Dog Pure Awareness blog

I had an interesting experience in the woods with Shiro a few mornings ago. We entered the woods from the field along the deer path, taking a route we know well. The snow is still deep and walking anywhere off the deer path is very difficult, so all the animals who live in the woods use the same paths. This morning, Shiro went in slowly, stopping every few yards to freeze and sniff the air. When we walk, I follow him, and when he stops I stop. He was stopping much longer than usual, highly alert. I watched him.

Deeper into the woods, at an area of dense small pines, he stopped. I stopped too, and noticed that the usual sounds of the forest were not around us. We have birds like crows who stay all winter, and some migratory birds had even returned that week, so cawing and chirping are part of the surroundings. There are woodpeckers tapping, squirrels clicking, and just the swish and creak of branches in the wind. These woods were silent. I had a déjà view experience –  a sense of something wrong.  

It took me a minute to remember: it was in the water, twice, once off of Kauai and once off of Culebra. I was swimming and a shark came near me in the water. All of the normal ocean sounds suddenly seemed to be quieted, not the waves, but the living creature sounds, the scraping of lobsters along the sand, fish waving their tails through the water, gulls and pelicans swooping around. These sounds were all gone.  I knew that I was in danger and swam as fast as I could to shore.

It was the same feeling of danger in the woods that morning. As I was remembering, Shiro, who hadn’t moved, turned and came back to me. He led me out of the forest.

On the deer path there were so many tracks overlapping each other, so many journeys, that I hadn’t seen anything unusual. But back at the field I looked closely. And there, where Shiro had not yet gone, were many tracks that looked a lot like Shiro’s, a pack of dog-like tracks, that could only be coyotes. They had come across the field and entered the woods ahead of us. They were the danger.