Dogs, Fearfulness & the Inconsistency of Being

I have not posted for a while. I'm sorry I hit a real low last week and just couldnt rally to write anything about an issue SABP and the Surrey PCT simply refuse to volunteer information about. They also continue to insist that it has nothing to do with me.

That's the official line. Distance is all.

Five days ago my friend lost her dog Wishie who ran off in Mountain Home , Idaho in the middle of a violent storm. Wishie hasnt been seen since.

I remember my friend choosing Wishie in a shelter in Ontario , Oregon where the wall was lined with cages containing dogs which had been lost , rejected and abused.The place reminded me of my own life growing up in care. At the end of the row were two really mournful long eared King Charles spaniels who whined for attention but howled in misery the moment I stopped stroking their ears. I had to stroke their ears at the same time to stop them becoming jealous.

They were beautiful.

The King Charles siblings , I assumed they were, craved attention but that was ok, they were hurt animals. Stroking their ears and comforting them didnt require an awful lot of effort. But I knew as much as I wanted to take them home that I couldnt save them as I wouldnt have been able to look after them. I can barely look after me. They should have been looked after by people who had more going for them in life.

I hope those dogs were properly adopted. I can still feel their cool drooping velvety ears. I hope they are relaxed and kicking back watching some movie from the couch. yeah, if those two dudes made it to happilly slobbing out in front of the tv, thats ok by me.


My friend chose Wishie - or Flossie as she was then called - whose papers set out how she had been evacuated from New Orleans . I was in the US driving across the rockies when Katrina struck and even got home quicker because Katrina's dying breath blew my plane back acoss the Atlantic that much quicker.


Katrina blew me a taunting kiss...

I was also in New Orleans for the first post Katrina Mardi Gras. I wanted to be. The sun shone, the costumes and freaks outed and the bands played downtown but the devastation wasnt just confined to blocks , it stretched across whole neighbourhoods and states. I remember entering the South through Cairo Illinois , a rapidly decaying town where the great Mississippi and Ohio rivers meet and watching the damage inflicted by Katrina piling up as we got closer and closer to New Orleans. After leaving the Big Easy we drove along the shattered coastline of Lousianna to Gulfport/Biloxi in Mississippi where casino's had been flipped into the air and on to Florida a land of hurricane hit holiday homes for sale. Outside of the devastated urban sprawl much of the once natural landscape had been transformed into writhing orgies of dead trees and debris. If you want to know why Americans watch weather forecasts a bit more closely than we do, go check out the aftermath of a hurricane.


The French Quarter faired well though. As did Flossie.

That first post Katrina Mardi Gras went well. People turned up to party. Flossie got evacuated up to Ontario , Oregon or thereabouts then, through my friend became Wishkah or Wishie and moved on to Nevada a hot, calm and gambling aside, boring desert state and then , weeks ago up to Mountain Home Idaho.

On June 7th the winds picked up and an unleashed storm front hit Mountain Home. Wishie took off. Who can blame her?

Yesterday I created a missing dog poster , posted an appeal on Flickr , set up a Lost Pets group on Flickr and managed to get the local newspaper the Mountain Home News to cover Wishie running off in storm as well.

This took all my energy but I will be back to follow through on the SABP issue later.