The Story Behind The Lost Dogs

So a couple of people have been wondering about what hiking for a cure for leukemia and other forms of cancer has to do with searching for stray puppies. In case you're one of those people, or you are just curious why we picked "Team Lost Dogs" as Stacy and I's team name, then search for your answers no further! I am pleased to say that there are no lost dogs that I know of, roaming the streets homeless due to our team's lack of supervision! I do wish for all stray dogs to have a home, however those poor strays are not the inspiration for our team name, nor are we accepting donations for their placement with suitable families just yet. Our team name has a completely different inspiration and a sort of double meaning.

If you are familiar with the story of why we wanted to take on this challenge, then you know we are hiking and raising money for cancer research in memory of our friend Danny Moyle. Danny and I (Phil)were at a Pearl Jam concert the night before he found out he had leukemia. You can read more on that story on a prior blog post. Danny was a big fan of the band so I thought it would be fitting to name our team after something related to them. For any non Pearl Jam fans, Lost Dogs: Rarities and B Sides is a double album of rare Pearl Jam tracks that you would mostly be familiar with if you've seen them play these songs live. So the first meaning behind Lost Dog's new tricks ties in with something Danny was really in to; Pearl Jam.

Since we wanted a Pearl Jam-esque name for our team, we went through all song titles, album titles, and plenty of lyric sheets from the band before we finally decided on Lost Dogs to be the most fitting name. Thanks to Randy Jackson, I think many of us have referred to our friends as our 'dawgs' whether we like to admit it or not, at some point. In this case, Danny is our Lost Dawg and the team name reminds us that we need to do all we can to search for a cure for blood cancers so that sometime in the near future when people are diagnosed with any form of cancer, they can take comfort knowing that modern medicine has caught up with this deadly disease!

I guess when you think about it, we are in fact searching for lost dogs. Well not literally, but we are definitely trying to help search for something to help all of our dawgs of the world who have found out that they have some form of cancer.

Oh, and by the way,'...new tricks' isn't just there because it kinda’ has a nice ring to it (although it actually kinda’ does don’tcha think?). The 'new tricks' represents the added years of life we will help bring to cancer patients when a cure is found!

So that's the story behind Team Lost Dogs! Thanks for supporting our Team In Training efforts, and if you see any stray dogs roaming your neighborhood, please help find them a home!