Walks with Dogs

Click on thumbnails for full-size images. 

Female hip wound

Male leg wound

Male chest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Tragedy at the Trailhead” my March 7, 2009 blog gives the details. Now this sadist strikes again. A few yards further up the trail, I smelled corpse. On the slope to the south was a bag.

Stinking bag

 I approached with dread, knowing what I would find. A dead coyote  was wrapped in a sheet and stuffed into this bag. The forelegs were visible at the opening. The bag was Nutrebeef for Cows: Right Now Mineral for Cows which means I could possibly locate this executioner because only one or two locals keep cattle; there are no ranches here.

What is he trying to say with this display? His utter contempt for the graceful life he has brutally ended. Parading his potent masculinity, i.e. gun, to the world. A warning to all of us — anybody or anything he doesn’t like.

By contrast, ironically, symbolically and serendipitously as well as coincidentally, further up the trail I came upon a new dog grave. Locals frequently bury dogs up here, fitting remembrance of happy trails together. Witness the care put into this memorial.  Etched on the wooden cross the words: “Here lies the big dog” and mysterious numbers: ”9407″. The whimsical sculpture. The scribbles probably by a child in the family. A metal cross, possibly constructed by another child. Probably a tear-stained outdoor family funeral was held.

 

 

 

 

Again the glaring contrast. Horror for the wild dog; reverence for the pet. The best and worst of the human spirit.

More local dog graves:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sadie is taking an extreme obedience class: “Hear Me Roar”, or Growly Class, in which participants wear a harness, a collar, a Gentle Leader and a muzzle. It works.   Five weeks of training and she’s mellower in daily life even without all that gear. Something relaxed in her. I was afraid it would break her spirit, but far from it. Her huntress spirit is intact, but her anxieties and defenses have all but evaporated, and she’s happier for it. She smiles now. Her face used to be a taut mask.

She knows it isn't a real baby. So no worries. Smiling here with trainer Jana Williamson of Dog Training by P.J. That's a Gentle Leader on her face.

Sadie has always been edgy around small children. This problem behavior seems less intense, but still needs attention. So we tried introducing a “baby and stroller”  in class to desensitize her. No reaction. Until it lives and breathes and feels fear, she’s not interested. Oddly, though I asked nicely, nobody in class would volunteer a child to act as aggression trigger. And it may not be necessary.

I base my hope on a recent  encounter with  three boys, one of them very small, on the trail last week. Sadie was a perfect lady and the oldest boy told me she is “a cool dog” .

The other reason she’s in Doggie Gitmo once a week is her  leash aggression, i.e. lunging and barking at other dogs when she’s on the leash. Off leash they are just furniture to her; she’s got chipmunks to catch; not much else matters. But we can’t have that kind of behavior in agility class where she will be on the leash much of the time. And all this training is about getting both of us back into agility.

For this purpose, Growly class is working amazingly well. Sadie was on the leash surrounded by loose dogs at a ranch recently. Formerly, she would have picked the one she hated the most and gone at them with everything she’s got. This time, as the furry bodies and hot breath closed in on her from all sides, she paid no attention to them, preferring to sniff the grass.It was not cowardice; far from it. It was sublime confidence. So she didn’t get growly and nobody else did either. A principle: calm dogs create other calm dogs.

Class has definitely helped. What we’ve also got going for us is age. A dog reaches the Age of Reason around  eight. Roger did a major personal readjustment in his eighth year. So did Melody. You can see them thinking about things. They watch you more intently, and in some cases try to talk to you. Melody would stand there and make high whiny noises at me. Sadie communicates with a rich variety of barks. They give up their puppy illusions and make peace with their reality. The change is dramatic and happens seemingly overnight.

So I have reason to hope agility class will be better this time around. Two years ago, she handled the obstacles , in my opinion, brilliantly. But between her runs she entertained herself by dragging me around, barking at the rat terrier in class (I still think he started it), peeing on everything she could reach,  occasionally lunging at other dogs if they came too close, digging under the shed for ground squirrels. The peeing was the biggest nuisance. The trainer keeps jugs of water around the lawn. If a dog urinates, the owner has to hike to one of the jugs, try to remember where the spot was,  schlep the jug to the spot, and pour enough water on it to dilute the harmful bodily chemicals.

She’ll probably still pee. But maybe the other folderol will be reduced.

Early training with low hurdles. We were both two years younger.

