Merle's Door

by Ted Kerasote

  Stiffly, he got to his feet and it was then that I noticed he was lying in a pool of blood.

  Dropping the book, I knelt by him and parted the hair on his shoulder. The white Shepherd had slashed him down to the scapula.

  "Oh, Merle," I moaned. "That looks really bad."

  He regarded me stoically. I ran to the bathroom, got some compresses, and began to apply pressure. Picking him up, so he wouldn't have to walk and open the wound further, I put him in the car and drove to the vet.

  Several stitches later, we drove back through Kelly and by the white Shepherd's house. Merle jumped up and growled menacingly.

  "Hey," I said, "you won. Look."

  The white Shepherd, her standard-colored companion, and the two cars were gone. The shades were drawn, the house deserted.

  Still, every time we rode by the white Shepherd's house, whether in the car or by bike, Merle would pant hoarsely, his hair standing on end, his eyes blazing.

  When this had happened a half dozen times, I stopped and straddled my bike. "Look, Señor," I told him, "she is really gone. I saw a For Rent sign at the post office. Go ahead and take a look." I motioned with my hand to the front door.

  Gingerly, he crossed the lawn and smelled where the white Shepherd had lain on the grass, the stone steps leading to the lintel, and the front door itself. He glanced back at me and a slow smile crossed his face: "Yep, she's gone."

  Then he raised his leg and peed on the steps. Scratching mightily, he cast dirt against the door.

  He trotted smartly to my side and off we went. He didn't pant in triumph or wag his tail jubilantly. Instead, his face wore a satisfied look of accomplishment. Perhaps, I thought, he hadn't been far off the mark when he had told me, "Don't sweat it, Ted, I got it wired." The white Shepherd had left, peace had returned to the world of Kelly's dogs, and he was never in another dogfight as long as he lived.

  On the day the floor finishers put the final coat of polyurethane on the pine floors, I walked over from the trailer to have a look. During the months in which the house had been built, many people had stopped by and walked through the house, since it wasn't every day a new log home went up in Kelly. To prevent such visitors from inadvertently stepping on the newly finished floors, I had asked the floor finishers to lock the sliding doors to the deck and the front door when they left. But I had forgotten to mention the dog door.

  Opening the front door, I saw a line of dog prints, each print with its four toes and large central pad pressed deeply into the still tacky polyurethane. The line of prints walked to the wood stove, stopped, did a cloverleaf to the main window of the great room and looked outside, then walked back across the room and into the hallway. When I raised my eyes, there was Merle, standing on the balcony above the great room, his head between two balusters as he grinned down at me and wagged his tail with great enthusiasm: "This looks terrific."

  I sighed. "Come on down, please," I said, gesturing to him with a curled index finger. He whirled and I heard him bounding down the stairs. Across the great room he ran, leaving another set of tracks.

  "Ah, Sir," I said, kneeling before him and giving him a pet as he stuck his head against my chest. "I'm glad it meets with your approval."

  Several days later, when the floor had fully dried, the floor finishers returned. They resanded and refinished the great room, the hall, the stairs, and the balcony—all of the balcony, that is, except the corner where Merle had stood, looking down at me and wagging his tail. I had asked them to leave his pawprints there. Years later, they're still there, overlooking the house he helped to build.

  By October, I'd gone through my budget and had to let the carpenters go. I did the rest of the finish work myself: the kitchen counters and cabinets, the daybed in the alcove, the mudroom, the balustrade for the stairs going to the second floor. On Halloween evening, I took off my nail belt, put some wood on the fire, opened a beer, and pulled a chair in front of the stove's blazing window. Merle lay at my feet. The house glowed around us, and he turned on his back and looked up at me out of the corner of his eye. Thump-thump-thump went his tail.

  "Yep," I agreed. "We done good."

  The only thing remaining was to bring what little furniture we had in the trailer, as well as Gray Cat, over to the new place. A couple of pickup truckloads moved all my kitchen stuff, the couch, and my books.

