by Ted Kerasote
Such bloody confrontations rarely occur between humans and dogs. Rather, by a thousand different cuts—our control of ingress, egress, food, water, elimination, and fun—we reduce dogs to a state of quiet capitulation, a softened version of the Stockholm Syndrome, named after the Norrmalmstorg bank robbery of 1973, during which two ex-convicts held four bank employees hostage for five days. The victims became emotionally attached to their captors and subsequently defended them after they were freed from their ordeal. Two of the women even became engaged to two of the robbers.
The incident provoked a great deal of social research bent on discovering whether the reaction of the hostages was a freak incident or an example of a pervasive social condition. The latter proved to be the case, and the hallmarks of the syndrome—a powerful individual's coercing a captive into submission, and even the demonstration of affection—have now been identified in cases of dependent children, battered wives, prostitutes, prisoners of war, and victims of hijackings.
Obviously, most dog owners don't intend to harm their dogs in this way. The opposite is the case. If the $15 billion Americans spent on dog food alone in 2004 is any indication, most dog owners do their best to give their dogs happy and healthy lives. Yet it's difficult not to concede that virtually all dogs remain captives. Indeed, the activities they enjoy—roaming, seeing other dogs, and exploring interesting odors—are constantly thwarted by the demands of modern civilization and training methods that have been designed to bring about what one dog trainer, echoing the words of numerous others, has called "the reversal of millions of years of evolution and genetic propensity." Is the loyalty people then receive from their dogs true devotion, or the numbed reaction of captives to captors?
To begin to answer this question, consider just one in-vogue training method—crating. Dog experts of all persuasions counsel confining both puppies and adult dogs in crates to toilet train the young dog quickly (a dog doesn't like to soil its sleeping quarters) as well as to keep adult dogs calm. Jon Katz goes so far as to say that "dogs are den animals" and that a crate "approximates the dim, cozy den that a dog would inhabit in the wild." He adds that "left out in the wild, almost every dog would seek out a space very much like a crate and voluntarily make it his headquarters."
Such claims need to be put into perspective. The researchers who studied feral dogs in central Italy, for instance, didn't see "almost every dog" seeking out a den. What they discovered was that only females and their pups used them. The same holds true for wild wolf packs—only the alpha female regularly occupies a den, and then only during the period in which she gives birth and is nursing. Even her mate will only occasionally enter the den. The other wolves in a pack don't seek out shelter. They sleep in the open, or beneath underbrush if it's very stormy.
Yet, on occasion, domestic dogs do build dens. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas recounts how her dogs, when confined to an expansive pen next to her house, created a den large enough for four of them by digging into the side of a hill. They undertook this lengthy excavation despite her having provided them with what she calls "substantial shelters," some of them outfitted with small doors and filled with hay and cedar shavings. She suggests that her dogs made their own den because of the need of group-living mammals to create a spot that acts as a meeting place and focuses the group's energies and attention. In addition, she points out that the den had its practical side in the muggy and buggy climate of Virginia: It had a constant temperature as well as protection from mosquitoes, sun, and wind. Nonetheless, Thomas observed that when all four of her dogs occupied the den, only the last dog to enter its narrow tunnel stayed voluntarily. It would emerge "calm and refreshed" from its nap while the rest of the dogs, whose free exit had been blocked, popped out looking "very agitated." Thomas then goes on to say something telling. The calmest moments her dogs experienced weren't when they were in the den, but when she and they lay outside together, gazing from a hilltop to the forest below.
Merle also seemed his most serene while watching distant landscapes from high overlooks. As for dens, he took his lead from wolves. In the thirteen years I traveled with him in the backcountry—from Arizona's canyons to the Canadian Rockies—the only shelter I saw him seek out was that of streams when it got really hot and evergreens when it was snowing hard. He scraped out a nest beneath them and let himself be covered by the falling snow—just like a wolf.