Finally, have these changes come too late? Sadie, along with her wisdom, is getting stiff front legs. Mom is occasionally an arthritic basket case. Will agility 2009 be an ironic, bittersweet impossibility? Or a triumph of will and heart? Am I watching too many dog and racehorse movies? Stay tuned.

Being A Dog

Here’s the essential Sadie. No leash. Nobody standing over her telling her what to do. She sniffs a woodpile, home to dozens of rodents, perfectly attuned to her environment, utterly absorbed. For a few precious hours, she gets to be a dog and her world makes sense.

Writers say dogs made a bargain with us sometime in the past; a branch of the wolf family, so goes the legend, traded wild insecurity for domestic security. This is interpretation and anthropomorphism. Animals don’t “make bargains”. Animals follow the food because they’re hard-wired to do so. If they know anything, they know they don’t control a damn thing in the human world. Every time I come into the house with a bag of groceries, their little upturned eyes almost cross with amazement. How does she do it? How does she just produce food out of thin air? They do not aspire to such powers themselves, not the smartest of them.

Sadie, and Roger before her, and Melody and Melba before them, lived for hikes. They were never leashed except for trips to the vet.  In the boonies,  their speed, their energy, their hunting instincts, their autonomy, their intelligence come into play. Around the house, it’s just waiting.  They will lie around all day until I pick up my boots. Then they spring into frenzy. All my dogs who got an almost daily opportunity to be a real dogs lost interest in balls and puppy toys.

In Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog by Ted Kerasote, this is noted. Merle had survived in the wild for about a year before moving in with Ted. And Merle had no interest in playing fetch.

Since there are at least 50 million pet dogs in the USA, shouldn’t we provide our so-called “best friends” with more actual dog experience? Keeping an animal of this grace, power and speed on a little leash forever, as suggested by one of the commenters in my previous post, is abject cruelty. Little dog parks are unnatural. A dog used to her freedom like Sadie, freaks out in such an environment. Strange dogs thrown together in a small space…that’s not what nature intended. The one time I took her to a dog park, she found her way out of it in five minutes.

It would make more sense to dedicate huge tracts of the outdoors for their enjoyment: vast ranges exclusively for dogs and people who love dogs because they are dogs, not because they are pretend human children.

As for the effete who say (and I have actually read this, but lost the source. I have the horrible suspicion it was a vet) never let a dog loose because it might get hurt, I say you have never really understood any dog. They do get hurt. There porcupine quills out there.  They get hurt a few times in a lifetime. The rest of the time they get happy. Captive over-protected dogs get fat, fat, fat. Which is worse? What was the dog’s crime? Why must it live in perpetual solitary like a prisoner in Gitmo?

Dogs are banned from our national forests. Forest managers are busy “preserving species” which usually means tinkering with the balance of nature so hunters have enough “game”. I hate all the terminology of hunting and trapping, hence my excessive quote marks. Animals aren’t “game.” They aren’t “trash animals”. They aren’t “nuisance animals.” They are who they are: victims of a shrinking habitat.

I suspect people who defend the indefensible, such as steel jaw traps, are different from me down to the DNA. My brother warned me years ago:”There are people who cry when Bambi’s mother gets shot, and people who laugh.”  Those who sense the spirit of the animals around them, and those preoccupied with power and control to the exclusion of everything else. How does the hunter not suffer an agony of loneliness when he kills the soul he has sought? How can he not feel the pain he inflicts?

Many do give up hunting and trapping as they mature. Those who persist tell me it’s “testosterone.” Does that explain Sarah Palin?  I could pin some pretty good psychobabble labels, and I would like to, but I don’t want the same done to me. So I’ll just end by saying we should treat our best friends much much better. We should do them the honor of giving them what they really need: acres of unleashed adventure. How about one national park in each state for starters?

Depressing!

February 9, 2009 Reno Gazette Journal Online
Traps don’t belong near popular paths

While hiking above Pleasant Valley, my dog was caught in a steel trap. The trap was only about 30 feet away from a path that is obviously used with some frequency for hiking. Fortunately, a friend was with me and together we were able to free my dog.

I understand that trapping is legal in Nevada from November through February, but I question the good sense of it being allowed in areas easily accessed by nearby residents and their pets. 

