About 12,000 years ago, canines came to the fire.

Before long, humans and dogs became very close friends. No one can say exactly where it happened, though it was likely in southern Europe or North Africa. But the terms of the arrangement were simple: The two species would look after one another. Dogs would sniff out and run down game as well as guard the homefront. Man would offer food and shelter. Neither would be lonely.

Since then, it鈥檚 been man who most often fails to live up to the bargain鈥攏ot by skimping on kibble, but by allowing his dog to become a do-nothing layabout or even a nuisance. The idea of a dog as purely pet is a 20th-century concept and, frankly, a bad one. Of course, I鈥檓 not telling anyone anything they don鈥檛 already know: Dogs like daily order and work. Hell, they need it. If you鈥檙e not willing to give a dog a job, whether it鈥檚 running with you, sitting calmly while you fish, or running behind you while you ski, you should probably stick to having goldfish鈥攐r ferns.

But if you鈥檙e ready to dedicate time to training a dog that鈥檚 up for adventure, then we鈥檝e got the drill sergeant you need. , 58, is a former police officer鈥攈e spent seven years on the force in Oxford, Mississippi, then 18 years as chief of campus police at the University of Mississippi鈥攚ho鈥檚 been 鈥減iddling around鈥� training dogs since he was a young man. Today, he is widely regarded as one of the best dog trainers in the world. He breeds, trains, and sells British Labradors out of his , a lovely and well-tended farm on 143 acres of fields, ponds, and woods outside Oxford. Stewart鈥檚聽new book, The Wildrose Way, details how you and your dog can be better in tune with each other聽in all sorts of situations, from boating to snowshoeing to birding鈥攅ven just walking along Fifth Avenue in New York. While he trains everything from hunting dogs to diabetic alert dogs, Stewart鈥檚 favorite pastime these days is training adventure dogs.

My wife and children and I trained service dogs for about two years. (It was my daughter鈥檚 idea;聽among the many benefits of the work, she got a great college essay out of it.) I recently returned from a visit with Stewart at Wildrose. While his book goes into great depth, these are some of the principles he uses to help a pup grow into a finished dog.

Pick the Right Breed

鈥淚f you鈥檙e living in a small apartment in a big city and working long hours, even if your dad had German shorthaired pointers all the time when you were growing up, that鈥檚 still the wrong dog for your situation,鈥� Stewart says. 鈥淜now who you are and what you want from a dog. Consult professionals. Malamutes are born to run, hounds are bred to track and bay, and Jack Russells to burrow. Labs do well in cold water but shed and, if untrained, will carry your socks and shoes around. Breed traits will crop up whether you鈥檙e going to the pound or the fanciest kennel out there.鈥�

Give 鈥橢m His Own Home

Contrary to what you might think, a dog crate is nothing like a cage. It鈥檚 a safe haven where your dog can get some peace and quiet. Every time you put your animal into its crate, you should reinforce the action by looking the dog in the eyes, saying its name, opening the crate door, and saying 鈥渃rate.鈥� Treat the dog as it goes in. A dog that crates well is a dog that travels well and learns how to wait patiently. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a retreat for a dog,鈥� says Stewart.

It鈥檚 also the key to housebreaking. Dogs instinctually avoid soiling their dens. Just be sure to let your dog out every two hours for the first few months. After that, lengthen crate stays to up to three hours during the day and, of course, overnight. And every time the dog comes out, it鈥檚 straight outside and 鈥済et 鈥檈r done,鈥� says Stewart. This routine is sometimes called errorless housebreaking, and it鈥檒l stay with your dog for life鈥攗nlike rubbing your dog鈥檚 nose in its mess, which accomplishes nothing.

Point and Click

Stewart鈥檚 staff begins working with dogs at three days old, getting them used to different sensations and scents even before their eyes open. Then, at five weeks, Stewart and his staff initiate clicker training, leading the pups through obstacle courses, marking behaviors he likes鈥攃onfidence, eye contact, going through a kid鈥檚 playroom-style tunnel鈥攚ith an audible click from a small noisemaker (they鈥檙e at the checkout of every pet store for a dollar or two) and following that closely with a bit of liver treat. Entire books (like Karen Pryor鈥檚 ) have been written on clicker training, and we recommend that you read them along with Stewart鈥檚 book. But here鈥檚 a short explanation of why clickers work so well: Dogs like rewards, and they鈥檙e are very good at figuring out the patterns that lead to them. The click tells the dog that whatever it was doing at that exact moment is what produced the treat.

Warning: Clicker training has a way of attracting starry-eyed disciples who talk about little else. We like to start with clicker training聽but move away from it as we head into the field.

Focus on the Basics

The four simplest obedience commands鈥攈eel, sit, stay, and come鈥攁re also the most difficult, because they force the dog to use self-control. By the time the dog is about six weeks old, you should spend 80 percent of your time working on just these four. 鈥淚 do each training behavior five times, in five different situations,鈥� Stewart says. In the home, in the yard, in a park, in an outdoor shopping mall鈥� in the middle of a riot. The key is to start simple and gradually raise the level of distraction. 鈥淲hen a dog can do each successfully in five places, you can be reasonably sure the dog will know what to do in any situation. You鈥檝e got to teach each level of distraction like it鈥檚 a new skill.鈥�

Remember that it鈥檚 much easier to teach a dog a trick, like jumping over something, than it is to train it not to do something fun, like chasing after a mountain biker. For this reason, another key behavior to practice is loading and unloading from a vehicle on command. Nothing is more dangerous than a dog bolting from a car into traffic.

