by Ted Kerasote
The only one who wasn't aware that the dog was going with us was, of course, the dog himself. After loading the raft with dry bags and coolers of food, I patted the gunwale and said to him, "Jump in. You're a river dog now." I had been designated to row the raft for the first day while the others paddled kayaks.
Dubiously, he eyed the raft. "No way," his eyes said, "that looks dangerous."
I tried to pet him, but he danced away, making a "ha-ha-ha" noise, half playful, half scared, as he pumped his front paws up and down in that energetic little dance he'd done the previous night as he appeared in our headlights.
"You'll like it," I said. "Shady canyons, great campsites, petroglyphs, swimming every day, Milk Bones, Purina Dog Chow, and"—my voice cajoled—"elk sausage."
I opened my waterproof lunch stuff sack, cut off a piece of the elk summer sausage, and held it out to him. He came closer, leaned his head forward, and snatched it. "Come on, jump in."
He shivered, knowing full well he was being gulled, but letting me pet him nonetheless, torn between wanting to come and his fear of the raft. Carefully, I put my arms around him, under his chest, and lifted. Whining in protest, he struggled. I managed to deposit him in the raft as Benj tried to push us off.
The dog leapt out of the boat, but instead of fleeing danced up and down the shore, panting frantically, "Ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha," which I translated as "I really want to go, but I don't know where we're going, and I don't like the raft, and I'm scared."
I talked to him in a low, soothing tone and got him calmed down enough so I could pet him again. Resting his head on my knee, he gave a huge sigh, like someone who's emotionally wrung out. For a moment, I could sense his many dashed hopes and his fear of people and their gear—not an unreasonable one given how he had cowered when I raised the stick to play fetch.
The others were in their kayaks, ready to go. Carefully, I got my arms around him again, but when I lifted him he struggled mightily, calling out in desperate whining yelps. I put him in the boat, and Benj shoved us off as I held the dog until the current took us. Then I let go of him and started to row. We were only yards from shore. With a leap and a few strokes he could easily return to land. Stay or leave—the choice was his. The dog jumped to the raft's gunwale, put his paws on it, and stared upstream without showing any fear of the moving water. Rather, he watched the retreating shore as if watching his natal continent disappear below the horizon.
His ambivalence filled my mind with questions. Had he been abandoned, or gotten himself lost? In either case, was he waiting faithfully for his human to return? Was his friendliness toward me his way of asking for my help in finding that person? Had I misread his eyes, seeming to say, "You are the one I've been waiting for"? Was his longing gaze back to shore simply his attachment to a known place—a familiar landscape where he might have been mistreated but which was still home? How many abused souls—dogs and humans alike—have remained in an unloving place because staying was far less terrifying than leaving?
"Easy, easy," I murmured as he began to tremble.
I stroked his head and shoulders. Turning, he looked at me with an expression I shall never forget. It mingled loss, fear of the unknown, and hope.
Of course, some will say that I was being anthropomorphic. Others might point out that I was projecting. But what I was doing—reading his body language—is the stock-in-trade of psychologists as they study their clients. All of us use the same technique as we try to understand the feelings of those around us—friends, family members, and colleagues. There'd be no human intercourse, or it would be enormously impoverished, without our attempting to use our own emotions as templates—as starting points—to map the feelings of others.
But something else was going on between the dog and me. An increasing amount of research on a variety of species—parrots, chimpanzees, prairie dogs, dolphins, wolves, and domestic dogs themselves—has demonstrated that they have the physical and cognitive ability to transmit a rich array of information to others, both within and without their species, sometimes even using grammatical constructions similar to those employed in human languages. Individuals of some of these species can also identify themselves with vocal signatures—in human terms, a name.
These studies have corroborated what I've felt about dogs for a long time—that they're speakers of a foreign language and, if we pay attention to their vocalizations, ocular and facial expressions, and ever-changing postures, we can translate what they're saying. Sometimes we get the translation spot-on ("I'm hungry"), sometimes we make a reasonable guess ("I'm sad"), and occasionally we have to use a figure of speech to bridge the divide between their culture and our own ("I love you so much, my heart could burst").
