In 2013 Kevin and Lisa saw 4-month old Scout on a website, and they reached out with interest in meeting him. This would have been an easy meet up for Southern Californians, as everyone involved lived within an hour of each other. Young Scout had already had two families as his first mother received him as a gift from her boyfriend, but it turned out she was allergic to dogs. She then re-homed him to a friend who lived in an apartment but couldn’t manage him, at which point Scout was posted on-line, where Kevin and Lisa discovered him. At the last minute, Scout’s family cancelled the meet and greet and, unbeknownst to Kevin and Lisa, put the pup into breed rescue.

Disappointed, Kevin and Lisa continued their search. They’d had a Setter before and loved the breed. After several months of looking they found SWESR. As they looked through the Available Dogs page they stopped at a familiar face. “We know him!” they said, and it was, indeed, Scout, who was being fostered several hundred miles away in Northern California.

When they brought home this now 9-month-old, he displayed his full field Setter puppy energy. He had a large fenced in yard in which to run, but Scout preferred to chew! He ate all their sprinkler heads, and when those were destroyed he moved on to gnawing the rubber sprinkler hoses. He’d find bird nests in trees and try to get at them, to the point that mockingbirds would dive bomb Scout in his own backyard. He was so manic he sprained his ACL and had to wear a brace for almost a year. Scout was an 11 out of 10 on the energy scale.

Kevin took the lead on training, and Scout went to obedience classes at a local park. Lisa had an acquaintance who knew Setters and who taught Kevin strategies to keep Scout occupied (non-destructively) at home.

Scout loved his walks, and he would pull Kevin along at full pace on their mile long treks every
morning and evening. Kevin noticed that a white truck would often slowly follow them as they were at the park. One day he asked the driver why this was happening. They were park rangers, and they knew that whenever Scout stopped he had found a populated gopher hole. Scout was identifying rodent control targets for them!

When Scout was four he was diagnosed with a large mast cell tumor on the sheath of his penis. The established treatment at that time involved an amputation that would deeply traumatize every male reader of this article. Instead, Kevin and Lisa opted for what was then an experimental treatment called electrochemotherapy, where the chemotherapy medications are
injected directly into the tumor along with an electrical charge to diffuse the medication to allow it to better target the tumor. And it worked! Scout is cancer free.

Some of Scout’s treatment regime included large amounts of steroids and antihistamines. One day he went to explore a miniature lemon tree in his backyard, where unfortunately there was an established beehive. Much like the well-known image of Winnie-the-Pooh carrying a jar of fresh “hunny” and being chased by bees, poor Scout came running back into the house through his dog door not only with bees stuck to him but also chasing him from behind. He was stung multiple times, and the vet said it was a good thing he was already on steroids and antihistamines to alleviate the bee venom.

In 2020, the family moved into Lisa’s childhood home which has a swimming pool. Scout loves
to swim, and he established a daily habit: he would swim exactly one lap in the pool, come out, shake himself, then go to the flower bed and roll, covering himself with dirt. Satisfied, he would then go into the house through his dog door and sit in front of the fan. Scout is a character!

Now 13, Scout has finally calmed down. He has arthritis, but he continues to enjoy his walks,
although they are shorter and completed at a gentlemanly pace. He has cataracts, so any
backyard bird nests are now safe from his attention. He loves visitors and is great with kids, especially Kevin and Lisa’s grandchildren.. Scout’s parents had a party a few months ago with50 attendees, and Scout was quite the party dog, greeting everyone and letting them know he would be happy to eat their leftovers if they didn’t want to insult their hosts by leaving food uneaten on their plates.

Although he no longer volunteers at the park finding gophers, Scout does have to remind his parents daily when it is time for dinner and time for bed. How would they manage without that help? Scout likes to curl up with his parents, enjoying the day’s comfort and calm. He may well recall the follies of his youth, or he may think back to a sun bath he took just a few hours earlier.
Either way, Scout can remember a life well-lived.