The Signal Her Dog Had Been Giving All Along

When Kara Mullins began training as a search-and-rescue volunteer in the Cascades of Washington State, her biggest challenge was not the terrain or the cold — it was learning to read her dog. Her yellow Lab, Boone, would pause mid-trail, nose lifted, ears forward, then circle back to her with an intensity she mistook for restlessness. Twice during a training exercise in the Mount Baker wilderness, Boone stopped and pressed his muzzle against her hand. Twice, Kara tugged the leash and kept walking.

Her mentor, a twenty-year SAR veteran named Dale, watched from the ridge. After the second pass, he called down: "Kara — your dog is alerting. He's been telling you something. Stop moving and listen to him."

She knelt. Boone circled once, locked onto a scent cone, and led her straight to the hidden volunteer playing a lost hiker, tucked beneath brush fifty yards off the trail. The signal had been there all along. She just hadn't known what it looked like.

Young Samuel heard his name three times in the darkness of the Shiloh temple and ran to Eli each time, not recognizing the voice. It took an older, wiser guide to say, in essence, "That voice is not mine — it belongs to the Lord. Next time, be still and answer." Sometimes God has been speaking all along. What we need is someone to help us recognize His voice, and the willingness, when we finally hear it, to say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."