Three Retrievers at Useless Bay

18 years stuffed in a phone booth.

Three Retrievers at Useless Bay

When a cat or a dog is missing, there is a story of what happened, but we don’t know that story yet. With a dog, for example, he might have run off chasing a deer. If it is a small dog, there is a 7% chance, roughly, that he was taken by a coyote and a 15% chance he was picked up by someone who intends to keep him. If there is a ravine nearby, and there is almost always a ravine nearby, there is a good chance the dog went there. Where did the lost dog travel? A dog who is lost and frightened might move like a pinball facing obstacles and attractors, moving towards the water source of the creek, or the smells of the taco truck, but moving away from a Good Samaritan who wanted to help but just made things worse. There is the unknown story of the path the lost dog actually took, and if we want to find that lost dog, we need to investigate as many of those possible paths as we can, using various tools and methods. Are there doorbell cameras in the area that might have seen him go by? Is there coyote scat in the area that could tell us where the coyotes travel and what they have been eating? Missing dogs are found at the shelter maybe 15% of the time. Dogs are located by the search dog, 25% of the time, in those cases where search dogs are used. Posters find lost dogs roughly 25% of the time. Dogs simply come home on their own in about a quarter of all cases. To find out the truth, we start with a set of hypotheses and test them. If someone saw the dog running down the street, we try to generate witnesses by putting up effective posters. In almost all cases of a lost dog, it is advisable to make a post on social media to try to generate a sighting, even though social media posts can attract a lot of nonsense. There is an underlying truth of what happened and we need to keep chipping away until we find that truth.

When I receive a request to help a lost cat or dog, I conduct a consultation with the pet’s owner to help them decide the best way to find their pet, based on my experience. I ask them questions, but in most cases, once they get started talking, I just listen and take notes. Sometimes they give me details that don’t seem related at first, but later I can piece them into a bigger picture. Sometimes, while working the case, I eventually learn something which would have been really helpful to know in the first place, if I had tracked it down with the right questions. In what follows, I am not rambling about birds and my grandfather and submarine springs to waste your time, but because it is all related, even if I can’t exactly say how or why. This essay contains a lot of seemingly unrelated stuff, which is all related. I don’t know exactly what it means, and I can’t stitch it together into a logical narrative. I understand that few people will actually read it through to the end, or that it will mean anything to them. I’m not entirely sure what it means to me or exactly what I am trying to say. These are pieces of a puzzle that I have not solved. I only know that this is what is important to me, even if I may never know why, or what good it might do.

It is my job to listen to animals, to dogs specifically, and cats. For 17 years, I have worked with search dogs to find lost pets. When working with a search dog, I need to read him, the way he holds his tail, where his eyes are looking, how much he is pulling on the leash, his level of excitement and engagement, his pattern of breathing. People often ask me, how do I know when Raphael has found a cat? I will reply, generally, that he whines and pulls on the leash. That is not the full answer, though, which would take too long, and which I probably couldn’t even adequately describe.

I listen to my working dogs, Tino and Raphael, and my search dog in training, Raven, to such an extent that they become incorporated into my awareness. I am watching without even looking at them. As I look at the terrain and the breeze on the leaves of a vine maple, as I listen to a dog barking in the distance, as I check the map on my phone and take photographs of claw marks on a fence, my working dog is in my peripheral awareness, and if he catches that scent, I will know, like a spider’s web that suddenly has a new vibration. When his intensity increases, I will pay closer attention to his body language and behavior.

Because of my habit of listening to dogs, observing their patterns, learning the typical ways of lost and stray dogs, observing how humans typically react when helping or encountering lost pets, I think it is likely that my brain has been remodeled so that I have more neurons, a larger percentage of my mental capacity, opened up to just being aware of animals and nature. When I took the course from Missing Pet Partnership in 2008, where Kat Albrecht taught us how to find lost pets using search dogs and knowledge of animal behavior, she had a section on bird language. She said that she couldn’t tell us exactly how birds could help us find lost pets, but that if one understood bird language, it may be possible that birds could tell you where a cat is hiding. Over the last 17 years, I have spent thousands of hours listening to birds. I recall one specific instance, a couple of years ago, where the alarm calls of birds did reveal the location of a hidden cat, which turned out not to be the lost cat we were looking for. So far, bird language has not been the key factor that helped me solve the case of a missing cat or dog. I have enjoyed listening to birds, though, and all that they tell me, even when they don’t find lost pets. I will keep listening, and I’m sure that one day a bird will provide the pivotal clue to the location of a lost pet.

