Bear Witness

Happy Birthday to Cedar. Her gift you ask? She finally got to practice all that training with an off-leash encounter with a large black bear.

Fortunately, or unfortunately (I’m really bad at judging), it was more her ski training than the recall work that did the trick.

We were walking home on the big tree trail and I had bear spray and a bell, but no leash. (Kids are home and she’s getting lots of outings.) Cedar saw or smelled the bear before I did. She growled and pointed and then I saw the bear, ambling uphill towards the trail, absolutely unfazed by my bell. I called COME to Cedar. She ignored me and began moving toward the bear in full hackles up, head down bark mode. As the bear pivoted and started moving back in the direction from which it had come, I yelled ON BY (our ski command for moving past other skiers), and she complied, trotting down the trail, looking and sniffing over her shoulder with a grumble or two.

Two nights prior, we had a couple of seconds of excitement, too. Tim, Katie, and I were enjoying a king salmon dinner, with surprise guest Delaney. Cedar had gotten a little too interested in the kitchen table, so I clipped her out on the run. As I was at the sink, Delaney, matter-of-factly commented, “You have a bear on your deck.” I turned to see a full grown black bear with both paws on the deck, about 3′ from clipped in Cedar. I opened the door, grabbed Cedar’s lead and hauled her into the kitchen. Seems like it was only then that Cedar realized the gravity of the situation and barked her bear bark. (Later that night, I said the word, “Bear” and she actually got her ears back and head down for a second. Tried it just now, and I think she has efficiently erased that part of her hard drive.)

The title is a dumb pun, I know—the kind of thing I get to do when I’m the editor in chief. But, and…Cedar, the watcher and thinker (and hearer and smeller and OMG, licker) has had a year now of bearing witness to a world full of newness and surprise and only occasionally danger. I’m grateful for the ways she is teaching me to bear witness, too, as we go “on by”, in our separate but overlapping worlds.