Look Him in the Eyes

鈥淟ook any dog you鈥檙e training in the eyes for at least three seconds before you give a command,鈥� Stewart says. 鈥淭hen the dog should be invited to do the behavior. You look him in the eyes, say his name, then give the command.鈥� A dog that makes consistent eye contact has focus and is paying attention. The most trainable dogs will have a natural tendency to look you in the eyes. Other dogs may need to have eye contact built up with rewards. For all dogs, the key is consistency.

Build in Calm Behaviors

Within two or three months, every Wildrose dog has been taught to walk on a leash and sit still on a piece of carpet or mat. 鈥淭hese are foundational skills,鈥� Stewart says.

It seems obvious, but just about any behavior problem can be avoided if the dog is either heeling, sitting on a dog bed, or in a crate. It鈥檚 only when dogs go off on their own that they start chewing, trashing, and getting up to no good. Once Stewart and his trainers have gotten a dog to stay in place, they add distractions like tennis balls tossed around them, people walking by, and other dogs. Build in the distractions slowly enough so that the dog always succeeds and you鈥檒l have the sort of off-leash pal that garners compliments on the trail.

鈥淲hen you鈥檙e in the backcountry and a herd of elk run by, you need to have a dog you can trust,鈥� he says. 鈥淭eaching and reinforcing calm is huge. Once you have it,聽you have it.鈥�

Train, Don鈥檛 Test

One of the biggest mistakes people make is wanting to see if their dog is an overachiever. So they (mostly men) push their dogs to do college-level behaviors, like heeling behind a biker, when they鈥檙e still in preschool. 鈥淵ou have to make your dog confident and comfortable with the boat or the horse before you鈥檙e shooting rapids or galloping down the trail,鈥� says Stewart.

If you鈥檙e going to take your dog skiing, put on your skis in the house and let the dog get used to the idea that they become part of you. Going biking? Don鈥檛 just saddle up and start pedaling. Walk the dog next to the bike, then between you and the bike. Then turn the pedals with your hands to be sure the dog isn鈥檛 going to try and nip at them.

But while dogs tend to struggle in new situations, they do have amazing memories. Screw up once in a big way and you鈥檙e likely to have a rafting dog that鈥檚 terrified of boats or a hunting dog that鈥檚 gun-shy. So train them right, proceed slowly, and you can trust them to perform again and again.

Ramp Up,聽and Never Let Down

Every training session should start with a ramp-up; a five-minute walk lets the dog burn energy and reconnect with its owner. Then, once the dog is comfortable and settled鈥攏ot riled up because you just got home鈥攜ou can get down to whatever skill you want to teach. Focus on only one or two skills per session, and keep the sessions short.

As your training progresses over time, be consistent with obedience,聽鈥渘o matter what day it is, no matter where you are in the world,鈥� says Stewart. 鈥淚f the rules fall apart because you鈥檙e in a hurry and don鈥檛 have time to require a controlled heel, the dog will begin breaking down exactly when you most need him to behave.鈥�

Praise Frequently鈥擶hen It鈥檚 Due

鈥淎 dog wants to please his master,鈥� Stewart says. 鈥淎nd there鈥檚 nothing wrong with praising him every time he performs a skill right when you鈥檙e first teaching him. Later on, though, you want to vary the frequency and intensity of the reward. The way I see it, most dogs are just out for a good time, like the frat boys at Ole Miss. Yeah, it鈥檚 fun to stand around with a plastic cup of libation, but if you show them there鈥檚 value in work beyond that鈥攊f you stop that behavior and show them there鈥檚 more that鈥檚 possible in their life鈥攂oth the frat boy and the dog might very well adopt the new behavior.鈥� Always end training sessions with a success and praise. 鈥淲hen a dog goes home after a day of work,鈥� says Stewart, 鈥渉e needs to know he did a good job.鈥�

Care for Them Like Your Kin

Dogs need regular exams鈥攆rom you, not just the vet. 鈥淭his is especially true for adventure dogs,鈥� Stewart says. 鈥淐lip their nails short, because if they break one, they can start bleeding all over. And look out for the pads on their feet. Consider dog boots if you鈥檙e going somewhere with jagged rocks. And pay attention to their eyes. Inspect them daily. Clean them.鈥�

Adds Stewart, 鈥淒ogs are tough, and they鈥檙e up for most anything you鈥檙e doing, but they鈥檙e also vulnerable.鈥�

The post The Making of an 国产吃瓜黑料 Dog appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

HE’S CLOSE. VERY CLOSE. RUMORS place him here just yesterday, playing with a sea kayaker along this beach. He hung around for 15 minutes or so, swimming in circles, splashing and making his usual sing颅song squeals and clicks. No, he didn’t put on his trademark Big Show. But then, in recent years that spectacle has come less and less often.

Dolphin 56 Migration

Still, he’s nearby. A forty-ish Atlantic bottle颅nose dolphin, with a number freeze-branded on both sides of his dorsal fin, giving him his now familiar moniker: Dolphin 56.

