God gave us His glorious creation to explore and discover.

Rediscovering Nature With the Help of a K-9

By Jules Tiegs, DIB Editor and ATP Donor Relations Manager

In a world where we are inundated with the 24-hour news cycle, how can we find some respite from all of the bad news?

Look no further than your local park or forest.?God gave us His glorious creation to explore and discover. Sometimes we are so distracted we forget to notice.??

In my trail marathoning days, I spent countless hours training in the Colorado Rockies, but unlike many runners, I chose to leave the earphones at home. I wanted to hear and identify every single songbird that God placed along my path.?I was, quite literally, in tune with nature.

When chronic injuries sidelined my running career, my passion for birding-by-ear took a backseat. After surgery and years of physical therapy, indoor gyms, elliptical trainers and working out in front of a TV, I was finally able to try running again.

Having spent so much time tuned into electronics, I joined the multitude of runners wearing earphones to pass the miles. I admit it, I became fascinated with true-crime podcasts.?The modern-day, real-life “whodunit” in portable audio format made time fly by, but at what cost??

A peculiar thing happened. As I ran through the forest, I started to feel as if I were not alone. With a stranger’s voice piping into my ears the details of the worst crimes in history,?I had lost touch with my surroundings.

I felt paranoid, anxious, possibly even hunted. While fascinating, true crime wasn’t good for my mental health.

That all changed when 3-year-old Belgian Malinois?Esmée?came into my life. Esmée is a pup from Victor and Eileen Marx’s famous K-9,?Super Scout, and?a precious gift from the Marx family.?

Taking on the responsibility of a highly trained, multipurpose K-9 is no small task. These dogs require proper bonding with their handler, consistent training and lots of exercise — I mean LOTS of exercise!?

Esmée couldn’t have come into my life at a better time. I desperately needed a four-legged running companion — one who could keep me company, ease my anxiety and give me the confidence to head out deeper into the forest without fear.

I recognized right away that the earphones would have to stay home.?Esmée deserved my full attention. She earned it.?

When Esmée and I were first introduced at?Baden K-9?in Ontario, Canada, we were strangers to one another. Over the course of a couple days of training at the facility,?Esmée began locking eyes on me.

She came to understand that I was going to be her handler. The trainers and other more seasoned handlers in the room recognized the transformation. “Look, she’s watching you,” one noticed.?“The bond is forming!”

After a week of intensive training, my husband and I headed home with Esmée to begin a new chapter of our lives.?

Now, each day as I lace up my running shoes and put on my jacket, Esmée watches intently. She knows what time it is. Every afternoon; rain, sleet, snow or shine, the two of us head out on the trails in search of obstacles to make the training interesting.?

Our adventure awaits.?

River-worn lava boulders — remnants of the Pacific Northwest’s ancient, explosive past — have been meticulously placed by our Creator to discover and explore. Curiously shaped lodgepole pines and twisted junipers along the trail provide complex mazes for Esmée to work through. Hulking, aerated blobs of lava and pumice, with all their tiny cracks and fissures, are just begging to be climbed.?

Introducing this intriguing, foreign world to Esmée has restored a child-like curiosity in me.?When we are on the trails, we are not thinking about the troubles of this world: crime, contentious politics and human discontent. We are thinking about the beauty of God’s Creation before us: the songs of birds, the whoosh of the river rapids, the crackle of branches and dried leaves under foot.

Like our ancestors who traversed the unexplored wilderness before us, we are marveling in God’s glorious creation.?

Inspirational Insight

Someone once said that one of the best things we can do for our mental health is take a “news fast.” Log out of?social media, close the laptop, turn off the TV, put away the earphones, even if just for one week.

Head out for a walk or a run in the forest. Observe, as if for the first time, all the natural wonders God has placed before us, and see how it changes your perspective.?

For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.?— Isaiah 55:12