It's a fitting tribute to the duo. The park's impressive five acres feature shade structures, drinking fountains, a small dog run, and an agility course, ensuring many happy puppies for years to come. A lot of work and dedication went into this canine haven.

Ever since town councilwoman Amy Holland attended David's funeral in 2013, she was determined to create something meaningful in his memory. When Amy returned to her office that day, she took the program with David and Flex's photo and put it on her bulletin board. Amy vowed to get the dog park built in their honor.

Separately, David's family has worked hard to create a legacy so that he will never be forgotten. The Marines Special Operations command renamed its dog kennel after him. And David's father, Kevin, runs Rocky Mountain Dawgs, a charity in his honor that teaches veterans with PTSD to train their own service dogs. But they are humbled and grateful that Amy and the town of Parker put in so much work to create this lasting tribute to David and Flex.

“All the signage they put up, all the thought they put into this, I know David’s name will be carried on for generations to come,” said Kevin. “I don’t even know if I can put it into words how incredible this is. How proud we are that Town of Parker would do something like this, to make a memorial that will last forever in his name, that’s unbelievable.”

Creating this space for dogs to enjoy off leash freedom and the company of other pups is such a great tribute to the work David and Flex accomplished together and their special relationship.

Dog's name and age: Maggie, 14 years old

Adoption Story:

Originally from Minnesota, Maggie's previous person couldn't keep her, so she was given to the rescue group Washington State Setter Rescue. Living in Seattle at the time, Maggie's soon-to-be people and their beagle were excited to meet her so they scheculed a visit. Maggie, then known as "Mcgyver", and her foster mom came over for a meet and greet and it was love at first sight! Everyone in the family knew it was a perfect match.

Maggie's Interests:

Tasty treats, taking up the whole couch, and doing tricks like high-fives.

In the spring of 1967, I moved to San Francisco and had a couple of months to become acclimated to the West Coast climate—both social and meteorological— before summer hit. Hard to believe that 50 years have passed, but that summer has stayed in my memory. In retrospect, it was a seminal moment, although the magnitude of this cultural watershed wasn’t apparent at the time. Even so, we knew that something was definitely happening here: be-ins; love-ins; and music by the likes of Janis, Jimi and Jerry and a long playlist of others flowing almost nonstop from clubs and parks. I think of that time now not only to mark its golden anniversary but also because, while so much has changed, some societal and political similarities have persisted over the past half-century. Still, for me, it was a great time and place to be a young adult—to actually be there. The good times really did rock (and roll).

Back to the present … I just read a research paper in Science Daily with the intriguing title, “Lifting your spirits doesn’t require many reps,” which concludes that simply getting out of your chair and moving around can reduce depression and lift your spirits. As I was reading it, my three dogs urged me to do just that, barking their need to see what that darn squirrel was up to in our back yard. Even though I was mildly annoyed with them for breaking my concentration, I knew I had something to thank them for. As a bonus, the paper’s lead author, Gregory Panza, observes that the study’s results suggest that the “more is better” mindset may not apply when it comes to the connection between movement and our sense of well being. So, even short bursts of mild activity, like walking around the block with your dog (or chasing them around the yard, as it was in my case), can improve your mood.

To help you tap into some good vibrations this summer, we chose “Journey” as our issue’s theme, trippin’ in both the metaphorical and the literal sense. To start off, we’ve packed this issue full of reasons for you and your dog to get out and about. We have 51 tips —one for each state and the District of Columbia—for exploring with your dogs, from “California to the New York Island,” as Woody Guthrie famously sang. We also give a special nod to the fine city of Austin for its five-star dog friendliness, as well as to New Mexico’s Sunrise Springs Spa Resort, where guests relax while helping with the socialization of future assistance dogs.

If you’re thinking about wandering overseas, you’ll be inspired by Belgian photographer John Thai’s work at Thailand’s Headrock Dogs Rescue, where he contributed his talents during a working “volunteer vacation.” Similar opportunities to help animals in need abound, many in scenically beautiful locales.

For our literature coverage— what would summer be without lots of good reading material?—we travel with author Laura Schenone as she covers the stories and meets the people who started Greyhound rescue in Ireland and beyond. We interview her and excerpt her book, The Dogs of Avalon, a thoroughly enthralling and inspiring read. We dip into our archives to bring back Michelle Huneven’s essay, “Lala the Loot,” from our anthology Dog Is My Co-Pilot. Her story, about a charming little dog whose cuteness inspires others to snatch her, has a happy ending, so be prepared to smile.