Beyond concerns for the safety of adults, children and their pets is the issue of the inhumanity of trapping wild animals simply to harvest their furs for clothing. If certain people simply must drape their bodies in the pelts of dead animals, there are those animals raised for that purpose, and I’m hoping that when they are harvested for their beautiful coats, that they are not first held captive in a trap without food for an unknown number of days and nights until the trapper decides to check his traps and then ends their suffering with a bullet to the head. 

Please contact your legislator if you believe the laws regarding trapping in our state need to be addressed and modified. 

Linda Anderson, Reno

Here are the online comments she got. Mine is first:

There was a movement called TrailSafe in 2007 to address this problem in the Galena area. Perhaps they are still around. Jeff DeLong of the RGJ gave excellent coverage to the controversy. You could contact him for background information and maybe how to contact TrailSafe. 

Clearly more trails need protection. One can also contact the Humane Society of the United States and make out a Trap Report which greatly helps them in national campaign to eliminate heartless, cruel trapping. Nevada state legislature was not sympathetic in 2007; maybe more so now.

++++++++++

Then follow typical RGJ comments: This one features unintelligible syntax and the writer is wrong: she did mention “it actually happened”.

ahhhok wrote: 

I agree that you should leash your dog in the desert. You may not be the only one around that has a dog. You do not mention if the trap hurt you dog. Did this actually happen or did you just stumble across a trap?

02/10/2009 7:11:24 a.m.

++++++++++

Here’s one that makes sense:

You shouldnt have to leash your dog when out hiking. Yes, in the city or parks, or congested areas, but not in the boonies, or hills. They should be able to run without getting snared in a trap when in the hills. What if it was a kid getting trapped, do they need to be leashed as well? Sometimes, its ok to not have your dog on a leash and that is up in the hills. Even if this dog was on a leash it may have gotten snared, just due to where the trap was placed.

Here’s the response she got. I thoroughly object to the leash freaks and below, in green, I will tell you why.

 Reply to above: Did you ever think about keeping your dog on a leash?

This one sounds like he’s running scared. Maybe we will ban trapping one of these days. What the hell is he defending? How can anybody, in this case “daveintonopah”, get defensive about their “right” to torture animals?

 Trapping is banned in cities and parks and congested areas. You can only trap in the boonies or hills. Why not just admit you are a liberal and want to ban trapping? 

This next comment is typical of dreck one finds in RGJ forums. Note the aggressive tone:

lisacmb…dogs should be leashed any time you have them off of your property, that is responsible dog ownership. The ONLY place an unleashed dog is acceptable is at the dog park.

And dont start me on leashing brats….er, kids….lol

And finally, a terse sympathizer: 

ausscyn wrote:
Trapping is inhumane.

02/09/2009 12:28:07 p.m.

So that is the discussion. In the next post, I’ll explain my many problems with leash freaks and leash laws and dog parks and a world that’s getting too crowded for even small dogs.

Roger 1994 - 2008

The Lord Is My Shepherd

January 30 is Roger’s Jahrzeit. He left this plane of existence sometime between 2 and 5 AM January 30, 2008. Although he had slowed down and lost weight throughout the year, he had only two weeks of real suffering during which, as dogs do, he would not eat enough to sustain himself, turned into a walking skeleton, and kept dragging himself to the furthest corners of the yard to lie in the snow and ice, awaiting his fate. I couldn’t leave him there. I kept dragging him back inside where he lay on the blankets I left about for him. He was a proud animal; to the end he forced himself outside to do his business, sapping what remained of his strength. I never once had to clean up after him.

The final night he licked weakly at a tablespoon of the Ben & Jerry’s Peach Cobbler ice cream I had bought for him. It had been odd, standing at the market freezer and wondering which flavor my dog would like. The feeding didn’t last long, then we went to bed: he, as usual, atop the covers, alongside me on the futon.

I woke up at two and he was still there, still quietly breathing.

I went back to sleep and in a dream a tawny young man of incredible sweetness was there in my presence, radiating soft, tawny love. I felt bathed in love, deeply relaxed and at peace,  amazed and delighted to finally meet one who loved me so completely, also some anticipation that I might in real life meet this beautiful being.

This has happened before. Departing souls will send a message of consolation and peace.

I awoke again at 5AM. He had gotten himself onto the blanket folded at the foot of the futon and there had died, lying on his side upon it, perfectly centered,  as beautiful in death as he had been in life.

We both knew he was going to die, and die he did, after sending me all the comfort he could. Now a year later, very rarely, the full measure of the loss will hit me. When it does, it is like being kicked in the gut, a moment of blinding pain, mercifully short and rare.

