Man's Best Friend

My friend, Davis Hawn, has a dog named Booster.  He's a Labrador Retriever and weighs close to 100 pounds.  Davis has other dogs too, but Booster was his first dog and surely is the most remarkable.

Years ago, when Davis went to retrieve his truck from an impound lot, he found a scared, hungry little dog quivering in the truck.  He took the pup home and decided to call him Booster.  That was the beginning of a beautiful relationship that has lasted until this day.  Both Davis and Booster's lives changed substantially for the better as each dedicated himself to the other.

Davis needed a service dog to help him with PTSD, and he began training Booster to do tasks like open doors, flip light switches, and retrieve items from the refrigerator.  He also learned to obey a variety tasks at Davis' voice commands.

Some extreme animal rights people don't approve of training animals and putting them to work, but the case of service dogs, helping human companions seems to me to be a job for which dogs have naturally evolved.  Years ago, one misguided acquaintance wouldn't neuter her dog because "they deserve to have a good sex life".  Pretty silly, I think.  Fortunately for Booster, Davis had a more realistic and enlightened concept of a good relationship between a man and his dog.

Davis' quest for the right relationship with Booster led him to Bergin University in California where he learned to train service dogs.  He persisted at Bergin until he graduated with a Master's Degree last year.  Today he is funding scholarships for young students to attend Bergin.  Included among his scholarship recipients are two young friends from Cuba.

Now I should explain that Davis is a frequent traveler to many parts of the world.  Booster often goes with Davis on his foreign trips, so he also is well traveled.  He's been to Cuba and South East Asia as well as on cruise ships.  Lucky for Booster that by law, service dogs can travel in the passenger cabin of airliners.  (The picture shows Booster with a group of Thai young people.)   I first saw Booster in Orlando at an HSUS Expo convention for animal shelter operators.  He was easy to spot as only a handful of dogs came to Expo that year.

Davis needs little encouragement to put Booster through his paces.  The dog won't eat until given permission from Davis.  He carried his toy through all three days of the convention.  Davis always has time to show off Booster's skills to reporters, and, as a result, he has been featured in newspapers and magazines, and once he was featured in the Bahamas Air seat pocket magazine.

Since Booster entered Davis' life, Davis added several other dogs to his family.  Fidelity, a rescue from the streets of Havana, was the subject of one of my earlier blogs.  Al Anon, another yellow lab, is Booster's son and has been trained to do most of the tasks Booster can do.

This week, Davis and Booster have begun a new phase of their bond.  Booster began to show problems when chewing, and then a lump was discovered on the top of his skull.  Davis had him to the best vets, and it appears the lump involves the skull itself and occupies some space inside the brain cavity.  He's had cath scans and pathology tests, and all the results aren't in yet as I write this.

Booster's future is uncertain as I write this.  Davis is committed to knowing all he can about Booster's condition and prognosis.  What he knows now is the growth is a squamous cell carcinoma, and more test results are due in a few days.  Whatever fate befalls Booster, he has had a remarkable life from the time Davis found a shivering puppy in an old truck all the way through to today.

Booster and Davis's story demonstrates certainly that dogs are man's best friend, and Davis and his dog are fine examples of the bond that weds our two species together.

Les Inglis

Abandoned

If you have a dog or a cat you don't want any longer, it's a shame to put him down.  Wouldn't it be much better to take him out in the country and leave him where he can hunt on his own?

Yeah, sure!

I don't know where that harebrained idea ever began, but I do know too many people believe it.  We learned dogs and cats can't really live on their own out in the country when we bought a farm on the Ohio River about 50 miles downriver from Cincinnati, Ohio.  Almost before our signatures were dry on the real estate documents, we started to see abandoned dogs—nearly a parade of them—following the road in front of our farmhouse.

Annie, a beautiful young beagle was the first to find us as we worked on remodeling the old farmhouse.  She came up out of the riverbank and stayed near us as we worked.  We had little for her to eat, but we gave her what we had.  She was obviously hungry.  That day, she looked resigned as we got into our Jeep and drove off to our house in the city.  Four days later was the Labor Day holiday, and we were back at work on the old house.  This time we brought food along in case she was still around.  Before we'd gotten our tools out of the Jeep, Annie showed up and wouldn't leave our sides.

This time we gave her all she wanted to eat, and she lay peacefully on the front porch as I worked just inside the front door.  Of course she didn't have a name then.  So I came up with "Annie" from a story I read in 7th grade about another beagle titled, The Voice of Bugle Ann.  The afternoon progressed, and we came to the time to pack up our tools and go home.  Annie wasn't going to let us get away again, so when we got to the car, we saw   she had jumped into the Jeep over a doorsill about two feet above the ground.  (She was never again able to make that jump into the Jeep.)  Annie went home with us to our house in the city and became a member of the family.  She stayed with us until she died many years later at age 17.