In another entry with a journey theme, Laurie Priest tells us how a kayak vacation to Baja California’s Sea of Cortez netted her a honey of a dog, along with an amazingly complicated return trip with the dog to her home in Massachusetts. Dana Shavin’s essay, “There Is Now Only This,” comes with another twist—how being dogless just doesn’t feel right. As she notes, “My meticulous tending to the ever-expanding needs of my dogs became the point of my life. It was what defined me.” Without that, who are we? Finally, our “Backstory” features a man who traveled into outer space with the support of his pups, whom he considered to be his family.

On the department front, Karen London tells us why bite inhibition matters and how it develops; Carin Ford provides pointers on starting a rescue; and Ernest Abel explains how the R.E.A.D. program, which is now in just about every country, came to be. Heather McKinnon gives us another reason to consider getting a doggy-pack for our dog; Erica Goss reveals how research into human color blindness was helped by a Poodle aptly named Retina; Sarah Wooten, DVM, shares new treatments for arthritis; and we interview the star and writer of “Downward Dog,” a new TV comedy we hope hits it big.

In this issue, you’ll find a new short feature, “Dog-eared.” If you’re like me and read a lot, you have no doubt encountered references to dogs in books that are not about dogs at all, perhaps as a refreshing plot turn or as part of a character’s environment. We’ve started collecting these dog-eared finds, and if you run across any you’d like to share with us, we would love to hear about your discovery (be sure to note the source’s title/author/page number). To kick it off, we found the perfect paragraph in Louise Erdrich’s wonderful LaRose; in a very few words, we come to know both characters better (see page 20 in The Bark Summer 2017).

Finally, as always, we have some unforgettable artwork for you to feast your eyes on.

We hope you take a liking to what we’ve put together, and that your own 2017 summer of love goes well. We look forward to connecting up with you again in fall. You can purchase a copy of The Bark Summer 2017 here or subscribe to get all these wonderful articles.

Last month I wrote about how studying dogs gives scientists a unique view into genetics because of the way they’ve been bred by humans. So who were the first people to breed dogs?

Recent evidence now points to the hunter-gatherers of a Siberian Island known as Zhokhov. Populated nine thousand years ago, these people lived in an unforgiving land, hunting polar bears and reindeer in year-round freezing temperatures.

An analysis of canine bones from Zhokhov suggests that these hunter-gatherers were among the first humans to breed dogs for a particular purpose—by thousands of years.

Vladimir Pitulko, an archeologist at the Russian Academy of Scientists, has been excavating Zhokhov since 1989. It’s well known that the island’s hunter-gatherers were using dogs to pull the sleds they used to pursue reindeer, but it wasn’t previously known if they were actually breeding dogs for this purpose.

Now Vladimir believes he has evidence that says that they were. His team of scientists studied the fossil bones of 11 individuals. Ten of the pups weighed between 35-50 pounds and may have resembled Siberian Huskies. The remaining dog weighted 63 pounds and seemed to be a wolf-dog hybrid, perhaps resembling an Alaskan Malamute.

According to Valdimir, good sled dogs typically weight between 44-55 pounds, big enough to pull sleds but won’t overheat like larger dogs. He believes the Zhokhov people bred the smaller dogs for sledding and the larger ones to hunt polar bears. “They were clearly shaping these animals to do something special,” he says. The size grouping is important.

About 7,000 years ago, dogs were used for herding in the Near East, but the wide range of weights in the ancient canines there argues against strictly controlled breeding. Angela Perri, a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, believes that different kinds of dogs were mating with each other, producing random litters of puppies. The people there may have selected the most promising sled dogs from those litters but they probably weren’t specifically breeding them.

“It fills in a missing piece of the puzzle of early human-dog relationships, and even domestication itself,” says Angela.

The finding may also shed light on why dogs were domesticated in the first place. Though all scientists don’t agree on when this happened, recent research suggests it was at least 15,000 years ago. This happens to be around the time when Earth was beginning to warm, with large species like mammoths disappearing and smaller migrating animals like reindeer starting to dominate the landscape. Dogs could help hunt down this smaller prey and even provide a way for people to follow them.

“Before then, there was no real reason to have a dog,” says Vladimir. “We turned to them when we really needed them.”