A few weeks ago, I heard what I thought was a song sparrow. It sounded like the voice of a song sparrow, but with a modified song, leaving off the introduction, and really belting out a couple of the notes clearly, unhurried. A typical song sparrow often sounds like they are rushing through, like, yada yada yada, you know how this song goes. This bird was saying, Hey, pay attention. I quickly opened the Merlin bird app and the app also thought it was a song sparrow. In the recording, you can hear this new song with a song sparrow singing the traditional song in the distance. I suspected that it could be a Bewick’s wren mimicking a song sparrow, because they have a wide variety of sounds they make, and they seem to be playful and curious. The bird in question was there a second day, and then I never heard it again. I keep listening.

I don’t know when I started thinking this way, but I also want to listen to the planet, the biosphere, my local forest. I watch the clouds. I listen to the way the wind can roll up like a runaway bus, hurtling through the trees and then rolling over us, animating the shrubs when all had been quiet a moment before. I want the Earth to speak to me. I believe, and I am not the only one who thinks this way, that AI will give us the power to communicate with the biosphere the same way that AI is learning how to talk to whales. We can listen to the Earth and eventually learn her language. Or re-learn what we have forgotten. One day, I will have the opportunity to tell the Earth that I love her and I am sorry for the way humans have treated her.

I think the Earth is speaking to me now, through dogs and birds and breezes and song sparrows with new songs. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what she is saying, because I wouldn’t want to put words in her mouth, or get it wrong. I would hope you would start listening to the Earth yourself, and see what she says to you. She does not say—and I can feel pretty confident in deducing this—she does not say: rape me, burn me, torture me, and kill me if it makes you happy for a fleeting moment.

I do not want to say that the new song of the song sparrow meant one thing or another. If it was the Earth speaking to me, maybe she was just saying, “Good, you are paying attention now.” I also think the song sparrow could have been saying that there could be another way of doing things, that we can take what was good and turn it into something new and possibly better. June 26th, 2025, 9:22 AM is when I heard that song and recorded it. Maybe the song says that the way we do things is not the only way or not necessarily the best way. Maybe this different song was a mistake, or an accident, I don’t know. All of evolution, which created us, was a series of accidents, so if this bird song was accidental, that doesn’t mean it was meaningless. It felt like a message that was intended for me.

On November 27th, 2000, the derelict tug called the SeaWay 10 broke loose from her moorings near the Ballard locks, and she drifted until she ran aground on the sand of Useless Bay. I read an article in the paper, which, I am assuming, the author thought it was a newsworthy story for the same reason that it caught my attention, that it was clever of the unwanted old vessel to find her way to Useless Bay, as if she knew she was no longer wanted. This was the first I had ever heard of Useless Bay, which seems like an odd name for a geographic feature. We have Elliot Bay and Cutlass Bay and Pirates Cove and Commencement Bay. Padilla Bay has a name that seems to honor a person or place named Padilla, it would be safe to assume, knowing nothing other than the name. Useless Bay? It probably wasn’t named after Captain Useless. Deception Pass got it’s name from the swirling currents that could drive your boat onto the sharp rocks, so that what looks like a quick way from one side of the island to the other is really a quick way to the bottom. Deception Pass sounds like it is a cautiously respectful name, like, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” To name something Useless Bay doesn’t even seem like a warning. It’s just one step above having the official title of Nameless Bay. Or is the title of Useless Bay meant as a compliment, like Bad sometimes means Good? I would like to think so, whether or not that was the original intention. To be truly Useless could mean unexploitable by those who only look for what they can exploit, for short term gains.

Useless Bay is not at all useless. It is a beautiful place, and absolutely the best off-leash park for dogs on the entire planet, as far as I know. It has expansive sandy beaches when the tide is out. It is a perfect place to watch clouds. Nearby Double Bluff appears to be a large hill made entirely of sand, which is continually eroding and feeding the sand bars of Useless Bay. Acres of sand, and no fences, make an ideal place for dogs to go crazy, sprinting, chasing sticks, chasing each other, splashing in the waves. Herons continue to fish in the shallow waters because even if a rambunctious dog gets too close, the heron can move down the beach a little, and there is still plenty of room.

