This morning I put on a shirt that has a hole torn in the front. It reminds me of one of the searches that I did with Mu, when my shirt caught on a sharp edge as I was squeezing between two fences. I should either mend the shirt or throw it away but I haven’t done either yet. I like the shirt, but I have others similar to it. The search Mu & I did that day was truly remarkable. Together, we solved a mystery that never would have been understood without our help. Because of Mu’s excellent work, a cat’s owner knows what happened, and doesn’t have to spend the rest of her life wondering. Instead of throwing the shirt away, or recycling it, I put on a second shirt over it. It’s cold these days, and the extra warmth will be nice.
I went looking for Mu, and found him exactly where I knew he would be, in front of the fire. We call it Mu’s fire. The only way that Fozzie or Sky get a turn at the fireplace is if Mu gets too hot, and he has to sprawl out on the sofa to lose some excess heat. On the 21st of December, Mu will be 13 years old. I was looking through all of my pictures of him, from all of our adventures and play. I have my memory palace of Mu. I remember walking under the freeway in Tacoma, searching for Cali, and climbing over giant fallen trees near Snoqualmie pass, looking for the cat that had escaped an accident on the nearby freeway. I think Mu must have his own memory palace. When he rests by the fire, or dreams on the couch, I hope he relives 12 years of training every Sunday, and 12 years of working as my partner. I hope he doesn’t remember being tied to a tree as a puppy, before I rescued him, or maybe he does remember, and appreciates his adventures and his work and his hearth even more. And his family.
I think Mu could have a memory palace, of sorts. He certainly has a memory for places, and he knows when we are approaching one of the local parks where we train. Of course, he must remember the good times he had during training. That’s what we rely on, and how we accomplish training at all. We teach a dog that good things happen when they find a hidden cat or a missing dog. These search dogs, Kelsy, Komu, Fozzie, Tino, Raphael, and now Raven, all learn that finding lost pets is fun, and they do the job because it is a game to them. I think they may also understand that they are looking for a beloved member of a family. I hope they understand their work is important, more than just a game. Still, it is always our objective that the dog has fun, even on the cases with the worst outcomes.
In 2023, Mu solved three cases in particular that I can confidently say would never have been solved without his help. Although these cases had tragic outcomes, they are shining examples of really excellent work by Mu. We searched for a cat in Vancouver. There was a large open field near the cat’s house. It was the type of field that doesn’t get mowed often, and will probably become another tract of houses at some point. It’s the kind of field where a cat might like to go to hunt field mice, but there could be other predators around. The cat’s owner had found a small amount of fur, which seemed to belong to his cat. I took Mu there, and he smelled the area for a full minute. Then he tracked across the field, about 50 meters away, and found something. I looked right at it, and couldn’t figure out what I was looking at. I thought maybe it was an old baseball whose cover was coming off. On closer examination, it was not a baseball. It had been down in a depression. Anyone walking by probably wouldn’t have noticed it, and if they did notice it, they wouldn’t have thought it was associated with a missing cat. It turned out to be a skull of a cat. The fur that was still attached in places was about the right color, and the teeth seemed to be about the right age. The owner of the missing cat had searched that field many times, and walked right by this evidence. If I had been searching visually, if I had seen the evidence at all, I probably would have dismissed it as unrelated. These days, there is garbage everywhere you look. Only Mu’s nose would have found this evidence. While it was the worst possible outcome, the owner of the cat said he would rather know, even if it was bad news, than always wonder. I told Mu what a good dog he was. While we didn’t celebrate properly, such as having a game of fetch with stick we found, I did give him his treat, string cheese, and tell him how much I appreciated him. I petted him all the way home on the 2 hour drive.
What does Mu think about these three sad cases that he solved this year? I hope he is not too burdened by the tragedy of a family member dying. I think he understands on some level that these occasions, when he finds remains, are the worst possible news for the cat’s family. The tragedy is theirs, not his, and he has done his job perfectly. A couple of years ago, Mu had to take 6 months off from searching because he started to develop anxiety, and didn’t want to go on searches any more. I think he may have been picking up on anxiety I was feeling, after several searches in a row of deceased cats and anguished owners. We took a six month sabbatical, and just concentrated on having fun, and he was able to return to work. Now, I try to shield him from death as much as I can, and from the grief of the owners of the lost cats. I focus on rewarding him for his excellent work. We play the game, and find what we find. If we find bad news, we still did our job.