But I no longer live in a world of dramatic emotions, thank God. So what I want to say is more about him than about me. Animals’ lives are sadly uncelebrated. This animal deserves a wider audience.

Roger’s personality covered the dog spectrum. Those of you who met him when he was in full bloom remember a 65-pound Shepherd/Retriever with a perpetual self-effacing grin, a creature both radiantly beautiful and stunningly powerful, while at the same time apologetic, clownish and humble whether jumping on you, crawling onto your lap, dancing, spinning himself into a 180 degree turn while leaping on and off the couch, grabbing towels in the bathroom and prancing through the house shaking them in his jaws, chewing through wooden gates, wandering off, getting found by neighbors, or attempting to hump every other dog on a Sierra Club hike.

The same stunts pulled by a different dog would have infuriated me. But I could never get angry with Roger, and there was no power struggle between us. He was the clown and I was the perpetually receptive audience.

Because his face was so expressive, you could catch every nuance. Roger usually played it for laughs. He  stood on his hind legs with his paws on the examining table, making eyes at the vet,  ate the most ghastly remains: crunchy dried 2-dimensional dead rodents; once a rabbit with an arrow through it, and so much more that he came upon outdoors. He fought me one time for a ram’s horn and again for a boar’s skull, complete with tusks. He had found them first, so they were legitimately his, but I stole them for my collections.

Just as my dearly departed aunt sent me dimes at the oddest times, so Roger sent gifts to my other dog, Sadie, his hunting partner. He sent her a dead rabbit about three days after his demise. She ate it, something she never did before or since. After that he sent her a few mice now and then and once a garter snake.

Then, as with all the other spirits I have known, he ascended higher and further and the energy that had been Roger dissipated and could be found only in my lasting love and memories.

Dogs like Roger only come around once in a lifetime. I always said, as people ran away screaming, or cursed me as he body slammed them, “He’s a lot of dog.” May all of you find a Roger.

Nikki and Ambler (Cont.)

Nikki went first. Summer came and she was just plain miserable. So I sent her off to live in Tahoe. Today I would have held out for older owners. I last saw her, always amiable with people, lying in the back of a pickup trick surrounded by a group of young people who assured me she’d have happy runs in the forest.

That left us with Ambler. He just got more intense, more wired, more unmanageable. I was gone so much of the time and so tired the rest. I don’t remember Elise taking charge. I do remember her being pulled on her belly across the floor of the livestock center where we had come for his first obedience lessons. Just like Marley in “Marley and Me”, this dog wasn’t going to get any diplomas. My mortification was doubled because Elise let out a stream of curses as Ambler ran wild, heedless of the choke collar.

Then followed a string of little notes left on the door by Animal Control. He kept getting out of the yard and heading for the local riverside park where he would chase the ducks and geese. Twice I bailed him out, paying  big fines I could ill afford in those poverty days. Why did this keep happening?  I later found out my next-door neighbor was dropping the dimes on him.

Whenever I’d get him home from those episodes, he would hang close for a few days, slinking along the walls, literally looking both ways before crossing doorways. He had an increasingly haunted expression and  slouched walk. For all I know he got tattoos under his fur.

But after a week or so, he’d figure he was in the clear. He’d straighten up, shake off the jailhouse blues,  and disappear again. I spied on him from the kitchen one day and found out how he did it. The six-foot high fence came to a narrow corner at the side yard. Ambler would get a running start, fling himself, feet first, at the wall to his right which he would hit about four feet up. He then used his back legs to richochet himself upwards at the high gate in front of him. A quick push over the top with his front legs while he was airborne and he was up and over, then out to menace the neighborhood.

After the fourth bust,  I told Elise that was it. Ambler would have to stay at animal control. Her pleas did not move me. Then a few days later, I was walking down our street and saw the all too familiar dogcatcher’s truck two blocks away. The truck stopped, a door was opened, and Ambler came out trotting to me in his slouch mode. Animal Control couldn’t place him, they couldn’t help him, they couldn’t tell me the truth, so they just dropped him off.

But that reprieve only lasted a week or two and the pattern resumed. The next time he got out, he just didn’t come back. Animal Control evidently gave up on him too; there were no more mysterious reappearances. From that episode on, I’ve always held respect and affection for Animal Control, and realized their abiding compassion. They did what they could. Some dogs just aren’t suburban dogs. They need a big world, a forest, a forest that may no longer exist anywhere. I wonder if Ambler had been dropped in Yellowstone if he would have run with the wolves.