As far as I can recall, I first took Three Retrievers to Useless Bay on April 20th of 2007. Porter, Tess, and Kelsy were my three Labrador retrievers mixes. At that time, I did not know I would soon have a company called Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue, or a nonprofit called Useless Bay Sanctuary. I didn’t know that search dogs could be used to find lost pets. I was mostly unaware of the huge, systemic problem of stray, unwanted dogs. You could say that Porter, Tess and Kelsy were all unwanted by their previous owners. I got Porter from a shelter in 2000, I believe. It was obvious why someone had thought he was useless. He was beautiful but crazy, and incapable of following any commands even after demonstrating he knew what you were saying. Porter taught me to love crazy dogs. After a few rocky weeks, he was a really great dog. I learned to appreciate him for who he was, not just what he could do for me. Once I recognized his gifts, he did the best thing for me that a dog could ever do. He became my family. Tess was unwanted by her family because they simply didn’t have time for her. She was actually the best dog in the world, and she did whatever you wanted before you even asked. But to someone, she was useless because they were busy, I guess. Kelsy was at a shelter when she was nine weeks old. She was beautiful and happy, and completely trainable. If someone thought she was useless, they were blind or stupid, but people throw away valuable things all the time, I guess. I had been thinking about Useless Bay, off and on, ever since I read about the SeaWay 10 in 2000. Going there with my Three Retrievers was just a fun day at the beach, but also a kind of pilgrimage.

From 2004 to 2007, I had been writing a novel, Thunderbird Snow, which featured Useless Bay. I had written about Useless Bay as a kind of mythical place. Not actually knowing much about it allowed me to shape it for my story. It was a rainy day when Porter, Tess, Kelsy, and I first visited. Kelsy was less than 2 years old, still very much a puppy, with boundless energy. She played and played on the vast, open beach, fetching sticks and harassing the other dogs. Kelsy always loved to swim, and I threw her ball as far as I could into the waves. Porter and Tess swam after her, but not as far. The sand had magical qualities. You could walk over it quickly and easily, but if you stayed in one place very long, it would start to slowly swallow your feet. The sand was like a field of fresh snow, unblemished, and it showed the distinct tracks of everyone that passed, only to erase them and give you a blank slate the next day.

During a later visit to Useless Bay, we went to South Whidbey State Park, where we found a phone booth. I hadn’t seen one in many years, as they had become uncommon at that point, in the rest of the world. Most of them had been removed with the advent of cell phones. The phone booth was like a time machine, making you feel like the world had not spun on out of control. I had all three retrievers pack themselves into the phone booth for a picture. 18 years later, I visited the same phone booth, looking pretty much the same, and remarkably free of graffiti, and stuffed it with my current Three Retrievers, Valentino, Raphael, and Raven. On May 27th, 2025, Three Retrievers visited Useless Bay again, but this time they were the working dogs of Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue, all of whom had been saved by my nonprofit, Useless Bay Sanctuary.

I like who I have become, in some ways. I like my brain, where I spend a great deal of time, and I feel like I have the furniture of my mind organized properly. Would I have become me if I had not gotten Porter from the shelter in 2000 and read about the SeaWay 10 aground in Useless Bay in 2000? I think I might be a completely different person. I was a cat person before 2000, and Porter made me a dog person. Now I spend all day every day in the service of dogs and cats, working with dogs, listening to dogs and understanding them. I don’t only listen to my dogs to understand them. Sometimes I listen to them just to experience them, without understanding, but just knowing them. Language is a tool, a technology, but language is not reality. Not everything is a story, a narrative. Sometimes you just have to listen, observe, and not draw any conclusions. If there is meaning, maybe you shouldn’t decide the meaning before you have all the pieces of the puzzle. After Tino, Raphi, and Ray packed into the phone booth for a picture, we went for a walk in the forest. We stopped in several spots and just looked and listened, without preconceptions, at least on my part. One of the great joys of spending all day with dogs is freedom from the tyranny of words, freedom from the imperative to make everything into a narrative. We just sat and looked at the trees and listened to the birds. We just existed, which was really excellent.

On the ride home, and on the ferry from the island to the mainland, the dogs all settled in and slept. As Tino was relaxing, preparing to sleep, he shifted his joints and aligned his head just so, with his tail draped over his nose, and he emitted a faint whistle, barely noticeable, from his nose. It wasn’t a sigh or a purposeful exhalation. It wasn’t a whine or simply the regular sound of his breathing. It was a whistle from the labyrinth of passages of his gigantic nose, but it was also a word, a symbol of meaning. It might have meant, “I am settled now. I have had my work and my play, my food and water, and I am with my person, settling down for deep rest, and everything is just right.” I listen for this subtle whistle, which is one of my favorite sounds. I try to make a recording of it, but it doesn’t always happen predictably and it has eluded me so far. It’s odd that my dog can have this whistling sound in his nose that I find enchanting, but if I was around a human that had a random whistle in their nose, I would fantasize about smothering them with a pillow. Many charming dog behaviors would be grounds for justifiable homicide in humans. But on that day, May 27th, 2025, this faint whistle from Valentino seemed to indicate that the visit of Three Retrievers to Useless Bay was a complete success.

