… found in pet shelters. Amazing pups who obviously really want to be useful, just need someone to show them what their job is! Taught by people who help the animals develop the ability to locate the hidden nests where sea turtles lay eggs on the sandy beaches just above the shore line. The female sea turtles’ reproductive task completed, after covering the holes they dig with their flippers, they then laboriously return to the salty ocean. Abandoning the dozens of small leathery eggs and disappear back into the deep water.

The canines trained for this work were first seen in an online article. Passed along as a an unusual way for those often neglected, throw-away, neglected dogs to become useful: and don’t we ALL want to feel like we were made for a purpose? Media outlets in recent years have promoted the dangers to sea turtles in fishing nets, well as land-baseed predators, like un-leashed dogs, coyotes, humans, that might up the nests and consume eggs before they mature to hatch. Plus dangers once those tiny creatures do get to the waterline, when so few survive to maturity and reproduce. And then there is climate change across the planet, which many deny as bunkum.

The world is right there at your fingertips when consulting Dr. Google: One story found in ‘People’ magazine, and another came from ‘National Geographic’, considered a well-established, reliably documented source. Such an unusual and unique approach, people who have funding to do environmental and conservation work on this particular challenge of supporting wild-life are writing research articles about the success of the task.

The reports indicated the dogs could be trained to identify the residual odor left behind when the sea turtles deposit their eggs after digging nesting holes in beach sand. This process, when done by the trained canines is not fool-proof, but far quicker and with much better results than the tedious efforts produced when humans are doing the same work, searching on two (human) feet at a much lower pace. Numbers quoted in the article for a dog named Dory on the Atlantic coast in Florida completes tasks consistently.

Magpie, seen above in the article from ‘People’ magazine was selected from a number of rescues, and trained with grant funding from Tito’s Vodka. The sea turtle breeding season starts in April and lasts through September, with Magpie starting her ‘job’ as soon as she was trained: finding many more nests in that time period than the humans had previously discovered. Trainers expect she will also help with locating injured turtles during the ‘off season’ when not detecting the ‘chambers’ filled with eggs below the sand. The turtles, after completing the task of laying eggs, often cover the holes they dig so effectively they are often invisible to humans, but the scent easily found by the trained dogs.

… that could have easily become major if not for having a ‘back up’ plan. Someone went to a near-by chain drug-store/pharmacy after discovering reading glasses were advertised on sale and came in the door with a pair of eye-glasses for everyone! Not one to readily pass up a bargain, after years of being trained to shop the BOGO adv. at the nearby supermarket: hard to walk past a bargain!

People who had been cautioned that vision starts to decline when your eyeballs have a birthday after four decades cannot live in denial for long. Unable to read the small print on the pill bottle. No longer, even with squinting or standing right next to the light source able to decipher the font on back of the carton.

To make facing the reality of that slippery slope, the decline continues. A person can go into the store, stand at the rack, look at the choices, discern the necessity for magnification by studying the eye chart and make a decision. Walk to the cashier and pay for your new ‘readers’. Only to discover over time the magnification is insufficient. You are going to need something a little stronger to read the daily hints for the crossword puzzle printed in the newspaper. Bumping up from 1.5 to 2.00, then sadly- whatever comes next as you find you cannot recall which room you left those readers in…

… by highly lauded and respected, noted southern regional author Wendell Berry. According to research, Berry has published over fifty books, although some appear to be reprints of articles in other media, as well as anthologies that are collections of short tales of his creative mind. Consisting of local residents and relatives, friends, neighbors, business people, farmworkers, all beautifully developed people from an invented community over decades of keeping company with these families who lived inside his head before landing on a manuscript and coming to life in his books.

The book includes a couple of hand-drawn maps, to show where the community has expanded over the years, even though it only exists in the mind of the author. With farms, homesteads, commercial property along the edge of the river. The small tributaries that flow off the hills where people have built homes, barns, raise livestock as well as families, with runoff feeding into the creeks, into the wider navigable water way. Naming established families and their connections as young people marry, settle down, reproduce, sharing lives together, watching generations grow, relocate, return and often planted in the property surrounding the churches they attend.

I have read another of the Berry books: the story of Jayber Crow as his history is relayed. Quite entertaining. More requested from the local library collection. For someone with a library card that provides access to the PINES system in Georgia, organized by UGA, the options for reading more Berry tales are almost limitless…

… a noted regional author who recently died. Wendell Berry was born in 1934, recently died at the end of August 2026. Limited reading of his writing might think the stories are about individuals created in the mind of Berry, but often amalgam of those he encountered in life. He was known as a prolific writer: publishing books, short stories, as well as poetry, essays, being an ardent conservationist, speaker, Trump opponent. Small time farmer of land he owned, preserved, loved, in his native Kentucky by observing sound management of crops and livestock, with an abundance of common sense.

Highly regarded as an author of essays, poetry, fiction of the membership of Port William community, as well as full length books where he attempts reasonable explanations on race relations, soil and water conservation, A proponent of small family owned farms, Berry opposed large farming operations that cover thousands of acres, supporting the family farming operations of yore. Berry received a number of distinguished literary awards. His notable career achievements include: Guggenheim foundation fellow, recognition by President Barack Obama, National Humanities Medal, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

…. by Wendell Berry. Berry was a regional writer, telling tales of life in a non-existent place where he developed a cast of characters inhabiting Port William. A fictitious community, he referred to as a ‘membership, situated in the valleys and hills, rich bottom land with farms along a river. With a population of fascinating, well-developed natives who ran shops, worked the land, married, had families, lived and were buried in the community. From pastors of small congregations, to barbers, farmers, tradesmen, all with a variety of skills and abilities as befits those capable men and women of that self-sufficient era.

Situated on the banks of the Kentucky River, along with a number of smaller tributaries, the hills and valleys of the community settled by families that married, expanded and diminished over the years as the area prospered. Then declines as circumstances changed for individuals including drought, being called into military service, financial difficulties, job loss, marriage and other life-altering situations. Stories of those who endured the hard scrabble life of farming on shares, as well as others who were fortunate enough to come from generational wealth: growing up in families established on land that was debt free, and profitable for raising livestock or crops.

All cheerfully invented over time, by a man with a mind so fertile all of the many people who lived there in the land surrounding the community seem absolutely believable: with thoughts, opinions, friendships, heartaches, employment, desires, doubts, and all the other daily difficulties humans live with. Most of the tales truly poignant, with elements of so many human emotions from hilarity to unbridled grief, racism, love for fellow man and beast, struggles with day-to-day doubts and fears.