The end of the begining

Monica has recorded the details of the last two days pretty well. The situation today is that we have confirmed sightings of Raven in Los Gatos from Monday, but nothing since then. This suggests the possibility (perhaps the strong possibility) that Raven has traveled out of Los Gatos to parts unknown since Monday and this is why people are not seeing her and reporting it. We know that we've reached a kind of critical mass within the city regarding people's awareness of the situation and it seems strange that no one would call if she was slinking around.

The decision now is do we track again or not. At the moment, tired and fatigued and needing to get some work-work done, I am thinking probably we do not track more at this time. Jackie and Dino and Dot are not available until Monday, and this would put us days behind. It's not a question of the freshness of the scent as Dino can track scents up to 5 weeks old without issue, apparently. More to the point, we don't know when Raven left Los Gatos, if she did, and we might spend a full day simply noodling around that city and not get the direction of her travel out of the city until multiple days of tracking were completed. Unfortunately, tracking is like listening to an old school cassette tape with the fast forward button broken. You can only follow the track as it was laid down. You cannot skip ahead without someone calling you with a confirmed sighting and we don't have that.

We are thinking that yesterday and today mark the "end of the begining" phase of our search. Initially, we have charged ahead trying to find her ourselves. It has become apparent that this is quite unlikely to happen - Raven is too fast and too evasive at this time. And the rest of our lives have been suffering and need our attention at this point too. We don't have the bandwidth to continue the search with the level of energy and single-mindedness that we have put out previously.

So, we are thinking through what we can do, and have been listening to many people's good advice about how to conduct a less aggressive search. As I have time to digest it all I will post what we come up with here. Certainly, this will involve craigslist postings and other website postings, regular checking at the animal shelters, continued postering of areas where Raven might have gotten to, newspaper ads, etc. If this is going to become a long term effort, we have to arrive at a program we can sustain over the long term. More on the shape of this effort soon.

We have been truly touched by the many people who have put forth an effort to help us. This may not be the place to acknowledge everyone's contribution personally, but I want to make clear how thankful we are.

I slept in my own bed last night and spend the morning and evening with my daughter. It's nice to have a little normal again.

Mark