A story about a dog: Shadow, the Black Lab
We don't adopt pets; they adopt us. Sometimes, they come to bring us something that was missing in our lives; other times, they come because they know we can connect them to others who truly need them
It was October 29th, 2021: a few days before Halloween. I came home to my tiny, run-down cottage nestled on the edge of a nectarine orchard after a long day of work at an irrigation company that I ended up working for in the fall of 2020.
As I slowed down for the final few hundred feet from home, I saw something moving in the fields, and after I parked in my driveway, I went back to take a closer look.
A hungry, forlorn dog appeared from behind some machinery. My daughter and I later came to call him “Jack”, but his new owner now calls him “Shadow”.
I guess his new name is more fitting, because at the time, that’s what he looked like: a black shadow.
At that point in time, I did CAD work and excel-based calculations to design large scale irrigation systems for tree and berry farms in California’s Central Valley, systems sometimes spanning hundreds of acres.
Pumping, filtering and moving water from where it was, to where it was needed to grow food. Moving water, like the heart pumping blood, sustains life.
Something like 60 percent of America’s fresh fruit and produce is grown in California, and the Central Valley is the heart of it all. Much of it relies on groundwater wells that pump water during the sweltering heat of midsummer.
Growing food is a vital industry, and I came to deeply respect and admire the hard workers who labored under the hot sun to keep the agriculture industry running. For a time, I actually lived on a nectarine orchard, though not entirely by choice.
How I came to do that particular job during the COVID era, at that time in my life, is a story all to itself for some other day. I was a highly skilled engineer, from one of the best engineering schools in the US; engineers of that caliber can learn to do most any technical job, so that’s what I did.
I didn’t know anything about irrigation when I started, but it only took me a few weeks to master the fundamentals.
For three years, I worked at that small company; two months ago, I found out that for much of that time I had been working within walking distance of the “Chinese Biolab” in Reedley California that was recently discovered.
I lost a dear coworker, Alfred, in late 2021, just after I met “Jack” the dog. Alfred died from the mRNA “shot”—when someone gave him the jab in late 2021, he was also sick at the time with Wuhan Delta.
We now know that the jab was not at all safe, nor effective; Ethical Skeptic among many others has proven this conclusively.
We now know that the injectables are contaminated with SV-40 DNA fragments, a potential cancer promoter, among others; and that there is a serious “frame shifting” error that can occur with the mRNA generation of spike protein.
These injectables should be pulled, and people should be jailed for the catastrophic results that have occurred from mandating their use.
Even back then, before this knowledge was discovered, the medical system used to know better than to give shots when people were actively presenting symptoms of illness. But the world lost its mind in the COVID era.
Looking back, I now have to wonder if the outbreak in our area might have been intensified by that Chinese-owned biolab, which was located near fruit packing plants and a school district central office. The CDC, despite their protestations to the contrary, was an abject failure in handling this biolab disaster.
It fills me with fury to think about Alfred’s loss and the incompetence (or complicity) of our “government” in the COVID disaster (a subject about which I’ll be releasing a blockbuster new post shortly.) He never got to meet Jack, though for a time Jack slept at the foot of Alfred's desk.
Throughout my life, I’ve learned that God has a way of putting me in places and situations to see and learn things, though I may not understand the reason for it until years or a decade passes. That job, and that place, seemed to one of those situations.
I was pretty tired that day after a long week, and the sun was thinking about setting. It was a bit chilly, and I turned off the main road into the dusty gravel avenue that led to my little cottage.
My landlord, the farmer who owned the nectarine orchard, was having a new ground water well drilled just off the road; I passed the drilling rig as I rounded the corner onto the avenue leading to the dirt parking lot in front of my place.
A few months prior, as I was out walking my two dogs Jake and Videl along the dusty farm roads that ran through the orchards, I noticed the farmer’s existing well wasn’t putting out the volume of water that it used to; having worked in the irrigation industry for a few years at that point, I now had an idea of what might be wrong, so I took some photos and sent them to him to alert him.
It turned out the old well was depleting and bringing up sand, so he decided to relocate it and drill a new well a bit deeper to tap into the water table at a better place.
He has several fields in the area on which he grows apricots, nectarines, and oranges, and that single pump connects to a network of concrete pipes that flood irrigate all of these fields in succession. It was important to get it fixed ASAP.
On that Friday, there was a drilling rig parked on the corner where I turned, and a company was in the process of finishing the new well—but they had left work for the day. I walked back toward that rig, and I saw a black labrador with beautiful golden eyes looking back at me, forlornly.
At first, I thought he might belong to one of the drilling workers; sometimes guys bring their dogs to work in the bed of their pickups in that part of the country.
But he looked hungry and cold, no trucks were around, and a quick text to my landlord revealed that nobody had an idea who he might belong to.
I went inside my cottage where my youngest daughter was doing homework. I picked up a few more dog cookies, and she followed me out to see if we could still find the dog and check if he had any tags or markings (he didn’t.)
When we came around the corner, he was still there, waiting for us.
He was somewhat skittish, and there were cars and trucks whizzing by on the road behind us, which seemed to frighten him; that was good, because it probably helped him avoid crossing the road and survive. He wouldn’t come any closer to us than cookie-throwing distance, but he seemed friendly, hungry, and needy.
After a few minutes of coaxing, we gave up and went home for a bit, because my other two dogs needed to go out for a walk. At that time, we were guessing that he belonged to someone in the area, so we thought he might head home.