He also acted like a wolf in his making our house into a gathering place, what wolf biologists call a "rendezvous" or a "loafing site"—the place a wolf pack locates near the female's den and that they use to congregate, snooze, chat, and generally hang out. Free to come and go as he wished, Merle brought at least a dozen other dogs to the house. These dozen dogs were the ones I actually saw. Ranging in age from year-old pups to senior citizens, they were Labs, Golden Retrievers, Australian Shepherds, Border Collies, Vizslas, Terriers, German Shepherds, and a variety of mongrels.
Not once did I find the furniture chewed or shoes or clothing destroyed, though these were readily available and I was gone for hours. Returning, I'd find the dogs asleep on the deck or on the great room floor, as relaxed as if they had been drugged. And they had been drugged—by endorphins, fresh air, and the grass under their paws.
This view of domestic dogs sees them as responsible individuals, even when not confined. In fact, it bases good behavior on freedom. It also understands dogs as maturing over time and becoming self-actualized adults—just like their lupine ancestors, who may not reach full adulthood, which is quite distinct from sexual maturity, until they are five years old. It embraces the idea that older dogs have wisdom and can teach younger dogs how to behave with decorum. It trusts the dog.
An increasingly widespread understanding of dogs, however, sees them as wolves, but only as infant ones—individuals who have been permanently halted by domestication in the stage of puppyhood. Unsuited to making decisions on their own, these are exactly the sort of animals who crave our direction and must be periodically crated for their own peace of mind as well as ours.
This line of reasoning can be both self-serving and self-fulfilling. Consider the findings of researchers at Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest. They asked dog–human couples to perform a variety of problem-solving tasks. Dogs who had a strong dependent relationship on their humans performed more poorly at solving the problems than those who didn't. In fact, the more the dog fulfilled the role of a child substitute for its human, the more dependent it became.
I was determined not to go down this road with Merle and received support from the work of Karen Pryor. Despite being the foremost advocate of clicker training since Skinner, she also cautions, "Nobody needs to control or be controlled by cues and signals all the time; living creatures are not a bunch of machines."
The more I listened to trainers like her, the more Merle's ability to call his own shots continued to surprised me. It shouldn't have. According to Pryor, you get what you shape. Reinforce automaton-like behavior and you get a robot. Reinforce creativity, inventiveness, and open-ended decision-making, and you get a dog who's closer to being your peer. But watch out. You also get a dog who may put you in your place, and by this I don't mean vie with you for dominance. Rather, as your dog becomes more self-actualized, he may hold up the mirror for you, and the face you see can be humbling.
This issue might never have arisen in Merle's and my relationship had it not been for Ralph Yaeger. Ralph lived in Helena, Montana, with his wife, two young boys, and a Golden Retriever named Scout. Ralph was tall, affable, and handsome—Christopher Reeve as Superman—and Scout was frumpy, opinionated, and a little overweight, the canine version of Gertrude Stein. Ralph worked for a nonprofit organization whose mission was to promote ethical hunting, and, having read my work on the subject and met me at a wildlife conference, he invited me to serve on its board and to come bird hunting with him. Both invitations might have fallen on deaf ears had we not thought so similarly about the place of hunting in modern life.
For
us, hunting wasn't a sport. It was a way to be intimate with nature, that intimacy providing us with wild, unprocessed food, free from pesticides and hormones, and with the bonus of having been produced without the addition of great quantities of fossil fuel. In addition, hunting provided us with an ever-scarcer relationship in a world of cities, factory farms, and agribusiness—direct responsibility for taking the lives that sustained us, lives that even vegans indirectly take as the growing and harvesting of organic produce kills deer, birds, snakes, rodents, and insects.
We lived close to the animals we ate, we knew their habits, and that knowledge deepened our thanks to them and the land that made them. Our thanks also went out to our dogs, for it was they, and particularly their noses, that helped us make wild meat a steady diet.
