Merle's Door

by Ted Kerasote

  Merle, and those other dogs who were never caught, could hardly be said to be nervous—far from it—so perhaps a better description of their ability to avoid danger is "cautiously suspicious." In times gone by, if you lacked this trait you were quickly eliminated from the population by predators. But even the most cautious of animals occasionally makes a mistake. Merle made his as he walked from Donald's and Gladys's house to our own, across the school bus turnout where a variety of repair trucks parked during the day, their drivers sitting in their cabs and making phone calls. Merle walked in front of one of these parked trucks. Later, when I reflected on the incident, it occurred to me that his recognition of the dogcatcher's vehicle must have been primarily acoustic rather than visual. The door of the truck opened. Nothing unusual in this—many of these service people gave him biscuits. The dogcatcher stepped out and nabbed him.

  I've often questioned why the dogcatcher, a stocky and unsmiling man, walked Merle across the road to my office door instead of taking him directly to the pound. Perhaps it had something to do with Merle's having become a well-known dog by this time, not only in Kelly but also in Jackson, a result of his house sitters taking him with them when they went into town.

  Weeks later, I'd be hiking along some trail with Merle and people whom I didn't know would stop us. Merle and these people would greet each other warmly, then the people would introduce themselves by saying, "We've never met you, but Merle has spent a couple of days at our house," or "We've hiked Snow King with Merle," or, the topper, "We went shopping with Merle in Idaho Falls." Perhaps the dogcatcher had some sense that hauling such a well-liked dog to the lockup without a second chance might be bad PR.

  He held Merle by a collar that he had slipped over his head. Panting frantically, Merle looked desperate. Right then, I was pretty sure that he and the dogcatcher hadn't gone shopping together in The Falls. I slid open the glass door and immediately took the collar off Merle's neck. He sprang inside.

  "Thank you," I told the dogcatcher, trying to keep my voice pleasant despite my anger at him for disrupting Kelly's dog paradise. Then, unable to control myself, I added, "But he knows the way home on his own."

  We looked at each other.

  The dogcatcher said, "You know dogs aren't supposed to be unleashed."

  I took a breath. For whatever his reasons, the dogcatcher had spared Merle some time in the pound and saved me a trip to town as well as the fine.

  "I know," I said, deciding not to argue, "and I appreciate your bringing him home. That was kind of you."

  Perhaps I had surprised him. He didn't say another word. So I nodded and slid the glass door closed respectfully. The dogcatcher walked to his truck.

  Turning to Merle, I said, "How do you do it, Sir?"

  "Ha-ha-ha," he panted gleefully, pumping his paws up and down at his escape. "That was a close one!"

  He was a hard dog to treat like a dog, even, I suppose, for the dogcatcher.

  A few more weeks went by, the white truck of the dogcatcher cruising the village every other day. Then, suddenly, he was never seen again. The cutting horse instructor may have stopped complaining, or perhaps the county finally got the message from Kelly's angry dog owners: Since we lived in the park, let the park's policy about dogs prevail. It was both a simple and a fair one: No trouble from the dogs, no need to leash them.

  Chapter 13

  The Alpha Pair

  Like all couples, Merle and I had to make compromises. Most often, at least in the summer, they were about fishing.

  Taking a fly rod from the shed, I'd ask him, "Want to come?"

  In return he'd give me a long-suffering look that I had come to know well. That slender cane in my hand meant that nothing exciting was about to happen. We'd walk to the river—good enough—and then I would proceed to stand in the water, walking, if you could call it that, upstream at a pace that would try the patience of a snail.

  And all this to catch a trout. The first time I caught one in his presence, and he picked it off the shoreline, he dropped it immediately, holding his mouth open and gagging, "Ugh." He sent me a look of complete disgust: "May such slime never touch my mouth again." Turning, he immediately went to the river and had a long drink.