  It was now the first week in November and it had been snowing heavily for several days. Putting on leather gloves and a stout canvas jacket, I went back for Gray Cat. I had learned the hard way—on visits to the vet for Gray Cat's inoculations—that he hated to ride in vehicles. My hands and arms bore the scars of his anger.

  As I carried him from the trailer, and he spied the truck, he began to struggle and claw at me. I hustled him into the cab, and the moment I released him he launched himself against the window, bouncing off of it. I marveled that he hadn't broken his neck. He then set to yowling at the top of his lungs, as if he were being drawn and quartered.

  At the new house, I bundled him into my arms as he screeched and scratched me. Hurrying him across the porch and through the mudroom, I deposited him in the great room before the toasty woodstove.

  He looked around—up to the twenty-foot-high ridge log, to the beckoning alcove with its brightly colored throw and fluffy pillows, to the kitchen, to his bowls that I had put out, and he turned, walked directly to the front door, and, slap-slap, left.

  I ran after him. Plodding through the deep drifts, he was heading across the field to the trailer.

  "Gray Cat," I called.

  He looked back at me, eyes burning with hatred.

  I went inside and watched him from the great room's large picture window.

  "Can you believe that cat?" I said to Merle.

  Merle gazed out the window where I had pointed.

  Gray Cat, looking like Dr. Zhivago trying to find Lara, was disappearing into the wind-whipped snow.

  The next day I tried to bring him over again. The results were the same: He fled the house and plodded across the drifts, back to what he considered home.

  I shut off the heat at the trailer and gave him no food. I let three days go by and went back. He was curled in the corner of the trailer's living room. The place was freezing, and he looked weak and malnourished.

  "Gray Cat," I said, "please come to the new house. There is nothing here. It's over."

  I picked him up. The instant we stepped outside and he saw the truck, he fought me. I got him over to the new house and held him in my arms as I walked him around, showing him his bowls full of cat chow and water. When I let him down, he streaked out the cat door.

  Running after him, I pleaded, "Gray Cat."

  He ignored me, plowing through the drifts with an intensity that was hard to misread: "I would rather die in the trailer than live here."

  So be it.

  Seven and a half hours later, just as it was getting dark at four-thirty in the afternoon, I heard a meow, or thought I did. I gave it no mind. Shortly, there came another meow and another.

  Coming downstairs, I saw Gray Cat sitting on the back deck in front of the sliding glass door. I looked at him, and he looked directly at me. There was no humility in his expression. His expression said, "Open the door."

  Why he hadn't gone around to the cat door was an interesting question. It meant another fifty yards of travel through the deep snow, and perhaps Gray Cat was tired of playing Dr. Zhivago.

  I slid open the door and he walked in, glancing left, right, and up to the ceiling with the attitude of a discriminating buyer of high-end objects. Spying the alcove, he walked directly to it, sprang onto the daybed, turned to face Merle and me, lay down, took another glance around the great room, and began to lick his paws with a weary air that implied, "Well, this will have to do."

  "Gray Cat," I told him, "you are a piece of work."

  Unperturbed, he raised his head and stared at me. There was no apology in his eyes, no attempt at ingratiation. Every molecule of him said,
"Just remember, I am not that dog."

  Chapter 9

  Estrogen Clouds

  We kept a bachelor household, it's true; but it was hardly monkish. Merle had always welcomed female guests at the trailer, and our new location on the main road provided him with an expanded social network. There was Josie, a round and jolly chocolate Lab. There was Boone, a spry little Border Collie. There was Emmy, a soulful Golden Retriever. And, of course, there was his old flame, Zula, who made the trek across the field. But since all of them were neutered, nothing came of their friendship except exuberant play.

  Gray Cat, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with his own kind, male or female. He was a being about whom Charles Dickens's description of Ebenezer Scrooge seemed apt: "secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster." Sans balls—and as far as I could tell sans any passions besides hunting and snoozing—he left on his nightly forays, only to return at daybreak with the occasional offering of the tail end of a rodent at my bedside to show what he had been about. Cool and careful as a sniper, he never came home with a tattered ear or gashed forehead, some wound of honor demonstrating that he'd been in a territorial or mating fray.

