I will be forever amazed at how it played-out.

Trooper is home!

We are all so relieved and will sleep well tonight for the first time since Wednesday. -19C -20C -21C -25C -21C those were the overnight temperatures each night Trooper was out there. I'm am thankful we got him home today because they're calling for -27C! In a twisted bit of fate it was his bad luck to go missing on literally the coldest nights of the year. He just put away two tins of sardines and a handful of dried liver treats. He's lost a pile of weight but otherwise looks in good health. We're going to take him to the vet and have him checked out. I have a fascinating story to tell about Karin who gave me the divine information - It's a true miracle and my family is so gratified that it had a happy ending.
John, Helene and Trooper

We asked our son David, to take Trooper who knows David well and I assumed he would answer to him like he does to me.Wednesday evening the wheels came off...Trooper got spooked somehow by another dog and took off. We got a couple of mixed reports that evening about where he had fled. In any event, despite extensive searching and a massive poster/social media campaign that was the last we heard of him until Saturday morning. A lady on Aleutian in Qualicum called 3-1-1 to report he was in her yard again after having visited on Thursday and  Friday afternoons for about an hour each time. We came close to getting him twice but he fled South through Trend-Arlington, right past David's place!!!, and finally down to the end of Siskin where it was believed he ran down the trail towards the bush South of Bruce Pit. We searched until dark and I went home to warm up intending to go back to Qualicum and the QCH area later in the evening. It was at that point that everything changed!

Let me start by saying that I have been in law enforcement for 38 years and am used to only accepting facts and solid evidence. I am very, very pragmatic and down-right sceptical about things that lack solid proof. I have never been particularly spiritual mainly because I've been very fortunate not to have needed that support.I have always suspected there was a higher order but never devoted much thought or contemplation to the matter. I have never heard of intuitive spiritual healers (just Google it - quite an eye opener, particularly Dr. Orloff - a practicing psychiatrist who uses it with traditional medicine). I have never heard about Karin Nikischer before she called me on Sunday evening. She took me by surprise by telling me that she knew where Trooper was and that she was in contact with him and sending him healing energy. She told me she had worked with a pendulum and a map to narrow Trooper's location down to the woods a couple of hundred meters from the end of Siskin. She offered to send me the map. Well, at this point I was open to any and all suggestions so I figured, what the heck. Although it was in the area he was last seen I was still absolutely convinced he was around Qualicum because of the tracks in the fresh snow leading back there. She sent me the attached Google screen shot, (with the triangle and red circle), just before 6:00pm along with a shot of the sheet she uses to do her calculations. She explained that the red circle indicated the general area of his presence/activities but she felt he was currently in the area of, (if memory serves me correctly), the 2nd small dot from the top of their vertical line running up the middle of the circle. I found it difficult to translate her calculations and instructions to my concept of navigation but after lengthy discussion we were able to develop some form of commonality.I got dressed, grabbed my GPS, and headed out to the cold, dark woods. I was hoping to find fresh tracks to validate her directions but was dismayed to find the woods full of fresh dog tracks. It looks like everyone in Arlington Woods took the opportunity of a lovely but cold Sunday to take their dogs for an off-leash tear through the woods. I was crashing about in the woods when Karin phoned to excitedly report that Trooper was on the move! I urged her to try to translate her Google Map calculations to GPS coordinates so that I could navigate through the deep ravine and thick brush. She finally worked out the actual GPS numbers and I struggled to follow them over to the ravine behind a house on Siskin. I was dumbfounded and very, very excited to find evidence of fresh dog tracks and "bedding" activity under a large fir - exactly as Kevin McCormick(Tracker's Edge) had described.I thought, "OMG or something like that this stuff really works!" There were numerous tracks leading up to and all around the house on Siskin . My excitement grew as I discovered fresh Trooper-like droppings at a couple of places along the edge of their hedge. My spirits were dashed though when the residents told me that they had a dog that was allowed to roam the yard and ravine. But, I left them my number and searched the area a bit more calling his name. I found other tracks but nothing too fresh.I went home to bed very dejected but buoyed by Kevin's earlier assurances that dogs can be very resilient to the cold for many days and his belief that Trooper fit the profile of a happy ending.

And now here it gets really, really interesting....Around midnight Karin sent me another map, (the one with the vertical line leading from Siskin to Riverbrook) She told me Trooper was on the move again. The trail she gave me started exactly at the house I had visited on Siskin and went northeast through the yards on River brook. I figured there would be fresh snow on the ground by morning and I would go back and try to pick up his trail. Just before 8:00 am my phone rang the people I had spoken to on Siskin reported he had just been in their yard!!

We all rushed over and began searching the area. I went down into the ravine and in the daylight found a Trooper super-highway along the creek bed going back/forth from the area where Karin first said he was to the big fir tree in the ravine I was just coming back onto Siskin when I got word that Helene had found him in a yard nearby getting a tip from the home owner Helene spotted Trooper curled up in a little ball under a chair in a corner of the back yard. She used her best "scared puppy recovery" skills and lay down in the snow calling to him softly.
He looked at her with a bit of curious recognition but finally emerged and approached her when she started using some of the phrases we use in training and praise.

And...The rest is as they say, history.

For the rest of my life I will always be amazed by what Karin did! If it wasn't for her information I am pretty sure I would still be searching Qualicum. How or why this happened I will never know. The important thing is that Trooper is back at home.

We have since had a long discussion and she told me wonderful stories of her life and what she does. She is very modest and does not acknowledge her abilities as a gift...she says she regards it as a natural part of her life - just something she has done since she was around 6 years old.

She identifies herself as an "Intuitive, Clairvoyant, Spiritual Healer". I don't doubt her when she says she is always pained by some of the sceptic reactions to her work and therefore she tends to maintain a low profile.. She says connecting with Spirit is one thing, staying connected when you’re working over a map takes hours . It's not like the GPS coordinates spring out of the air. At  times when she gets tired and has her own doubts about the existence of an actual conduit, makes it harder of her staying in balance and keep concentrating on succeeding.

Apparently the process requires buy-in from all parties if the connection to succeed, i.e. Karin-me-Trooper. She says that after she established contact she saw that Trooper's energy was very low. He was cold and had an upset stomach. She says she sent him specific healing energy and instructed him to stay put and wait for rescue because "your 'Dad' (me) is very worried. He has been looking for you and will come and get you" I think it's that point in my life to start examining my own spirituality - who knows, perhaps this is what this was all about. My fondest wish is that everyone who loses their pet is allowed the wonderful opportunity to be reunited again.

Thanks again for everyone's wishes and help.

How or why this happened I will never know.
The important thing is that he is back at home....

John with Trooper, February 05. 2015

Trooper is resting.

Trooper's back on the podium with 2nd place in New York after only 1month! And, as promised, this one is dedicated to you Karin Nikischer :)