As usual, he’s spending late summer and fall hugging this stretch of southern New Jersey shore, a rugged line of dunes and sand known as Island Beach State Park, roughly a thousand miles from his Florida birthplace. I’m here, and hoping for a glimpse, aboard the 26-foot fishing boat Phyllis Ann, owned by captain Rod Houck. Two weeks ago to the day, Dolphin 56 swam up to the Phyllis Ann’s gunwale, lifted his head and upper body from the water, and let Houck and some fishing buddies rub his shoulders, snout, and forehead in amiable human-to-dolphin congress.

“It was one of the unforgettable moments of my life,” Houck says. He’s steering the Phyllis Ann out the narrow passage of Bar颅negat Inlet, past the last navigational pilings and into the broad Atlantic horizon just south of the park. It’s a warm late-summer Sunday. The ocean shimmers, flat and calm. Conditions are exactly like yesterday; exactly like two weeks ago, when the 44-year-old Houck first made contact with the dolphin who has become my obsession.

“It was the strangest thing,” Houck says. “We were motoring about a quarter-mile offshore, and I saw a single dolphin off our port side. So I shouted ‘Dolphin!’ to the guys and pointed at him, then backed off the engine. Soon as we slowed, he came toward the boat. Not porpoise-ing like normal dolphins, but with the top of his body a full third out of the water. He came toward us like a surfaced submarine. I thought, Now, that’s unusual. I didn’t know yet that he was so famous.”

1. NEW YORK
1998聳2001: three sightings

2. DELAWARE & NEW JERSEY
Nearly 50 sightings between 1998 and 2008

3. MARYLAND & VIRGINIA
1997聳2001: eight sightings

4. NORTH CAROLINA
1997聳99: 69 sightings; two more in 2001 and 2004

5. SOUTH CAROLINA
1997聳99: 11 sightings

6. GEORGIA
1997聳98: two sightings

7. FLORIDA
Just over 40 sightings between 1979 and 1996

OVER THE PAST 15 years, and among a growing circle of followers that runs into the hundreds and includes everybody from marine scientists to curious water people, Dolphin 56 has built a legion of fans. In me and others, he’s inspired a condition I’ve come to call “Benign Ahab Syndrome,” or BAS. For the afflicted, our free moments tend to settle into the dream of shaking hands with Dolphin 56, Ambassador of the Atlantic. For years I’ve chased him聴or, more accurately, chased sightings of him聴from North Carolina’s Outer Banks to Delaware Bay, always without success.

At this point, actually seeing him has become almost a second-tier goal聴maybe I will, maybe I won’t. But there’s always fun to be had in the quest, and since Dolphin 56 lives in the ocean, there are usually a few good seafood meals thrown in. So everybody wins.

But we should start closer to the beginning.

“Let’s see, he was originally captured on August 28, 1979,” Dan Odell is telling me over the phone. Now a senior research scientist at Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, in Orlando, Odell, 63, christened Dolphin 56 while conducting a U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service survey of dolphin populations in northeast Florida’s Indian River Lagoon system, an Atlantic estuary in the shadow of the Kennedy Space Center.

“On that day, we captured five dolphins,” Odell says. “We were in boats and used a long seine net in shallow water to encircle them. Then we drew the net tighter and tighter.” At the time of this first capture聴when Dolphin 56 was netted along with dolphins 55, 57, 58, and 59聴he was seven feet nine inches long and weighed roughly 320 pounds. After recording weight and measurements, Odell and his team numbed a portion of Dolphin 56’s jaw and pulled a tooth. Its growth pattern indicated that he was about 12 years old.

After that, Dolphin 56 got branded and released. “We used a brass branding iron, in his case with the number 56 on it, that was supercooled in liquid nitrogen,” Odell says.

In those days, no one had reason to believe Dolphin 56 would behave differently from any other dolphin in the study, all of whom were most likely lifetime residents of the lagoon. For 17 years he stayed put. He was sighted dozens of times in the estuary and was recaptured by Odell and his colleagues twice in the first three years, for measurement updates.

But even then Dolphin 56 had his own ideas. “For a few years, he used to hang out with another dolphin,” Odell says, “but something happened. And soon we never saw him, or even heard about him, with any other dolphins. Usually male dolphins live in pairs or groups of three, called alliances. But not 56. He became solitary. Which isn’t, like, totally unique. But it’s close.”

AT SOME POINT in the early eighties, boaters in the lagoon started reporting that Dolphin 56 was following boats and begging for fish. As he grew bolder, he often put his head and snout on the edges and low decks of their vessels. Soon he had put together a program of flips and splashing leaps that came to precede his appeals for food.

In November 1996, Dolphin 56 earned his first newspaper mention, a photo and caption in the Orlando Sentinel. Shortly after that聴and for reasons still not clear to anyone but 56 himself聴he decided to take his show on the road.

“When a solitary male dolphin breaks off on his own, nobody knows quite why聴and it’s probably a different story in every case,” Odell says. “Maybe there was a social struggle. Maybe he became an outcast. Maybe he just liked his own company.”

In the late nineties, biologist Sally Murphy, of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, told Odell that she’d seen reports of people spotting Dolphin 56 near Hilton Head Island. He was moving north, still well within his species’s normal range but a rare behavior nevertheless, since most bottlenose don’t travel far over their lifetimes. He was moving on his own schedule聴and with his own agenda. Soon he was reported in waters off the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland, where he regularly entertained people in boats.