  As for me, I carried only one major wound of the latter sort, and it had healed well. In fact, it seemed to have occurred in another lifetime. If I caught the whiff of estrogen blowing my way, I had no reservations about raising my nose and following, which, at least at the trailer, led to some amusing moments.

  Since I had no bed, my loves and I often found ourselves on the floor. There we'd be, going at it, when suddenly we'd feel a third party thrusting away behind us.

  Breaking into laughter, one woman said, "Do you do everything with your dog?"

  "Excuse me, Sir," I told Merle. "Could you find someplace else to go?"

  Grumpily, he curled up in the corner.

  Building a house with an actual bed thus conveyed some advantages to my love life, for Merle wouldn't climb on the bed without an invitation. The trailer, though, had given me a significant insight into my dog: Neutered or not, the only thing missing from his libido was the proper stimulus.

  It took me by no surprise, then, when I spied him solicitously guiding a little white-and-black dog toward the house one fine spring morning, his eyes star-struck, his tongue lolling out of his mouth in lustful appreciation of her perfume.

  He came through the dog door first, and the wee dog, a Jack Russell Terrier, vaulted in after him. They began to cavort around each other, and without further ado Merle crouched over her and attempted to copulate with her, an attempt that was somewhat hindered by the vast difference in their sizes. Merle had a profound erection, though, and, if his avid thrusts in the right area could be trusted, he appeared to know what he was doing.

  His behavior, despite not having his testicles, wasn't that unusual. Contrary to popular myth, castration—especially castration after a dog has matured—doesn't always affect his personality or his ability to work. It may make him more willing to accept authority from humans, but in many cases it doesn't prevent him from mounting and mating with bitches in heat, who appear to show no preference between cut and uncut dogs, as was being demonstrated by Ms. Jack Russell, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself.

  When she and Merle separated, she jumped up, placed her paws on his shoulders, and energetically licked his neck, ears, and cheeks. Merle looked at her adoringly.

  Walking over to them, I fingered her leather collar. On its brass nameplate was written "Shayla." Why Merle was so interested in her became immediately obvious. She was bleeding and most definitely in heat.

  "Quite the catch," I told Merle, who happily wagged his tail.

  I gave them each a dog biscuit and they devoured their treats before romping around the great room. They soon chased each other out the dog door and rolled on the grass before taking turns mounting each other. Shayla, of course, couldn't mount Merle while he was standing, so he lay down, and she thrust at his rear end before racing around to his nose and mounting his head.

  After about an hour of such antics, they lay on their sides, exhausted, their paws touching. Ten minutes later, they sprang up and went at it again. Several more hours went by.

  Watching Merle, I had to wonder at the reasoning of the person who had castrated him. Perhaps the person had bought in to the standard line of animal welfare organizations across the land, which is "Don't have unwanted puppies. Spay and neuter your dogs." And given that about two to four million dogs are euthanized each year in the United States and Canada alone, this reasoning is impossible to fault.

  But there are other ways to achieve the same end. If you have a male dog and you don't want him to become a dad, a laparoscopic vasectomy is a less invasive procedure than castration and an equally effective form of birth control. Most traditional vets, though, don't support vasectomies. They argue for castration because it eliminates roaming, which may save a dog from being hit by a car. Castration, some vets claim, also reduces the incidence of testicular cancer, hernias, and prostate problems.

  Likewise for female dogs. Vets routinely recommend spaying (the complete removal of ovaries and uterus) over tubal ligation (tying the tubes) or a hysterectomy (the removal of the uterus), both of which will prevent pregnancy and are far less demanding surgeries. The rationale for spaying is very similar to that used for males. With the elimination of bloody discharge and odors, the dog owner has a sanitary animal who doesn't attract male dogs. With her roaming urges reduced, the bitch will stay home and out of traffic. She's also protected from mammary, ovarian, and uterine cancer by the loss of her reproductive organs.

