Merle's Door

by Ted Kerasote

  "Merle," I said in a soft low voice. "Merle." He gave me another quick look, one brow up, the other down.

  "Will that name work for you?"

  The dog looked away, downriver, trying to ignore me. Then he began to tremble, not from his cold swim, but in fear.

  In central and southern Italy during the 1980s, about 800,000 free-ranging dogs lived around villages, among cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, deer, boar, hare, other domestic dogs, and wild wolves. To estimate the impact these free-ranging dogs were having on livestock and wildlife, and particularly on the small, endangered wolf population, a team of biologists captured, radio-collared, and then observed one group of dogs in the Velino-Sirente Mountains of Abruzzo. The group consisted of nine adults—four males and five females—to whom forty pups were eventually born, only two surviving into adulthood, a testimony to the many dangers the freeranging dogs faced as they eked out a livelihood. They were killed by people—primarily herders—as well as by foxes, wolves, and predatory birds.

  Contrary to popular belief, the biologists discovered that the dogs didn't prey on wildlife or livestock. Instead, they scavenged at garbage dumps, as did most of the wolves. Since large groups of dogs prevented the smaller packs of wolves from feeding, the wolves sometimes went hungry. The researchers also noted that a small percentage of the dogs hunted deer and other wildlife, their prey varying by locale. In the Galápagos Islands, for instance, free-ranging dogs had been seen to prey on marine iguanas. On occasion, the Italian researchers added, such dogs were known to take down livestock, especially calves.

  Among these dogs there were some individuals the researchers described as "stray" and others as "feral." The two are quite distinct. "Stray dogs," the scientists wrote, "maintain social bonds with humans, and when they do not have an obvious owner, they still look for one. Feral dogs live successfully without any contact with humans and their social bonds, if any, are with other dogs." Merle—for the name quickly stuck—was clearly a stray, and his previous experience with people had apparently left him both friendly and wary.

  Stepping ashore that evening, he kept a low profile, still trying to gauge our reaction to his cow-chasing incident from a distance. Even when I filled his bowl with kibble, he studied me with caution. I slapped my hip and called, "Come on, chow's on." I rattled the bowl, put it down, clapped my hands, and extended them to his dinner.

  His mistrust evaporated in an instant. Bounding forward, he devoured his food. When he was done, he let me rub his flanks. I put my face between his shoulder blades and blew a noisy breath into his fur. This made him wriggle in delight. Then I opened my lunch bag and cut him a piece of elk summer sausage. He plumped his bottom in the sand, whisking his tail back and forth as I handed him the tidbit. He took it from my fingers with care.

  I knew that I was probably sending him a mixed message, since elk and cattle are both red meat. But if he and I stayed together, I reckoned we could sort this out in time.

  During the next few days, he rode on the cooler and swam among the kayaks. He slept between us and sat around the stove, as polite and amiable a dog as one could wish for. The river became wilder, losing itself in deep canyons, and no more cattle appeared to tempt him. We also kept the latrine covered. Merle would follow us to it and sit a ways off, his expression turning wistful when the user of the latrine rose and closed its lid.

  Once, after we climbed to an overlook high above the river, Benj, who is an avid herpetologist, caught a desert spiny lizard. I had seen Merle chase several jackrabbits—unsuccessfully—but when Benj offered him the ten-inch-long lizard, its tongue flicking in and out, to gauge his reaction, Merle backed up several paces, his eyes filled with worry. "That is a dangerous animal," they seemed to say, which was somewhat true—although desert spiny lizards eat mainly insects, and sometimes other lizards, they have powerful jaws that can inflict a nasty bite. Benj brought the lizard closer to him, but Merle would have nothing of it. He snorted several times, continuing to back up.

  "Maybe he got bit by one," Benj said, "or just doesn't like reptiles."

  A couple of days later, I saw Merle behave in a way that lent some credence to both of Benj's guesses. As Merle and I walked along a bench above the river our path joined that of a sidewinder rattlesnake, its trail curving through the sand. Merle took in a noseful of the spoor, lifted his head sharply, and studied the terrain ahead with concern.

