bear Dog...or not

Pepsi the Bear Dog

      You never quite know what to expect when you pull up to a search.  All you know is there is someone lost in a vast expanse of forest, swamp, corn fields, mountains and other assorted terrain that normal people would take a picture of from their car.

     While training a SAR dog you’ve got to think outside the box when training so your dog can handle all the weird stuff that is thrown at her.  Dogs coming into your territory, bears chasing you out, deer running across her line of sight.

      A couple of evenings ago, training took an interesting turn.  As I was heading into the woods with Kell, my neighbor popped out to say that their bear dog slipped her collar and was doing her thing in the National Forest.  The dog is a sweetheart, so I thought this would be a good experience for Kell.  The distraction of a bear dog hunting up a bear.

     Oh, did I say that just a week ago I had two adult bears ambling through the pasture on an evening stroll, the neighbors have had their dumpster dumped and they’ve caught several of them on their trail cams.  And there have been plenty of sign telling me the bears are sticking around, torn open dead snags and bear poop.  Lots and lots of bear poop.

Hungry Bear

     So, I was okay with another dog running interference for me and mine since there was a very good chance we could run into Mr. Bruin.

Kell did her thing, found her sock with no problem. Then Pepsi did hers.  She dropped a spell over the two of us as we listened her baying on a scent high on the ridge to our south.   Kell and I stopped for a minute to listen to her and I think we both were a little in awe of the pure instinct that Pepsi gave voice to. I did wonder a little what Kell was thinking when she heard that.  Wishing she could follow or thankful she had a warm bed to sleep on every night? A little shiver of excitement or dread, I’m not sure, traveled down my spine. But, we continued down the trail back to the house.

Then Pepsi popped up in front of us, and I almost added to the bear scat found on the trail.  Because all I could think was she chased the bear back around us and we were walking straight into a very pissed off momma bear and her cubs.

Moral of the story?  It’s nice to have a bear dog clear the way in front of you, but it’s not good for your heart or your underwear when they end up behind you.

PS:  When out, later, on a ride on my horse, we scared up that momma bear and her twins.  Interesting ride after that.

No bears for me

Don't Be Fooled

It was one of those spring evenings that you dream about.  Cool breeze, low humidity and plenty of hours of day light after work.

Kell is insanely active dog. Always busy and looking for things to get into. Whether it is rounding up all the shoes not guarded by doors and baby gates, running down marks a 100 yards out in the field, following the horse on trail rides or hunting down my team mate that always seems to get lost (I always wonder what she thinks every time she finds Dan).

And this evening was scheduled for SAR training at a friend's farm. I wanted to try something different with her.  Teach her to use her nose every way she can, whether it be air scenting or tracking.  The hay field hadn't been mowed yet but there were paths knocked down that were only a third as high as the grass that was going to go to hay.

My plan was to have her find the article the subject left then see if she would track the subject along the mowed path or air scent through the unmowed grass.

She took the hard way.  Air scenting through the waist high grass.

That's were I was fooled.

It was only a 20 minute problem, with a fit dog on a cool spring evening.

She over heated.  To the point that she wouldn't give me her indication.  She had the classic "I'm too hot grimace", lips pulled back as far they could go, eyes squinting, thick tongue, the works.

It took almost 15 minutes under the cedar trees with judicious amounts of water poured on the pads of her feet and turning the dirt under chest into mud.

Kell needs to learn to pace herself.  But, I, as her handler, need to know how to keep her safe from herself while she learns that pace.

Lesson learned?  Tall grass is hard to work through and carry twice as much water as you think you need.  Even if it is only a 20 minute task, it could be the difference between life and death.

Where upon a SAR dog handler got bored

I’ve been a canine search and rescue dog handler for close to 20 years now (good God!! Has it really been that long?). Six dogs through state certification, without a wash out. So, I’ve either been very, very lucky or had good dogs. Or maybe a little bit of both, with great team mates to train with.

I finished off Tally in HRD, she's my 3rd HRD dog,  and thought, “Now what?” I was bored. Training became boring, throw some source out, feed the dogs when they find it. I felt like Fred, the Dunkin Donut baker, “time to make the doughnuts”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2AGc70Eq9k

Finn, my first real search dog, half of my heart, the dog that I did everything with and he always asked to do more,  had also started his final decline during this time.

A text would come through announcing a search. Live find, HRD whatever, I resented being called out. A sabbatical was becoming more and more promising.

This past April 1st, I posted on Facebook that I was retiring from SAR.  No one took me seriously, but most didn't know how close it was to being true.  I was tired.

