Day 27, Saturday, Oct 13, 7:30 PM., Home

Note:  I just learned that only “registered” users were allowed to make comments on this blog. I have changed that to "anyone”. Sorry for the inconvenience. Feel free to comment freely now. I will do my best to respond to any that look for a response.

Note:  Today is Wednesday, Oct 17th. I'm sorry it took me so long to get to the final trip entry to this blog. Here it is below. At some time in the near future, I intend to write up some additional words about the trip and add a few more photos and some other things. There is no question but that this trip was one if not the best of the journeys I have taken despite its sad ending. It deserves more than just this final blog entry, and it will get what it warrants. If the National Geographic titled Sonntag's and my journey to Alaska as An Incredible Journey, God only know what they would call this one, The Beyond Incredible Journey?

The accompanying photo is of the dogs getting ready to leave our last campsite of the trip at the Cleveland KOA, the same one we ended our trip at last year. After I concluded that Leben had become paralyzed, I mapped out a KOA route home because I needed to save time (instead of setting up and breaking camps), I knew they allowed dogs in the cabins (except the pet unfriendly Minneapolis Northwest KOA), would be  easy to manage Leben in, and were 100 percent predictable, so I would not have to go through the process of learning a new place every night.  Thank God they were available and still open (most of them closed on October 15th, two days later).

We made it back to DC by 7:30 pm on Saturday. Half the benefit of the trip was lost, though, as soon as I hit route 270 about 25 miles from Washington when we got caught up in the speeding, heavy traffic. After four weeks of heavy traffic being defined as a vehicle every few minutes (except for south of Chicago on I-80 a couple of days before), all it took was 45 minutes of driving into DC to chip away at my nerves that the adventure that was ending restored. I do not think most of us realize how much the pace, traffic, noise, over-population, etc. detract from the quality of life we could have. We do things to help abate those and other negative influences  on us (e.g., join health clubs, yoga, meditation, pray, drugs, booze, party, etc.), and they do help, but it helps in the way a freshly fallen snow covers up and beautifies any landscape that remains the same  underneath.

This journey did not end as I had hoped, although I was prepared for it. This is why at 2200 miles from home, when one of my beloved dogs became paralyzed, I did not panic. I knew how to care for him thanks to my 3-plus years in managing Sonntag as a paralyzed dog. It was easier to manage Leben on the road than it would have been (and is now) at home since going for a walk on the road meant one step outside the tent, Defender, or campsite. Richard Olsenius, in his tribute to Sonntag on YouTube (click here --- coming soon) said, ""Let me tell you something, it was not easy" (for me to manage Sonntag). Well, managing Sonntag was a walk in the park compared to managing Leben. He is an excellent "patient" but he is 115 pounds (Sonntag was 90), his disability is actually greater than Sonntag's even though both were completely paralyzed, Erde, Leben's inseparable, is as active as she was when she was a pup on that first trip the three of us made to Alaska in 2001, and I am 12 years older. (He is easier to manage in one respect --- he always wanted to be where I was.) But I will do it. One journey just ended and a new one begins, just as the journey with Sonntag actually started February 27, 1998, when he suddenly without warning became paralyzed and not when we set our for Alaska in July 2000. And just as I promised Sonntag, I am not going to put Leben down because he is big and, therefore, difficult to manage or presents a housekeeping problem, as Leben's vet said when I told him the operation took away Leben's urination control. You don’t put a down because he cannot walk and certainly not because he presents a housekeeping problem. You can always buy new rugs, but you cannot replace the joy from a devoted dog.

Speaking of Leben's vet (Ryan Gallagher of VOSM), I sent him an e-mail from on the road last week about Leben's problem and to solicit his advice on what he thinks. I sent him another e-mail today. I am publishing them here (click here) so you can understand a little bit more about the nature of Leben's problem. Hopefully, I will hear back from him soon to learn whether I should hold out hope for a recovery or get on with Leben's life in a wheelchair, which I will order today from Eddie's Wheels just in case. By the way, Eddie’s letter to the National Geographic editor after the article on Sonntag was published was the only one of hundreds submitted published, and many, many dogs lived out their full lives because of that Richard Olsenius’s photos and Eddie’s letter.

I cannot end this blog without saying that the highlight of this trip was our hike to Beech Mountain, which occurred on the fourth day of the trip.  That day was one of the highlights of my life, not only the trip, for reasons I will write about later.  I could have ended the trip then and there for it to qualify as an incredible journey, but if I had, if I am right about what happened to Leben, it would have occurred sooner, since managing Leben from my condo is an enormously difficult task on him and me both, as well as Erde.

The irony that appeared in this trip never cease to me amaze me. Our original destination, before I decided to go ahead with Leben's surgery, was to be to the site on northern Alaska where the photo was taken of me and Sonntag in a snowstorm. Since we got a late start because of Leben’s surgery, I decided to postpone that till next year (and we will go all three of us, four if you consider the Defender a person as I do). Little did I realize that the last photo of Leben was taken just after a snowstorm (dusting, really)? (See photo in right sidebar --- coming soon). I also find it ironic that the day we reached our revised destination, Thunder Bay, Leben became paralyzed. But also, I find it ironic that the night he became paralyzed, we camped in one of those tiny but cozy Thoreau-like cabins (wooden tents, really) at the south end of route 527 in Ontario. Last year, our ultimate destination was a remote setting on Lake Bukemiga in northern Ontario, which is located at the northern end of route 527, 157 miles to the north.  

This blog was about a journey with my dogs all around the Great Lakes. It was an amazing adventure, one that will stay with me for the rest of my life. We lived among sheer natural beauty for four weeks. We interacted with fewer people the entire trip than I see at my health club each day in ten minutes. We experienced spectacular sunsets from 10 different locations. We reached our destination, albeit not as I had planned. Before I left, I prepared a list of things to do when I got home to unwind from this trip and move on. That list is now put aside because of another journey I have to take, one that I am thrilled to take because if what happened to Leben was fated for him, I am glad that I happen to be his guardian so that this loyal, obedient dog can live out his full life. 

Over the next few weeks, I will post some photos of Leben and Erde back home in their new lives, some other photos of the trip, a recap of this journey, and a few  sidebars on matters of logistics for the trip. Other than those things, this blog has ended. I have created a new blog to deal with Leben's situation www.LebenGSD.blogspot  that those interested in the subject of managing a paralyzed dog might wish to look at. 

By the way, the perceptive among my readers will have noticed that in this blog there are a lot of photos of my dogs, Leben and Erde, as well as a lot of the narrative devoted to them, and they will have been correct in noting that.  This trip was all about an adventure with my dogs who, at 11, may not be around much longer.  This was not a Travels with Charlie-like blog and not because there was virtually no one else in the camps we visited to talk with about America, not to mention that Canadians really do not care about America and I took the trip to escape the election stuff as well as the oppressive Washington heat. Nor was this a Walden-like recounting, because, frankly, I cannot tell one flora from another fauna, although I did learn a lot about attack-racoons, teasing chipmunks, and bears frightened by an aging female German shepherd named Erde.  My dogs.  That's what this trip was all about, me and my dogs. Those who know me probably same the same thing about my life, and they would be right.

Thanks for reading this blog and taking the journey with us.

ED