Not everything had gone as planned. The weather forecast had said it would be cloudy and cool, but the sun came out and it was much warmer than expected. I should have brought water for the dogs. I should have planned for the unexpected. Since I didn’t, I tried to improvise by getting the dogs to drink from the stream. Useless Bay has a stream that runs through the acres of sand at low tide. When I brought the dogs to it, they wouldn’t drink it, as if it was still too salty, like the sound. We followed the water upstream, but then it just disappeared. I thought maybe it was a creek that got buried by the shifting sands, so we went into the woods to look for the source. We didn’t find any creek or even a trail, but the woods were cool and inviting after the relentless sun of the open beach. When we came out of the woods, the dogs got ahead of me. I heard a scream. Then a woman said, “Nice doggies! Go and play!” When I caught up with my dogs, I saw that she was holding her small dog in her arms and looking nervous. I guess she was startled by my three large dogs rushing out of the forest unexpectedly without a human. My dogs just wanted to visit with the new dog and exchange scents, but at 63, 85, and 100 pounds, they can be intimidating even at an off leash area, especially when they pop out of the woods unannounced. That scream was the only drama of the day.

After not finding the source of the stream that runs through the beach, I researched it on my iPhone briefly and learned that there are submarine springs. This had never occurred to me before. Of course, if you have springs in the hillsides around Puget Sound, you can have springs below the high tide line. This was both obvious and amazing. I had been coming to Useless Bay for 17 years not realizing that I was looking at a submarine spring. Indigenous people thought of these underwater springs as sacred spaces. This spring, in Useless Bay, probably had a name in the Lushootseed language, and maybe that name is lost to time. I’m certain Useless Bay once had a proper name, and the Native Americans found the bay very useful, since they knew how to appreciate it. A sacred place had been right in front of me for years and I hadn’t known.

I have almost 200,000 pictures on my phone. At this moment I have 197,932 pictures and videos, mostly of dogs. I would say that my pictures consist of 80% dogs, 50% of which show Tino, who is very photogenic and has had his picture taken nearly every day of his life. The other dogs are just as beautiful, in my opinion, but they get annoyed when I try to take their picture. Tino thinks that’s just normal, since I have taken his picture almost every day of his life. Maybe 10% of my pictures and videos are of clouds, trees, moss, ferns, and nature in general. Probably 5% of my pictures are of evidence gathered on searches. The rest are screenshots, and pictures I took of things simply to remember the data, and not for visual interest. Less than .1% of my pictures are of humans. .00001% are of me. On May 27th, during our pilgrimage to Useless Bay, I took 164 pictures. Many of these pictures were just me trying to get the perfect shot. For every one picture I like, in terms of content, composition, focus, exposure, and clarity, I probably take ten others that could be deleted. I rarely delete anything because I have paid for 2 terabytes of data storage in the cloud, and I have used only a quarter of it. Sometimes I like the imperfect pictures, too.

I have been a photographer since my teens. Although I have never been a professional photographer, many of my pictures are of professional quality, in my non-expert opinion. My grandfather got me started. He gave me his old camera, which was my first camera capable of producing high quality images. I enjoy photography as a way to see the world without words, without the tyranny of language and meaning. A song sparrow with an interesting new song was not there for me, to convey some meaning to me. He was just there living his life. I heard his song just as beautiful music. Also, I know he was saying to his tribe that he was there, with his territory and his genetic fitness. If I get meaning from his song, it would be insights into my relationship with nature, with the biosphere. Our trip to Useless Bay, with my ever-present iPhone, was a chance to just have fun, and to see my dogs just as wonderful, amazing, beautiful creatures, no matter if they do life-saving work or if someone once thought they were useless. Our trip was also a visit to a place that had become sacred to me even before I knew there was a submarine spring that most likely was very important to the first inhabitants. As a photographer, it is my job to observe, to see what is really there, what people passed by without noticing. As a writer, and I have written more than 250 articles in this newsletter describing my dogs and their work, it is my job to observe, to show people something they wouldn’t otherwise be able to see. As a pet detective, as some people refer to me, it is my job to observe everything. I gather information, work my search dogs, observe their behavior, examine clues, and evaluate witness statements. Society wants me to be observant when it is a marketable skill, but wants me to switch off those powers of observation when I can plainly see that we are murdering the biosphere, with eyes wide open, and somehow pretending that we are not killing ourselves, destroying humanity’s future.