Then this thing happened:

Glendair's Celtic Kestral, from my Tally

From the first she ran through life at mach speed.  Nothing and no one got in her way.  If there wasn't door to go through to get to the other side, she made her own.  Or even if there was a door, she liked to make her own.

That's 1/4 inch reinforced glass, with pieces of glass that landed 3 feet out in front of where it was supposed to be.  She didn't die, she didn't break her neck or fracture her skull.  Just two small lacerations for her trouble.  The local TV station was there that day, doing a story on us.  Thank god, they weren't recording...I'm not sure I would want to hear what I actually yelled, after the sonic boom of her head shattering the glass cleared from my ears.

The next week she considered jumping off of a 12 foot high concrete wall to a concrete slab below.

Climbing the pile at 16 weeks

I got health insurance on her the following week.

She helped me rediscover why I started this obsession in the first place.  The joy of getting into the forest, following her as she explores the scent on the air.   With her help, feeling the direction of the wind current (no puffer bottle needed, just the nose twitch that says the current has changed). Learning to understand what her body language was telling me. The concentration in her face as she tries to figure out where that scent went when she dips into the drainage and it floats over her head. Following her as she quarters through the scent cone and watching that cone get smaller and smaller the closer she gets to the subject.

The shear joy as her body starts to wiggle from nose to tail when she's in the strongest scent pool and knows she's about pounce on her subject.

Then trying to think of situations that might confuse her, so she learns how to problem solve.  And watching that brain work as she conquers each goal.  She keeps me on my toes, and figures things out before I even know what goal we are working for that day.

I hope you never get lost. But if you do, this is what you might see just before your human rescuers get to you.

I hope I get to see this for many years to come:

     Too Soon

     He was magnificent. Big, beautiful, bold, and ball crazy.  He answered the call through cold and wet and muck and mountain laurel and dark.  He was able to bring two people home in his career. And he was only 8 years old when it all came to a crashing end.

     He was not the most social of dogs, Chessie’s rarely are. They like their person and not much else. He liked to wreak havoc in his world.  Stirring up trouble everywhere he could, mainly because he was bored when he wasn’t searching. So when not searching, he appointed himself the job title of “pot stirrer”.  He had his job, and get out his way when he was working. Self-appointed job or out in the search field.

     He ended up with his handler (who was a pointy eared dog lover from way back) after basically being dropped on her door step as a puppy.  He was suffering from puppy strangles and looked like he was at deaths door. His face and muzzle swollen to two or three times its normal size.  Gobs of green pus rolling out of his eyes.  And skin lesions everywhere. A little prednisone, some antibiotics, and a tincture of time, viola, a Malinois in a floppy eared body.

     He was a thing of beauty when he was in his search harness. He cleared logs with wings on his feet; crashed through underbrush, ripping hide from his side with nary a sound; climbed mountains with springs in his legs; and danced across rubble like it was a ballroom. All the while not so patiently waiting for his handler to catch up with him. But that’s the case for most of our search dogs.

     His career was cut short by a horrible disease called Degenerative Myopathy. It is a disease that is as cruel as it is devastating. His mind still sharp, but his rear end quit working. He was supposed to be able to retire when it was time and enjoy a well-earned rest.  But, maybe, just maybe, that would have been shear torture for him, not being able to work.

    

     It was a beautiful sunny and cool morning. We followed an easy path, one that wouldn’t tie up his barely functioning rear legs in knots.  Put his harness on, with the bell. And he changed from an old tired dog that didn’t understand what was happening to his body into one that we remembered from before.  His nose in the air seeking that scent, ranging far and an extra spring in his step that we hadn’t seen in a long time.

     He found his last person, then left us in the arms of his handler, crunching on his favorite ball and talking smack.

     There will never be another one quite like him. 

Uzi, you son of a bitch, you will be missed.

It's just a dog

Except when he isn't. Just a dog. 

Trapper was an elkhound shepherd mix with a little West Virginia Mountain Walkin’ dog mixed in. Nothing special, no titles earned, no tricks learned, no search and rescue finds.  Just loved and adored by his family. 

The first year of his life was a horrible mixture of abuse (outright- being kicked while chained) and neglect (no food or water or shelter).  But, somehow, he kept a flame of self-respect and pride burning.

That flame was covertly and sometime not covertly fed by his neighbors.  During his first winter, the son would sneak over before the school bus came, and tuck him under his coat to warm him.  The father started checking on him to make sure he had food and water. And once stopped the owner during a “training session” that seemed nothing more than a kick the dog festival. The family dog, a Golden Retriever, would go and play with him.

