New Dog, Old Tricks

    So see if any of this sounds familiar? ...we have more access to information than any other people in the history of humankind and yet, it seems more difficult than ever for us to arrive at a consensus about what is true.  It is even more difficult to determine what is right and ethical.  This year has been one of confusion, disorder, and disagreement.  Our good ship appears to be drifting somewhere, but we are not looking at the same maps, cannot agree on the direction of the prevailing winds, and several of us claim to have scurvy while others dispute the existence of scurvy and believe it is a hoax invented by the Chinese.  How did we get here?  And how do we chart our way forward?  If you felt that this was from a current political speech, the answer is no...those words came from the editor of a book from three years ago, a book compiled by high school students and aptly titled The Best American Nonrequired Reading (the series has been done annually since it's inception in 2002).

    What got me thinking a bit about those words was that they did seem to reflect the mood many of us are feeling.  It's a bit of lull in calm waters but for many it is merely the eye of the hurricane;  benefits and subsidies will soon expire and even for those businesses coming back there is a bit of doubt.  Will customers return?  And with the recent riots and occasional looting that has happened over the world, many small business owners are questioning why it was that their stores' windows that were broken, and why their meager goods and limited inventory were taken, and why did those people who threw the rocks and bricks target their own neighborhood?  Add to all of this the spike in people testing positive for Covid-19 and many of those same doubts and fears return (yes, the virus is still around although the hospitalization and death rates appear to be dropping overall when compared day to day, said STAT).  Confusion and anticipation both seem to be peeking ever more boldly around the corners.  Then came Bear...

   The story goes that he was found abandoned in a dog "dumping ground" off the highway in Wyoming, obviously lost, nearly blind, emaciated and on the verge of death.  He had welts all over his body, and could barely walk.  The people that found him took him to a vet who advised that he should just be put down due to his condition; they ignored his advice, took him home and called a rescue agency.  For us, it seemed that fate was calling and telling us that it was time to put aside our five months of grieving over the loss of our other two German Shepherds.  Here was a long-haired German Shepherd who needed help.  We named him Bear.  As with any rescued animal, knowing what happened in the earlier years of their lives is almost impossible.  Did this dog fall out of the back of a truck (Wyoming is pretty rural in much of the state so there are often long stretches between homes or ranches), had he just outlived his usefulness (we've found that many ranchers and farmers often consider animals "working" animals and not "pets"), did he just wander off somehow and get lost (he has pannus, an eye condition that can be stabilized but not improved; left untreated it leads to complete blindness), was he simply too old (he's nine years old and the general life expectancy for a large dog such as Bear usually tops out in the 12 year range).  We were fortunate in that our earlier German Shepherds were close to 14 and 15 before their bodies began giving out; but with Bear the mystery would be not so much what happened to him back then but what would happen to him now?  

    Back up a few years and you'll find that adding Bear to our household was really no big deal because our home has always been full of "rescued" animals.  My wife is now part of a network of people who catch-and-release feral cats, spaying or neutering them once caught, then returning them back to their "colony" to live out the rest of their lives (as with most other such groups, enclosed and straw-filled foam boxes are provided and placed nearby for the winter months along with regular food and water, all of which sounds good but overall is a miserable life for the animals since the majority of these cats are not really "feral" but were once living comfortable lives inside a home and now have to simply survive; most of the animal colonies are located near apartment complexes, the animals generally having just been abandoned or left behind by their previous "owners").  Seven of those "feral" cats now keep us company in our home.  Wait, seven?  But as anyone who has rescued an animal can tell you, there may be no better way to experience life than through opening your home to someone or some animal that's on the verge of giving up.  A little patience, a lot of love, often a lot of extra time and effort, and the rewards are immense, a gratitude and return of affection rarely witnessed anywhere else.*

