Team Tucker: Flowing Between Wisdom and Love

Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

There are nothing but gifts on this poor, poor Earth – Czeslaw Milosz

My Optimism wears heavy boots and is loud. – Henry Rollins

The day before I got the message that Tucker had passed away, I was in my kitchen emptying the dishwasher, my young dog Miles fitted snugly between the dishwasher door and my leg, coaching me to move a bit faster in replacing the clean dishes with dirty plates and bowls. Out of nowhere, I became overwhelmed by the thought that one day I would be dead. I would cease to be. Everything would be black forever. This is strange for me, because I am not afraid of my own mortality. I am pretty chill about not only the inevitability of death, but also the unpredictable duration of life. Feeling terribly unhappy about giving up my experience of existing, I slumped to the kitchen floor. Miles climbed into my lap and put his face in front of mine. I stared in his eyes. Still feeling deeply troubled by the certain and permanent loss of the joy of being, I now felt even worse for Miles. I’ve already lived nearly three times longer than he probably will. If I’m lucky, I will live six times as long as his entire life. He’s the one who should be devastated, not I – or at least he should be more devastated. Miles leaned into me and licked my eyelids, just like my cattle dog Muriel would do after we’d run for 10 miles in the LA summer heat. I gently pushed him back and looked in his eyes again. This time I was looking for Muriel. I swear, somehow, she was in there. I stood up and met my wife’s eyes across the room and smiled at her. What an amazing feeling to be alive. To be. To share connections. To give and receive. To know joy and suffering, and to experience it all with a grateful heart.

And so, a highly unusual existential crisis in the kitchen was followed a day later by a message from Sarah telling me Tucker is gone. Tuckie. Or, Mother Tucking Punk Rocker for those of us who ever had a front row seat to one of his searches, where, like a labrador mash up of Johnny Thunders, Bob Mould, and Billie Joe Armstrong, he’d turn the search area into a stage, the odor into a Les Paul guitar, and he’d play that odor in ways entirely his own, yet satisfyingly familiar. He knew how to hook you in, take you on a roller coaster ride, step you to the edge of the cliff where the next step could be a fall into the abyss or a leap into bliss. If you faltered, he’d just leap for the both of you. He knew that bliss and the abyss were one in the same.

Where did Tucker go when his body couldn’t carry him further? I am pretty sure wherever he went, he made a stop in my kitchen on his way there.

What happens when a being or a thing ceases to be? From my perspective, I don’t see a ceasing to be. It doesn’t make sense. I’m inclined to tell myself a story about connection, intention, and re-formation, re-being.

Tucker is more than a dog to me. He is an essence. In the time I spent getting to know him through his searches with Sarah, I connected with the essence that is Tucker. That connection does not die like a body dies. That connection continues to live. That connection forms and reforms, without beginning or end.

Tucker was one of the great artists of scent. He liked a big canvas for his searches. Yet, he was incredibly sensitive to individual atoms of odor, moving between the grand and the granular with a kind of controlled chaos that could be overwhelmingly beautiful. Through his circles, swoops, zigzags, darts and turns, Tucker the artist would reveal invisible drips, splashes, swirls and spatters of odor, but really he’d reveal some part of himself, of his essence.

I remember marveling at Tucker’s confidence and joy in nose-surfing on the waves of scent, telling the secrets of odor through his patterns of movement. Sometimes I’d be unable to hear what Tucker needed me to hear, but I’m not sure he actually needed me to hear anything. I think he loved expressing himself. As long as he was allowed to be fully himself in his searches, he would tell all the secrets of scent that he knew, and if someone heard those secrets, it would be better for them and probably better for Tucker, but it wouldn’t change his experience for the worse if they didn’t.

When I fed my dog Muriel her first meal the day I adopted her, I remember thinking that she was no longer going to die in a kill shelter, no longer going to be beaten, starved, chained up alone, chased down by motorcycles… She was no longer going to be afraid and unloved. I had nothing in mind for us to achieve with our lives together beyond safety and love. What could be needed beyond safety and love? We had many experiences from that day forward – 15 years of experiences – but that first meal was a lifetime of peace and joy in a moment.

Tucker received safety and love from Sarah. The two of them shared many many adventures and spent countless hours together in the pursuit of a deeper relationship, but – and this is my perspective – never did Sarah see a need for something beyond safety and love. What they did in scent work, they did joyfully. There was not a reaching for something, but a growing from something. A growing into something. They were growing from and into safety and love.