  Despite his dislike of trout—at least ungrilled ones—he would come along with me, pausing to smell the flowers and gaze at birds flying across the sky, while sending me beseeching looks: "We could go on a nice hike, you know." Then, at the river, he'd wait on the bank as I cast, sighing intermittently, his entire slumped posture saying, "Have I told you how bored I am yet?" One hour was his limit. Then he'd wag his tail slightly, as if to say, "I've paid my dues. See you at home." And off he'd go.

  In the winter, it was my turn to be patient. After I had skied a slope and had stopped to put on my skins for the ascent, he'd come swooping by me, laughing and ignoring my "Hey, this is where we're stopping. Merle!" Down, down, down, he'd continue, finally halting where the gradient left off. Tail whipping feverishly, he'd indicate, "Oh, my god! You don't know what you're missing. Come on down!" Of course, he wouldn't make the slightest effort to climb back up, for he'd learned the hard way that he'd only flounder in snow that light and deep. He'd wait for me to ski down to him and break the uptrail. I hadn't wanted to descend that far because my energy for breaking trail wasn't limitless and I had other slopes in mind to ski that day. But he wanted to ski more of this slope, and so I obliged him.

  Then there were those days when he wouldn't come when I called him. Instead, he'd look at me from afar and wag his tail with ever-increasing intensity, meaning "It's you, my friend, not I, who should come. I've found something fascinating, and I think you'll enjoy it."

  Some dog owners would look upon this sort of behavior as an act of flagrant disobedience and wouldn't tolerate it, but I saw it as my being affiliated with a dog who knew as much about the country and its animals as I did, sometimes more. By listening to him, I frequently learned things I never would have known. Walking to where he was, I'd see wolf sign, bear sign, weasel prints, perhaps a hidden grouse, or elk in the distance.

  Once, coming up to him, I found him standing over a line of superimposed prints in the snow. A wolf had been tracking an elk, placing its paws precisely in the elk's deeper hoofprints, and thus saving energy. Merle swished his tail at me: "Pretty interesting, eh?" Another time, as we hurried down a trail, a forest fire not far behind us, he stopped and stared to the right. I looked behind us to the smoke-covered sky. He didn't move when I kept going, raising his eyebrows at me with that look of "better pay attention." I followed his gaze, and there, not sixty feet from the trail, stood a large black grizzly bear, his front paws balanced on a log, his rear ones on the ground, as he stared at us intently. As soon as the bear saw my gaze fall upon him, he turned so slowly that it appeared he might be melting. Oozing over the log behind him, he quickened his pace and vanished in the tangled deadfall. Looking down, I met Merle's eyes and he gave me the patient look that a parent gives a child: "See, you almost missed that."

  The most unforgettable instance of Merle's disobedience opening a new horizon for both of us came around the summer solstice. Tinker had been in the corral for a couple of days and I at my desk, and both of us were itching for a gallop. We headed into the great prairie northwest of Kelly with Merle leading the way. I let Tinker have his head and he took us on a canter of a couple of miles, stopping finally to blow and graze. Removing his bridle, I lay on my back, looking at the dusking sky and breathing in the fresh smell of the new grass. Shortly, I felt Merle snuggle against my side and put his chin on my chest. Then we both fell asleep.

  I awoke with a sense of being watched. Thirty yards off sat a coyote, gazing at us. I met the coyote's eyes and instead of fleeing, it walked closer, not in a straight line but in an arc, first away, then closer, until it was twenty yards off.

  At that moment Merle awoke, instantly spied the coyote, and hurtled toward it. The coyote turned and fled.

  "Merle, no!" I shouted, think
ing that the coyote might lead him toward a waiting pack.

  Both of them vanished over a small rise.

  I called Tinker, bridled him, and rode after Merle. Within two hundred yards, we found him. Trotting toward us, he was trailed by two coyotes, only thirty feet behind him. The three dogs seemed easy with each other, as if all the animosity between the two species had been laid to rest. A moment later they proved it. Merle turned and followed the coyotes, not chasing them in anger but in play. The coyotes loped off, then reversed course and followed Merle. He set off with a little hop and a shake of his head, as if to say, "This is amazing! Who would have believed it—playing with coyotes!" Within a hundred yards, he made a lazy circle back upon the coyotes and bounded after them as they sauntered off, exhibiting the same sort of body language: "This is fun! Playing with a dog!"

