Paying Attention - Dog Rescues

This email, short, I think, is a follow up on my dog saga. However, I hope it goes well beyond the normal lost and found report.

I always thought my moving here had something to do with my environmental passion and whenever I am depressed about the world, I go visit Chief Seattle's grave and have a little conference.

Anyway, the day Tundra went missing, there were fireworks and later some lightning and thunder. She has always been an escape artist but if she managed to slip out, she was generally back in an hour or sometimes 3-6 hours. I suspect she has some playmates in the neighborhood, and they have parties to which people are not invited. My worries mounted when she did not return as she has always done.

Tundra was adopted from the Santa Fe Animal Shelter around Halloween 12 years ago. Quite a few of you wrote me and your ideas about where she was and why varied a lot. Being distraught, I wasn't as clear as I like to be. I took a nap and asked to be shown in dream state what I needed to know. Lo and behold, an old spirit friend came to visit, an enormous gorilla who is one of the chakra guardians of a friend. She was holding a small, glowing bluish-white ball. It was a bit like a crystal ball but really luminous and about the size of a grapefruit. She told me she was bringing Tundra back and not to worry. Well, I immediately began to worry because it wasn't clear whether she was bringing Tundra back in spirit or in flesh. I thought she meant "alive" but then it occurs to me that the gorilla and I might not actually perceive life in the same way as she surely thinks she is alive.

One person wrote that Tundra had some karma to sort out. I gave that some thought and decided she is a very kind spirit, one who has always been exceptionally able to show gratitude, especially for being adopted when she was so close to the needle. At the time I signed the papers to get her out, she was scheduled to be terminated in about an hour.

So, I tried to think of what kind of karma she had and the only thing I could come up with was "pay it forward."

A friend in Seattle gave me a list of places to post notices. One of the things you have to do is describe the breed and I honestly don't know. I have always called her a little red wolf. So, I was looking at pictures on petfinder.com and stumbled on an Akita that rang all my bells. They told me she was no longer available and I thought, "that must be a mistake."

Pay it Forward - #1
Blindly, I looked at one web site after another and posted notices. To make a long story short, someone told me about an Akita in Oregon who was going to be put down. I was told I couldn't adopt him because Akitas can only be rescued, not adopted. So, I contacted several rescue groups. Thanks to some very swift action, he was saved.
Pay it Forward - #2
Meanwhile, Washington Akita Rescue decided that I was, in fact, the right person for Sakura and they notified the other party that they should consider another dog.
Pay it Forward - #3
This was hardly decided before an S.O.S. went out about Shugo. I offered to foster him to get him out of a kill shelter in Idaho. A home for him was found before he ever made it here, but that was three lives saved and "pay it forward" was now complete.

At precisely the time I was involved with Akita rescues, Tundra was taken in by a very nice midwife who is building a home near mine. She was very thin and thirsty and rather weak. Little signals crossed. I had posters around the community and in mailboxes, had left messages with all the veterinarians and hospitals on the peninsula but never thought of Bainbridge Island! The lady had taken Tundra to a Bainbridge vet! Several glitches later, the dots were connected. Curiously, the problem was that I described an "elderly" dog and the vet has estimated her age as five!

Okay, no one needs to know all the details, but Tundra was brought home one full moon later. She is gaining weight and is no longer interested in escaping! She seems none the worse for wear.

Now, about the synchronicities. Convincing anyone that you have enough experience to handle an Akita takes more than one email! I had to go through lots and lots of old pictures to find photos to send to show that I would be totally competent with an Akita. In the course of this, I stumbled on one picture that touched me deeply. I posted these on exactly the day that Tundra was taken in and given food and water and TLC.

This is me cross country skiing with one of my Akitas and a wolf named Allegro con Brio. In those days, I had three white Akitas and I used to drive a Subaru Brat. Brio and my dogs would pile in and Brio's mom and I would go up in the mountains and enjoy our play time. Brio was a wonderful creature and my dogs adored him. Wolves are much gentler than Akitas and they are very obedient compared to dogs. Their survival depends on learning from their more experienced elders and they are so much more alert and amenable to learning than dogs. I developed the most incredible love and respect for wolves.

On another occasion, Brio saved the life of his people mom. They were hiking and she got lost. They spent several nights in the wild. He shared his warmth and then showed her the way back.

Some years later, I met a psychiatrist who had two wolves and some llamas. He and his wife used to bring them up to my place in Cundiyo, just north of Santa Fe, and we would go on long hikes. Again, my dogs and the wolves got along famously.

The Akita in the skiing picture is Kaehi. She is mentioned in my book on Cancer Salves. She developed osteosarcoma and on New Year's Day, quite some years ago now, an enormous wolf came right up to the house, big bluish-silver wolf. Kaehi just looked at him and I stood in awe also. I knew he had come for her. Afterwards, I had the same question, "Was he real or an apparition?" I knew he was Kaehi's great love. She ran away shortly after that, but I tracked her in the snow and carried her home. When the snow melted and the ground was frozen hard, she ran away again. This time, I knew I would not find her, but I looked for ten days, same number again. Tundra was found on the 10th day.

Moral of this little story is if you see a big gorilla, listen carefully! Seriously, I have taught my students to work with their chakra guardians but this gorilla is the only one who seems to drop by on her time off normal detail. We are all one and our relationships with each other are very important and probably eternal. Wolves are very sweet creatures so when we think of the world of the future, the one in which we have learned to live together instead of preying upon the weak and innocent, think Green!

For me, this was all interwoven and the world of spirit and the world of "reality" were never separate except in our minds. During this strange time in which my domestic space was reorganized, I wrote a lot of articles that I have not told you about yet: one on Christianity, one on the Third Dimension, and another on chakra guardians and how to find them. So, if it seems there are a lot of emails now, it's because I am finally catching up.

Many blessings,

Ingrid