I don’t recall that my grandfather spoke much. He listened to me, which may have told me more than any words he might have said. He was a calm, quiet man, who maintained his home and his car, and occasionally worked in the forest nearby, addressing a potential problem like a rotten old tree that was leaning towards the house. He taught me how to use a chainsaw, and he showed me how to keep a workshop organized. He was always happy to see me. He was never loud or angry. He never, ever said an unkind word about anyone, at least not in my presence. He didn’t brag. He didn’t demand attention. He was competent and smart and caring. If anyone needed help, he would help. He was the perfect role model, quiet, competent, kind, and ready to help. I would show him my photographs. He built me a darkroom in our basement, and I would show him the prints I made, and how I had adjusted the contrast and exposure like Ansel Adams said to do in his books. I still have a closet full of his slides. I need to go through them someday. I wanted to show my grandfather my iPhone, how it can hold 200,000 pictures, and it shoots videos, and you can edit and crop photos right on your phone. I would like to show him how I can take a picture of Valentino and later delete a little dirt on his face in just a few steps, how it produces perfect pictures instantly, which can be transmitted anywhere in the world. I wish he could have come with us on our trip to Useless Bay. I suppose in a way he did.

I play chess, probably too much. The thing I like about chess is that you and your opponent have exactly the same tools and every move is made in plain view. The only secrets are in our minds. Quite often, maybe always, I don’t see a move on the chess board that was plainly obvious if I had bothered to really look. Sometimes I will have a great plan, and then position my queen right next to a pawn that can take her, ruining my grand complicated scheme. I keep playing chess in the hope that I will finally learn to see what it right in front of me. I think it is a failure of my imagination more than a problem with my eyes or my intelligence.

Recently, as I have been going to sleep, after I get settled in, wedged between Mu and Tino, I have been visualizing the cedar trees that surround our home. Five cedars form an arc from the southwest to the northeast. They are giants, probably over 100 years old. I’m certain their roots connect underground, aided by the mycelium. As I close my eyes and listen to Tino breathe, the house disappears, and I am surrounded by the cedars in the starlight. They braid their roots together and form a tendril that drills up through the floor and sneaks around the mattress to touch the back of my neck. This tendril of cedar roots interfaces with my brain stem and the forest downloads all of my experiences of the day, capturing my events, my thoughts, my emotions, remembering me. This is a very pleasant visualization technique, which I have never managed to maintain for more than a minute before falling into a deep sleep between my mutts, my search dogs, my family.

When I am not taking pictures of dogs, or evidence, I take pictures of the nature that surrounds me, that I see every day. I want to really see it, to not overlook it like a chess move that is right in front of me, unnoticed. The light changes, flowers come and go with the seasons. There is always something happening, something different in my forest landscape, even if nothing really changes much from one year to the next. I take pictures of my dogs so often that, if you compared them, you could probably count the gray hairs as they appear, one by one, on Mu’s face. I took photos of the dogs in the phone booth in 2007, 2013, 2018, and 2025. The first time, it was Porter, Tess, and Kelsy. In 2013 it was Kelsy, Mu, and Fozzie. In 2018 it was Mu, Fozzie, and Tino. 2025 had Tino, Raphael, and Raven. I hope the phone booth stays just as it is for a long time, and I can keep coming back there. I can’t even contemplate not having my current dogs that I love so much. Life does go on, and I imagine I will have to live my life without them someday, whether I want to or not. As long as I live, I will always remember them and they will always be present. When I took the pictures of Tino, Raphi, and Raven on this most recent trip, all of the 13 dogs I have shared my life with were jammed into that phone booth even if they didn’t show up in the photograph.

If it is my job to find lost pets, and if it is not my job to wander about in the forest with the ghosts of every dog and cat I have ever had, then why should anyone care what I think about a submarine spring or bird with a different song? Because I will never be able to find all of the lost cats and dogs. I will never be able to rescue every stray dog. The answer to this problem is not for me to find them faster and better, although that is something I am always striving for. The answer to the problem of lost pets and stray dogs is for people to value their cats and dogs the way that I do. To make them family members. To incorporate them into their souls. If everyone valued their pets as people, as souls, as family, then the Greater Seattle area would not have more than 100,000 lost pets every year, as we currently do. 100,000 human children don’t simply go missing every year. My dogs are my children, they are my family, they are my soul. I protect them like they are family. It is possible that I could lose one of my dogs, but I do everything I can to minimize that risk, and to be sure I would recover my lost dog as quickly as possible. I know that I will lose all of my dogs someday, but I will keep them with me forever.