Dog owners who hold "conversations" with their dogs will know exactly what I mean. Those who don't—as well as those who find the whole notion of conversing with a dog absurd—may want to consider that humans have shared a longer and more intimate partnership with dogs than with any other domestic animal, starting before civilization existed. In these early times—before speech and writing achieved the ascendancy they enjoy today—dogs had a greater opportunity to make themselves understood by humans who were still comfortable communicating outside the boundaries of the spoken and written word.
Charles Darwin, as keen an observer of domestic dogs as he was of Galápagos finches, commented on the relative equality that once existed between dogs and humans, and still exists, if you look for it: "[T]he difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind." Darwin went so far as to say that "there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties," adding that nonhuman animals experience happiness, wonder, shame, pride, curiosity, jealousy, suspicion, gratitude, and magnanimity. "They practice deceit and are revengeful," he asserted, and have "moral qualities," the more important elements of which are "love and the distinct emotion of sympathy." These were breathtaking notions when he set them down in 1871 and remain eye-opening today, even to many who believe that animals can think.
The dog now took his eyes from mine, looked back to the shore, and let out a resigned sigh—I was to learn that he was a great sigher. Stepping down into the raft, he gave our gear a brief inspection and finally let his gaze settle upon the cooler sitting in the bow of the raft, surrounded by dry bags. Padding over to it, he jumped on it and lay down with his back to me. Another sigh escaped him. Within a few moments, however, I could see him watching the bluffs and groves of cottonwoods with growing interest, his head snapping this way and that as he noted the countryside moving while he apparently did not.
"Pretty cool, eh?"
He moved his ears backward, acknowledging my voice without turning his head.
As we entered the first canyon, and its walls blocked out the sky, he took a glance upstream and gave a start—the campground had disappeared. He jerked into a sitting position and stared around apprehensively. Without warning, he pointed his snout to the sky and let out a mournful howl, beginning in a bass register and climbing to a plaintive alto crescendo. From the canyon walls came back his echo: "Aaawooo, Aaawooo, Aaawooo."
Stunned, he cocked his head at the unseen dog who had answered him. Where was the dog hiding? He looked up and down the river and at the high shadowed cliffs. He seemed never to have heard an echo before. A moment later, he howled again, and again he was surprised to hear his voice rebounding from the cliffs. He looked around uneasily before giving another howl—this time as a test rather than to bemoan his situation. When the echo returned, a look of dawning realization crossed his face. It was remarkable to see the comprehension light his eyes. His lips turned up in a smile, and he howled again, long and drawn out, but without any sadness. Immediately, he cocked his head to listen to his echo. As the canyon walls sent back his voice, he began to lash his tail back and forth with great enthusiasm. He turned around and gave me a look of surprised delight—the very same expression people wear when the
y hear themselves for the first time.
I leaned forward and put a hand on his chest.
"You are quite the singer," I told him.
Throwing back his head, he laughed a toothy grin.
From that moment on, he never looked back. He sat on the cooler like a sphinx, his head turning to watch the cliffs and side canyons go by. He hiked up to several Anasazi cliff dwellings with us and stood attentively as we examined petroglyphs. On the way back to the river, he'd meander off, disappearing for long minutes, only to reappear as we approached the boats, dashing toward us through the cactus without a glance at the obstacle course he was threading. He seemed about as home in the desert as a dog could be.
At camp that evening, he supervised our shuttling the gear from raft to higher ground and watched as we began to unpack our dry bags. Then, satisfied we weren't going to leave, he vanished. I caught glimpses of him, exploring a large perimeter around our campsite, poking with his paw at some object of interest, sniffing at bushes, and raising his leg to mark them. When I began to pour his dinner into one of our cooking pots, he soon appeared, having heard the tinkle of kibble on steel. Inhaling his dinner in a few voracious gulps, he looked up at me and wagged his tail. Cocking his head, he raised an eyebrow and clearly added, "Nice appetizer. Now where's the meal?"