Two of Ralph's and Scout's hunting companions were a Helena fireman named Bill Orsello and his Golden Retriever, Eli. It was they who clinched my decision to take Merle bird hunting. Bill tended to think about hunting along the same lines as Ralph and I, and both he and Eli were big guys with gentle dispositions. Unlike Bill, however, who was a powerhouse of activity, Eli was laid-back, just as inclined to sit on the tailgate of Bill's truck, looking at the sky with a dreamy expression on his face, as he was to set off hunting.
I thought that if any two people and any two dogs could cajole Merle into giving bird hunting one more try, these two could. I was right—at least about Merle's liking them. He took to them immediately, for Ralph and Bill were tender in their greetings, and Eli and Scout made a big fuss over this new Wyoming visitor, breathing in his exotic, elky smell with extreme interest. In turn, Merle smelled the birdiness they wore in their fur—pheasants, sharptail grouse, Hungarian partridge, ducks, and geese. Within a half minute of meeting each other, the three dogs were wagging their tails in perfect time.
The acid test, though, came when we loaded the shotguns in Bill's truck. I had put mine, cased, in the roof carrier of the Subaru on the drive up, so Merle wouldn't see it, but Bill used this moment to show me his favorite gun. Merle took one look at it and dropped his head in dismay: "Oh, no! So this is why Ted brought me here."
Eli and Scout, however, began to wag their tails at the sight of the shotgun, and this confused Merle. Shotguns were bad news, weren't they?
Peer pressure at last carried the day. When Eli and Scout jumped into Bill's truck and I extended a hand to the tailgate, Merle sighed and climbed aboard, lying between Eli and Scout, his flanks pressed to theirs as if they were his security blankets. They in turn pressed against him soothingly as if to say, "Nothing to worry about, ol' buddy. This is going to be fun."
From Helena we drove up the Missouri River to Great Falls, then east to Lewistown, where the mountains rise like archipelagos from the plains. In the valley where Ralph was born, we began walking through rows of cut wheat, Merle following leerily behind me and watching Scout and Eli with great attention as they crisscrossed through the standing brush at the edge of the fields.
Eli flushed the first pheasant, its long tail streaming as it cackled and flew over the willows. At the bang of Bill's shotgun, Merle flinched, ducked, and began to pant in panic. I was certain he would run away, but he surprised me. Seeing Eli retrieve the bird, he rushed to him and ran protectively by his side, casting worried looks at him, as if he might have been hurt by the shot. When Eli gave Bill the bird, Merle sat next to the bigger dog, his head turning from his newfound friend to Bill with some perplexity. Apparently, no one had been hurt, and Eli seemed to be enjoying himself.
Scout flushed the next pheasant, Ralph brought it down, and Merle, having loosened up a bit, rushed in and put his nose in the bird's purple and green feathers as Scout handed it over. Taking a big sniff, he immediately grabbed the bird from Ralph's hand and tried to eat it. Now this was the part of bird hunting he could understand!
"No, no, Merle," Ralph said, laughing and taking the bird back. "You have to wait until we grill them."
Ralph put the bird in his game vest, and Merle stood on his hind legs to give the canvas pouch a long smell. Dropping to all fours, he wagged his tail happily.
I was elated. Just letting Merle be with these dogs—watching them bird hunt without any pressure on him to perform—appeared to be a natural and effortless way of getting him to overcome his bad history with firearms. All might have gone well had Eli not vaulted a small stream a few minutes later, lost his footing, and fallen off the bank. Landing on his butt, he began to cry out in pain. Using only his front legs, he clawed his way up to the field, dragging his rear end—paralyzed, it seemed, from the waist down.
Merle leapt over the stream, rushed to Eli, and began to whine in dismay. Pushing him with his snout, he jumped up and down, crying out and giving every indication of saying, "Oh, Eli! You're hurt! You're hurt! Please stand up!"
Bill rushed to Eli, but Merle intervened, protecting the big Golden Retriever with his body while trying to push Bill away.
"Merle!" Bill shouted, his voice rising in fear. Eli, it seemed, had become a paraplegic. Bill shoved Merle off, and I grabbed him.
Carefully, Bill began to explore Eli's hindquarters. "I can't feel anything broken," he said. "Let me give him some massage."