Tucker is no longer “here”. Yet, he is here. He and Sarah share a deep connection, one that does not stop because a body stops. See, Tucker was not just an artist of odor. He was a sculptor of Sarah. When I first met her, I marveled at her skills in communicating with Tucker. She had a cue for release from odor to get food, a cue for release to get a toy, a cue to “try again”, etc. I once remarked that she was like a Michelin Star Chef the way she taught Tucker a language for searching with her in the realm of scent. The majority of us were just backyard barbecuing! As I got to know Sarah more deeply, she revealed a love for Tucker that transcended cues, and timing, and fluency. She wanted to know him. To know his essence. I could feel this in the searches I watched Sarah and Tucker do together. A flowing between skill and intuition. A flowing between wisdom and love.

The Turner Trials at the Dry Town water park in Palmdale will be forever etched in my mind, specifically four searches: “99 problems” a 9 hide 9 minute search beneath giant tube slides and throughout a huge area with a shower station, picnic area, and bathroom building; “blank stare” an 8 hide search with no judge feedback for alert calls; “where?” a 4 hide search from the edges of a large circular kiddie wading pool with all hides on equipment in the water and no dogs allowed to touch the water; and “straight up Ron” a 4 hide search with one doozy of a high hide spreading far and wide throughout a grassy picnic area in a large fenced-in space. I can remember Tucker & Sarah’s partnership in each of these searches like it happened yesterday.

That trial weekend was high winds, high energy, and lots of feeling rather than thinking. Tucker thrived in the “straight up Ron” search. And the “99 problems” search. He got to express his essence and create scent songs uniquely his own. In the other searches, Sarah had to make choices she may never have considered before. She got to play in real time with the flow between wisdom and love.

Then, there are searches just the two of them worked in the backyard of her mom’s house, or a search set by a friend in a cool courtyard. These searches have a consistent energy to them. Tucker is authentically Tucker. Sarah is lovingly exploring who “Team Tucker” is, who they might become.

The trial videos I watched, Elite trials and later Summit, were joyful and successful, sometimes with a challenge or two arising from a miscommunication or a missed communication. Team Tucker loved to play in the competitive setting, and some of their searches have a beauty to them that is akin to watching the aurora dance across the horizon on a clear winter night: you almost can’t believe what you’re seeing, it flows and shines and dances before your eyes with a magical realism. In the searches where a challenge arose I got to know Sarah’s desire to be perfect (I know it well in myself) for Tucker. “Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything.” Over and over, I observed Sarah and Tucker tell each other they were everything through their relationship and partnership. Love has no need for perfection, only a need for connection.

In the last couple of years Sarah and I spoke less about search strategies, and more about deepening her understanding of Tucker’s language. To be present for him in a search, to honor him, and to experience joy – all longstanding goals for Team Tucker – became, not tools in Sarah’s hands, but shapes Tucker formed Sarah into. A search for odor had turned into a discovery of profound connection.

Sarah sent me a video of a Summit trial exterior search where Tucker seemed to be “stuck” in collection points and at edges of odor, not advancing to source. I didn’t make the connection at the time, but I had seen this communication twice before when a human had fully committed to the journey of learning the dog’s language. It was as if Tucker was telling Sarah, “yeah, source is pretty fun, but now that we’re really deeply conversing, let me tell you about all of these quirks and curiosities of odor. Let’s do some improvisational odor jazz, let’s paint something just for the two of us.”

I’ve watched some of Tucker & Sarah’s search videos over again, and reread some of the email conversations between Sarah and me. Tucker led Sarah into such deep places of experiencing, feeling and thinking about their relationship, it is impossible not to believe that he changed her, that his essence has become part of her essence. I know Team Tucker changed me, and I’m grateful for it.

That day in my kitchen, when the thought of mortality unleashed a melee on my solar plexus from the inside, turned out to be a gift in disguise. I stopped feeling grief long ago as the hurt of saying goodbye to so many dogs became too much to bear. The grief was there, it would just come and go unnoticed, like a piece of paper that’d been crumpled and smoothed so many times it no longer makes a sound. I was grateful to grieve Tucker’s passing. Grateful to have known him, to have connected with him, and to have been been changed by his essence: bravery, truth, and joy.

I don’t know where Tucker went, but I know where to find him.

Brave, truthful, joyful sniffing!