Walking Mika

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Mika is my 26 kilo, “Canaanee”, or in the USA, Canaan Dog. She is a beautiful animal, very smart, prefers to lead not follow, and her breed were guard dogs, by sheep herders for thousands of years to protect herds of sheep from wild animals. Mika is my constant companion and until recently walked outside with me 6 kilometres a day on 4 to 5 walks. She came into our home a year and a half ago, and was already a year old. She was a “wild dog” and stray before she

wandered into the garden of one of my wife’s former students who was heading off to college and had to find a new home for her. It was meant to be as she is great with just about anyone.
I have worked with trainers and Mika everyday for the last year to keep her from hurting me on a walk. She stops at the top of each staircase to allow me to go ahead of her. She sits and waits for other dogs to walk by. She comes back on command, and sticks to me off-leash.

My multiple myeloma cancer and the complications including brittle bone, anemia, etc (The New Project) has made it impossible for me to walk her. I have to allow others, my neighbors and friends, to walk her at least three walks a day. With my pain levels spiking every day, until I got that under control, just managing the volunteers became a stressful task for Karen and me.

As “Necessity is the mother of invention”, I readapted the oncehub.com system that I use to book and manage podcast interviews to a reservation system for walking Mika, with an unlimited number of volunteers. So besides creating a solution that takes me out of the loop almost entirely, I can see on my calendar, at a glance, if the next session is booked.

So far, it is working great. I can improve its feature set by using Zapier.com with it, to create reports, provide updates and warnings, and even send out a WhatApp message, automatically, if we are close to walk time, and I still don’t have a volunteer booked.

While my “new project” is not one that I would have chosen, it does open the door to new opportunities and learning. I can master new skills that recognize my responsibility for efficient use of the time to all of the volunteers who have stepped up to help us.

Walking Mika is huge burden off of us while I am out of commission. Since my new project is a challenge to me and my family, I look forward to the uncharted waters and opportunities that this journey will bring.

73, Eric

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