Reduce Reuse Recycle

I’ve been off pretending to be a writer and was participating in NaNowrimo, however, I didn’t make the 50,000 word count in 30 days goal.  When I first started I didn’t have any concept of how difficult it would be to pull close to 2,000 words a day out of my imagination that actually made sense when read all in a row.  After reading the last thing I wrote one evening, the next morning, I had to wonder who actually wrote it, because I certainly didn’t remember ever striking those keys. And, no, they didn’t make any sense.

But that doesn’t mean I and my horde hasn’t been active.  Finn, the old man, is still able to put in a four hour middle of the night search on Massanutten Mountain, or as I like to call it, Mass-a-rock Mountain.  We were looking for a mentally handicapped person that decided that he really wanted to go for a hike, forgetting that he couldn’t remember how to get home.  A lot of people and dogs put in quite a few hours and covered many miles looking for him and the three dogs that went with him. 

I like searching at night, because if I could see what I was actually trying to search through, I’d probably turn around and go home.  Much of what was in my search sector that night consisted of rock.  Big rocks, little rocks, boulders, rocks that like to rock, rocks that hide under leaves, slippery rocks, moss covered rocks and holes that hide. All of them just waiting to break an ankle.

That looks like a field of ferns, but the ferns are covering field of rocks

The beginning of a laurel thicket

One of many rock slides Finn and I encounter on our searches

And then down at the bottom of the rock slide Finn and I were searching was the mountain laurel.  After walking across rocks, the thing I hate the most is trying to find a decent path through the woven branches that make up a mountain laurel thicket. 

But, if everyone got lost in a city park with walk ways, they wouldn’t need us.

The gentleman was eventually found safe after he set the forest on fire.  Literally.  He set a fire that ended up eating 10 acres of forest.  But he was found and so were his dogs.

However, Teagan and Deacon where feeling a little neglected and hatched a plan to make me pay more attention to them.  It consisted of some tag team vomiting and eating of said residue. 

Deacon is a dog with a severe sock fetish.  The first hint that this was going to be a lifelong problem and that maybe he needs some therapy for this mental illness, was Christmas 2009.  He stole the nearly naked carcass of the Christmas turkey from the counter at Mom’s house.  Pissed off was the least of what I felt, because I had warned Mom what a counter surfer he was.  I thought she knew what I was talking about, but obviously didn’t because she wasn’t watching him while he was in the kitchen with her and I was out with the other dogs.  My dad, who is normally very unflappable, comes rushing out the house with an extremely worried look on his face, to tell me that Deacon had inhaled the ENTIRE carcass in about two bites.  Fortunately, hydrogen peroxide works well on him, and urrppp up comes the carcass in its entirety. 

Then 20 minutes later, a sock.  A beautiful yellow tinged, sewer smelling athletic sock.   As of this writing, he’s puked up close to 5 socks.  Several in my truck coming home from hunt tests and SAR training.  I know when he’s got a sock percolating in that stomach of his.  He gets tucked up, his ribs start to show a little and he has a couple of days of throwing up small amounts of food.  And then it appears, always yellow stained, stinking like something dead that’s been rotting in the sun for a couple of days.

I do nightly patrols to pick up socks, make sure the door is closed to the room that has my socks in it, and make sure the laundry is put away as it is done.  All for naught…  Because he is a mission driven, sock seeking machine.  Nothing and nobody will stand in his eternal quest to find that holy grail of his life, THE PERFECT SOCK. 

A couple of weeks ago, while I was upstairs plunking away on the computer, he disappears for a few minutes taking Teagan with him.  I get down stairs just in time to see him licking his lips and a large area of fluid on the laundry room floor.  My suspicion, that he’d just re-eaten what he’d just regurgitated (canines-giving real meaning to reduce/reuse/recycle).  I didn’t think much of it and left to go do my morning rounds.  However, when I got back home for lunch, he’d continued to vomit in his crate.  So I called the clinic I worked for, in only a mildly panicked state, and advised them to prepare for what is probably going to be the first of many surgical sock retrievals I foresee in Deacon’s life. 

