Piper’s Fearless Spirit

Piper wasn’t afraid of much. As I type this out, I can only think of a handful of times where she would come to me with anxiety. Maybe a bee stung her or she heard something out of the ordinary. I never actually narrowed down any specific reason she showed any signs of fear. A lot of times, she was the opposite. Like a big dog in a little dog’s body. But she wasn’t all bark, either. At the dog parks, for instance, it was ME who had anxiety because… “Piper might pick a fight today.” If another dog sniffs Piper’s rear-end the wrong way (is there a right way??) or it’s just getting too close to her majesty, Piper *might* howl and if they’re small enough, Piper would pin them down. Mostly small game, that’s what she was really interested in. Rabbits, moles, oh there was a crawfish situation. Here she is with the crawfish like they’re in round 3 of a no-holds barred WWE match.

Come to think of it, she didn’t like water much. Baths, of course, were high on her list of dislikes. Ocean, lakes, she’d go in but very infrequently. It’s not that she was scared, I should point out. I think she treated that sort of activity as beneath her. Royalty doesn’t need the fun that peasants take part in. Last summer, with the Florida heat being what it is, I propped up a hose so she could have a refreshing mist to stay cool. Did she like it? Hmm, I doubt it. But was she going to let me see her back down? Not a chance. Here she is in the mist, defiant while still giving me a bit of a side eye for good measure.

I miss you ol’ girl.

-Out of the Wilderness

Piper and Being Happy to be Sad

I cried during Titanic. Not for the reasons you’re probably thinking, though. It wasn’t that Jack died in the end or that Rose was caught between a partner who was rich and safe and another who was passionate and poor. Or the devastating loss of almost an entire ship of passengers. I cried about our beloved family dog Belle who’d died soon before the movie came out. There I was in the theater and some random scene reminded me of Belle and it took all my effort to not just straight out bawl. Isn’t it strange how something completely unrelated to our hearts breaking can break our hearts again?

I’m currently going through another major loss. A couple of weeks ago, Piper, the first dog I had as a companion in my adult life, had her last day.

Enjoying a delicious pup cup from Starbucks on her last day

I’m not even close to over it, sometimes having to hide in Walmart so no one sees my watery eyes or another time holding myself together in church when all I could think about was casually twirling her long ears, the way I did when she and I were together. There are songs I can’t listen to, places I can’t go, bites of bananas I leave for her that she’ll never eat again. Sometimes it’s all so overwhelming. I think of myself as a writer but sometimes it’s better to just leave it to the professionals so I’ll conclude today’s post with two things I heard recently, both from a great movie called The Penguin Lessons. Towards the end of the movie the main character had learned his lesson and had this to say…

I’m sad, but I’m happy that I’m sad.

It’s nice to feel things, isn’t it? I don’t enjoy being sad about Piper but all this sadness is just proof that she and I had a wonderful time together and that makes me happy. The next quote is in the movie as a retelling of a poem by Charlotte Mew. Not exactly about a dog and yet, Piper is all I can think about.

Seventeen years ago you said
Something that sounded like Good-bye;
And everybody thinks that you are dead,
But I.

So I, as I grow stiff and cold
To this and that say Good-bye too;
And everybody sees that I am old
But you.

And one fine morning in a sunny lane
Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear
That nobody can love their way again
While over there
You will have smiled, I shall have tossed your hair.

I’m posting 15 memories/stories about the awesome and incredible Piper, who was 15 years old, so if you want to catch up on the past few, read below. You can also subscribe to get notified for each daily post. Thanks for reading today…

10. Piper Ate a What??

9. Piper in the Wild

8. Piper and Her Never-Ending Curiosity

7. Piper Loved People – Part 7 of Piper’s Farewell

6. Piper’s Final Days and the Following Weekend

5. T-R-O-U-B-L-E!

4. She’s Gone Forever.

3. The Heat Is On

2. You Make Me Wanna Roll My Windows Down and Cruise

1. The Beginning of An Era

-Out of the Wilderness

Can we believe anything ever again?

