I am the Dog Rescuer

I left my place at about 8:30 last night for a jog. I thought: why not jog up the hill into the nearby VA facility so that I can look out over much of the valley to see the various firework shows? The plan was working great, except that the boom boom started picking up a bit before the sun was really down. Let me tell you, I think I suffered some post traumatic stress disorder.

There were an unusual amount of planes in the air; probably due to the proximity of the Van Nuys airport and that it must be a very interesting view to be above all those exploding fireworks. Picture this: planes overhead with whistler firecrackers making that slow sliding, falling whistle... BOOM! Pair that with sporadic booms, pops and sizzles and you too might be fooled into thinking it’s a war zone. Perhaps it was the militarily shapeless buildings around me, or the fact that I started having flashbacks to jogging with Mike and his personal arsenal of cherry bombs, but I was suddenly motivated run from building to building with my head down!

The thing that snapped me out of it was following a sign that pointed towards “Lewis B. ‘Chesty’.” I immediately said: “nice one guys,” that must be a joke. However, upon further review, it turns out that’s not a fake name. But really, “Chesty” WTF?

Anyway, I stopped on the way back to my house at the observation level and had a rather impressive view of fountains of fire, expanding spheres of many colors and bright sparkles ascending into the pale, smokey night sky. Oddly, there were only a few other people taking advantage of this vista.

After descending the hill that I hauled my lumbering ass up just 20 minutes earlier I came across a panic-stricken medium-small German shepherd. She was across Plummer, a street far too busy for a panicked dog to be wondering about, when I called to her: “Hey buddy, come over here...” in a very assertive, yet soothing tone. There was a very large break in traffic at the time I called to her and she trotted right over to me. She was panting hard and didn’t really want to be still. She didn’t have a collar so I had to firmly wrap my arm around her soaking wet fur to keep her from spiriting away. After a moment for her to calm down and for us to get to know each other, I started heading home with her. At first I was stooped over keeping a hand on her, but eventually I convinced her to heal as she jogged with me. Yes, I felt like “the man” for establishing pack leadership within moments of meeting this upset dog. I was channeling Cesar Millan (aka, "The Dog Whisperer").

I managed to bring her in safely to my backyard and established peace between Cali, my roommate’s dog, and Firecracker. I had to give her some sort of name and Firecracker just seemed to fit. This morning when I checked on her to give her some food, she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Firecracker, where are you? Come here Firecracker!” and she came straight away.

There’s been a missing dog poster up in the neighborhood for a medium German shepherd, but the worried couple that came by last night were a little disappointed to discover that this shepherd was not theirs. I’ll be posting Found Dog posters later today, hoping to reunite Firecracker with her owner.

-- Mark

PS In an earlier post I mistakenly referred to the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s "hand" ... I obviously meant noodly appendage.

PPS My Trading Blog has good news, and it’s short... so go check it out!