Of the two dogs we had at the time, one was also a stray; Videl adopted me in the summer of 2019, at a time when I needed her the most. Somehow, she sensed that she was needed, and came to find me. She and Jake, my 15-year-old miniature Aussie, were waiting inside the cottage. I had a habit of taking them for a run on my electric “one wheel” unicycle, so I did that and then brought them home.
A while later, we peeked out…and the black lab was still there near the rig. We gave him another cookie and tried to approach him; he was less skittish, and seemed like he really wanted a good pet…but still wouldn’t let us come close.
So, we turned around and went back to the cottage, unsure what to do. The sun had gone down by the time I thought to check again, so I took a flashlight and opened the front door. To my surprise…he was there, sitting in my lawn chair!
I was able to pet him and rumple his ears, and my daughter and I brought him food and water. We still had no idea what to do with him; we had a tiny space with two other dogs who were inside barking at him, so we took some more blankets outside.
I said, “Well, if he lives around here, he’ll find his way home; if not we’ll figure out what to do in the morning.” I went to bed, and it was quiet.
In the morning light, I looked out…and he was still there, curled up in the lawn chair. Over the next few days, we checked with the local vet, put up signs, called more neighbors—did everything we could think of to find his owners, to no avail.
In the meantime, Jack just moved in, like he had always belonged there.
Monday came, and I had to go back to work and my daughter had college classes. I had left him in the garage one of the nights, and he chewed up a small exercise trampoline I had there; I had tried introducing him to my other two dogs, and though it seemed they might all get along, I still couldn’t keep him inside while we were away at work.
So, I talked to my boss, and he graciously let me bring him to work for a few weeks while we figured out what to do with him. Jack gradually revealed more and more of his personality: he was a sweet, clumsy, oaf of a (mostly) good boy. He loved being at work with me, and riding in my coworker’s truck when we went into the fields.
I came back to the office from a meeting one morning and found him lying on top of one of my CAD drawings on top of the conference room table!
He’d been with us for about a month, and my other two dogs eventually got along with him, so we started letting him sleep inside with them at night while I continued taking him to work during the day.
My daughter and I had concluded that he had been abandoned out in the country by someone who couldn’t keep him; that was a common occurrence in our area, we came to learn.
One day, I got a text from a friend of mine who is a physics genius; we’d been in touch off and on through the years, because we had a common interest in the work of Dr. Randell Mills of Brilliant Light Power.
My friend was an investor in the company, a long-time follower, and he also had read the entire three volume set of Randy’s work many times over. He was among the most knowledgeable people in the world about the subject of Randy’s work.
I happened to mention the story of “Jack”, and how he had come to adopt us. My friend said “wait, can you send me a picture?” — so I did. He had lost a beloved dog of his in recent years, and his remaining older female dog was in need of a companion.
My friend was dealing with some health issues, and I had a strong feeling in that moment that he really needed a companion to help him—a younger dog to help him get some more exercise, laugh and play, and ease the pain of the beloved dog he had lost.
I knew, then, that God had sent “Jack” to find me…as a way to get to my friend, who really needed him. I was to be the conduit to make that happen.
It turned out that my daughters and I were scheduled to fly back East to be with my parents at Christmas; I had already made arrangements with the brother of a co-worker to take care of my two dogs.
But I knew that we couldn’t leave Jack inside during the day (he was still just a big puppy, and he’d chew up the furniture if left alone too long) and he’d be too much for the caretaker to handle, so we had to find him a new home before we left.
When I explained all of this to my friend, he said “we’ll figure out how to make this happen. I want him here. I’ll start checking with the airlines.”
COVID was still strangling the economy, and it turned out the local airports did not have airlines that were able to transport pets at that time; most had shut down their services.
My friend found one airline—Alaska Airlines—that could transport pets; but the only airport offering service was San Francisco. That was a four- or five-hour drive away, but we committed to doing it.
And so it came to be that one morning in late December of 2021 at 4:30am, we hit the road in the dark, driving through a pea-soup thick fog that lasted most of the drive, and we took Jack to San Francisco. I bought him a new crate and packed a T-shirt that I had worn for a few days so that he’d have a familiar scent when he got picked up.
It was hard for us to say goodbye, but we knew he was headed to a new, loving home. At that time, we could have had no idea what lay ahead for all of us.
Almost two years went by, and I nearly forgot about him.
In April of 2023, through an act of God by an Angel who reads these posts—a man who made this new life that I now live with my fiancée and her daughter possible—I was granted the means to move from California, where I had lived for 34 years, and move to be with my new fiancée in Michigan.
Last week marked my 9th month here. By chance, my fiancée and I were invited to attend an event in a suburb of Detroit at which Lara Logan, General Flynn, Boone Cutler, Mike Smith, and others were speaking. I got to meet Gen. Flynn that night.
As we were driving toward Detroit, it suddenly occurred to me: my physicist friend lived somewhere in Detroit, but I had forgotten where, exactly.
I texted him while we were on the road, and he was cross with me because I hadn’t let him know we were coming sooner! But he made arrangements to meet us at a church where we were attending the event, and he brought Shadow.
So last Saturday, through an unlikely sequence of events that only God understands…how I came to move to Michigan in 2023, and how that led me to start a new life with Emily and her daughter…I got to see Jack…now named “Shadow”…once more.
The circumstances that brought him into our lives, and into the home he now lives in, can only be understood as an act of Grace, by God. He needed to be where he is now, and we were honored to be chosen to help him get there.
I hope you enjoyed this latest post! More to come soon on AI, the Pandemic, and other topics.
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I almost used up a whole box of kleenex. What a heartwarming story about Shadow. I can see two more stories: one on Videl and one on Jake. Looking forward to those.
What a beautiful reading