  I could not help but join in. Clucking Tinker into a trot, we followed them a ways only to have the two coyotes turn around and chase us. Round and round we went, circling under the darkening sky, horse, dog, man, and coyotes playing until the stars came out and the coyotes set a course for the mountains, their quickened pace saying, "Bye-bye for now."

  I leaned off my saddle and said to Merle, "Well, does this mean you've reached a détente with these two coyotes, or with all coyotes?"

  Wag-wag-wag went his tail: "Let's wait and see."

  These, then, were some of the times I was quite pleased to have a dog who didn't always respond to "Merle, come!" There were other times, though, when I wasn't so pleased. I would go to where he stood only to find nothing—no tracks, no poop, not a sign of wildlife, at least none that I could discern. But, obviously, whatever he had scented was important to him.

  Of course, when I knew perfect obedience was necessary—as in downtown Seattle—I took no chances and kept him on a leash. Could I have trained him so that no matter the circumstances he would have immediately answered my call? I believe I could have, for it's the rare individual who can't be reinforced to follow simple commands even though one may not be able to turn him into a rocket scientist as John Watson claimed. But such training—which would have made my commands into absolute law—inevitably would have changed Merle's and my relationship. We would have become the sort of dog–human couple that millions of dog owners aspire to: an alpha human giving orders to a subordinate dog, orders that must always be obeyed.

  This model has been said to mimic the pack structure of wolves—a hierarchical one in which an alpha individual runs the show—and is thus recommended by countless dog trainers as a natural way to produce happy dogs and harmony in the home. I would agree that being an alpha to your dog is one way to enforce order. I doubt, however, that it always produces the happiest of dogs or, if we were to examine the situation objectively, real harmony. In fact, what it often produces is a simmering conflict between the social ambitions of the maturing dog and the human who believes that the dog sincerely welcomes staying a perpetual child. When the dog then goes ballistic—chewing furniture, peeing on the carpet, barking, or engaging in power struggles with its human—dog experts offer a variety of reasons for the sudden appearance of these dysfunctional behaviors: The dog is bored, it needs more exercise, it's anxious, or it's trying to be the dominant individual in the relationship and needs to be put in its place; if he's an uncut dog, castrate him. Daily exercise with other dogs can certainly help to reduce these sorts of dysfunctional behaviors, but—and this may say a lot about the blinders we wear—no one ever makes the suggestion that something natural is going on. The dog wants not dominance, but equality. No one ever makes this suggestion because it sounds preposterous. After all, it's only a dog, right? And the dog's genetic ancestor, the wolf, puts its subordinates in their place all the time. The only problem with basing dog training on wolf society is that many of our notions about how wolves live have recently been overturned. In short, wolves live more egalitarian lives than any of us suspected.

  One reason why this aspect of wolf society has remained unknown is that much of our knowledge about wolves has been based on watching captive packs in zoos. As David Mech, one of the world's most experienced wolf biologists, has commented, "Attempting to apply information about the behavior of assemblages of unrelated captive wolves to the familial structure of natural packs has resulted in considerable confusion. Such an approach is analogous to trying to draw inferences about human family dynamics by studying humans in refugee camps. The concept of the alpha wolf as a 'top dog' ruling a group of similar-aged compatriots is particularly misleading."

  Mech was one of several biologists who, at the end of the twentieth century, began to watch wild wolves in a different way. On Ellesmere Island, he was able to habituate a pack to his presence and study their behavior over several generations from a distance of only a few feet. And, in Yellowstone National Park, every Canadian wolf released during the reintroduction program of 1995–1996 wore a radio collar, as did a majority of their offspring in the ensuing decade. These collars have allowed park biologists to track and to watch wolves from the air on a daily basis without disturbing them.