For Barry Truitt, a biologist with the Nature Conservancy who saw Dolphin 56 in 2002, the big moment came as a complete surprise. “We were in the Atlantic off the Virginia coast, in the channel off Hog Island,” Truitt says. “All of a sudden, this dolphin began putting on a SeaWorld show. He was tail-walking and making loud vocalizations 聟 really working to attract our attention. Then the damnedest thing happened. He swam right up to the boat, put his head on the gunwale, and began making pops and clicks with his mouth open, begging for food. Later, back at the office, I was telling people what had happened and someone said, ‘Oh, you just saw Dolphin 56.’ And I was like, Huh?”

Every summer from then on, Dolphin 56’s interactions have been recounted in small-town newspapers up and down the Atlantic coast. Which is how I first heard about him. A typical entry was this South Jersey Courier-Post story from August 20, 2001:

“It’s unmistakable who he is when he comes bounding toward you,” says Keith Rittmaster, natural-science curator for the North Carolina Maritime Museum. Rittmaster, 52, claims “a dozen or more” Dolphin 56 encounters. Along with Dan Odell, he makes up the hub of the Dolphin 56 information network, a loose group of half a dozen hardcores who stay connected by e-mail and phone. The network’s filaments extend to hundreds of people who’ve reported sightings over the years, Rittmaster says. “But when we get a flurry of Dolphin 56 sightings, wow, the number of people communicating sometimes spikes huge.”

To Rittmaster, seeing Dolphin 56 never gets old. “He engages you. When you think about it, what other large wild animal does that? Wild bears don’t approach people. Wild moose don’t. And while reinforcing begging behavior in wild dolphins shouldn’t ever be done聴it leads to them being injured by propellers and colliding with boats and sometimes being inadvertently hurt by the humans themselves聴Dolphin 56 is a very unusual case.”

Rittmaster wonders whether there’s more going on with 56 than learned, food-motivated behavior. He recalls a day when the big guy swam up to his boat and, as usual, started begging. Federal law prohibits people from feeding wild dolphins, so Rittmaster couldn’t do much more than smile and shrug.

“After a few minutes, when he realized he wasn’t going to get any fish from me, he聴and this is no kidding聴he swam off, caught a fish in his mouth, then returned with the fish sticking out to show me,” Ritt颅master says. “He was saying, ‘Feed me fish! I want fish from you!’ Obviously, he was capable of catching fish for himself. So what’s another explanation for his behavior? I mean, it sort of implies he wants interaction with people.”

ABOARD THE PHYLLIS ANN, as we motor into the broad Atlantic, our search gets down to business. Along for the ride with Houck and me are his wife, Phyllis, the boat’s namesake, and their 15-year-old daughter, Alicia. While Captain Rod and I scan the ocean for signs of dolphin life, Alicia is belowdecks, happily texting the day away. Phyllis聴a friendly woman who’s made sure we have food and cold soft drinks聴relaxes in a deck chair, taking in the sun.

Houck and I keep looking, our heads on swivels. A sturdy, gregarious type, he chatters nonstop as he guides his vessel northward, tapping the throttle from time to time, giving the steering a tweak. Along the beachfront in the state park, groups of people line the sand, participants in the annual Governor’s Surf Fishing Tournament.

“There’s lots of people out today,” Houck says over and over. “Lots of activity out here. That should attract him. The seas are just right. If he’s gonna show, today’s the day.”

A union carpenter and lifelong fisherman from Yardville, New Jersey, Houck has the steady focus of someone who truly works for a living. He started his own Web site a few years back, calling it NJ Saltwater Fisherman, and it now has thousands of active members and numerous regular advertisers. I heard about his encounter with Dolphin 56 on the site after being directed there by Dan Odell. Two days later I contacted Houck, who understood my craving and invited me aboard for a 56-spotting expedition.

It’s a lazy afternoon, livened up briefly by Houck’s friend Ken Jelnicki, a fisherman and tinkerer who’s called Houck’s cell to let us know he’s about to use his newest invention, the Surf Rocket.

Consisting of a length of two-inch acrylic tube connected to a trigger-operated air tank, the Surf Rocket is a “mechanized surf-bait delivery system” that shoots a packet of frozen bait and chum 300 yards out into the ocean, with a fishing line attached. There it sinks, thaws, and releases a fish-attracting offer of chum and rigged, weighted baitfish, all well beyond the murk of the surf zone. Today Jelnicki is using it to assist a group of wheelchair users taking part in the fishing contest.

Houck says Jelnicki sets a rigged baitfish in a mold, then fills the rest of the container up with chopped fish and water. After that, it goes in the freezer. Eventually, he cuts away the mold and has a frozen cylinder that fits inside the Surf Rocket.

Houck smiles. “Ken’s a really, really nice guy,” he says, his eyes never leaving the ocean. “But he’s obviously single. I mean 聟 I don’t know any married guys who’d be allowed to keep a freezer full of baitfish in the house.”

Pooooof. On the beach, a white cloud of compressed air explodes out of the tube. The frozen parcel lands about 40 yards off the Phyllis Ann’s stern. Houck speed-dials Jelnicki on his iPhone. “Uh, Ken, that one was a little close,” he says. “We don’t want to get clocked out here.”

The hours spool along. We keep motoring north, past miles of state park, past the town of Seaside Park, past a surfside amusement park with its gray-planked boardwalks empty, its attractions and Ferris wheel already closed for the season. The trip is slow, the sun warm. Conditions for Dolphin 56 couldn’t be more perfect. And yet he’s nowhere.