    We're now three weeks into having Bear and we're learning from each other, his once-weak back legs are getting stronger each day (when he arrived he could only walk about the length of four houses but we now walk for an hour in the morning, followed by an afternoon and an evening walk).  He has a few fears (stairs for one) but is learning to face them as he begins to trust that we're here and that he now has a home.  It's bit of a similar story for Pip Hare who, at 45, will attempt to become the 8th woman to circumnavigate the world solo in a tiny boat.  Here's what she told Red Bulletin about being "out there" alone: The first time I climbed the mast while the boat was sailing was terrifying.  It was on my first single-handed transatlantic race, to Brazil, in the 21-foot boar.  They're capable of speeds in excess of 20 knots (23 mph) -- crazy little bullets, with masts around 40 feet high.  There are no satellite comms, no contact.  I'd been racing about two weeks and I was physically exhausted.  I was in the middle of the Atlantic, the furthest possible point from help.  There was a bad storm, and a piece came loose at the top of my mast.  It got wound around the mast, and the boat would have been in danger if I hadn't fixed it.  I realized I'd have to climb to the top under full said and sort it out.  I'd practiced solo mast climbs while docked but not when the boat was sailing.  One of the biggest dangers is swinging out, away from the mast.  When you swing back, you accelerate toward it and you could either hit your head or break a limb -- and, because there's no one to help, you'd be stuck up your mast, just swinging like a pendulum...the amount of adrenaline coursing through you is ridiculous.  My hands were shaking.  I could hear my heart in my ears, and my brain was just going over and over things.  Plus you're completely reliant on autopilot --this machine-- not to change direction or have a problem while you're up there...Because I'd lost so much weight and my upper body strength had improved so much,, once i got halfway up I just kind of dragged myself to the top with my arms.  When I got there, I thought, "Wow, I didn't know I could do that."...After you've done something like that, you get an incredible feeling of pride and endurance.  It makes you feel a lot stronger as a person, and it gives you huge confidence that you can deal with whatever is coming.  Most of the time, the thing that limits us is ourselves.  We underrate what we're capable fi.  We want to be cautious, to want some sort of positive guarantee that we're going to be able to do something before we're prepared to try it...It's like grabbing yourself by the lapels and giving yourself a big shake and saying, "This is the person I want to be."

    This is a time when fear envelopes many of us: fear of the unknown, fear of if we'll make it, fear of what lies ahead.  For me, having once nearly drowned, the fear of not being able to breathe sits quietly in the dark recesses of my mind but it doesn't take much to bring it roaring to the forefront.  So when I read stories of people suddenly losing their sense of smell or taste and then often rapidly progressing to a struggle to breathe, it is as if that possibility is also peeking around the corner, maybe not in the water but now in the air.  The unknowns of this virus continue to appear, and now The Conversation added another entrant, this time a newly discovered (and equally mystifying) fungus that attacks the lungs: Hybrid fungi that can cause infections in humans are well known to occur in several different lineages of single-celled fungi known as yeasts.  Notable examples include multiple different species of yeast hybrids that cause the human diseases cryptococcosis and candidiasis.  Although pathogenic yeast hybrids are well known, our discovery that the A. latus pathogen is a hybrid is a first for molds that cause disease in humans.  Why certain Aspergillus species are so deadly while others are harmless remains unknown.

    Of course none of this compares to Bear or any of the other animals abandoned almost daily, or the people kidnapped and trafficked, or the mothers just wondering how they'll feed and protect their children, or those fighting for their lives in a hospital or a deserted street.  At such times we may find ourselves alone, perhaps feeling as alone as Pip Hare in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, staring up a mast 4 stories tall in rough seas.  At some point we may want to just freeze and close our eyes and hope that it will all just go away, or we can grit our teeth and shift into survival mode.  But there are no guarantees and often no easy ways out; and often the road ahead may be a difficult one.  It may be, as they say, a bear.  Those of us who have gone through it or are now comfortably safe in many aspects may need to remember what that was like, to have additional compassion and to open our hearts and our wallets...and to remember what it's like when you can't breathe.    

    

*Hats off to the many people, groups and animal rescue organizations who generally operate on a tiny budget and yet devote such a chunk of their lives to help others.  All of which is multiplied ten-fold by those who decide to adopt not an animal but a child.  Offering a person, and especially a teenager, a chance at a new life may be one of the biggest decisions and commitments in a couple's life.  Such people are truly heroes, devoted and yet often content people who simply give back and do so without ever expecting a medal or an award...it is as if they already know that what they are getting back far outweighs any form of praise or money.  For them it becomes a treasure which fulfills the heart and no other compensation is needed...