I’m in the camp that’s very skeptical of artificial intelligence. Granted, I was already mostly dismissing everything I read online whether it was through Facebook posts, Twitter, etc. Before I ask this next question, it’s important to clarify that AI is obviously still in its infancy stages and it’s not always hard to discern what’s fake but… is there anything AI can’t do? That’s the frightful question at the forefront of my mind when anyone talks about AI nowadays. It became so much more clear to me in the aftermath of the Coldplay cheating scandal. Here’s the original video of the pair caught at the Coldplay concert. And then I’ll include another one with a few AI creations. Take notice of how realistic the fake videos are, not perfect of course, but very close.

We’re already heading in a direction I don’t like at all. Soon there will be video or audio of everyone saying everything. At that point, we can’t believe anything. That is, unless we see it or hear it for ourselves in person, verified, and documented. These are the crazy times.

For instance, can you imagine the field day scammers are going to have with the incredible capabilities of AI at their disposal? What they’re already doing is sickening but if a Nigerian prince actually sends me a video and explains why he needs to deposit a thousand dollars in my account, and he mentions me by name and has a member of my bank call me to verify, how can I say no?

Seriously though, what’s going to keep someone from destroying the reputation of someone they don’t like, just because they can? Maybe the time we live in now, this very moment, can be a turning point for all of us. Use less social media? Post less photos and videos of ourselves, making it less likely to be manipulated? I don’t have the answer and maybe we’re already past the point of no return. Not to get all religious on you, but the longer I live and the more I experience, the more I believe Jesus came at the exact perfect time. In today’s media-saturated world, with hackers, liars, and especially with AI now, no one would believe someone like him existed or could do the things he was recorded in the Bible doing. They’d just say it’s all fake. Which, kind of oddly, is what they said 2000 years ago, too.

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-Out of the Wilderness

Piper Ate a What??

I don’t think Piper was always eating everything but as she got older, her appetite expanded. Kind of like when you become an expert at something and crave a bigger challenge. That’s how she was with eating. Food? Nah, that’s for peasants.

Piper ate a lot of things that should not be eaten. Well, I take that back. One of them was actually food, I suppose. Have you ever seen a seahorse? One random day we found one on the shore, it had already died somehow. It’s not every day that you find a seahorse so I brought it up to the house to, I don’t know, have it on display. Yeah, that didn’t last long. Just for a moment Piper was left on the porch of the beach house and you can guess what happened when she was unsupervised out there. Seabiscuit went bye bye.

She’s eaten books, papers, napkins, as seen in this library book I eventually had to pay for.

I’ll just get this out as quickly as I can: She’s also had a used tampon in her mouth. I’ll spare you any pictures. The lengths that pup went to digest things was pretty impressive. I guess she had the stomach for some wild things, I’ll give her that! Everything was ranked #1 in her belly, but she will always be #1 in my heart.

-Out of the Wilderness

Piper in the Wild – Post 9 of 15

Piper loved being in the woods. She’d go to the nearest forest anytime the opportunity presented itself, which was more than I liked, that’s for sure. Not because I wanted her to be unhappy, it’s just that I worried for her. Her nose got her into some pretty delicate situations. Maybe she was chasing a rabbit. Or I had looked the other way for a few seconds too long. Then boom, she was off and running!

Here I go again on my own… traveling down the only road I’ve ever known…

It’s a blessing and a curse having a beagle. On the one hand, I love that Piper was very good at hunting without a single session of training. But on the other hand, like I said, it made me nervous because she wasn’t really afraid of anything. In Tennessee that’s mostly OK where wildlife is concerned. But once we moved to Florida, all I could imagine was Piper having a run-in with a gator or a snake and how I’d manage explaining to authorities that Piper dominated them both.

OK, I’m just being silly. Piper never had an encounter with an alligator or snake (that I’m aware of) but the most scared I ever felt was a day she was gone for 4 hours on the coast of Florida where there are gators, snakes, and bears. I searched, my whole family searched (we were in the middle of a beach family reunion), but we all came up empty. It wasn’t until later that day we got a call from a nearby vet’s office that someone had picked up a beagle trotting along the only paved road in the area. She had travelled miles and someone miraculously found her and took care of her for one night. I picked her up the next day. To this day, she never told me what she did or where she went, I guess that’s a secret I’ll never know!

I miss my wandering beagle. Even when she played Houdini, she always somehow made it back home. I loved being with her and I don’t think there will ever be another one for me like Piper.

-Out of the Wilderness