As I wander through my forest and take pictures and enjoy silence, I wonder if I am a witness to the murder of nature or if we will figure out how to save her from us. We certainly have the technology and the capacity to stop killing our mother. Why do we lack the will? Why do we lack the vision? How can it be that the Earth that gave us life, that gave us everything, is held in such low regard? I think it might be because people are not looking at the miracle and wonder that is right in front of them. Recently, we searched for a lost cat in a housing development in a golf course. Between the houses and the legs of the golf course, there was a band of pristine forest. This remnant of forest was maybe 200 feet wide and 800 feet long. It was pristine, perfect habitat. If you only looked in one direction, you could imagine you were in an endless wilderness area. As Raphael and I looked for the cat, I didn’t fail to notice this perfect habitat, this immaculate ecosystem, behind the back fences of these very expensive homes. They had done everything they could to make their yards fancy, and completely unlike the beautiful forest. They had spent thousands of dollars and hours of time to grow plants that looked like pictures from a magazine, and every single resident of that community turned their backs on the spectacular perfect forest right behind their back fences. It was simply a space they hadn’t gotten around to bulldozing yet, or a buffer so that golfers weren’t looking in your kitchen window. As a magnificent example of nature, it seemed to have no value to the nearest residents.

Our planet is a lost dog. She is not lost because it was inevitable that she would be. She is lost because humans don’t seem to care, because they can’t see the beauty that is right in front of them. Our Earth is a lost dog that could be rescued and adopted by you. She could become a member of your family, an extension of your soul. I think that as long as I live, the number of lost and stray dogs and cats might only ever increase, and I might not solve this problem as long as humans continue to think of dogs and cats as disposable consumer products, and not family members. I will keep saving them, one by one, as the numbers that I can’t save only ever increase. I fear that as long as I live and fight my fight, I will not convince everyone to adopt our lonely biosphere and bring her into the family. I will keep trying to persuade. I hope that one day we will learn to talk to the biosphere, and to listen to the Earth. It might happen after I am dead, but someday I hope she can read my words, and know that I tried even if I failed. I want to tell her how sorry I am that she was ever treated as anything other than our mother, our creator, our reason for being, a wonderful, beautiful, singular life form.

But, as I am thinking that it is a long shot that I might persuade people to value cats and dogs as family members and protect them from preventable harms, and as I am thinking that the odds are slim that I could persuade a nation that voted for Trump to start caring about the fate of planet Earth, I find some reasons to hope that I could succeed in one or the other of these endeavors. I figure, at this point in this essay, it is highly unlikely that anyone is still reading, so that gives me some freedom to stretch my mind a bit farther than I had intended. One reason I might have hope is that, having dogs as family members is really excellent, a great experience. It is very likely that humans spent thousands of years living lives where they spent not that much time with other humans, simply because there were fewer humans around, but for thousands of years, it is very likely that any given human would have spent all day with a canine companion. As we went about our lives, trying to find food and avoid being eaten by a predator, it would be necessary to leave the company of other humans, but a dog could go anywhere with you. It was probably the norm that a person would spend the whole day in the company of a dog, more than with humans. Our brains evolved for canine companionship. If I ask modern humans to treat dogs and cats as family members, I am not asking people to do anything difficult or out of the ordinary. In fact, this sort of relationship could restore something in your life. Our current toxic stew of social media puts us in to too much contact with humans, and many experts agree that modern life is dangerous to our mental and physical wellbeing. Spending more time with dogs and cats, and having deeper connections to them could shield us from the toxic effects of our connected modern world. It’s beneficial to dogs and cats and humans.

Likewise, asking people to spend more time in nature and appreciating the biosphere is not asking them to give up anything or take on a burden. I want people to put down the burden of living in an artificial world all of the time. Studies have shown that test scores go up when students have a window showing trees and sky. Taking time to unplug from your phone and your email and notifications constantly pinging you, to just watch clouds form and drift and change, to walk in Useless Bay on the wide sandy beach, it’s good for you, good for your health, and it can be good for the planet if you feel a connection, if you feel that nature is your home and the biosphere is worth protecting. I am not asking people to make sacrifices to save the Earth. I am asking people to stop sacrificing that time they could be spending with nature in order to scroll through more screens. Don’t let your attention be hijacked by that next video that tells you about that very important thing that you really ought to know about, and allow yourself to just look out the window and see that tree. It is a really excellent tree, and it always has been. It is just waiting for you to see it.

