I’ve mentioned Mike Hingson on this blog before and am still serializing my interview of him. He’s a very generous and insightful guy. Generous for asking me to be on his podcast and then agreeing to be interviewed by me later.
His podcast episode with me is now live at the usual outlets.
It was a fun conversation. Mike grew up in Palmdale, CA, near Edwards AFB, where his father worked. My family and I lived at Edwards for several years, so Mike and I had several points of intersection in our discussion. He is also an author.
His book, Thunder Dog, was the first book (and maybe only so far) I rated as a 10 on the Feral Scale. It’s well written and inspirational. Check it out here.
I’ve been thinking back on my dogs and doing a bit of hindsight assessment on their suitability for guide dog duties. Of the various purebreds, mutts, and rescue hounds we’ve owned, I think there are a few who could have made it: Turbo, Bear, and Luna. Of them, Luna was clearly the smartest and also the most difficult to bring into the family.
When we adopted her, she was 13 months old and had been at the Humane Society for 10 months. She looked fierce. That’s the only reason I can come up with for her long tenure. She had a wild look in her eyes and coloring that said, “Don’t mess with me.” Over the first few months, I learned what living in a shelter had done to arrest her dog development. She was afraid of:
- Bees
- Storm sewers
- Boy Scouts
- Bicycles (If she saw one coming our way, she would take off in full afterburner going the opposite direction.)
- Boy Scouts on bicycles – terror personified for her. Worse than seeing Michael Myers on Halloween. I once spent an hour looking for her only to learn that she’d been picked up by someone and taken to our vet to have her chip scanned.
She overcame her fear of bees, developed an interest in storm sewers because of their appeal to raccoons, is okay with Boy Scouts on foot, but still distrusts anyone on a bicycle. These days, she gives them a lethargic bark when they pass us during our walks, saving her more energetic alerts for the UPS guy or anyone who *gasp* dares to walk their dog past her house.
Give Hingson’s book a read and check out the podcast to hear our conversation.
Cute pups!