  "Snake," I said, trying to teach him the English word.

  He glanced back at me, only the very tip of his tail moving, acknowledging what I had said. Then he took several steps to the side of the sidewinder's trail and walked parallel to it, keeping his eyes peeled.

  On our way back to camp, we passed some coyote scat—two turds, each about four inches long and an inch in diameter. Merle's reaction to them was entirely different. He gave the coyote poop a sniff, then poked at the turds with his right paw, his nails taking them apart. He gave them another deep smell, like a wine connoisseur who has swirled his glass and is appreciating the wine's bouquet. His gaze became excited.

  "Coyoté," I said, giving the word its Spanish pronunciation.

  He wagged his tail hard, cocked his leg, and squirted the coyote turds before enthusiastically scraping his hind legs over them. Puffing himself up, he trotted down the trail with his head swiveling dramatically from side to side, his entire body language announcing, "I will beat the living shit out of you if I find you."

  His familiarity with the creatures of the desert impressed me; his burnished golden coat attracted me; his eyes wooed me. Yet for all the time we spent together, and despite sleeping by my side, Merle wasn't overt in his affections. He didn't put his head on anyone's lap; he didn't lick; he didn't offer his paw. Though still a pup, he was reserved and dignified. Life had taught him that trust needed to be earned.

  On our last morning, as we came in sight of the muddy beach at Clay Hills and our waiting cars, which a shuttle company had driven down for us, I began to wonder whether this stray dog, with his mixture of fear and equanimity, would stick around or head off into the desert. I had once met a stray dog in Nepal whom I had thought was attached to me, but he had fooled me completely.

  Like Merle, he simply appeared, walking into our camp in the remote Hunku Valley that lies beneath the great divide on which Mt. Everest looms. A young, black-and-brown Tibetan Mastiff, what Tibetans call a Do Khyi, he also had good manners and a highly evolved sense of how to feather his nest. He tagged along, eating our food and sleeping pressed to my sleeping bag, as my two companions and I trekked up the valley.

  At the head of the valley, as we entered an icefall, the dog (whom we had named simply "the Khyi") went off to the left. Shortly he returned, sending us beseeching looks as he ran off again, trying to get us to follow him. We ignored him, keeping to our path, which we could see from the map was the direct route to the pass we had to climb. Many torturous hours later, we emerged from the icefall, only to find the Khyi, sitting there, waiting for us, an "I told you so" look on his face. Clearly, he had been this way before and knew a shortcut.

  The next day we had to climb the Amphu Labtsa, a pass at the head of the valley that is the only way to exit the Hunku without retracing your steps. It's nineteen thousand feet above sea level, and to approach it you have to ascend increasingly steep snowfields, which the Khyi, still at our heels, navigated handily. However, when the last snowfield turned into a gully full of ice bulges, the Khyi was stopped short. We had fixed ropes for our four porters, and I brought up the rear, "jumaring" on the rope (using a mechanical device with teeth to assist in the ascent) and pushing the Khyi ahead of me, boosting him over the ice bulges.

  At last, we came to a bulge too long and steep for the Khyi to surmount even with a push from me. He sat, unable to go up or down. Had he attempted to do either, he surely would have slipped and tumbled to his death. Like Merle, he was a four-eyed dog, with two tan patches on his black forehead, directly above his very brown eyes. He was unable to move them
independently, as Merle could, yet, when furrowed, they gave him an expression of sobriety and command. Now, they seemed to say, "You know what we have to do."

  I took off my pack and opened it wide. Since the ropes and ice-climbing gear were being employed on the mountain, I now had extra room. Lifting the Khyi by his armpits, I slipped him into the pack tail-first. He didn't protest in the least, and I continued up the ropes. He wasn't quite as big as Merle, maybe forty-five pounds. Still, given the other gear I was carrying, it meant I was toting about sixty-five pounds. Occasionally, the load pulled me off my stance, my crampons scraping across the ice as I swung on the rope.

  The Khyi didn't stir. When I looked around, he met my eye and gave me a steady look, unfazed by the steep angle. Not once did he lick me.

