Golden Mountain Dog Solutions

The oldest known evidence of human domestication of dogs is approximately 14,000 years old. Only a jawbone with some teeth attached, it was found in the 1950′s buried under the floor of a cave in the region we now call Iraq, and wasn’t properly dated until 1974. In his excellent book The Intelligence of Dogs, Stanley Coren finishes the tale:

“… the importance and age of this fossil were not recognized at first. This is because the fossil was of a dog so similar to contemporary dogs that the archaeologists thought a modern dog must have wandered into the ancient cave site and died there.”

It is safe to say that were you knapping your flint spear head by the fire in paleolithic times, the dog curled up next to you would be indistinguishable in appearance and behaviour from one you might meet on any street in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

In late July of 2001 Cinders and I were on a training exercise in a rugged region at the far northern end of Lunenburg County (the picture at left was taken that day). In the course of the trip Cinders stepped into what appeared to be a mass of wet dead leaves filling a crack in the granite outcropping we were traversing only to find out that it was actually a mass of dead leaves floating at the top of a very deep puddle of water filling a gap in the outcropping. She plunged in head first and I grabbed her harness in time to help her out before the rest of her went in.

Her entire front end was coated in a brown mess of rotted leaves that I took her to a nearby clear running stream to wash off. Soon, with Cinders restored to her former beauty, fresh smelling and no worse for wear, we continued on with what was a very enjoyable day. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article first appeared in the 27 January 1999 edition of the Lunenburg “Progress Enterprise” At the time this occurred, our Whynacht Security & Survival alarm monitoring station was the central dispatch centre for both the Lunenburg and District Fire Department and the Lunenburg – Mahone Bay Police Service. Randy personally processed this call and hastens to add that the reason he “… dispatched the fire department after receiving two calls about the dogs ….” as the article states is that the calls came in back to back and had to be answered before he could initiate any response.

We are happy to report that both dogs named in the article weren’t at SHAID long before they were adopted. As of today’s date, their litter mate Dusty (picture at left) is 11 years old and still going strong as the grand old man of our pack. How he got to be here is a story for another post.

Theresa Hawkesworth
Lighthouse staff

LUNENBURG – Man was dog’s best friend last week as Lunenburg firefighters rescued two puppies from the Back Harbour.

Now those dogs need another friend.

When “Pete” and “Martha” fell through the ice near Sawpit Wharf January 21, Lunenburg firefighters responded. Read the rest of this entry »