++++++++++

Unleashed Melody

I’ve had  11 dogs in my life. I hate to say it because it’s elitist, and I hate competitions and odious comparisons, but Melody was the smartest. She just was.

It was 1984 and I’d been through three harrowing dog episodes. The first of these was Ambler. Elise was 11, old enough to pick a pet. We went to the local pound, where the attendant begged her to take any other dog there, any dog but the skinny, wired black animal of indeterminate ancestry who stood glaring at us from behind his wire mesh. This, of course, riveted her to the belief that he was the only dog she would have and she by all means would have him.

Ambler always acted like the FBI was after him. He would skulk around corners. He was nervous and suspicious, though friendly enough to humans.  We took him hiking frequently and never had the problems I’ve had since with other dogs on hikes. He stayed more or less with us and he got into the truck after the hike — both behaviors I’ve learned one cannot necessarily expect.

He was plenty strong enough to pull her around the neighborhood.

Because he had so much energy, we got Nikki from a newspaper ad to keep him company. Nikki was depressed. She was depressed, the owner told me, from a spaying gone bad, although there were no physical symptoms of this; she was depressed because she was blind in one eye which we were told was the breeder’s fault; and I found out she was further depressed because she was hot all the time. The upshot was Nikki lying around most of the time, heaving great sighs and passing a lot of gas. When she would drag herself erect, a thick mat of silky fur coated the carpet and furniture. This we collected in paper bags, planning one day to learn to spin, and from the resulting dog thread knit dog garments, earning big bucks.

Oddly, like a switch being thrown, she would rouse herself from her depressive moods to chase Ambler around the house with a vicious frenzy that terrified us. We would stand on the couch as the two would race around the circular floor plan barking, growling and spitting with murderous intensity. I still don’t know if they liked or hated each other.

In retrospect they were friends.

Doubtless it was just the scattered way I was living in those days: working several part-time jobs and worrying about money, I never kept either animal.

I always say they find us, we don’t find them.

Sadiepants Mackenzie is a case in point. There was a thread of logic. Roger was getting old. And he had yet to find his long-lost brother. Just as Snoopy daydreamed about his mother at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, Roger with that self-effacing goofy grin of his, sought the brother who was as big and rowdy as he was, who would body slam him while running along the lakeshore, who would jump and spin and challenge. What the poor guy got instead were two worn out little old females.

The first day Roger came home with me, Dolly — 35 pound Basenji, and

Dreams of lost brother

Melba — 45 pound Bassador stood gaping with horror on the steps. He was afraid to pass by them, so he stood at the landing and barked. It never got any better than that. I owed him.

So with Dolly and Melba eventually spreading furry wings and gliding to the spirit realm, I took Roger up to the Wylie Animal Rescue Foundation near a wooded park in Kings Beach. The idea was to foster a dog — see if they got along.

The online Adopt Me picture that had attracted me up to Kings Beach, an hour’s drive from my place, was a blond dog face somewhat like Roger’s own. But in person Prince [I think his name was Prince] was a sad, cowed, skinny, spiritless animal despite being younger than Roger.

We walked them out on leashes and Roger blandly ignored Prince, not interested enough to harass him. If I brought him home, Roger would have him for breakfast.

Next up was a skinny pointer/setter type. Sufficient spirit, but I know those breeds and they’re not for me. “He’ll jump my six-foot fence,” I told Connie, the rescue lady. She expressed denial. A laconic animal control officer in the front room didn’t look up from his paperwork: “He jumped a fence this morning.”

To their credit, WARF has outdoor play areas and volunteer dog walkers and the shelter dogs have it pretty good, good enough to jump a fence here and there.

Time was moving along. Connie seemed out of options. “OK,” she said. “Let’s try Sadie.”

Sadie is such a common dog name that this animal was Sadie Number Four. I waited outside with Roger. Connie came out with what seemed like a pretty small dog on a leash. I had in mind somebody at least as big as Roger, who was 65 pounds but rangy, built like a Shepherd.

Dolly 1989 - 2003

Connie and Sadie approached and the two erupted into a blur of snarling high gear. I noted with disappointment the white splash across Sadie’s black shoulders; her markings were nearly identical to Dolly’s, and I had my differences with Dolly.