Another search Mu did this year, which had a sad ending, was another instance where the owners would have always been left wondering, if not for Mu. We searched for a hairless cat, who was indoor only, and had escaped. His sibling was very vocal, and was meowing loudly at the screen door when we arrived. I started Mu searching, and he paid particular attention to a spot on the side of the road. From there, he took me down into a ravine covered with ivy. Within 20 minutes of starting the search, he took me to a spot in the ivy 130 feet from the cat’s house. He had that look on his face, like the search was over. I couldn’t see anything in the vines. I parted the ivy, and deep below the surface leaves, there was a small bit of remains. I could have looked directly at it and dismissed as nothing if Mu hadn’t pointed it out. It was just maybe 3% of the cat, but it happened to be unmistakable, a definite match for the missing cat. I collected the remains. We returned to the yard of the cat’s family. I told them that I was 100% certain that Mu had found evidence showing their cat had been taken by coyotes, and that there was nothing to be gained from them looking at the evidence. I didn’t think they would want to remember their cat that way. They said they wanted to look anyway, and they agreed that it was a definite match. They were overcome with grief. They did nothing wrong. Their beloved cat accidentally got out of the house for fifteen minutes or so, and he cried for his family to come find him and bring him back in. Unfortunately, when a cat cries in distress, it can attract the attention of coyotes in a nearby ravine. Although it was horrible that their cat was taken, at least they knew where and why and how. They didn’t have to spend months searching in vain, or years wondering what happened. Mu was able to give them a definitive answer when there was absolutely zero chance they would have known, otherwise.
On the day where my shirt was torn on the fence, Mu solved an actual homicide, which was a first for us. Although Mu has found the aftermath of coyote attacks in at least 110 instances in the past 12 years, I wouldn’t call those murder, although the owners of the cats might disagree. This was the first case we worked where it appeared the neighbor intentionally killed the cat. Before we had come down to search, the cat’s owner had sent me a picture of the remains of an animal about the size of a cat or a rabbit. It was just a section of a spine and parts of two limbs, with no fur intact. I asked her if she could send me a closer picture, so I could try to identify the species, if possible, but she couldn’t because the remains were gone when she went back. The evidence had been removed by scavengers, most likely. When Mu and I got there to search, I took him to the general area where the cat’s owner had photographed the remains, and we expanded the search from there. About 100 feet from where the spine had been, Mu located fur. It was about 20 feet away from the driveway, in wild landscape. A visual search would not have discovered this fur, only Mu’s nose. It was a significant amount of fur, more than could be explained by anything other than a serious attack. Given that a spine had been found earlier, it wasn’t looking good for the cat’s chances. We searched around for more evidence, but didn’t find any right away. At the end of the long driveway, which was a public easement, we came to a large house, and a little white dog ran out to bark at us. Mu didn’t react, and I kept myself between Mu and the little dog, so the dog wouldn’t bite Mu. Eventually, the homeowner came out and called the dog back into the yard. I texted the cat’s owner to let her know what Mu had found, a significant quantity of fur, and she said she would come out to look. As I was showing the evidence to the cat’s owner, Mu pointed out a dried stain on the paved area of the long driveway. At was about the right quantity of liquid to be the volume of blood of a cat or rabbit. There were no skid marks. It was in the middle of the driveway, not on the side, so it probably wouldn’t have been where someone poured out their cold coffee. The fact that Mu took an interest in it strongly suggested it was blood, and not some other sort of liquid. The cat’s owner told me that the neighbor at the end of the long driveway was trying to claim the easement as her own private property even though it was a well-documented public easement for the whole community. That neighbor had come close to running people over in the driveway, and the cat’s owner had to jump out of the way and pull her niece to safety on one occasion. It seemed probably that the neighbor at the end of the lane had some sort of mental illness, and not at all unlikely that she had run over the cat on purpose. The cat’s owner had given the cat a mild sedative to take her to the vet that morning, and she had intended to keep her in, but the cat got out, still under the influence of the medication, and may not have had full awareness of a car, possibly a quiet electric car, driving towards her. As we were examining the scene of the crime, I set Mu’s leash down, so I could take better pictures. He slowly walked away under the shrubs, towards a chain link fence, and he was sniffing at the bottom of the fence. I crawled under the bush to see what he was interested in. I could see fur on the bottom prongs of the fence, which matched the missing cat. Inside the fenced yard, about 15 feet away, I could see a large quantity of fur that matched the cat. Mu had found where scavengers had pulled the body out of the road and under a fence. The spine, the small but significant amount of fur, the stain on the pavement, the fur caught on the bottom of the fence, and the large pile of fur on the other side of the fence, along with the history of a neighbor dispute, it all painted a pretty clear picture of what had happened. The owner of the cat was sad and angry, of course, but also appreciative of Mu’s remarkable work. Another case had been solved by Mu when there would have been absolutely no other way the cat’s owner could have learned the truth.