He worked his fingers along Eli's spine as I held on to Merle, who was whining and trying to lunge toward Eli.
Suddenly, without warning, Eli stood up and walked out of Bill's hands. I released Merle and he ran to Eli, dancing around him joyfully and pressing his nose into his neck while calling little endearments to his friend.
Padding along, Eli rubbed flanks with Merle, breathing deeply but quietly, like some big football player who has had the wind knocked out of him: "Hey, Merle, it was nuthin'."
Scout, who had remained unflappable during the entire incident, who in fact had been nosing here and there, was already trailing the next bird. We took another tack through the mown wheat, but seeing Eli injured had rattled Merle's nerves. As Scout flushed a pheasant and Ralph shot, Merle jigged sideways from the blast. Not watching where he was going, he stepped onto a sharply mown-off willow at the edge of the field. Yowling in pain—perhaps he thought he'd been shot—he held his paw in the air and began to sprint toward the truck.
"Merle," I called. "Come."
He tossed me a scornful look: "Not on your life."
I followed him to the dirt road where the truck was parked and found him lying by the vehicle.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
His body language remained guarded.
I examined his injured paw, and it appeared fine. I petted him and told him he had done a great job. He continued to stare ahead and didn't wag his tail. Opening the tailgate, I let him jump in the truck, where he stayed even when the others returned for lunch, his head between his paws, his eyes moving nervously between us as we talked.
When we got ready to set off on the afternoon's hunt, Merle finally raised his head.
"You can stay here if you want," I told him.
"Ha-ha-ha," he panted, at last showing some emotion. "I think I will."
He glanced down at Eli and Scout, wagging their tails at him.
"Up to you," I said. "Don't let them change your mind."
He slapped his tail against the bed of the pickup, but he didn't budge.
"Okay," I told him. "Hold down the fort and we'll see you later."
And, three hours later, there he was, wagging his tail at our return.
I was so certain that this experience had put him off bird hunting permanently that I considered leaving him home the next time Ralph invited us to Montana. But Ralph said that Merle could stay in the truck while we hunted, enjoying Scout's and Eli's company in Helena and at the motel in Choteau. This sounded like a fine idea—both of us getting our needs met—and all went according to plan until we arrived at the farm where we were going to hunt. Instead of staying in the truck, as I had expected, Merle leapt out with Scout and Eli and rushed to greet Ri and Purdey. Two black Labs, male and female, they belonged to Eric and Ang
ie Grove, who also were from Helena. Along with them was Dinsdale, the male black Lab of one of Eric and Angie's friends.
After discussing how we'd spread out across the barley fields, we began to load our shotguns. It was then that I discovered that Merle was gone.
I cast my eyes to the horizon—long rows of stubble, cottonwood trees, the distant mountains of the Montana Front dusted with snow. But my dog was nowhere to be seen. Puzzled, I looked under the truck. A moment later, I heard a knocking coming from above my head. When I peered into the camper shell, I found Merle curled in the very back corner of the pickup's bed, shaking violently with his nose under his tail. Our loading the shotguns must have undone him.
"Oh, Sir," I said gently, crawling on my hands and knees to him. "Are you having a flashback?"
His answer was to shake harder.
"Listen," I said in a soft voice as I petted him, "I'm going to leave the hatch of the shell open. You stay right here, and we'll be back in a few hours."
I closed the tailgate, left the back window up, and we set off through the mown barley. We hadn't gone three minutes down the field, though, when I heard the sound of flying paws. Up tore Merle, breathing hard.
"Ha-ha-ha," he panted sheepishly at me. "I got a hold of myself. I got a grip. I'm ready to go now."
I rubbed his shoulders and he rushed away from me, joining the five other dogs, who mobbed him happily.
He had gotten a grip. He ran among Eli, Scout, Ri, Purdey, and Dinsdale, following them as they flushed and retrieved, never doing any of the work himself, but appearing to have a wonderful time by staying as far from the guns as possible.