While I contemplated my disappointment, Connie was trying to pull her off. She was going for Roger’s neck, just as Dolly used to do. He used to just stand there and roll his eyes while Dolly did what she could to rupture his jugular, but with this one he fought back. I was delighted.

“Looks good,” I said.

“It does?” asked Connie. She already had me pegged for a nut anyway. “Yes. He can’t push her around. She’s not afraid of him.”

No, she was not. Sadie was 56 pounds of assertive border collieness. This little lady had a self-possession I had not seen since Trinka, my Doberman, so many years ago.

We got the two separated and headed for the leash walk. With them separated, I could see that Sadie was bigger than I initially thought; bigger than Dolly, muscular, utterly confident. It doesn’t take me long to fall in love with a dog. I asked Connie if I could hold the leash.

We were on a pleasant sloped trail with typical Tahoe boulders, pines and firs. Sadie leaped, spun, hunting with all her senses, never tangling the leash. It was as though the leash wasn’t there as she sprang from boulder to boulder or along fallen trees.

“She’s agile,” I remarked.

Connie didn’t seem that impressed. Now, four years later, I’ve found so many are not impressed by my Sadie who I’ve come to adore. “She has an attitude,” a trainer told me. Yes she does. Yes she does.

After the walk, we put them in the play yard to see if they would at last make friends. Roger leaped into the kiddie pool because he thought he’d get a laugh from us, splashing and churning, turning on the grin.

Sadie turned her back, went to the shelter door, stood on her hind legs and scratched madly for admittance.

Nevertheless, I decided on her. “It’s because she was the third,” said Connie.

I couldn’t explain it myself. She clearly wasn’t going to be any friend to Roger; she wasn’t his long-lost brother. He needed a male, probably a rowdy young Shepherd. It’s only a foster, I told myself. All I knew was she was about “3 or 4″ years old, had been on death row among several other previous placements, was billed as a Border Collie although there was clearly some other genetic influence as well.

FIRST ADVENTURE

I came up a few days later without Roger to pick her up. Connie was delayed, so I asked the shelter people if I could take Sadie “out to play.”

I came to her cage with the leash and she was galvanized. They uncaged her and she ran to the front door, stood on her hind legs and produced the same frenzied clawing to get out as she had two days ago to get in. I hooked her up and she dragged me outside and up the slope before I could inhale.

The leash and me huffing along behind her didn’t slow her down. We flew over the trail, Sadie doing the logs and boulder bouncing, me trying to remember landmarks. I didn’t know I could move like that, but I didn’t see what option I had, so I clung to the leash. Earlier I had told Connie how I walk my dogs off leash. She warned me shelter dogs aren’t bonded, don’t even know their names, if they get lost, call WARF.

So I knew they’d think I lost Sadie if we stayed out too long. After she ran off her initial steam, I was able to lead her to what I thought was the way back. It wasn’t. We walked through a subdivision, where she behaved herself reasonably well, alongside a golf course, and finally came to a garage.

I called the shelter to pick us up; I was wiped out. Sadie lay in the shade until the animal control truck showed up, driven by the laconic guy. I made some self-effacing remark. “Why do people do that?” he asked me. “Why do they point out their mistakes?” Great question.

“Sadie’s a good dog,” he said. “She has just enough bitch in her.” I agreed profusely.

Hard to say if Connie believed me that Sadie was never off the leash the whole episode, but she didn’t argue. I signed the papers and Sadie was my official guest, complete with a little orange “Adopt Me” cape, a wool blanket and two collars.

I lifted her to put her in my Pathfinder, and she gave me one kiss, on the cheek, as powerful a kiss as I’ve ever had. “I like you,” it said. “You are fully accepted. I am profoundly grateful that you have rescued me.”

Sadie is a dog of few words. She doesn’t need many. Four years later and now she sleeps at the foot of my futon, over the covers, the very place where Roger breathed his last.

Fostering a dog sounds reasonable on paper. You give it a home; the shelter advertises, a few days/weeks/whatever, and somebody else takes over. A few days after Sadie came to my house, I was at lunch with my swim group. “Yeah,” said one. “I fostered a dog. She’s been with me a year and a half.”

I was supposed to take Sadie to a ranch event in Carson City where she well could have been picked up as a ranch dog. But I did not. I took her hiking again, and she’s been with me ever since.