“You know,” Houck says as the day dribbles on, “and this is something I forget about the ocean every time until I get back onto it. But the sea is really big 聟 it’s a huge area to search for a single animal. I mean, that’s something we gotta remember. The ocean is huge.”

DOLPHIN 56 MAY BE a loner, but he’s not the only quirky, friendly dolphin around. As Houck observed, it’s a big ocean out there, and over the years, at various spots around the globe, a number of dolphins have decided to break from the pack and become people-centric free agents. In March 2008, researchers with a British environmental group called Marine Connection published “Lone Rangers,” a report on solitary dolphins and whales. Authors Lissa Goodwin and Margaux Dodds found 91 examples, providing locations and episodes of human contact, as well as a behavioral framework for how these relationships evolve.

Goodwin and Dodds explained that most soloists appear to initiate human contact after arriving in a new home range. Once acclimatized, they start to follow boats, sometimes exhibiting leaping behaviors to attract attention. Eventually they grow confident, trying to interact with people as they ride in boats or swim; in some cases, this stage lasts for years.

Usually, the interactions are harmless. Friendly dolphins simply become attractions or, at worst, nuisances. According to “Lone Rangers,” a dolphin named Opo lived in Hokianga Harbour, New Zealand, in the fifties and chose to play gently with children. In 1975, in Key West, Florida, a female called Dolly befriended a family, allowing the kids to pet and play with her. In 1988 another dolphin, Billy聴who lived in the Port River outside Adelaide, Australia聴grew fascinated by a horse trainer who exercised his animals every day by having them swim behind his small boat. Before long, Billy was swimming among the horses at every outing, often brushing against them. Between 1998 and 2004, Paquito, a male in San Sebasti谩n, Spain, came within a few feet of swimmers, often putting on elaborate greetings for people he recognized, though he never allowed anyone to touch him. And in Ireland’s Dingle Bay there lives a dolphin named Fungie who’s been enjoying confabs with swimmers since 1984.

Then there’s the story of Moko, who lives off the Mahia Peninsula, in New Zealand. Since 2007, he’s interacted with children, providing “fin tows” around his native beaches. In March 2008, he assisted in the rescue of two pygmy sperm whales who’d stranded themselves in shallow water. After multiple attempts by humans to free them, Moko led both whales into deeper waters.

Unfortunately, a small number of these “friendly” individuals get so comfortable that they display sexual or dominance behavior toward people, sometimes with embarrassing results. In the late seventies, a dolphin named Donald, who cruised around off the coast of Cornwall, in southwest England, “permitted swimmers to hold his dorsal fin, taking them for tows 聟” But now and then, like the creepy guy in a city park, he “exhibited arousal,” pinning swimmers to the seabed while wriggling on top of them. In a 1994 incident, a previously friendly bottlenose dolphin聴Ti茫o, based in the Atlantic waters off S茫o Sebasti茫o, Brazil聴rammed and killed a swimmer and injured several others. For some reason, affable relations escalated into violence. Ti茫o disappeared in 1995.

And sometimes, of course, the dolphins get hurt. Since 1990, a solitary male named Beggar has been studied south of Florida’s Sarasota Bay by Randall Wells, manager of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program at the Mote Marine Laboratory. Beggar often approaches people, and he’s been able to avoid the dangers of fishing gear, boat hulls, and propellers. But his behavior has been modeled less successfully by others in the area. One four-year-old bottlenose dolphin died six weeks after he was first observed begging for food from humans. When his body was recovered, it had enormous propeller cuts on its tail stem.

At some point, even Dolphin 56 may have run afoul of humans. “A few years ago,” says Dan Odell, “photo images of him showed his lower jaw was no longer aligned with his beak, or upper jaw. He might have misjudged a boat and collided with it. Maybe he was injured in a human interaction. Maybe his jaw got broken or dislocated. We don’t know.”

Still, Odell says, Dolphin 56 “appears to be thriving. He’s a big, robust dolphin these days. He’s somewhere in his forties now. We don’t know where he goes in the winter聴maybe into the Gulf Stream, but he never comes back to Florida. I have all these questions. Is he still sexually active? Why has he chosen to spend his life traveling?”

Odell says Dolphin 56 has carved out a bountiful life for himself, outliving the members of his original group. “The average age of a bottlenose dolphin in the Indian River system is 20 to 25 years old,” he says. So, right there, Dolphin 56 is well ahead of his old compatriots. It’s a life that seems to suit him.

LATE IN THE AFTERNOON aboard the Phyllis Ann, Dolphin 56’s panache has never been in question. “Seeing him two weeks ago was just so cool,” Houck is saying. “He was so 聟 friendly. He surfaced about there”聴he points at a spot two feet off the starboard side聴”and you could tell he was happy, and really healthy-looking. And he was huge. I’ll bet his body was as big around as a 55-gallon drum.”

But today it’s not to be. After five hours of perfect weather, a storm front has pushed in from the northeast, bringing spitting drizzle, a brisk wind, and falling temperatures. With the offshore breeze, a healthy chop has formed on the Atlantic’s surface. In these conditions, it would be hard to see Dolphin 56 even if he wanted to show himself.

Houck, adjusting to conditions, has shifted tactics. As we motor along the shore, he occasionally kills the engine and we drift while we pound the outside of the hull with our palms. Last time, Houck says, Dolphin 56 swam off toward another boat after his initial visit. By slapping the hull, Houck and his friends were able to call him back.