So I get to the clinic early the next morning and get started on his radiographs.  I make all the other veterinarians at the practice look at them and tell me there is nothing stuck.  And had to be persuaded not to send the rads off for a radiologist to put their mark on them signifying that there wasn’t a foreign body trapped in his small intestine.  But, both of them did feel a mass in there.  As I was leaving, one of the docs made me promise to call her and tell her what he craps out.  In my crazed Munchausen by Proxy fugue state, I was still trying to figure out how I was going to get him back up there for the surgery I sure he needed.

We get home safely and when I open the door to the laundry room, I nearly pass out from the stench that greets me.  It appears that Teagan had pushed Deacon away from the magnificent mass of vomit that he regurgitated for her and ate it, sock and all.  For in her crate was a beautiful yellow sewer smelling athletic sock, that she’d very carefully re-eaten everything around it but left that splendid sock for me to see.

In the middle of that night, Deacon leaves me a present of a sock on the dining room floor.  Wrapped very prettily in poop.

Training tips for search and rescue dogs

Training Tip #39:  when leaving the house to set up your evenings training, make sure you put the puppy in her crate.

Addendum to Training Tip #39:  latch the crate door.

Paths Unkown

A couple of weeks ago a beautiful silver balloon drifted into my yard, having lost all its helium.  Made me wonder who lost it.  Was there a child somewhere that cried when it floated off?  Whose birthday party did it drift away from?  Did a young man give it to his first love, and she lost it?

It also made me think of other things that wander into my life that I wasn’t aware I was looking for.  Those things that make us travel a path we weren’t expecting or planning on.  There is only one thing that wandered into my life I can remember that definitely pointed me down a trail that I had never planned on, and that would be my first search dog, Ben. 

Ben

I’d been with my search group, Blue and Gray, for about 6 months.  I’d come to realize the time commitment needed and the monetary commitment as well, so it was time for me to look for a dog.  I was in love with my college dog, Jack and wanted another one just like him.  He was a big dog, with long luxurious golden hair that paid homage to his mixed heritage; he was ¾ Golden Retriever and ¼ Great Pyrenees.  He was as beautiful as he was tough.  So I went looking at Bernese Mountain Dogs.  They are stunning to look at, and in my neophyte enthusiasm, thought they were working dogs.   All the dogs I saw were beautiful and exactly what I thought I was looking for, but something kept holding me back from committing to a puppy.

At this time in my life I was boarding my horse at my friend’s farm, Mountain Run Farm, where she also had a small boarding kennel.  I was out finishing up a ride, when Kari comes rushing down to the barn to tell me that I needed to stick around. She has the perfect search dog for me.

Some clients of hers were boarding their dog at her kennel until their house was finished being built as the place they were renting didn’t allow pets.  They frantically called Kari one afternoon, they had just picked up a Labrador on the road near their apartment building that they thought had been hit by a car.  Could she help them take care of it?  Why they didn’t call the emergency clinic, I’ll never know, but in karma of the universe, they weren’t supposed to.  Kari actually told them to go directly to the emergency clinic, but they wanted her to look at him first.

I was expecting what I call a cur Lab, to step out of their car.  A cur lab is a dog that nobody can tell what breed it really is but kind of looks like a Lab so that is what they call it.  They usually are whippet thin, with a whip like tail and a pointy snout, with a vague wave to a distant relative that may have been a Labrador.  The SPCA is notorious for calling everything a Lab, because that is the easiest to adopt out.  Especially if they are a black dog.

But, from this tiny car, out steps this big beautiful yellow Lab, with a gorgeous block head.

It was love at first sight, both ways.  I was completely and absolutely in love, the kind where music should be playing and little hearts floating around.  And all that was wrong with him was a raging ear infection. 

He was not the most gifted of search dogs, but he was patience personified.  Patience to deal with my mistakes as a novice trainer and the patience to not get frustrated with me when he couldn’t understand what I wanted from him.  He was a teacher, that was his gift.  I was lucky to have such a dog such as him, it made training the rest of my dogs that much easier.

Most SAR dogs are trained using toys, and for months I tried to get him to play tug, but it was beneath him.  I spent 6 frustrating months trying to get him to work for a toy, because that’s what everybody said I had to do.  This dog, though, was incredibly motivated by food.  One day he got out of my house when my pet sitter came to let them out to do his business.  She called me frantically, knowing how much he meant to me.  I remembered it was trash day and told her to just follow the trail of turned over trash cans.  Sure enough, she found him at the fourth trash can happily munching on what, I don’t know, but content. 