She and Roger were inseparable on the trail. They were hunting partners. They worked burrows together. When other dogs showed up, they had each other’s back. At home they ignored each other; they didn’t even demonstrate rivalry or apprehension. I had to get out the ball or the tuggy toy and to make them play. They would humor me for about ten minutes then go back to their lounging. All either one of them cared about was the trail.

ATTRIBUTES

Wedge profile

I call her Sadiepants to seem like she’s cute, but she’s not. She’s dead serious with no sense of humor. She’s a Type A, a manager with a tight schedule. She has a tough wedge-shaped profile: determined, streamlined, expressionless. This is partially because her dark, dark brown eyes are almost invisible against her black face, but it’s also because she’s intently focussed on her concerns. In the yard she hunts relentlessly, trotting her paths for hours. She finds mice all the time. She comes and gets me when somebody comes to the house. She’s on duty, she’s responsible, she’s busy. Not nervous, just busy.

I added Mackenzie to her name because her dignity calls for it, and because a friend looked at her a few weeks after I formally adopted her. “There’s something else there,” he said. “There’s a touch of Spuds Mackenzie.”

So this is introduction and soon to follow more episodes featuring Sadie.

The dog world is being overrefined. And I don’t like it.

Case in point: Beverly Hills Chihuahua which in fact I thoroughly enjoyed. But that’s because despite the typical puerile Disney plot, the action was well paced with spectacular special effects. And most of the jokes worked. My favorite scene: a cloud of dust approaches as Delgado, Chloe’s guardian German Shepherd, stands outnumbered against a pack of wolves. Closer, closer the great cloud. It is…a pack of Chihuahuas, all barking their brains out. The wolves flee.

But it’s no joke when real life  merges into an animated fantasy.

Consider the dog as he really is. He is a running, jumping, digging, and dodging hunting machine. He was not made to spend his life in a dog park or on a leash or in a Rodeo Drive handbag. I took  a Chesapeake Bay Retriever/Irish Setter on a grueling cross-country trip in the early 1970’s. She chased the truck at 20mph for an hour, but that is another story, and not necessarily a happy one. Watch Border Collies herding sheep. Watch, as Mike and I did on our Bermuda honeymoon, a working unit of four or five German Shepherds with no humans in sight, herding sheep, then running down to the shore for a quick swim and tumble, then back up to the job.

Consider the qualities of the wolf, ancestor to the dog.  From:

 
http://www.wolfhaven.org/physiology.php
Wolf Haven International
Wolves are superbly constructed and adapted for their particular role in an ecosystem - predators that pursue a large and small prey over different kinds of terrain: open plains, dense forest, deep snow, steep slopes and into the water if need be. Wolves have developed lean, muscular bodies set on long, powerful legs to be able to pursue prey. Wolves are built for endurance and running; they can average around 25 miles per hour for several miles and 35 to 40 miles per hour for short bursts. The wolf’s expert hunting ability comes from a combination of speed, stamina and strategy. Because wolves have narrow chests and outward – splayed forelegs, their hind legs can move in the same track as their front legs – an advantage in covering ground efficiently. Wolves’ large, well-padded feet help to spread their weight over snow and allows them to efficiently grip irregular surfaces like rocks and logs.

The sagittal crest (the bone on the top of the skull) on a wolf is where the jaw muscles are attached. This is well defined on the wolf because of their very powerful jaw. Wolves’ jaws produce immense power - a crushing pressure of about 1,500 pounds per square inch (psi), compared with 750 pounds for average large dogs such as German Shepherds. Wolves have 42 teeth specialized for stabbing, shearing and crushing bones. The first four teeth, front and bottom are called incisors and are used for nipping and gnawing meat from the bone. Wolves use their canine teeth, which can grow to be 2 inches in length, for gripping and holding itself to the prey animal. The premolars are used for slicing and grinding. The specialized molars, called carnassials are used for slicing and tearing. The last molars are used for pulverizing and grinding food.

Even more extraordinary is a wolf’s sense of smell - up to 100,000 times greater than human beings’. Under the right conditions a wolf can smell something up to 300 yards to 1 mile away. Their hearing is excellent also. Under certain conditions, wolves can hear a howl as far as six miles away in the forest and ten miles away on the open tundra.

In summary, the model upon which all canids are built:

• predators
• superbly constructed
• built for endurance and running
• speed, stamina and strategy
• jaws with immense crushing power
• teeth for nipping and gnawing and gripping the prey animal
• sense of smell up to 100,000 times greater than humans’
• Excellent hearing

So we take an animal with claws and fangs, a deep chest, a tucked belly, long springy legs and an indomitable will. Then what? We attempt in so many ways to remove him from the very nature for which he was designed. We make a mockery of God’s magnificent creations.