But even as he scans the sea and pounds on his boat, there’s anxiety in Houck’s voice and weariness behind his blue eyes. Sometime after 3 P.M., it’s decided: The day’s recon is over. As Houck pushes forward on the Phyllis Ann’s throttle and starts to steer us back south, he becomes philosophical.

“The GPS says we ran 47 miles today,” he says. “We got up and down the coast, we hit everywhere he’s been reported in the past few weeks. Had Dolphin 56 been here, and had he wanted to meet, we’d have found him. That’s a disappointment, you know? I had really high hopes 聟 but, then, I’m a high-hoper.”

Houck remains upbeat. He’s already talking about his next search: maybe trying again later this week, or certainly next weekend. As he talks, free-associating about the dolphin that’s become his fixation, I see that the contented (if distracted) mask of yet another Benign Ahab has settled pleasantly across his face.

“I’m pretty sure we can get out again next Sunday,” he’s saying. “If the weather stays warm, Dolphin 56 should still be hanging around.” Houck seems ready for the long haul, and he’s grasped a truth known to all Benign Ahabs. “Anytime you go searching for Dolphin 56,” he says, “you gotta remember: You don’t find him. It’s Dolphin 56 who always finds you.”

The post Dolphin 56 appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

SHEATHED IN SMOOTH, tobacco-colored leather, the instrument that once pinned vast chunks of the Arab Middle East to colonial Britain’s map was cradled in my right hand. It was densely heavy聴cool to the touch聴and its burnished brass and thick glass crown glinted in the afternoon light.

Christies Auction

Called a Verners聳Pattern VII, it was a field compass made in Switzerland in 1915, identical to thousands used by British officers during World War I. But this one was unique, because the name embossed into its leather case聴T.E. LAWRENCE聴meant that it had once been owned by Lawrence of Arabia.

Standing at the back of Christie’s auction house, in London (and watched over by clerks and security cameras), I imagined the compass’s luminous needle directing Lawrence across the northern desert of Arabia in July of 1917. That’s when, working as a British intelligence officer, he’d led a scruffy band of Arab rebels through the unmapped sands, sneak-attacking the Ottoman Turk stronghold of Aqaba from behind. The ensuing rout helped drive the Ottomans into collapse, birthing the modern Middle East.

“Lawrence’s compass,” I said. “That’s so… It’s… Wow.”

Sure, it was only a hunk of magnetized alloy, but to me it gave off a tangible buzz. I refastened the leather flap and placed the compass back in its velvet-lined wooden box, nestled between Lawrence’s pocket watch and his silver cigarette case.

I was being watched for a good reason: All three relics had just been gaveled off by Christie’s聴one of the world’s leading art-and-antiques auction houses聴to an anonymous bidder, who paid 拢254,000 (about $480,000) for the set. And the bidding wasn’t over. Up a grand flight of stairs from where I stood聴in a stately, cream-painted hall on the second floor of the Christie’s building in London’s exclusive St. James district聴the morning session of the annual Exploration and Travel Sale was still going strong. Other personal items of Lawrence’s were on the block, and I could hear the sale’s low, elliptical murmur in the background, punctuated occasionally by the crack of the auctioneer’s hammer. For me, though, the compass was the morning’s high point, and I held it a minute longer, relishing its complicity in Lawrence’s audacious, humanly flawed, and world-altering contribution to history.

Then I handed everything over to a clerk, who whisked it off to a packing area. It was quite a feeling. But, looking back, I have to wonder if I put more vibrational energy into the compass than it put into me. Three weeks after the auction聴in a claim that’s a first for such a sale at Christie’s聴it would be challenged as a possible fake.

FOR A DECADE NOW, the market for what some call “explorabilia”聴antique objects used by adventure legends like Lawrence, Robert F. Scott, Captain James Cook, and David Livingstone聴has been chugging quietly along, driven by a worldwide network of fervid collectors who probably number no more than 50 and prefer to remain anonymous, mainly because of the monetary values involved.

The goodies get sold in various ways, often through a sprawling private network of explorers’ families, and friends working on the families’ behalf. Some sales are handled by antiquarian bookstores and on eBay, but the Christie’s auction is far and away the subculture’s biggest show, accompanied by a fat, lavishly produced catalog and a treasure trove of historically significant objects. Starting small in 1996, the auction has become a tribal event for the planet’s explorabilia buffs, with nearly $3.7 million changing hands during last September’s one-day sale alone.

国产吃瓜黑料 sent me to London to check out the 2006 offering, authorizing me to spend up to $1,500 to snag a cool souvenir for the home office. I wasn’t optimistic I could afford anything. Compared with other Christie’s sales, the explorabilia totals aren’t that huge, but the prices for individual items can be amazing. “Christie’s art auctions make lots more money than we do,” says Nick Lambourn, 50, one of the sale’s two founders. “But few auctions anywhere get collector interest the way ours does. Who wouldn’t want Henry Morton Stanley’s map of the Congo, with the map’s blank portions sketched in by Stanley’s own pencil during the 999-day trans-African expedition? For a certain kind of collector, these objects are sacred. That’s really fun.”

Not to mention lucrative: In 2002, Stanley’s map sold for roughly $121,000.

Lambourn and his fellow cofounder, 49-year-old books-and-maps specialist Tom Lamb, employ a unique combination of luck and carefully cultivated relationships to land their swag. Together, the small, dark-featured Lambourn and the tall, auburn-haired Lamb manage, every year, to gin up an absolutely transfixing mix of museum-worthy and oddball curiosities to drop into the sale’s larger pot of books, maps, photos, and paintings.