  At the top, we cramponed along the ridge crest, searching for an exit and discovering that we were at an impasse. The only negotiable descent was via a ledge whose far edge connected to a steep snowfield that in turn led to the glacier and valley far below. However, the ledge was about a hundred feet below us and we couldn't climb down to it, a fact that was brought home to us by one of the porters who, shifting his backpack nervously, dropped his sleeping bag. We watched it grow smaller and smaller as it tumbled several thousand feet through space until it hit the glacier.

  The only way down, we could see, was to follow the sleeping bag's fall—a free rappel, with nothing beneath our feet but the dizzying drop. Since my friends had led up, I offered to lead down. When I swung off into space, aiming for the tiny ledge, the Khyi, immobile till then, gave a small whine. Braking myself on the rope, I turned and saw him peering down into the abyss, his eyes enormously wide. He glanced at me and whined again. He did not like the exposure.

  When I reached the two-foot-wide ledge, I let him out of the pack, for he had begun to struggle. He ran several feet to the right, where the ledge ended, and a dozen feet to the left, where it merged into the steep snowfield on which it was obvious he'd get no purchase with his claws. He sat down, looking as if the wind had been knocked out of him, and stared to the distant valley. When the others arrived, he came over to me, sat by my pack, and let me put him in it. This was a dog without illusions.

  We did two more rappels before the steep angle of the snowfield lessened. I took the Khyi from my pack, and without so much as a backward glance he ran off into the approaching night, his dark form vanishing on the glacier below.

  Out of water, almost out of food, we camped in a sandy swale, glad to be down and looking forward to the morning, when we could cross the glacier and moraine in safety. When the sun rose, we found a trickle of ice melt, and as we sat drinking our tea who should come trotting up but the Khyi. He greeted each person briefly with his plume of waving tail, then came and sat before me. Looking me in the eyes, he raised his paw. I clasped him on the shoulder, and he put his paw on my arm in a comradely gesture. He stared into my eyes for a long moment, then whirled and disappeared among the ice.

  I never saw him again, though a good friend of mine met him the next climbing season when the Khyi approached his camp only a few miles from where he had departed from us. He was convivial and well mannered, and attached himself to my friend's party, accompanying them to Island Peak's 20,300-foot-high summit.

  Now, as we floated toward Clay Hills, I watched Merle sitting on the cooler and wondered whether he'd walk off into the desert to await the next group of river runners—like the Khyi, a canine adventurer and opportunist, a professional stray, a dog who liked scenic trips, his luminous eyes having said to how many others, "I am yours ... for some elk sausage and a free ride."

  We de-rigged the raft and loaded it in Benj's truck. We lashed down the kayaks, and Merle watched our every move with attention and without the least inclination to take off. We gathered in a circle, and he looked at us quizzically.

  "What should we do with him?" I asked.

  Pam had a little Husky named Kira and couldn't take on another dog. Bennett wasn't sure of his future. Benj lived and worked at the Teton Science School, where dogs weren't allowed, and Kim said a dog didn't fit into her lifestyle. I wondered whether a dog really fit into mine, and what I might do with him when I traveled on assignments. When I voiced this concern, Pam and Benj volunteered to dogsit.

  Merle stared at me from under his crinkled brows. The thought of leaving him on this riverbank suddenly struck me as one of the great blunders I might make in my life.

  "You want to become a Wyoming dog?" I asked him, thinking of how his back had felt against mine in the night and the expression on his face when he had realized that the howls echoing from the canyon walls were his own.

  He gave his tail a slow, uncertain swish, having read the somewhat uneasy tenor of our discussion.

  Our decision was delayed momentarily as Pam and Bennett, needing to be off, began a round of hugs with us. After they had driven off, Kim climbed into the truck, as did Benj. I held the door open for Merle. "Let's go. You're a Wyoming dog now—if you want."

  A warm, sloppy grin spread across his face: "Me? You mean me?"

  "Yep, I mean you," I said gently. "Come on, let's go home."

  He bounded in, and settled himself behind the front seats on the floor.