Apartments:

Where better to witness the pathetic degeneration of the species than Manhattan, where I spent many years, most recently the summer of 2006.  The rule in big city co-ops is no dog over 25 pounds. Co-op boards vote you in or out in New York, and they can be tough. Case in point: my aunt’s building, The Edgewater, overlooking the East River, voted the legendary Frank Sinatra out because of his wild parties. Some bozo had dropped a whiskey bottle from the penthouse terrace to the street way below. Fortunately no pedestrians died, but Old Blue Eyes  had to do it his way someplace else.

They are just as relentless with dogs. A realtor friend told me she had a client with a pug, but it was a fat pug weighing at least 35. Knowing if the pug made a personal appearance, her client would be rejected, she got the board to agree to make their decision based upon a picture of the dog.

All the clients’ pictures showed a clearly overweight, underfit beast. So the realtor went to Google and came up with some ideal weight pug pictures. She had to find the right color. Then she had to rumple the picture so it looked long possessed and loved. She spilled a little coffee on it, for further veracity. Then she had to buy an appropriate frame. Steely though they were, the board was satisfied, and the client and his obese animal moved in. This is how silly it gets.

The biggest dog I saw in the vicinity of East 72 Street was a little border collie. “You poor suckers” I thought, stepping my way through droves of pugs and Shih Tzus straining at their leashes, peeking out from their velvet handbags, “you poor little suckers.”

Embryona Satanicus

This was an eventful walk. I’ll get to the potato bug soon, but first I need to talk about signs & signals from what my Mom used to call The Great Beyond.

Naturally it’s about Roger. (See Post Roger’s Ghost) My friend Betty recently lost her gentle yellow wolf, Tonka, and we were talking about visitations from the other side. She told me two things that gave me chills. First, that her daughter had dreamed of Tonka after his passing, but he was with dogs from other times in their lives. This corresponded to my Roger tawny dream. Then Betty told me Tonka had extra rear dewclaws which I had never noticed, and all of a sudden she’s seeing dogs with these claws all over the place.

The very next day I’m volunteering for the Humane Society, displaying adoptable pets at PetSmart. They assign me a dog so painfully like Roger: a German Shepherd/GoldenRetriever cross and he has extra rear dewclaws!!!

So this combines my visitations with Betty’s proving the universality of us all, and goes into the file of speculation that there might be something happening out there beyond our ken, in the space my ex and I always called the Z-band.

Now get this! The very next day after that, Sunday,  I take Sadie out for her romp. Somebody has parked an old rusting pickup truck where I usually park, in the cul de sac by the new elementary school. I climb the hill and see a man about my advanced age with a dog who looks just like Roger!!! Sadie runs up and starts hunting with him just as she did with Roger, probably assuming it is Roger, no questions asked.

The Good Old Days. Sadie and Roger have a critter in the pipe. They worked it ceaselessly till I left. I came back to find them lying around. As soon as they saw me, they quickly got back to work.

“Is this your dog?” I ask the man who has already gone to his truck. He says yes in a way that sounds suspicious as though I’ll accuse him of something. But he is good enough to let his dog and Sadie and me have our moment. The animals are digging into mouse holes side by side with no apparent sentiment, while I watch them streaming hot tears, tears that surprise me because these days the emotions are buried so deep.

The dog ambles to me after a while. He’s fatter than Roger was, his face is smaller and pointier, his hair is shorter and coarser. Still the resemblance is remarkable. I give him a desultory shoulder rub and send him to his silently waiting Dad. One last coincidence…this dog stands at the truck door as Roger used to do until the owner lifts his hindquarters into the cab.

They loved this chair and near it (not pictured) a black and white striped gaudy couch, incongruous in the desert.

Alone now with Sadie, I am dismal for the first quarter mile or so, missing the Big Guy, as I used to call Roger, but brighten up as the sun floods us. It’s now sweatshirts in the morning until about 10AM…perfect weather. And then I encounter the potato bug pictured above, a creature I’ve seen elsewhere, but never so close to my subdivision. Good news: A. I got a good shot of it B. some information in case anyone wants to keep one as a pet. It’s scientific name is  Embryona Satanicus which might especially appeal to teen-agers.