Examples? How about Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton’s ragged ration bag, a cotton sack that carried his Christmas pudding during his 1901聳04 Discovery expedition and which sold for $6,497 in 1997? Or the hollow-coconut drinking cup Captain William Bligh used after he’d been bounced from the HMS Bounty in 1789? (2002 sale, $142,000.) Other lots have included Captain Cook’s antimony cup, a squat drinking vessel made of antimony alloy. From this, the great South Seas explorer consumed red wine that, having reacted with the metal, created a potion “with purgative qualities.” This handy laxative system fetched $392,392 in 2005.

One of Christie’s most famous auctions, held in 1999, involved the sale of relics recovered at the death site of Robert F. Scott, who perished in 1912, along with all five of his men, after a failed attempt to beat Norway’s Roald Amundsen to the South Pole. Lamb and Lambourn acquired them from Lady Phillipa Scott, Scott’s daughter-in-law, then in her seventies and living at Slimbridge, the family estate in Gloucestershire, England.

“A few years ago, we visited Lady Scott,” Lamb recalls, “and she pulled out this leather trunk from beneath a bed, and it was filled with Scott’s possessions.”

Inside were the explorer’s personal effects, recovered when his frozen remains were found by a late-arriving British rescue team聴among them, a brass pocket watch, snow goggles, a pennant, Scott’s diaries, geological specimens, two briar tobacco pipes, and a bag of tea. At auction, the boodle sold for an astounding $514,700.

THE SUMS INVOLVED聴like the $11,260 paid for a single dry biscuit from Shackleton’s 1914聳16 trans-Antarctic expedition聴can make you wonder if the world has gone nuts. And there are people who think these prices are not just bizarre, but harmful, since they usually guarantee that the best stuff ends up in private hands rather than inside museums.

“It’s a bad idea,” says Jeff Blumenfeld, editor and publisher of Expedition News, a monthly newsletter for the adventure industry. “It’s like cherry-picking the Titanic. When you have these expeditions and you break them up, you have no context that tells a complete story. To cannibalize these things and spread them to the winds is wrong.”

Christie’s response is simple: It’s a free world, and the owners of these artifacts can sell them wherever they choose. To protect purchasers, Christie’s does plenty of advance research on origins. The Lawrence items came from the family of a man named Corporal Albert “Taffy” Evans, who supposedly was Lawrence’s unofficial chauffeur at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The compass, watch, and cigarette case聴sold by the family to a private collector in 2003聴were said to be a gift to Evans from Lawrence, who had the cigarette case inscribed with this message: “I leave to my dear friend Taffy my compass which saw me safely across a wilderness so that he may occasionally know where he is going!”

Casting doubt on all this is British writer Jeremy Wilson, author of Lawrence of Arabia, a widely respected biography published in 1989. Wilson says he saw the sale catalog online in early September, posted a “caveat emptor” message about the items at an online forum for Lawrence scholars, and sent a similar warning to Christie’s. Wilson noted that he had never heard of Evans, that Lawrence didn’t smoke, and that Lawrence didn’t start styling himself as “T.E.”聴the name embossed on the leather compass case聴until 1923.

Lambourn notes that Wilson did not raise these concerns when the objects were displayed at the Imperial War Museum in 2005, but he hastens to add that Christie’s is taking the possibility of fakery quite seriously and will cancel the transaction if the items don’t check out. “The current concerns are enough to merit further research before we can conclude the sale,” Lambourn explained in an e-mail in November. “We are therefore trying to find out more about Evans, and have a lead with another collector who has another Lawrence relic with Evans provenance, with, apparently, more corroborative information on Evans and his role as Lawrence’s driver in Paris.

“If we are able to find evidence of Evans’ role… Wilson has agreed to review his currently skeptical view of the lot,” Lambourn continued. “So, in summary, watch this space.”

THE OBJECT I COVETED at the 2006 sale was Lot 204, a humble pair of sunglasses worn by Roald Amundsen during his victorious 1911聳12 race with Scott to become the first man to reach the South Pole.

Made from a silvery alloy, the shades had round, yellow-green lenses and came inside a black spectacle case embossed with ROALDAMUNDSEN in tiny gilt letters. The catalog estimated the sunglasses would fetch between $1,600 and $2,300聴expensive, but feasible.

So, on the afternoon of September 27, I found myself sitting toward the back of Christie’s auction hall, clutching a “registered-bidder paddle” in my right hand. I was bidder 342.

The session began with the auctioneer, Jonathan Horwich, hustling briskly through his 106 lots. With each new item, Horwich would open somewhere near the catalog’s low estimate, then streak up or down depending on interest. Sometimes the bids would rise toward half a million dollars. But other times, buyers seemed bored, and Horwich would dispatch the lot with a dismissive statement: “Pass. Next item.”

A medium-size man dressed in the standard-issue British blazer and gray flannel trousers, Horwich managed to keep focused on several things at once: the 100-person auction audience, a laptop computer showing digital bids, and a line of a dozen blue-blazered “auction specialists” to his right, whose ears were glued to telephones placed on a tall counter.