Then the family moved away and left Trapper behind, tied to his box. It was probably the best day of Trapper’s life, being left like that.  The neighbors took Trapper in, not realizing what was ahead of them. He was a difficult dog to get to know and a difficult dog to accept.  He growled at everyone. He wouldn’t go in the beautiful dog house they got for him; he’d rather pee on it and sit on top of it. And he wouldn’t come in their house.  So rather than make him, they accommodated him. They put a strong roof over his pen to keep the snow out in the winter, rain out in the spring and the hot sun in the summer.  During the winter, the walls were stacks of bales of straw covered with ply wood.  In the summer, it was just plywood, used to keep the wind out.  It took three years to teach him to accept a dog house and they did it once piece at a time.  The floor first, a couple of walls at a time and finally the roof.

He couldn’t trust this wonderful family at first, he didn’t know how to, he was never taught that humans can be more than a source of pain.  But, I am sure he remembered a little of what they did for him.  Because with patience and kindness and a lot of time, they won him over.  They allowed him to be the dog he wanted to be, not a fenced, leash walked city dog.  But rather confident unconfined protector of his domain.  He would have been euthanized long before now for biting, or killing small pets, if someone tried to turn him into a city dog.

But his confidence shown through.  He was never argumentative, or acted like he had a chip on his shoulder.  You just couldn't make him do anything, unless he thought it was his idea first.  Even to the end of his life, he didn't trust humans to make any decisions for him.

And that’s why his owners called me. Cars were never going to be his idea of a good time, and he wasn't getting in one.

I only got to meet Trapper three times, all within the last 10 days of his life.  But, for some reason, he struck a chord so very deep in me that I mourn for him almost as much as one of my own.  I don’t know why he made such an impression on me but he did.  And I guess I just need to accept it.

He was hiding under a lilac bush the first time I came to his house.  His owner and I pulled the big branches out of the way, and I politely asked if he would come out and let me take a look at him.  He laid there for a moment, thinking that proposition, and me, over.  And decided he would allow me to take a look at him.  I think that was the moment I fell in love with him.  The utter dignity and strength, even as sick as he was, was evident. 

Unfortunately, there wasn't anything we could do for him.  That’s wrong.  There was a lot we could do for him, but he told me in no uncertain terms that it wasn't going to happen to him.

I saw him my third and last time last night, under the faint glow of a flash light in the field of his choosing and lying next to his devoted dad, asking as only he could, to be allowed to pass with the dignity he’s earned. 

And I helped him the only way that was left.

Good night, Trapper.  I feel lucky to have known you, even if it was only 10 short days.

A Nightmare

There are three things in my life that I am terrified of:  having my dogs hit by a car,  a house fire with my pets in the house, and poisoning of my dogs .  So far, none of my dogs have been hit by a car.  I’ve already lived through a house fire. Then this past spring, I lived through one of the worst experiences of my life with my dogs, antifreeze.

I got home late from a surprisingly dogless afternoon and let the crew out before dinner. After a few minutes of stretching their legs I called them back for dinner, which was inhaled in seconds.  And as Labs, they soon went into a food induced nap.

While I was sitting in my recliner, reclined and half asleep, a loud crash startled me out of my half slumber.  Thinking that it was just one of the dogs falling off the couch while they were asleep, which they've done before, I didn't think anything of it.  Until Deacon crashed loudly into the crate behind my chair. That had me leaping up to find out what the heck was going on.

Deacon was standing there swaying as if he’d hit his head and had his bell rung.  I tried to get him to walk it off, to see if he could regain his balance.  But he didn’t, it just kept getting worse. He stumbled around the living room getting more ataxic by the second. He was knuckling over, crossing his back legs and when he stood in place, he just swayed like a tree in a high wind.

 I could feel the bile burning the back of my throat, the nausea was so overwhelming.  This wasn’t a seizure, which was bad enough. No, he had to have been poisoned.  And the only thing that makes a dog stumble around like a sailor on a three day binge is antifreeze.

I called one of my team mates (she’s a licensed veterinary technician and she also worked at an emergency clinic) because, while I can keep my cool and work on anyone else’s dog in an emergency, I immediately turn into a quivering pile of Jello if my own dog is in trouble.  Unable to string two coherent thoughts together, let alone think of what I am supposed to do next, she, surprisingly, understood what I was trying to say.  Me, I wasn't real sure I was making any sense. All I could hear was my heart beating in my throat and then the overwhelming urge to puke. 

I finally got myself together enough to get Deacon into the truck and headed down the road to the Shenandoah Valley Emergency Veterinary Clinic.

Danielle met me there, I calmed immeasurably; something about shared terror.  We were the only ones in the waiting room so there was no waiting.  I told them to not even examine Deacon, just do the damn antifreeze test. Because I knew in my mind it was going to be positive, even though my heart refused to believe it was a possibility. 

