Friend + Neighbor = "Freighbor"

When I was a young child, I lived in a small midwest town, where neighbors looked out for one another and all the neighborhood children. The neighbor behind our house fixed our bikes, because he knew Dad was busy trying to start a new business and was putting in a lot of hours. Once an elderly neighbor beside us made cookies and brought them to me while I raced my Big Wheel up and down the sidewalk. Dad asked me if I'd thanked her. I was brought up with manners, and I had thanked her.

Then we moved to a small farm where Dad could also have his business. This was paradise for me. Trees to climb, a tree that held our tire swing, a playhouse, other farm buildings to play in, and fields to run in. We, also, had a huge wooden barn that had hand hewed posts and beams. It was solid, and housed our animals, along with lots of cats. The cats came from all over, finding shelter in the haymow, and food we'd put out. It was a place of happy memories for me. It was also another home were others looked out for us.

Photo by Vlada/FreeDigitalphotos.net

This closeness and friendliness is what I've looked for as an adult, but for the most part haven't seen it.  I, unfortunately, have lived in a metropolis city, something I detested. Neighbors were just people who live around you. You didn't make friends, because you didn't know if they would rob you. City life was like living in a concrete asphalt jail. That's a heck of way to live.

I was deseperate to move to the country. I felt country life would bring me all the positive things I'd experienced as a young child. We have moved to the country, but the world has changed - some neighbors are not friends, and some have been quite nasty and mean.

Photo by tiramisustudio/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thankfully, it is not all negative. This post is for all those people who still believe in looking out for your neighbors, checking to make sure you are okay, watching to make sure whomever is on your property is suppose to be there and not there to rob you, and not being afraid to call you or the police when something doesn't look right. These people are more than just neighbors - they are Freighbors which means friends and neighbors. And when you have these, it does make the world a better place. Thank you to all my freighbors!

Search and Rescue Author Susannah Charleson

Let me introduce you to author Susannah Charleston. She has written two non-fiction books, Scent Of The Missing and The Possibility Dogs, which I have reviewed on previous post. 

Thank you, Susannah for taking the time to answer my questions.

Are you still involved with search and rescue (SAR) and the Metro Area Rescue K9 (MARK9) team?

I am still working SAR with Puzzle, and now SAR trainee Gambit. We are now with Waypoint SAR, a grant-funded organization that serves nationwide and specializes in search strategies for the special-needs missing.

Puzzle would be about eleven now. Is she retired now? If so, how does she spend her time?

Puzzle is 11 ½ and still working, primarily trailing and human remains detection (HRD). She’s not interested in slowing down yet, and every cold front that comes through makes her act like a puppy even now. When we don't do enough training on any given day, she has a way of staring at me balefully until I go set up a scent problem for her to work.

When SAR dogs retire, do they transition easily to retirement? 

Some do and some don’t. I know handlers whose dogs just decided to crash out on the couch in their senior years and others that had to learn something new to do (one would go get the mail every day). Puzzle is very driven, so even when physically the search might be too much for her, I’m going to have to give her daily scent problems to work out, because she gets crazy bored if she’s not training and working on something related to search.

When the tragic events of 9/11 occurred, a lot of media attention was given to the SAR dogs need to protection their paws and the lack of appropriate gear. Has the technology advanced to protect the SAR dogs and their paws with any type of search environment? 

There are booties, yes, as there were then, but I think the durability and grip capabilities have improved in the past 15 years, and they needed to. The biggest change I see now is appropriate vests for cooling, reflecting plenty of situations where dogs on long summer searches need to be visible from great distances, but need to wear something that won’t make them even hotter.

 I know every dog is unique and each learns at a different pace. What would be the average time it takes to get a dog fully trained for SAR? And the average for a service dog? 

18 months is a pretty good average for a high-aptitude, high-drive dog and consistent access to training facilities. This is true for both service and SAR, allowing for repeated training and testing experiences in all different kinds of venues and seasons and situations. Some dogs take longer, some a bit less, but practically, if you’re following a rigorous curriculum, it takes both dog and handler time to work through all the exercises and scenario drills that must be mastered to demonstrate reliability prior to testing.

With your book – The Possibility Dogs, you wrote about homeless dogs in the animal shelter system being evaluated as potential SAR, therapy, service or emotional support dogs. Are you more involved with going into the animal shelters to do the evaluations and pulling these dogs? If so, what is your biggest challenge?

The most difficult thing with shelter dogs is having adequate time and space to evaluate them. So many shelters are stressful, anxious places for both dog and human, and giving a dog a fair chance to show who (s)he is and what (s)he can do can be challenging. On the flip side, these are not decisions that can be made in haste. If, truly, 1/50 dogs or so have the aptitude for service or SAR, the temptation to take a sweet dog on a whim and a hope is unethical. That sweet dog could be adopted to a family that isn’t needing involved service tasks, and to put a dog unsuited for that kind of work into a role (s)he is ill-equipped can lead to disaster all around. There are two lives at stake in this – the life of the disabled potential partner and the life of the dog training to serve. It’s tough passing up any dog, but we very, very often have to.  When I find super sweet dogs that evaluate well in temperament but just don’t have service aptitude though, I do try to connect them with rescues that can get the word out for their potential as family pets.

 For your fans, do you have any plans for any other future books?

 I’ve already written a third and am working now on a fourth. The third book is a novel, set just after a tornado has hit a small Texas town. The fourth is nonfiction, and while I can’t say much about it at the moment, I can say there are plenty of doggy characters in both books, and the fourth one also features a colorful—and opinionated—cat.

