Sapper K9

The five hypothesis rule is something I use constantly.

It’s simple enough.

A dog does something and before I decide why, I come up with five different explanations that could make sense.

Five separate hypotheses.

Then I start trying to kill them.

I ask questions. I look at history. I watch what happens before the behaviour and what happens after. I change what I can change and see what comes with it. I look for the things that don’t fit.

One hypothesis falls apart.

Good. Get rid of it.

Another one starts looking weak.

Get rid of that one too.

Eventually I might be left with one that explains the behaviour better than the others. Not because I’ve decided it’s the truth, but because it survived longer than everything else and the information I have keeps pointing me back to it.

So that’s where I start working.

But sometimes all five are wrong.

That’s where I think this rule really earns its keep.

You don’t pick the least s**tty explanation just because you ran out of options.

You come up with five more.

And if those five fall apart, you do it again.

There’s no rule saying the answer has to be one of the first things you thought of.

Dogs don’t owe us that convenience.

I think one of the easiest mistakes to make in this work is falling in love with your own explanation.

You see something. It reminds you of something you’ve seen before. Your brain fills in the rest and suddenly you’re no longer trying to understand the behaviour.

You’re trying to prove yourself right.

I don’t want to prove myself right.

I want to figure out what makes the most sense for the dog standing in front of me.

Those are two very different jobs.

A snakebite isn’t an emergency you want to start planning for after it happens.

If you live, work, or travel with your dog in snake country, know the risks, know which veterinary clinics carry antivenom, know your evacuation route, and train for the possibility before you need it.

Prevention matters. Preparation matters. Time matters.

You train like you fight.

Every so often I put up INTERMISSION and disappear for a couple days.

Nothing happened. I haven’t gone off to find myself.

Sometimes I’ve just been at it long enough.

There’s a point where another phone call, another message, another thing that needs an answer starts to feel like one thing too many.

So I step away a little.

Not because I don’t enjoy what I do. I do. But you can love something and still need to put it down once in a while.

I’ll still work some. Probably more than I should. But I’ll also pick up the acoustic guitar and lose a few hours.

I like what music does to time.

You sit down and start playing and somewhere along the way everything else gets quieter.

There’s no ambition attached to it. I’m not trying to become anything with it. I just like to play.

I think there’s something good about having a few things in your life like that. Things that don’t need to make money or lead anywhere. Things you can simply enjoy because you enjoy them.

Boxing is another one for me.

I can spend a couple hours with a heavy bag and eventually there isn’t much left except hands, feet, breath and rhythm.

The speed bag is even better. Once you find the rhythm, you stop thinking about it.

Music does that too.

For a little while, nothing is asking anything from you.

That’s really what INTERMISSION is.

I’m fortunate that I enjoy the work I do. I just don’t want the thing I love doing for a living to become the only thing I know how to love doing.

So find an hour once in a while and waste it on something you enjoy.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the music.

If listening to me play turns out to be your particular form of torture, I apologize. I’d send everyone earplugs if Instagram allowed it.

Look at it this way

eventually the music stops.

That can be your INTERMISSION.

I’ve always loved “Bob Fudge” because of the way it ends. You spend the whole song hearing about this old cowboy life, riding across open country and living through a time that seemed like it would go on forever. Then years later he comes back through that same country in a car, and the old trail is gone.

That part has always stuck with me. You can go back to the same place, but you can’t go back to the same time. All that’s left is the memory of what it was like when you were there. There’s something about that kind of nostalgia that I really love.

Here’s my cover of “Bob Fudge” by Colter Wall.

I travelled from Manitoba to North Carolina and somewhere at the end of all those miles, I found a brother.

Gary Dawson served in the U.S. military. I served in the Canadian Armed Forces. Two countries. Two uniforms. Different roads through life.

We are both retired now, but some things do not retire with the uniform. Loyalty. Discipline. Respect. Brotherhood.

Gary is one hell of a dog trainer. He understands dogs in a way that goes deeper than technique. He reads them. He respects them. He knows when to be firm and when patience will accomplish more than force ever could.

Dogs know people, too. You can bu****it a human being. It is a hell of a lot harder to bu****it a dog.

But this is bigger than dog training.

Gary is my brother.

He is a great fu***ng friend and a man I genuinely respect and look up to. I do not throw the word brother around lightly. A man earns that place with me, and Gary has earned it.

He is the kind of man whose name I would defend whether he was standing beside me or a thousand miles away. The kind of friend I would stand up for without hesitation. Not because he needs defending, but because that is what brotherhood means to me.

You stand beside your people.

One of us wore the Canadian flag. One wore the American flag. Now we are two retired soldiers working dogs, swapping stories, laughing at life, and understanding some things that never need explaining.

Gary, I respect you as a dog trainer. I respect you as a veteran. I respect you as a man.

Most of all, I am damn grateful to call you my brother.

I came from Manitoba to North Carolina and found family.

Worth every fu***ng mile.

Liberty is the right to live by your convictions, to know what you stand for, choose your own path, and live with the courage to be true to it.