Five minutes later, and I was right. They whisked him to the back to get him started on his three day treatment.  And I headed home to come down from that incredibly stressful evening.

I settled in to finish the rest of the “Big Bang Theory” dvd, when Darcy comes stumbling into the living room.  The first thought that went through my mind was, “You have GOT to be kidding!”.  And called Danielle on the way down to the clinic. It seems that I was winning the unlucky lottery, because Darcy also tested positive for antifreeze.  At first, I thought I was over reacting, taking her to get tested for antifreeze, that she all she really did was get her toenails stuck in the carpet and that was why she stumbled. Nope, that wasn’t the case, so she got to spend the rest of the weekend as Deacon’s roommate.

Two in a row; that was too much of a coincidence.  I asked the DVM that was taking care of my two if I could take home the rest of the antifreeze test strips test the remaining three dogs. Not really believing that they would test positive.

Danielle followed me home to help me draw blood on the dogs left at home.  By this time it was past midnight.  Neither one of us were very coherent.

Every. Single. One. Of them came up positive.

All I could do was sit there and stare at the test results in despair. How could this happen, WHO could be so cruel to do this to my dogs? While I was paralyzed with disbelief, Danielle jumped into action. She drove back to the EC and started grabbing things off the shelf, the most important: a bottle of Everclear grain alcohol, I'll explain why later.

She may have been half asleep but she knew what we needed to turn my dining room into an emergency clinic treatment room.

That began the 3 longest days of my life.  Basically, it was either Danielle or I up the entire time.  Monitoring the IV lines, switching bags back and forth, taking them out to pee, cleaning up after them when they couldn’t make it out, replacing IV lines when they pulled them, cleaning up the blood from the catheters when they pulled the administration sets out, cleaning up the vomit. Tally was the worst, even in her drunken haze, she still managed to rip not only the extension set from the catheter, but the entire catheter out of her vein.  Blood went everywhere. I couldn’t have done this without Danielle! 

There are three stages to ethylene glycol (antifreeze) toxicity.  The first stage is drunkeness. EG acts just like alcohol, so if the dog drinks enough to be poisoned by it, there is enough to make him drunk.  The dog then appears to recover before heading into stage 2.  At this point cardiac symptoms appear.  Third stage is when we vets usually end up seeing them.  This is when the kidneys have shut completely down and can't produce urine anymore.  And there is nothing that can be done at this stage.  Kidney failure is complete and irreversible. 

To treat EG intoxication, you need to understand a little of how it works in the body.  Because it isn't the antifreeze that is toxic, it's the metabolites that are deadly. In particular, the final metabolite called Calcium Oxalate.  That nasty by-product settles out in the kidney and destroys them.

EG is an alcohol, very similar to regular alcohol.  In fact it is so similar, that several Austrian wine producers added it to their wines to make it sweeter and heavier.  Austrian wine scandal  When first ingested, ethylene glycol will cause the animal to appear drunk (first stage).  It then latches on to the enzyme, alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which metabolizes regular alcohol into fairly innocuous by products.   But when EG attaches itself to ADH all kinds of badness ensues, by-products produced include metaldehyde (a cousin of formaldehyde) and worse, Calcium Oxalate crystals.  The good news, though, is EG is basically harmless if it passes through the kidneys unmetabolized.  And in order for that to happen, it can't get attached to ADH.  That's the reason for the Everclear, 190 proof clear grain alcohol.  Regular alcohol has a higher affinity for ADH than antifreeze, that means that the dogs have to go on a three day drunk to keep that enzyme occupied and let the antifreeze pass through unchanged.

You can't make a dog drink enough alcohol to treat the antifreeze, so I had to make up an IV infusion, using a formula that gave me 20% alcohol in an IV bag.  For all 5 dogs, I ended up using almost an entire liter of Everclear.  It sounds simple, just get your dog drunk and let the antifreeze pass through.  The problem is I could over dose the dogs and then I'd have to deal with alcohol poisoning.  And having them drop into an alcohol induced coma that could kill them too.  There is a safer way of treating, with a drug called Antizol.  But just my luck, it was on indefinite  back order.

It was a harrowing three days, but we all made it.  The dogs with an incredible hangover and Danielle and I with severe sleep deprivation. It took several days for my house to lose the moonshine stench, and I swear I could smell the grain alcohol on their breath for days. Even their poop smelled like grain alcohol.   Two days after everyone woke up from their hangover, all their blood work was normal. 

It was kind of anti-climactic, but I am ok with that.

Darcy, Tally,Cora, Finn, Deacon

I never did find out where the antifreeze came from.