Seated around me, bidding on books, maps, and paintings, was a mix of ruddy-looking, largely middle-aged, mostly European humanity. There were a few sleekly dressed suede ladies, their graying hair pulled back in tight buns. There was a scattering of hedgehoglike men, dressed in tweeds and dutifully writing down the going price of every object in the margins of their catalogs. These guys, I assumed, were explorabilia dealers, but I couldn’t be sure: To a person, none would speak to me for attribution.

There were even a few well-heeled and rugged-looking explorer types, both male and female. One of them, a tall, balding, thoroughbred-thin man who’d been carrying a banjo case when he came through Christie’s double doors, purchased James Clark Ross’s chronometer, used in the mid-1800s during an early Antarctic voyage on the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror. I watched as he paid 拢36,000 (about $68,000) for the chronograph without so much as a shrug.

Who was he? I have no idea. He refused to talk to me, too. I think the problem was an insignia I wore that set me apart from the other bidders: a press badge.

“MOST OF US SERIOUS collectors are normal, like everyone else,” David Gainsborough Roberts was saying.

Not an electrifying observation, but I felt lucky to hear it, since gaining audience with an explorabilia collector had been so surprisingly hard. Through the dogged work of Helena Ingham, Christie’s junior specialist for exploration and travel sales, my weeks of badgering for interviews finally bore results, and a few days after the auction I was patched through by phone to Roberts’s home on the Isle of Jersey, one of the English Channel Islands, off the coast of France. “We’re a tiny little island out here,” he said. “But we have, let’s say, more autonomy than the rest of Britain, especially with tax situations.”

Roberts is a favorite of the Christie’s staff, and he keeps several world-class collections going at once. A career private investor whose parents moved from England to Jersey in 1964, he’s recognized as one of the planet’s most ardent upscale pack rats. He’s often brought in to assess new acquisitions for museums and private citizens.

“I have a lot of T.E. Lawrence’s relics, his robes from the desert revolt, things like that,” he said. “I’ve also got probably the world’s best collection of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia. The only thing I truly lack is her dress from The Seven Year Itch. Debbie Reynolds owns that, and she’s a very nice lady. Still, I’ve got the one from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and I’m a very patient man.” Also in his larder: the clothes Bonnie and Clyde had on when they got gunned down by the law.

“Why do I do it? Why do I collect these things?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, I’ve always had a fascination with history. And these things, they link me to history聴to real people, not some name on the page in a book. They were human beings, with frailties and personal pains and tragedies.”

Roberts caught the fever early, as a child in England. “I grew up in a big old house with lots of attics,” he said. “I remember my grandmother once coming to me with this six-by-four-inch piece of wood, and she said, ‘This came from Lord Nelson’s boat, the Victory.’ And I recall thinking, Maybe Nelson trod on that. From then on, I was lost to collecting.”

Roberts declines to name fellow collectors, saying only that most are intelligent, rich, and male. “But that doesn’t exclude women,” he adds, “or the gentleman in the row house who’s saved for years in hopes a perfect object from some favorite old expedition might make its way to him.”

In the end, Roberts says, “People who collect are searching for authenticity in a less and less authentic-seeming world. They want truth. Sometimes, alone in the house, I’ll just go up to one of the bedrooms and pick up something from the collections. As I lift that thing, it still has that buzz of authenticity. It’s electric. I can always feel it. It’s funny, each time I buy something new, my friends all say, ‘You could have had a week in Greece for the cost of that!’ And I always respond, ‘But I don’t want a week in Greece. I want the buzz.'”

AS IT HAPPENED, I failed to catch a buzz when Lot 204 came up around midafternoon.

“OK,” Horwich announced. “We now have Roald Engelbregt Amundsen’s yellow-green-tinted sunglasses… . What am I offered?”

The bidding started at 拢700 (around $1,300). I caught Horwich’s eye with a nod.

“OK, 700. Do I hear 800 pounds?” A specialist from the telephone counter nodded.

“Nine hundred pounds?” I bid again… . But, yikes, I was already up to $1,700.

That didn’t even put me close: As I watched with a kind of calm awe, the bids mounted to a final price of $18,109. Crack!

A week after the sale, I found myself sitting in a London coffee shop with Nick Lambourn, who was just back from a well-deserved long weekend. Lambourn had a thick ream of photocopied newspaper stories in front of him聴this was before the Lawrence controversy started聴and he was slowly paging through them while sipping from an Olympic-size mug of cappuccino. “We’re already gearing up for next year’s sale,” he said. “With all this good publicity, we’re anticipating an even larger amount of items.”

Lambourn and Lamb both see plenty of potential for growth, ascribing the sale’s popularity to nostalgia for a time before jumbo jets and e-mail shrank the earth, back when exploration meant curiosity and patriotic duty more than ego. They take delight in the sales, and they’re always looking for ways to branch out into new, untapped explorabilia realms.

“We’ve been talking about a possible Visions of India add-on to the sale next year,” Lambourn said. “You know, Raj-era. Another possibility is a High Altitude and Mountaineering addition.”

Lambourn paused, his dark eyes ablaze with the idea. “Think of it,” he said. “Sir Edmund Hillary’s Everest equipment is still largely together, though it’s not so available. He’s loaned or given key bits to New Zealand museums. As for the rest, I guess the Kiwis won’t grant export.” He paused again, his mind clearly playing with the idea. “Edmund Hillary’s collection? Or Mallory’s? Tenzing’s?” Now he had a huge smile on his face. “What a sale that could be. Think of it. Imagine.”

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