I poured him some more, and after he gobbled it he gave me the same look: "Is that all?" Likewise after the next bowl.
"Enough," I told him, crossing my hands and moving them apart the way an umpire makes the signal for "Safe."
His face fell.
"We've got five more days," I explained. "You can't have it all tonight." Stowing his food, I said, "Come on, help me with the latrine."
He followed as I took the large ammo box inland and placed it on a rock bench with a scenic overlook of the river. After lining it with a stout plastic bag, I gave it its inaugural use as the dog sat a half dozen feet off, wagging his tail in appreciation as the aromas wafted toward him. Each day's bag had to be sealed and carried downriver to be disposed of properly at the end of the trip, and we had brought along a can of Comet to sprinkle on the contents so as to reduce the production of odors and methane. This I now did, leaving the can of Comet and the roll of toilet paper by the side of the ammo box. As I walked back to camp, the big golden dog followed me, his nose aloft, his nostrils dilating.
At dinnertime we sat in a circle around the stoves and pots, and the dog lay on his belly between Benj and me, looking alertly at each of us when we spoke. We were discussing what to call him besides "hey you."
Bennett proposed "Merlin," since the dog seemed to have some magic about him. Benj, who was opening a bottle of wine, wanted something connected to our trip, like, for instance, "Merlot." He poured us each a cup and offered some to the dog for a sniff. The dog pulled back his head in alarm and looked at the cup with disdain.
"Not a drinker," Benj commented.
"What about 'Hintza'?" I suggested. "He was the Rhodesian Ridgeback in Laurens van der Post's novel A Story Like the Wind. He looks like Hintza."
There were several attempts to call the dog Hintza, all of which elicited a pained expression on his face, as if the vibratory second syllable, "tza," might be causing him auditory distress. "So much for literary heroes," I said.
Someone threw out the name of the river, "San Juan." This brought about universal nays.
The sky turned dusky, the stars came out, the river made its soothing whoosh along the bank below us. We got into our sleeping bags. I watched the still nameless dog pad down to the river, take a drink, then disappear. I don't know how much later it was that I felt his back settle against mine. He was warm and solid, and he gave a great, contented sigh.
He wasn't there in the morning, but appeared shortly after I woke. Bounding toward me, he twirled around in excitement, pumping his front paws up and down and panting happily.
I roughed up his neck fur, and he closed his eyes in pleasure, going relaxed and easy under my hands.
We had breakfast and broke camp. Benj, who had been the last to use the latrine, carried it down to the beach. The dog was at his heels.
"I know what we can name him," Benj called out, twisting his face into an expression of disgust, "'Monsieur le Merde.' He ate the shit out of the ammo box."
"Ick," said Kim.
"No," I exclaimed in disbelief, watching the dog to see if he was foaming at the mouth or displaying some other sign of having been poisoned by the Comet. He looked absolutely tip-top, wagging his tail cheerfully.
"Are you sure, Benj?" I asked. "Did you actually see him eat it?"
"No, but it's empty, and who else would have done it? I saw him coming back from the latrine when I walked to it."
"He could have been someplace else." I knelt in the sand and said "come here" to the dog.
He came right up to me, and I leaned close and smelled his mouth. "Yuck!" I exploded, falling backward, as the stench overwhelmed me. "You are a vile dog."
He wagged his tail happily.
"You must be really hungry," I added.
"The question," said Pam, "is who's gonna row with him?"
We decided to draw straws, and Benj lost. "At least," he said, staring at the short straw, "someone on this trip has worse eating habits than me."
We paddled downriver, the morning breeze cool, the sun sprinkling the wavelets with glister. As the canyon widened, opening upon a grassy shoreline, the dog sat up smartly on the cooler. A dozen cows grazed along the left bank, raising their heads to watch us pass. They were Navajo cattle, the entire left bank of the San Juan River being the northern boundary of the Navajo Nation, which covers a sizeable portion of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.