I hope Mu knows how significant his work is. We work in the service of other animals. That is a rare thing. Most animals that have jobs are working for humans. I wish I could explain to him that his work accomplishes something vital, which only he could do. I certainly couldn’t have found those 300 cats over the last 12 years without his help. I have helped thousands of cats with my advice, but even then, the advice I give is based on what I learned while working with Mu. In Mu’s memory palace, maybe he just collects impressions and feelings, like that time we were searching for a cat in Mud Bay, Olympia, and while we were looking through a swampy area of tall sedges, which smelled really good for some reason, Mu was suddenly overwhelmed with excitement and zoomed in circles in the sedges for a couple of minutes, leaping and sprinting, before settling down and getting back to work. Maybe he remembers the time we went to Portland and found 17 cats, which was a boatload of fun, even if none of those cats were the one we were looking for. I hope Mu remembers that I told him that I love him about a million times. I’m sure he remembers the cheese he earned on each of his searches.
I don’t know how much longer Mu will continue to search. I have told him he can retire any time he wants. When he was having anxiety, he took a six month sabbatical, and then he returned to work when he was feeling better and we took a slightly different approach to things, being sure to focus on having fun. If he does say, one day, through his body language, that he doesn’t want to go to work any more, I will respect that. He has earned his retirement. If you do an internet search for the search dog with the most searches and the most finds, you probably won’t find any concrete results. As far as I know, Mu is the most successful search dog in the history of the world, although I am not making that claim. Certainly, he has been a great dog, searching or not. I hope he wants to continue working. If he decides to retire, I hope he lives many years relaxing by the fire, remembering his distinguished career.
However long Mu works, and however long he lives, I will keep collecting for my memory palace. He is beautiful and smart and funny. He enjoys life. When he eats a cookie, he makes snarfling noises like every cookie is the best cookie in the world and he hasn’t eaten in years. He likes being a bad dog, sometimes, which I try not to complain about. He keeps tearing apart the couch, and we keep putting it back together. I have my memory palace, my system of loci, that I use to remember things that I need to know, like the details of a particular cat we are looking for. I load up my memory palace with a list of particulars, and I don’t need to look at my phone while we are working if I have a question about something. The answer is in my memory palace. Not by design, but just through continued use, my memory palace has expanded to include memories of my dogs. Of course, I also have a photographic memory, which is also known as an iPhone. I have thousands of pictures and notes and case files. It is becoming increasingly easy to record any event or idea. As we working on training Raven as a search dog, I can record video and notes from all of her training exercises. It is my intention that Raven’s career as a search dog will be recorded in detail, and in an organized manner that anyone could look through and say, Raven was one of the best. Mu’s search career is well documented, but not necessarily in an organized way. Someday, when I have time, I intend to comb through all the files and piece his career together into one coherent story.
In the meantime, on the occasion of Mu’s 13th birthday, I have assembled 216 high-resolution pictures of him. They capture all of his funny faces, and give you a sense of his adventures. I hope you will take some time to look at them all. I have also collected the newsletter stories that feature Mu, along with a 17-minute video showing his antics. You can read the stories as chapters in the book of Mu, and I hope you will. I love Mu because I love dogs, because he is my family, and he is wonderful in every way. Even if he had never wanted to search for cats, I would have enjoyed every moment of the past 12.5 years I have spent with him. Because he is a great search dog, possibly one of the best in the world, I hope he is of interest to the rest of the world. Mu’s career as a search dog has definitely improved our knowledge of what happens to lost cats and how we can increase our chances of finding them. Please read Mu’s stories as you are sitting by the fire this winter, and imagine that Mu’s is curled up there beside you.
216 high-resolution pictures of Mu.
Mu & I discover a pattern concerning pets and coyotes.
If you enjoy Mu’s stories and pictures, please share your favorite Mu story with a friend.
Once again, I cried reading this wonderful story of Mu's rescues and adventures with you. I always feel as if I am right there in the moment feeling all the emotions. Thank you and Mu for being a great search team.
Happy 13th Birthday to Mu