So I switched to training him with hot dogs.  He was certified in 6 months.

His only find was a suicide in the Blue Ridge Mountains, before he suffered a career ending injury to a suspensory ligament in his rear leg.  He led me down this path I am on right now and he was the first step.  The second step of which was getting Finn, my current search dog.  Then my second HRD dog Cora, and have bred two litters of Labs.  I am training director for my team.  And with Finn, I’ve been deployed to New Orleans after Katrina and to the jungles of Guyana, South America on HRD missions as well as numerous local missions. 

In 2005, I lost him to cancer and still think about him almost every day.  I saw his ghost in my bedroom doorway, right after I put him to sleep.  He didn’t want to leave me, but I told him I’d be ok.  He did good with me and it was time for him to go and help someone else.

Little did I know what was in front of me that first day I saw him step out of that car.

Princess Prissy versus the Tomboy

When Cora was younger, I never knew which one was going to come out and play.  During training it was ok if Princess Prissy was out.  Not so good when we are on an actual task.  In the past, when we were at a cadaver search, I always brought out Finn first, because the Prissy vs Tomboy issue with Cora.  Even though, strictly speaking, Finn is cross trained for live and deceased and Cora is HRD only.

A couple of years ago I made the conscious decision to use Cora first on a mission in Charlotte, NC.  In this particular situation, we were surrounded by multiple news trucks and two news helicopters were hovering over head.  We (me and another canine handler), talked over how we wanted to attack the site.  Then we had to review it with representatives from the local LE and a couple of agents from the Justice Department.  And this was the time I decided it was Cora’s turn to go first.   No pressure!   The plan was for Cora and me to take the grounds with its accompanying construction site hazards:  equipment, debris, and pits dug for no reason that I could tell.  And the other dog team took the half built apartment complexes, with the idea the subject may have been buried and the murderer hoping to have the grave site covered in concrete.

I get Cora out, hoping and praying Tomboy is here and not Princess Prissy.  I break her (“hurry up”, her cue to pee), get her costume on (collar with the bells on it) and tell her to “go find”.  And boom, she’s off like a shot.    She’s ranging around, nose stuck to the ground.  I figure she’s getting her ya ya’s out and turn to say something to my walker.   I don’t think I get more than a couple of words out when my walker points to something over my shoulder.  I turn around, and there is Cora the TOMBOY, sitting, just barely, with her butt doing a wiggle dance and tail slapping the ground madly.  She opens her mouth to bark and I throw the ball to her to fill it.  I don’t want her barking to bring every single camera pointing at her and broadcasting that we found something until I figure out what she’s trying to tell me.

It turns out that what she found wasn’t what we were looking for.  She marked the area where 3 weeks previously a homeless man had been attacked and bled out.  From that point on I trusted her, and her confidence in herself because I believed in her skyrocketed.

So over the past couple of years I saw Princess Prissy less and less and Tomboy became the norm. 

Until this weekend.

I also do hunt test competition with my dogs.  It is a great way for the dogs to have fun and I don’t have to be in charge of training. So I get up at 5 AM on Sunday morning to be able to leave for field training by 6AM, since we have to on the field early to beat the heat.  I work her son, Deacon, first.  He’s a monster in the field and he had a great time picking up the bumpers.  Go to get Cora out of the truck, warm her up and then walk to the line to send her for a bird. 

“whaaa???? You want ME to RUN across thistle, and briar's and cut cedars to pick up a stinkin’ bumper??  I believe you didn’t talk that over with me, Princess Prissy, ruler of all things prissy.

“Talk to the paw.”

I had to handle her to on a stinking single.  Arrrghhh!  I made her do it and then do it again.  And then a blind through the same crap. She looked like haven’t trained her in a year. Then we had the walk of shame back to the truck.  I should say, I had the walk of shame.  Cora could have cared less.

That evening, I took her out to do some HRD (cadaver) work.  I had the problem set up from the evening before, so the area was saturated with scent and made for a little bit of difficulty.  But nothing she couldn’t handle, and has handled before.

Finn got to work first because he had been left at home a lot.  He did well.  Got Cora dressed in her costume, a pretty collar with Buddhist prayer bells that tinkle with a pleasing sound.  Got her to “hurry up” and then sent her to work.