The dog gave them a sharp, excited look, and leapt off the cooler. Flying through the air with his front and back legs extended, he hit the water in a mushroom of spray. He surfaced and began to paddle rapidly to the shore. Scrambling up the rocky bank, he shook himself once, and, as the cows watched in disbelief, he sprinted directly at them. They wheeled and galloped downriver.
Nose and tail extended, he chased after them, his wet coat flashing reddish-gold in the sunlight. Through willow and cactus he sprinted, closing the distance with remarkable speed and cutting out the smallest calf with an expert flanking movement. Coming abreast of the calf's hindquarter, he forced it away from the herd and toward the cliffs. It was clear he intended to corner it against the rocks and kill it.
Stunned, we watched in silence. Besides, what could we do?
Yell, "Hey, dog, stop!"?
Yet something about his behavior told me that he hadn't totally lost himself to that hardwired state into which dogs disappear when they lock onto fleeing prey. Focused solely on the animal fleeing before them, they can run for miles, losing track of where they or their humans might be.
This dog wasn't doing that. As he coursed alongside the terrified calf, he kept glancing toward the raft and the kayaks, heading downriver to a bend that would take us out of sight. And I could see that he was calculating two mutually exclusive outcomes: the juicy calf and the approaching cliffs where he'd corner it, or the fast-retreating boats and the family he had found.
I saw him glance again at the bend of the river where we'd vanish—and right there I realized that dogs could think abstractly. The calf was as real as real could be, a potential meal right now. The boat people, their Purina Dog Chow, and the affection they shared with him were no more than memories of the past and ideas about the future, or however these English words translate in the mind of a dog.
Instant gratification ... future benefits. The choices seemed clear. And mind you, we weren't calling or waving to him. Without a word, we floated silently down the river.
He chose the future. He broke off his chase in midstride, cut right, streaking past the group of startled cows who had gathered in a protective huddle. Reaching the bank, he raced along its rocky apron, trying to gain as much ground on us as he could before having to swim. Faced by willow, he le
apt—again legs stretched fore and aft, ears flapping like wings—before belly crashing into the water. Paddling with determination, he set a course downriver that would intercept our float.
After a long haul—mouth open, breathing hard, eyes riveted upon us—he reached Kim's boat, swam up to her gunwale, and tried to claw his way aboard. She grabbed the loose fur on his back and hauled him onto her spray skirt. He looked suddenly very thin and bedraggled, especially when he turned to gaze wistfully after the cows. He heaved a great sigh of disappointment when the cliffs cut them off from view, then turned to me, floating fifty feet off. Springing from Kim's boat, he swam to mine. I helped him aboard, and he stared into my face with what appeared to be distress.
"You look like you've done that before," I said.
His eyes coasted away from mine.
Sensing his guilt, I tried to praise him. "You're quite the swimmer."
For the first time, he leaned forward and licked my mouth—just once before jumping out of my arms and into the water. The dunking had at least cleared his breath. He swam to the raft, allowing Benj to haul him in. Standing on the cooler, he shook himself vigorously, then reclined in his sphinx position to let the sun dry his fur.
Paddling up to the raft, I heard Benj talking to the dog and calling him "Monsieur le Merde." The dog stared straight ahead, paying no attention to him. Bennett pulled up on the opposite side of the raft. "Merlin, you're a cow killer," he sang out.
The dog flicked his eyes nervously to Bennett, then away.
I had an inspiration. This dog, though a little rough around the edges, was a survivor. He was also proud and dignified in his own quiet way. He reminded me of some cowboys I knew.
"I think we should call him 'Merle,'" I said. "That's a good, down-to-earth name."
At my voice, the dog sent me a glance, gauging my intentions. He held my eyes only a second before staring straight ahead. He seemed to know that chasing cattle wasn't going to win him friends. More than likely, he had either paid the price for it or had had a narrow escape. Dogs who chase cattle on Navajo lands are routinely shot. Maybe he had been creased by a bullet or perhaps someone had given him a second chance, letting him off with a sound beating. That could have been why he had flinched when I raised the stick. The dog now appeared to be waiting stoically for our reprimand, and perhaps that's why he had tried to appease me by licking my mouth.