Wakomu Rests

Mu is officially retired.

Wakomu Rests

Although I have been putting it off, I think the time has come to announce that Mu is officially retired.  He has certainly earned the right to retire, after working hard for 11.5 years.  He has found hundreds of cats, and we have learned so much from his work.  For example, even though it seems intuitive and obvious, we only recently pieced together the idea that outdoor access cats should definitely not have bells on their collars because this can allow coyotes to locate them by sound.  This became a pattern in the cases Mu worked, and now we can share this advice, hopefully saving many more cat lives.

I have been reluctant to announce his retirement because I hoped he would, after some time off, have an increase in energy and want to go back to work.  A couple of nights ago, he was very happy and playing like a puppy, racing around the room and trying to get someone to play with him.  Unfortunately, these bursts of energy are too brief, and even at training he doesn’t have the energy to work very long.  I wouldn’t want to push him to work for three hours, as is typical for our searches.  Also, Raphael is doing great as a cat detection dog, and has energy to spare.

I miss working with Mu.  He has been a pleasure to work with, and he has been a big part of my life.  We had a rhythm to our daily and weekly pattern of searches.  When it was time for him to go to work, he would become very excited and he would run to the car.  Now, when I go to work with Tino, or when we go to pick up Raphael for work, Mu looks at me from the couch, like, I kind of wish I was going to work, but I’m okay sleeping by the fire.  I enjoyed all of the successes with Mu, but I also just liked working with him even when we didn’t find the cat.

Mu is my son, in addition to being my work partner.  Of course, even though he has retired, I still see him all the time. He sleeps right next to me.  Right now, as I write this, he is nearby, snoring.  I hope Mu enjoys a long retirement, and that he lives to be 15 or 16.  Someday, he won’t be with us any more.  Mu will always be in my thoughts, for the rest of my life.  Even when I am working with Raphael, Mu is there with us.  I remember, either specifically or generally, all of the searches we did together, and the places we found cats.  Mu has advanced what is possible for a cat-detection dog to do.  He has gone beyond his original training, and he has helped me become a better searcher than I was in the beginning.

When Kelsy was forced to retire because of her cancer, she didn’t last long, and she died a few months later.  Kelsy, my first search dog, was such a huge part of my life that I have never been able to let her leave my thoughts.  I think of her every day.  It is as if she is right next to me all the time.  One big regret I had with Kelsy was that I didn’t have more pictures of her, and better pictures.  Although I always wish I had more, I have thousands of pictures of Mu, and hundreds of really good pictures.  Some day in the future, maybe a decade or two from now, it will be possible to recreate a person or a dog in lifelike detail in a virtual 3D world.  When that day comes, I will be able to reconstruct a very realistic version of Mu from all of his pictures and from the stories I have written about his work and his adventures.  When I eventually retire, which won’t be until Raven has had a full career, I will be able to put on a special pair of glasses and see Mu right there beside me, looking as real as life.  He will even bark at me, demanding cookies.  If such technology is never invented, which seems unlikely, then I will always have Mu in my mind and in my heart, as if he is right there.

I hope that many others will always keep Mu in their minds, if not to think of him every day, then to think of him now and then, and what an excellent dog he has been.  Chained in a yard and doomed to an unhappy life, I bought him for $100.  He has lived a very full life.  Here are some of the best pictures I have of Mu.  Please read his stories in this link.  Eventually, I will put all of this together in a finished book, Mu & I.  The last chapters of that book have not been written yet.