  Such intimate observations have added depth and complexity to our traditional views of wolf society, in particular the idea that wolf packs are rigidly hierarchical. Instead, researchers have seen alpha male and alpha female wolves sharing leadership—making decisions on a relatively equal basis about where to hunt, what to hunt, and when to move the pack. Douglas Smith, the head of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, also recounts how in captivity alpha wolves eat first, then beta wolves, and so on down the pecking order. "But in the wild," he says, "we've never observed anything like that." Instead, he's photographed nine wolves eating an elk they had just killed while the alpha male slept to the side. In another instance, he's seen an alpha female having to force her way into the kill between her offspring.

  Smith also likes to point out that the long-standing persecution of wolves has destroyed their natural pack structure and left us with the false impression that wolf society is typically composed of an alpha male, an alpha female, and their pups of the year—what he calls "the simple pack." However, when wolves have been protected, "multi-generational packs" have developed. "These," he says, "have a deep bench." In addition to having an alpha male and female, and their subordinate pups of the year, multi-generational packs contain two-, three-, and four-year-old wolves who are no longer completely subordinate to their parents. "These older, non-alpha wolves know what they're doing," he explains. "They're experienced and can lead, kill, and defend the pack, and they do."

  What's even more fascinating, according to Smith, is that there are many times when the wolves in a pack will be unable to agree on what to do. "When that happens," he says, "everybody usually does what the alphas are doing—most of the time. But if some wolves don't want to go along with the alphas, nothing happens to them. They just go off in a different way. But try and breed with the wrong wolf," he adds, "like an alpha's mate, you will get your ass kicked. This suggests to me that wolf society has an organized structure but also has free will."

  Furthermore, it's important to note that even though the alpha male and female are dominant over their particular sex group, the younger female wolves deferring to the alpha female and the younger male wolves deferring to the alpha male, these relationships aren't static. Wolf families develop just like human ones: When children mature they, too, get to lead. In other words, rank is neither innate nor molded early. Instead, as Mech has written, "All young wolves are potential breeders and ... when they do breed they automatically become alphas."

  In this regard, submission can be seen in an entirely different light. It's a passage, not an enduring characteristic, and it serves a useful purpose. Juveniles that behave solicitously are more likely to gain access to food defended by adults. This enhances their nutritional condition and gives them a better chance, when they disperse, to form their own packs and become alphas. Submission is also necessary for survival—someone needs to coordinate group hunting. But as the cu
ltural anthropologist Constance Perin has noted, "The 'submissiveness' of dogs below the 'top dog' signals more their location and cooperative role in this food-getting system than it does 'being dominated.'" She goes on to say that dogs' relationships with people mirror their relationships to litter-mates, who, in the wild, are "contemporaries."

  Scott and Fuller said something similar in their study on the social behavior of dogs, noting how such equal footing can be achieved as dogs and humans interact: "When socialized to people, both dogs and wolves transfer to human beings the social relationships which they would normally develop with their own kind insofar as this is permitted by their owners."

  These social relationships, wolf researchers have now seen, are far more complex, dynamic, and shifting than that of a dominant individual laying down the law for subordinates. However, most dog owners, having heard the mantra of "be a strong alpha" for so long, quite understandably reproduce a pack structure that's dysfunctionally skewed toward dominance rather than cooperation. One of the best examples of the strife such a pack faces was demonstrated in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley from 1997 to 2000. During these years, the alpha female of the Druid Pack, Wolf 40, ruled over the other females of the pack with an iron paw, constantly harassing and even savaging them. Given their subordinate behavior, one would have thought that none of them had any leadership potential whatsoever. Yet, on a night after which Number 40 gave a particularly ferocious mauling to Wolf 42, the tide turned for this aggressive leader. The badly mauled wolf, along with several other subordinate wolves, ganged up on the matriarch and killed her. Wolf 42 then stepped into the role of alpha female, but with one crucial difference: Her personality was the antithesis of her predecessor's. Gentle and magnanimous, she raised Wolf 40's pups in addition to her own and also welcomed the low-ranking Wolf 106 and her pups into the pack's den. Under Wolf 42's leadership, Wolf 106 blossomed. She became the finest hunter in the Druid Pack and eventually the leader of her own pack, the Geode Creek Pack, where she, too, instituted a benevolent reign.