You can follow Susannah at:

facebook.com/susannahcharlesonauthor

Twitter:  s_charleson

Scent Of The Missing by Susannah Charleson

This is Susannah’s first book about the working dog and human relationship. In this book, Charleson’s first begins working in a search-and-rescue (SAR) program as a human volunteer (zero pay) who works along side a canine team. She learned to record the information as the team was in search mode. She also learns to read the search dog’s signals.

After much training running with another search team, Susannah was ready to adopt and train a dog of her own. A beautiful Golden Retriever puppy named Puzzle becomes that partner.

As a reader, you get to follow along in the search dog-training journey. You get to learn what is required in the training - the highs, lows, and even the frustrations experienced when training a dog beyond the basics learned by house dogs. Along this trek, there are stories of Puzzle interacting with Susannah’s pack of Pomeranians.

Susannah recounts actual search-and-rescues she has helped with as a team member of the Metro Area Rescue K9 unit in Dallas, Texas. Each search produces various emotions in the humans and dogs involved, and can be very taxing physically and mentally. One of the most demanding searches was after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.

Susannah is a great storyteller, pulling in the reader to walk or run beside a SAR team in search mode. She brings understanding of what is required and the toll taken by each SAR member – human and dog. Susannah also intertwines humor in her accounts.

With winter closing us up in our homes, take time to read. I love to read non-fiction books about human animal relationships and their bonds. Scent Of The Missing is the second book I've read written by Susannah Charleston. This is a great book about the loving partnership between a human and her dog learning to become a team in search-and-rescue work. I enjoyed it immensely. I give it Five Paws Up.

(I use "Paws Up" instead of stars or thumbs up for my rating scale. Five Paws Up is the best rating.)

The Possibility Dogs By Susannah Charleson

The book cover with a white dog, head tilted, left ear folded down, right ear standing with the very tip dipping and turned slightly to the right, along with his tongue hanging out in a gentle pant caught my attention. The dog's eyes and body language spoke of intelligence as well as gentleness. All of this drew me to read this book.

This was Susannah's second book dealing with dogs who help humans, but the first one of her books that I read. In this book, Susannah tells how shelter dogs, many who are mixed breeds, can be saved and trained as service dogs. Service dogs aren't just for physical disabilities, some are trained for mental/emotional assistance, like a solider who has PTSD - the dog would be trained to intervene if a PTSD event would start. For example, the dog would be trained to wake the person when a flashback dream occurs, or lick or nudge them to calm them, if they are showing signs the dog has been trained to watch for in their person.

Susannah goes in depth about a neglected, starved puppy that was brought to her. She named him Jake Pipper. (He is the beautiful dog on the cover of this book.) After getting him on the road to good health, she starts working with him in a service related way.

Charleson also interweaves stories about her small pomeranian pack. Size doesn't matter when it comes to a dog helping humans. Even little pomeranians can be trained as therapy dogs, to serve humans by visiting them in hospitals and nursing homes, bringing comfort with their small presence.

If you are an animal lover, this is a great book to read. If you are interested in service dogs and how they are trained; or if you're interested in knowing if your own dog could be trained for a disability you have, then read this book.

I loved this book. Susannah is able to pull the reader right in, making you feel like you are right there watching what is happen with the dogs. I give it Five Paws Up! (I use "Paws Up" instead of stars or thumbs up for my rating scale. Five Paws Up is the best rating.)

It is partially because of Susannah's pomeranian stories, that I decided to add a second Chihuahua to my little clan. She also comes up with some great names, and this gave me the incentive to be more creative with my two Chi's names. Thanks Susannah!

For more information about the organization Susannah started to train homeless dogs for service or your own, check out the following sites:
Possibility Dogs Organization Home Site
FB page for Susannah's Possibility Dogs Organization

New Year's Resolutions Vs. Just Making Goals

Making New Year's Resolutions is something that goes back thousands of years. It is not a tradition that I do. This year I am going to make goals to accomplish this new year.

Pippin and Spritzen playing tug-of-war.
Photo by Tracey R. Simmons 2015

1st goal - to laugh more. I believe that Pippin and Spritzen will be very involved with this goal. Undoubtable, they will have me laughing with their playfulness and joy of having each other as best buddies throughout this year.

2nd goal - to get my honeybee hives going. When I started this adventure in 2013, I created a nice area for the hives to sit, but they are close to the road. I had trouble from day one. Nobody who knew anything about honeybee keeping could figure out what was causing the troubles and loss. A non-bee keeping friend thought that maybe by being near the road, the hive deaths were from carbon monoxide. I was told carbon monoxide stays low, and my hives sit lower than the roadway. I will be moving the hives back a lot further. With the move, here's hoping I became a beekeeper! This has been a long time dream!!

2013 Honeybee Hive set up - flowers filled in around the pavers.
Photo by Tracey R. Simmons 2013

3rd goal - expanding my flower beds. With the help of two people, my green thumb gets greener every year. I have learned to start my own flowers and vegetables. My flower beds are filling in each year. My plan is to have all space in the following picture filled with perennial flowers touching one another, choking out all weeds.

Purple/Pink Flower Bed.
Photo by Tracey R. Simmons 2014

4th goal - start a jar of good experiences. On FB, I have read about getting a canning jar and writing the good things that happen throughout the year. Then, at the end of the year, you open it and read all the little slips of paper, reminding yourself of all the good the year held and being thankful.

5th - to send out children's books I've written to publishers. I have dragged my feet on doing things after having a very negative experience. I am not going to let those who wanted to cause harm to keep me from accomplishing a dream that I believe God gave me. With God, all things are possible!

What are your goals for this new year? Share them here, and Happy New Year.