Annie may not have been abandoned in the strict sense.  She may have fallen out of a farmer's truck, but she was all alone, trying to find something to eat and completely friendless—a terrifying situation.  Our family grew as Roscoe a terrier, Boy a German shepherd, Yo-yo a fox hound, and Spotty a bird dog came along and chose to stay.  We didn't see many of the other dogs that passed by, but some found our vegetable garden, where they chewed on pumpkins and squash to get something edible in their stomachs—leaving clear evidence of just how hungry they were.

Before the farm, I didn't think I wanted any more pets, but we had sixteen several years later when we moved to Florida.  I hate to think of what would have happened to those beautiful animals if we hadn't taken them in.  Surely some were purposely abandoned, perhaps all of them. Abandonment has to be the ultimate betrayal.

The first dog I saw in Cuba was almost certainly abandoned.  Christina, my traveling companion from HSUS and I waited near the area more than an hour for the lady who was supposed to meet us.  We were in a crowded area outside the Customs and Immigration areas where people found cabs or met their rides.  A thin little Chihuahua sort of dog came staggering along in the street right next to the curb.  He seemed to be very weak, and I don't think he had the strength to climb the curb to the safety of the waiting area where we sat watching him.  I tried to buy something for him to eat at a snack stand, but there were too many people around it and only one harried attendant, whose attention I could not summon.  By the time I got back to where we sat, the little dog had moved on out of view.

Later, talking with Nora, I mentioned the episode, and she told me it's a common sight at the airport.  If a family gets permission to leave Cuba for the US, they usually won't be coming back.  Often they can't find anyone to take their dog, so they go to the airport with their dog, and they say their goodbyes, and leave the dog outside as they go in to check their bags.  Dogs like this sometimes stay around the airport for a few weeks until they die or—in rare instances— someone takes them home.

Dogs have evolved to be symbiotic with mankind.  For thousands of years they have given us security, love, companionship, and help in hunting for food.  They deserve a secure place in our families, not abandonment.

Les Inglis

Diplomacy

Havana's grandest street, the Avenida de los Presidentes terminates at the Malecon, not far from my hotel.  That seaside interchange is a nest of curving streets surrounding a large circular monument of Calixto Garcia, a Cuban general who fought in all three of Cuba's wars for independence from Spain.  If you walk east along the Malecon, perhaps a mile, you come to the iconic Hotel Nacional.  Halfway between these two landmarks is another notable building, The United States Interests Section (USINT).  It's a 1950's, not particularly attractive, rectangular box about 8 stories high located between the east and westbound lanes of the Malecon.

What a strange name.  Section of what?  Therein lies the tale.  It is actually a section of the Swiss Embassy to Cuba, and it is devoted to the diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba—two countries which ostensibly have no diplomatic relations.

It seems the Swiss often take a role in relations between two countries which have reached an impasse in their relations and have withdrawn their ambassadors and closed their embassies.  So this non-embassy embassy without an ambassador run by the Swiss but housing an American chargé d'affaires is there to manage whatever comes up between the Cubans and the Yankees.  And, as you might expect, there are a lot of matters to manage.

If a Cuban wants to travel to the US, he has to obtain a visa to permit his entry into the country.  Until recently he also needed an exit permit from Cuba.  The US visa would come from USINT.  A complicating factor is that Cuban citizens are not permitted to contact USINT.  First the prospective Cuban traveler must gather together an invitation from someone in the US, airline reservations, a Cuban exit permit, and a US visa application—and then he  must wait for an invitation to an interview at USINT.

If every hurdle is successfully jumped, permission for a visit to the US will come at last.  This whole business of permitting travel would be a fertile field for the two countries to work out a simpler, faster system, but that assumes the two are willing to work out anything.  Little evidence for that willingness exists.  Conversely the USINT building sitting there in the face of a mile of Malecon drivers was used to provoke the Cuban government.  One day there appeared all along the top floor of the building a lighted sign with moving letters spelling out pro-US and anti-Cuban propaganda.

Cubans are not ones to accept an affront stoically, so they picked up the gauntlet and began developing a little park just east of USINT and also between the east and westbound lanes of the Malecon.  Their development was 50 flagpoles several stories tall.  They hoisted 50 black flags, each with a single white star. These effectively blocked the view of the lighted moving taunting machine.  They added in a few billboards calling George W. Bush an assassin, and apparently won the exchange.  At least the lighted sign came down.

My dictionary defines "diplomatic" as "skill in dealing with others; a tactful person."  These two neighbors need people with that skill.  When you the proximity of the two countries it's clear there will always be a need for diplomacy here, but in its place, we have public displays of contempt.  No one knows when we'll see signs of a thawing, but I'm sure many people on both sides of the Florida Straits will welcome it when it comes.

Les Inglis