Another reason I think I could succeed in persuading people to treat dogs and trees as family, (going much further down this rabbit hole than I had originally intended) is the sheer improbability that I should even be here in the first place, with Tino by my side. 13.8 billion years ago, the Big Bang exploded matter and antimatter into empty space. (That’s not exactly accurate, but something like that.) In this early universe, for unknown reasons, there were one billion plus one particles of matter for every one billion particles of anti-matter. When one billion particles of matter collided with one billion particles of antimatter and they all annihilated each other, there was one particle of matter left over. This left over matter, in the form of hydrogen and helium, was just the right amount of stuff to build our universe. If this ratio had been exactly even, no universe. If it was more lopsided one way or the other, it would have been a very different universe. Then, to create the Earth, stars needed to be born and die over those billions of years so that nuclear fusion could create other atoms like carbon and iron, and all of the elements that make up the Earth. Without supernovas, the cloud that collapsed into our solar system would not have had the proper elements for life. Then, when the lifeless Earth was less than 100 million years old, she was struck by a planetoid that glanced off and had just the right momentum and trajectory to get caught in an orbit. This new moon stabilized the tilt of the Earth, which gives us our seasons. After life had done quite a bit of evolving, and dinosaurs ruled the earth, an asteroid slammed into the Earth and killed off almost all of the dinosaurs, creating the space for humans and dogs to evolve. Roughly 20,000 years ago, in insignificant band of apes started hanging out with some wolves who were more tolerant of being in proximity to us. We found ways to help each other, we became friends, we became family, and because of dogs, humans have been able to develop culture, knowledge, and the internet. The atoms in my body are 14 billion years old, just like the atoms in Tino’s body. One hydrogen atom in my brain was there at the Big Bang, resided in a massive star until it exploded, then probably was engulfed in another star that also exploded, then accreted into the solar disc, and then became part of Earth. This hydrogen atom is statistically likely to have been inside a bacterium, a fish, a dinosaur, a dog, and various humans throughout the 13.8 billion year history of this atom. And now it is vibrating in my brain as I write this, resting comfortably next to another hydrogen atom and an oxygen atom. For that atom to have followed that path over 14 billion years is highly improbable, but that is in fact what happened. Most hydrogen atoms just float around in diffuse clouds in cold space, where nothing ever happens. One way to look at things is that highly improbable events do sometimes occur, for whatever reason, and so it is possible that I could someday persuade people to love dogs and love nature in a way that could save the Earth.

It is not just the Earth that I want to save, but the entire universe. Human life is on the verge of escaping this planet. Perhaps in my lifetime, or soon after, humans will establish colonies beyond Earth, and we will be on our way to spreading life and culture to places that currently seem lifeless. What kind of life will we be spreading? Will we be spreading Drill, Baby, Drill? Will we be spreading capitalism, a cancerous idea that views every beautiful part of nature as a commodity to be extracted and exploited and discarded? Will the humans who venture out into space be explorers and scientists who want to appreciate and understand? Are humans a cancer that will devour Earth and then devour every other planet they can seize? Or are humans the vehicle by which Earth’s wonderful life forms might flourish on distant worlds? Are humans the necessary link that allows Earth to reproduce, to have offspring elsewhere in the galaxy? Which vision of life will spread throughout the galaxy?

Another way of thinking about the highly improbable chain of events that led to me living on Earth at just this moment when humans and wolves have become family and when we have gained the power to save or destroy the Earth, to protect or destroy the galaxy, is that life, such as exists on Earth, is exceedingly rare. We don’t look out into the galaxy and see intelligent life everywhere. We could look back at 13.8 years of history in the universe as a never-ending series of cataclysmic events that constantly disrupt and destroy the conditions necessary for life. Maybe we exist because the universe just hasn’t gotten around to killing us yet. If that’s the case, then we had better wise up and prepare for the next disaster, like a Gamma Ray Burst, which could be on its way at this moment and which could wipe out most life on Earth. Humans have exactly the right skills and abilities to protect all life on Earth from cosmic events. We could be the guardians of the Earth and not her executioners. You protect what you love. If you love dogs like I do, you protect your own, but you try to protect all dogs. If you love the Earth, you try to protect her as if she were family, because she is. Nature is us, and we are nature. We need to become the kind of civilization that unites in common purpose to protect and preserve, not to extract and exploit. It’s not just a choice or a preference, it is life or death. That’s what I think about while my dogs are nearby, sleeping, dreaming. I don’t know what they are thinking about, but probably not the extinction of most species on Earth. Since they can’t really think about it, it is my job to think about these things. I want there to always be a planet where a human-like sentience and a dog-like companion can spend time in the shade of a tree or near a sacred spring. I want the children of the Earth to live in the galaxy forever, as gardeners and poets, not conquerors and pirates.

There is a giant ball of money rolling around the Earth. $100 trillion is stalking the planet, like a financial Godzilla, popping out of the ocean to leave a swath of destruction. This $100 trillion is all of the money of retirement funds, university endowments, trust funds, sovereign wealth funds, and the investment accounts of billionaires. Teachers and firefighters rely on this fund for their retirement. Schools use the earnings from this pool of money to fund education. But this fiscal Godzilla is always seeking the highest return on investment, and that usually involves screwing someone over somewhere. Maybe it’s the Amazon rain forest, or the jungles of the Congo. The fiscal Godzilla is private equity funds buying companies like ToyRUs and JoAnn’s Fabrics and intentionally running them into the ground to bankrupt the company and leave creditors unpaid, while the private equity firm collects upfront fees and avoids liability for the bankruptcy. What could the Earth do with that $100 trillion investment pool if we all got together and directed it at solving the world’s problems? With $100 trillion, or even a fraction of that, we could end poverty, stop deforestation, stop global warming, and fund education for everyone. Instead, the $100 trillion Godzilla keeps stomping around the planet, being cheered on by investors.