  However, in rural places, where there is little traffic, it seems hard to justify castration or spaying simply to protect a dog from the occasional car. Unless the dog is confined at all times, it will probably roam—that is the nature of dogs. As for preventing yet-to-arise diseases in our dogs, few of us—female or male—would willingly part with our own ovaries or testes to prevent a condition that may never appear. We'd rather keep our sex intact and address any problems when they arise, such as testicular cancer, which is quite treatable in both dogs and humans. Indeed, some vets believe that castrating dogs predisposes them to prostate cancers.

  Do our dogs feel similarly? Do they miss being sexed? These are hard questions to answer, but we can think of them in this way: If we were neutered before sexual maturity, we probably wouldn't miss what we didn't know. So may it be with our dogs.

  The more practical question to address, particularly for male dogs, concerns the efficacy of castration. Does it actually change unwanted behavior—roaming, mounting, urine marking in the house, and aggression toward other male dogs, the very sorts of behaviors that cause people to give up their dogs to shelters where they are subsequently euthanized? Timing seems to be key. In general, the earlier castration is done, the greater the likelihood of success, since the unwanted behaviors have yet to be established. Once such behaviors have been learned, they're far more difficult to eradicate, as was shown by a study done at the University of California Davis Center for Companion Animal Health. There, fifty-seven dogs were neutered for ongoing behavioral problems. Their behavior was then monitored over a five-year period. For the first three problems—roaming, mounting, and urine marking in the house—only 25 to 40 percent of the dogs showed any resolution. With aggression toward other dogs, one of the most common reasons cited by dog owners for castrating their animal, resolution of the problem was even lower: Only 10 to 15 percent of dogs who lost their balls also lost their desire to fight other males.

  Merle was a case in point: Castration had done nothing toward reducing his love of roaming. Whether it had reduced his willingness to fight other male dogs I couldn't say, since he never fought with any dog except the white Shepherd. Nor could I say whether he would have been a less loveable dog had he been entire. If his reaction to Shayla could be trusted, castration hadn't done a thing to cool his ardor for bitches in heat.

  And this posed a dilemma f
or me, albeit one more theoretical than practical. I was certain, having watched the huge affection between Zula and Merle that, had they not been sterilized, they would have mated. Chances are that their offspring would have been swift, beautiful creatures with a lot of their parents' energy and even temperaments. If Zula's humans would have welcomed the litter so would I, and I'm sure that we'd have seen to it that every puppy got a good home.

  As for the hypothetical offspring between Merle and Shayla, I wasn't as enthusiastic, for I like the Jack Russell personality less than that of the Vizsla. Yet Merle and Shayla were smitten with each other. It was also probable that, given Kelly's dog population, Merle hadn't been the first dog who had come knocking at Shayla's door. In other words, Shayla had chosen him, which is fairly common: Bitches can be quite discriminating, choosing only one dog among many suitors. In fact, lying on the wood floor of the great room while gazing deeply into each other's eyes, Merle and Shayla gave all appearances of being not only in a state of lust but also in a state of love.

  Some readers might find this observation suspect and put it down to my being one of those dog owners who can't differentiate between their own emotions and those of their dogs. However, Konrad Lorenz, who won a Nobel Prize in 1973 for his work on the organization of social behavior in animals, often spoke of his Greylag geese "falling in love." Occasionally, his colleagues took him to task for being anthropomorphic, and he would reply, "It is the accurate term for a real phenomenon for which there is no other name. I consider the term appropriate to any species, if that is in fact what they do."

  You've probably guessed where this discussion is going: Being an advocate of dogs having as much freedom as possible, I found myself hoisted on my own petard. I was willing to let Merle roam around Kelly and love whomever he desired, but I would have been more inclined to welcome his pups with Zula than those with Shayla. This was two-faced, I knew, but how many of us have breathed a secret sigh of relief when a close friend leaves off what we consider an inappropriate romance and marries someone else?