Aviation of Business

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Jun 19

My wife and I got a dog when we moved into our first (and current) house. We live in a depressed area in Columbus, Ohio - one that is on its way up, but is moving slower than we’d like - nonetheless one that is filled with beautful, turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th century) homes.

Our dog was “found” by the vet we took our cats to. He was found running around the neighborhood where the vet’s clinic is located, and was wearing a collar and dragging a leash. The vet put up flyers and contacted the local dog shelter in an attempt to find his rightful owners, but no one ever claimed him. So she gave him all his shots, neutered him, and sent him home with us. We decided to name him Merlin (after the Camelot Wizard) because he was an escape artist.

“Merlin the Magician” lived up to his name immediately. He got away from Jill as were going out to walk him within a week of us bringing him home. We had to go find him at the dog shelter his original owners apparently never contacted. Shortly thereafter, he broke a 40-foot dog chain at my mom’s house in middle-of-nowhere, Ohio, escaping once again and dragging the entire 40 feet of chain behind him. My thought was that someone would find him and return him to us or that he would wrap that chain around a tree, get himself stuck, and starve to death in the woods near the house. Ten minutes later, he walked right back up on mom’s porch and sat by the front door, waiting for me to let him in.

By far my favorite story about Merlin, however, is this one:

A couple Augusts ago, I came home from work, and Merlin did not greet me at the door as usual. I was a little concerned because it was hot, and our big, brick house is not air conditioned. I half expected to find a dead dog under our bed. But he was nowhere to be found in the house. I checked the basement, under every piece of furniture he could fit under, and in every nook and cranny I could think of (and he’s not a small dog… he’s a Golden Lab/Husky mix, we think - a little more than 50 pounds). I finally saw that a screen in the attic was missing from the window we had put it in. Our attic is on the third floor of our house….

I stuck my head out the window, trying not to look down and expecting the worst. As soon as I called his name, I heard a jingle from directly to the right of me. Running down two flights of stairs, and checking the “alley” between our house and the neighbor’s on the way past (just in case he had fallen - he hadn’t), I got to the neighbor’s yard and looked up. There was our magician - on the roof of our house!

Apparently he had jumped out the window (after a squirrel or something). Lucky for him, our neighbor’s roof is literally within inches of ours; we think he jumped out the window to their roof, didn’t like the pitch, and jumped about 2-3 feet from their roof to a relatively flat part of ours. Lord knows how long he was up there, but the black roof was HOT, and he hunkered in the shade of a tree that is right next to the house. He barely came to me when I called him from the ladder so I could get him down.

So, anyway - this a very long way to tell you the interesting discovery I made today:

I believe that I am meant to always be involved in aviation - we named our dog Merlin after King Arthur’s mentor, but today I found that Merlin was also a WWII aircraft engine - maybe the WWII aircraft engine. Aircraft sporting the merlin engine broke several speed records. So I’m going to start telling people that we named him Merlin because he’s fast, like the merlin engine.

Also, in some aircraft, the merlin engine was replaced with the griffon engine - so guess what we’re naming our next dog?

Jill and I think that it will be a cool way to remember Merlin, by naming his “replacement” after the replacement of many merlin engines in some of the greatest aircraft of World War II.