For 39 years, I have been listening to “Lives in the Balance” by Jackson Browne. Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring about the time I was born. Jared Diamond explained exactly what our predicament is in Collapse, in 2005. Naomi Klein has been writing about how capitalism will destroy the environment for decades. James Hansen warned us about global warming 40 years ago. Elizabeth Kolbert told us about The Sixth Extinction in 2014. Douglas Tallamy has offered a very practical solution with his Homegrown National Park idea. Why would anything that I say, since I am nobody, move the needle on our path to destruction? I have no idea, but I can’t seem to give up on the idea that I could do something to save my beautiful Earth. Because I am aware of the problem, I am obligated to try.

On April 26th, at 10:30 AM, something was wrong with Tino. He was trying to throw up, which is not terribly unusual. At first, I thought maybe he had eaten some grass on our morning walk, and just needed to get it out. Over the next ten minutes, he kept trying to vomit and it was clear he was in distress. I called the emergency vet and told them my dog appeared to have torsion. They said they couldn’t take him and that I had to drive him to Puyallup. I told them I didn’t think he would live that long, and they agreed to see him in Tukwila. When I brought him in, he was in serious distress and becoming weak. They asked me what was wrong with my dog, and suddenly I found myself unable to speak. I couldn’t make any words come out of my mouth. I just gestured at him, since he was in obvious distress. They asked me what his name was, and I couldn’t even say that. I pointed at his name on his collar. Seeing that I was too upset to have any sort of conversation, they gave me a clipboard with a form to fill out, and they rushed him back to be treated. They were able to unkink his stomach and release the pressure. Tino was stabilized, and I could breathe again. They had me take him to another veterinarian for emergency surgery. After a couple of days of observation and medication, I finally had my boy home again. Today, he is back at work, as good as new. We go for walks and he plays with Raven every day. Quite often, I just look at him and admire him and think how lucky I am to have him. Because I listen to Tino, because I watch him and pay attention, I was able to see a serious, life threatening problem and get it addressed in time, saving his life. And saving my life.

Every day, in my Facebook group, Lost Dogs of King County, there is a post of a lost dog that has died, either hit by a car or taken by coyotes. I can foresee these losses before they happen, and I have repeatedly shared ideas and methods for people to prevent losses and keep their dogs safe. I have made no progress at all in getting this message out. We all can see that we are about to lose our perfect biosphere. The Greenland ice sheet could go in the coming decades. The Doomsday glacier in Antarctica is ready to let go. Heat waves and flooding are noticeably worse this year. 100 year floods happen every year, now. Our Earth is ill, and the disease is us. I don’t want to be one of the humans who killed the planet, knowing full well that we were doing it and that we could have stopped it.

I want to be seen by the Earth. Someday, when technology enables the Earth to communicate with humans, she might read about my life. She could read the more than 250 articles in this newsletter and get a sense of who I was and what was important to me. I have also written several books, and a future planet Earth could get to know what was important to me. If I only told the Earth about the events, the narratives of my life, the things that can fit into a neat little story, I might be leaving out something critically important, like the song sparrow who sang a different song, or that I worry that it is my job to somehow save the universe from the worst of human behavior, even though nothing in my résumé suggests I am capable or qualified for that job. If I never was seen by anybody else, I want all of me to be seen by the Earth when she gains a voice. I want to say that on May 27th, 2025, I took Three Retrievers, three dogs who had been cast away, to Useless Bay, a beautiful ecosystem that had been deemed unworthy, and I worshipped my perfect dogs and I worshipped perfect nature. When I stood on the beach , near the sacred spring, amid my happy dogs, when I walked in the forest with the songs of the birds, I said, This is my tribe, my family, my home, and I will protect what I love. I want her to know that I was listening and watching and fighting and working and trying. I want my life to be seen by the Earth when she wakes up. When she gets to know me, she might think I did more damage than good, when everything is balanced out. She may say that my life had more of a negative impact on the biosphere than all of the good I have tried to do. The Earth might someday be aware that I failed to save her, that I didn’t try hard enough, or I didn’t find a way, and if that’s the truth of it, she should know that, too. I want to say, even if I am talking to a dying Earth, that I never said it was okay to kill her. I did not stay silent.