Time Travel

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Time Travel

Do you ever wish you could go back in time and talk to your past self and say, “Don’t do it!”  Maybe you would tell your past self to get off the couch and go for a walk instead of eating junk food and watching reruns.  Maybe you would tell yourself to pay more attention in school, or avoid a person who, in hindsight, turned out to be toxic.  Each of us has the power of time travel if we get in the habit of using it.  Right now, you are in the past of your future self, and you can ask, “What would my future self want me to do on this day?” Maybe there is a little thing you can do that would make an exponential impact on your future life.  We can take small actions in our current lives that can have great leverage in our futures, like a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa and changing the course of an Atlantic hurricane, impacting the lives of millions.

In my daily work, people often tell me, “I wish I had known....” People wish they knew there were coyotes in the nearby ravine, and their cats and small dogs were exposed to a small but deadly risk.  People wish they had put GPS trackers on their dogs before the escape.  People wish they had known that you should never call the name of a lost dog because it can cause them to run farther away in panic.  People wish they had known that your cat or dog is likely to escape when you are on vacation because of new routines and new environments with the pet sitter.  People very often say, “I wish I had known about Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue sooner, and I would have called you right away, and not lost valuable time.”

Right now, you have the opportunity to take small actions that can have outsized impacts on your future life.  You can implement Loss Prevention measures that take little time and cost relatively little money, but could really save your life.  I found Fozzie because he was running down the freeway.  People contacted me and told me about him, so Mu & I went to see if we could help him.  After about 20 minutes of searching, we found him under a freeway overpass.  I set the trap, and he went in for a can of tuna, after about ten minutes.  We did everything we could to try to find out who had lost him, who his previous owners were, but we never made contact with them in two months of searching.  After I had had Fozzie for about a week, I took him with me to training, just to go along on the adventure.  When I opened the door to get Kelsy out, Fozzie jumped over my arm and scampered away.  He wasn’t trying to get away from me.  He loved me and Kelsy.  He just liked to run around like a maniac.  It’s probably how he got lost in the first place.  Because I knew how to deal with lost dogs, I did not call Fozzie’s name (which was unlikely to have been his original name anyway) and I did not chase after him.  I did not make direct eye contact with him.  I kept track of where he went, walking parallel to him, not towards him.  When he would look at me, I would run away from him, back towards the car.  He liked this game, and through a series of short chases, I got him to chase me back to the car.  He finally let me pick him up.  After I got him back in the car, as we were talking about how scary it was to have him running loose, and what a relief it was to get him safe, after about 3 minutes, a coyote came trotting along right in the area where Fozzie had just been.  The next day, I ordered a GPS tracker for Fozzie.

It was a good thing I did get Fozzie a tracker because he escaped 7 more times in the next year.  He would find an opportunity to run through another dog’s legs at the open door, or he would jump over or under my arm when I opened the car door.  Then he would sprint around the neighborhood.  Fozzie is fast.  Because of the way the road curves, I can see a house up the hill, two blocks away.  On one of his escapes, I could see him rounding the corner by that house ten seconds after he had escaped.  When he would escape, I would pull out my iPhone and open the tracker app.  I would get in the car and drive to his location, which could be several blocks in any direction.  In each of his seven subsequent escapes, I was able to recapture him in ten minutes or less because of the GPS tracker.  Fozzie has been with us for over ten years.  After his first year of being a scoundrel, he never tried to run off for an adventure again.  I keep a tracking device on him, just in case.  Fozzie was the main search dog for Three Retrievers for a couple of years, between Kelsy and Tino.  He found dozens of dogs and saved the lives of some, such as a dog named James.  If I had permanently lost Fozzie on one of his 8 escapes, of course I would have been devastated, but also he wouldn’t have been with us to become a search dog and save the lives of other dogs.  Fozzie is a source of daily joy for many people. I am very lucky to have him, but also it turned out to be a very wise investment to get him a GPS tracker.  That small preventive measure made a huge impact in our lives.

Tino has a GPS tracker, not because there is much chance at all that he will run away.  I have GPS on him just in case of some highly improbable event, such as an earthquake or a car accident, or if I was struck by lightning while hiking in the mountains.  If I suddenly died of a heart attack or something, and Tino wandered off, someone could use his GPS to track him down and get him safe.  Perhaps these scenarios are unlikely, but I love Tino more than life itself, and I want to protect him from dangers even if they are unlikely.  I have never needed to use his GPS tracker, but I keep it on him and charged just for insurance.  I have stored scent items of Mu, Sky, Fozzie, and Tino just in case they should go missing and a search dog should be needed to find them.  Of course, all my dogs have microchips and collars with ID.  If any of my dogs should go missing, I have thousands of pictures of them that I could use on posters and fliers.  My dogs mean everything to me, and I take steps to keep them as safe as I can.

Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue receives about 1000 requests for assistance each year.  I try to keep up, but I am unable to deploy a search dog every time someone asks for one.  For 12 years, I haven’t advertised our business because I can’t keep up with the demand for services.  Instead, I have tried to get my information out to as many people as possible.  If your dog or cat is missing, resources at the web page or in this newsletter can definitely help you, and improve your chances of finding your lost pet.  One way you can get the most benefit from Three Retrievers is by reading about Loss Prevention and taking measures today that can greatly impact your future.  Every single day, many times a day, people tell me, or I see them say it in online posts, “I wish I had done things differently.”  When people lose a dog or a cat, they often realize in that moment that the little animal that cannot speak English very well, that can’t get a job or even do the dishes, that tiny little being that sleeps on the couch all day is a central member of the family.  One of the main reasons I do this work is because I lost my own cat in 1996, and I never found him.  I didn’t know the right ways to search for him, and also I did not fully realize the dangers he faced outdoors.  I wish I had known then everything I know now, and maybe I could have kept him safe.

Please share this newsletter with someone you know who is an animal lover.  Please pass along the loss prevention tips to someone.  Learn what you can do if you see a stray dog, and how your actions can save his life. You have the power of time travel.  If you get the right information to the right person at the right time, you can prevent a tragedy.  You have the power to keep happy families together in the future.