  An hour later, I turned around and said, "Hey, you guys, how you doing back there?"

  Kim gave a thumbs-up, and Merle, who had fallen asleep, opened one eye and gave me a contented thump of his tail.

  Chapter 2

  The First Dog

  We left Kim in Moab, where she picked up her truck and drove east to Colorado. We headed north, stopping on the pass between Vernal, Utah, and Flaming Gorge Reservoir in the time-honored tradition of all male travelers for a roadside pee.

  Merle took a few sniffs along the shoulder and, more particular about where he should relieve himself than Benj or me, moved off a few paces and urinated for an incredibly long time. When done, he looked up at the snowbanks—still piled alongside the road from the winter's plowing—and an expression of happiness suffused his face. Without a glance at us, he bounded to the top of the nearest one and stood at its summit, a good fifteen feet above our heads, wagging his tail slowly at Benj and me until he was certain that we were looking at him. Then, much as he had launched himself off the raft in pursuit of the cattle—front and rear legs extended—he leapt into the air and landed with a belly flop on the snowbank's sloping face, which was firm, smooth, and slippery in the spring sunshine. Like an otter, front legs before him, rear legs trailing, he slid downward, steering himself by pushing and pulling with his front paws so as to make gliding turns. At the lip of the bank, he went airborne again, landing lightly on all four paws and giving us a huge grin. Shaking off the moisture from his fur, he wagged his tail so hard that it slapped his flanks.

  "Are you a ski dog as well?" I asked him.

  By way of an answer, he galloped to the top of the snowbank, once again made sure we were watching him, then repeated his performance. This time, however, when he got to the edge of the snowbank, he braked himself with his front paws, slid sideways, rolled over, and rubbed his back in ecstasy on the snow, all four paws waving in the air. Then he threw himself to his feet, shook again, and looked at us with an expression that said, "That was the best!"

  "There's a lot more of that in Wyoming," I told him, holding open the door of the truck for him.

  Looking refreshed and restored, he jumped in and sprawled across the backseat.

  "Better?" I asked him.

  Thump, thump, thump went his tail.

  Turning forward, I stared at the road ahead, cutting north through pines and mountains, and I wondered, as I often had, about how much pleasure dogs and humans give each other and when their destinies first intertwined. Many popular and scholarly writers have repeated a version of Merle's and my first meeting: A wolf walks out of the night into a campfire-lit scene, sniffs at some humans who smell of aurochs or mammoth, and snatches a scrap of meat tossed its way. The reality of the first interaction betwee
n wild dogs and humans was probably more complicated than this.

  For starters, it isn't necessarily true that it was a wolf who threw in its lot with humans. It might have been a coyote or a jackal. Charles Darwin, whose work frequently returns to the subject of dogs and their domestication, noted that numerous domestic breeds around the world resemble specific wild canid species. He therefore believed that domestic dogs had a variety of wild ancestors. A century later, Konrad Lorenz, one of the founders of modern ethology and famous for having demonstrated that young geese could be imprinted upon a human, agreed. In his classic work Man Meets Dog, he maintained that certain breeds, such as German Shepherds, whom he called "Lupus" dogs, were the descendants of wolves, whereas such breeds as Poodles and Cocker Spaniels had golden jackals for progenitors. "The submissiveness of the childish jackal dog," Lorenz wrote, "is matched in the Lupus dog by a proud man-to-man loyalty that includes little submission and less obedience."

  This notion—that dogs had their origins in several wild canid species whose traits re-expressed themselves in modern breeds—was steadily eroded, however, by a growing body of fossil evidence. When excavated, early dog bones looked a lot like wolf bones from the same region. The evidence, though, was literally fragmentary—part of a jaw from one site, a skull discovered in another, a foot in a third. The entire skeleton of a puppy, dating from twelve thousand years ago, was unearthed in northern Israel in the mid-1970s, and its excavators were hard-pressed to say whether it was that of a young wolf or a young dog. Then, in the 1990s, Robert K. Wayne, a molecular biologist at UCLA, and his team of researchers applied mitochondrial DNA analysis to the centuries-old question.