She promptly peed near the source to show her displeasure (at what, only she knows), so back into the truck she went.

Princess Prissy showed herself to remind me that Cora does not like being second fiddle to anyone or anything.

I planned her next training with Princess Prissy in mind, to remind her that even though PP doesn’t like to work in tough terrain, that makes no never mind to me, Head Alpha Bitch, ruler of ALL THINGS DOG.

So I set up her problems is a field of this:

And then made Princess Prissy work through it all:

And she was perfect, even if she did dance the dance of sissy feet through this ground cover:

Even better, on our search today in Giles County near Blacksburg VA, in the rain and the acres of impassable thickets of mountain laurel, she did her work well and with enthusiasm.  While I shivered in the rain and thanked which ever deity in charge of dogs for giving me back my Tomboy. 

Nature's Lullabye

At dusk, the drum roll of a soft summer rain, added to the sharp call of the cicada mixed with the chorus of crickets.

And I am lucky enough to be sung to sleep every night this way.

If I got lost in the woods, would anyone care?

Probably not.  I am usually the one finding those lost people, not the findee.  Well, actually my dog is the finder; I just tag along for the ride.

But I have a young dog coming up, Darcy, that is due to start her wilderness certification this fall and winter.  And the main thing I am terrified of failing is my land navigation.  I’ve been doing this search stuff for close to 15 years and the last time I was tested on my navigation was eight years ago when Finn got his certification.  Since then, I’ve been the one who’s been teaching and testing people on their ability to navigate.  Nothing like the evaluator being evaluated.  I think it’s going to be more stressful testing Darcy than when I tested Finn the first time. Yep, you read that right, the first time.  I failed my first 160 acre test with Finn and had to make it up 3 months later.

This past weekend, my search team hosted a seminar taught by Rob Speiden of Natural Awareness Tracking School .  So there I was, Saturday morning, sitting and listening with rapt attention to Rob going over the basics of land navigation, like I’d never been shown a map or compass or spent the past 15 years navigating safely in the woods.  I like to say I’ve never been lost, just momentarily disoriented.  Then I bought a GPS, and whoosh, there went my ability to rely on my own sense of direction.   We reviewed Mr. Mercator, how to shoot a bearing and, in our first outdoor class of the weekend, we determined what our pace count is (mine’s 62).  That means it takes me 62 paces to cover 100 yards.  But that’s on flat ground with no obstacles.  I am going to find out how accurate that is in the afternoon when we are out in the woods.  I've never navigated using a pace count, always used terrain features.  Here's how I do it:  hmm, that looks like the mountain I am looking for on the map, there's the drainage I've been looking for, wait a minute, how many drainages was I supposed to pass before I got to the one I need to search, crap, I think I need to turn around and count them again, but I really don't want to climb all the way back down the mountain, I think I can make the terrain features I was looking for fit what's supposed to be on the map....Search to the top of the drainage, wait I was one drainage too far, head back to base by searching down the drainage I was supposed to go up. As you can see, I need to fine tune my navigation a little.

I am confident in my abilities, especially since I’ve been doing this for 15 years.  And you know what, confidence means jack, when you are learning something new and trying it for the first time.  Which I was with pace counting.  I was 50 yards south of the first point I was supposed to find.  At least my pace count was right on.  The next few points I did well with, but then again, following the whole group makes it much easier too. 

We did night nav as well… again I was glad the group was there.  Oh lordy, do I need to practice before I get evaluated this winter!  At least when I am on a real search I can use my GPS.

The fun part of the whole night was having a short search after everyone, well almost everyone, got back to the parking area.  Yep, one of the team got lost on her way back to her car.  However, it was a status one and we all went home to rest up for Sunday’s training.

Sunday’s training was about clue awareness and tracking.  I did pretty good with the tracking.  My team and I were able to follow two tracks to the end of them. 

Not so good with clue awareness.  Before we got to class, Rob had set up a clue awareness scenerio.  A missing 10 year old boy that liked to play cards and pick up golf balls when his dad was out on the golf course.  He had set out 10 clues.  I found exactly:  zero clues.

But this is all that I found:

And I tracked them for a short distance, although Rob said it was too easy because their foot prints where too distinctive.

It’s a good thing I have my dog along to help me, or I’d be totally useless out there.

Little Sisters

Deacon