Spry As An Old Dog

First, upcoming events, all with DK & the Affordables:
- Saturday Aug 16, Wedding at Pajarito Mountain
- Saturday Aug 23, Beer & Band at Pajarito Mountain
- Wednesday Aug 27, 6-8 pm, Santa Fe Bandstand on the Plaza
- Thursday Aug 28, Wedding gig in Las Vegas, NM (not NV--we aren't that cool yet!)
- Fall piano lessons start September 1
- Saturday Sept 13, Los Alamos Ashley Pond stage 2:30-4 (Science Fest), then the Cowgirl Bar & BBQ in Santa Fe from 9-midnight

The rest of the Affordables are also playing gigs on Aug 24 in Albuquerque and Sept 12 in Los Alamos, which I've bowed out of, but please go out and see 'em if you get a chance.

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Man's best friend on a ski trip in the Jemez Mountains a few years back. No, Rossignol did no pay me to put their name in this shot. But maybe they should! (I love those skis, BTW.)

A few weeks ago, I was walking with my dog, Rusty the Chocolate Lab, on the trails behind my house, and musing on the pet/human relationship. This musing came as a result of reading some John Gehrach (I just finished his book Standing in a River Waving a Stick which is of course about fly fishing). He was observing the relationships hunters have with their flushing/pointing/retrieving dogs. My dog and I are tight, too, and it stems from our time together training for search and rescue work.

Man's best friend, the much younger model, circa 2006, shown lounging in our freshly mulched backyard of sticks.

Rusty came with the house we bought in 2003. He'd been living with the previous owners of the house and was a year old when we got him. At a year old, he was pretty much a 70-pound puppy and barely knew how to sit on command. So, we went through basic obedience class. At the time, I was very involved in ski patrol, and was looking for some search & rescue (SAR) stuff to do in the summer. So, Rusty and I did agility training, wilderness tracking, and wilderness air-scent search training. The following winter, we tried avalanche rescue training.

One winter we trekked up to Monarch Ski Area in Colorado. Here you can see Rusty's hind end as he searches for someone buried in the snow. Avalanche SAR training and work is pretty tough. 

That was before I had kids, when I could spend an evening and a Saturday every week training a dog, when I could travel a weekend or 2 a month to train with some SAR guru or another (I did have the distinct pleasure to train with Elane Flower (who trained Sizzle, one of the best SAR dogs I've ever seen), Sue Purvis (SAR volunteer, excellent dog trainer, and all-around good person from Crested Butte), and Patty Burnett (who literally wrote a great book on avalanche dog training). I ended up with a well-trained, well-behaved dog. Rusty and I were a month or two away from trying for the New Mexico state certification for K9 SAR when my son was born 2 months early. That put an end to our K9 SAR career, which was for the best. I liked the idea of being a SAR dog handler, but the time commitment was getting to be a bit of a drag (and I had some music projects poised to take off!).

Rusty has been a great family dog. The kids love him, and Rusty helps keeps track of them since they are part of the "pack." Rusty ran, biked, hiked, backpacked, and skied with us. For a long time he could ski as hard as I could (A while back, I put up some pictures with Rusty skiing; you can see them here). But that's changing. He's getting to the age now (12!) where he is slowing down dramatically. A long walk leaves him pretty tired. The heat of summer requires early morning or late evening walks to beat the heat. He has a hard time jumping up into the back of the truck. But he still needs his daily exercise, just like the rest of us.

The old dog could still bound through the snow last Winter (Dec 2013), though at a slower pace than he did 5 years ago. Note the gray eyebrows and muzzle--he looks so distinguished. My gray hairs make me look "distinguished," too.

We ran into one of my wife's former co-workers (Debbie) and her black Lab (Noche) the other day on the "new" trails near our "new" house. Noche is one of Rusty's old dog buddies and is currently 13 years old. His hips are failing, he tore an ACL in a hind leg, and his muzzle and legs are all gray. Still, he was out for his 20-minute walk, same as every other day. As I watched the Rusty's and Noche's faces light up (and tails wag) when they saw each other, I realized that we all need a buddy, especially as we get older. I also realized that we all need to keep going, keep running, keep searching for that hidden rabbit, right up until we can't anymore. I also realized that 13 years old in "human" time is the equivalent of 91 or so "years" of dog time, give or take. I hope that if I live to 91 years old, that I'm as spry as these old dogs.

Thanks for reading!