Merle's Door

by Ted Kerasote

  Was his fear of guns cured for good? Hardly.

  As we loaded the shotguns the next morning I found him cowering in the same corner of the pickup truck. I left the hatch open and left the decision to stay or come up to him. A few minutes after our departure, he came running across the field to join us, just as sheepish as the previous day and just as excited to join the other dogs. He spent the entire day loping among them, never once flushing or retrieving a bird on his own.

  The following day everyone except Eric and me had to go to work. The two of us drove to a ranch that overlooked the Missouri River, and there Ri swept over the steep hills like an Olympian athlete, flushing coveys of sharptail grouse and Hungarian partridge while ignoring Merle completely. Not quite. Occasionally, he'd look back at Merle, padding along in the rear, with an expression that said, "Wow, you really are a duffer, aren't you."

  About mid-morning, Ri and Eric took the upper line around a shelterbelt of willow, and Merle and I went along their lower flank. I was surprised to see that, with no other dog or person present, Merle moved up to my side, even slightly ahead of me, and began to scan the terrain alertly. He seemed relaxed, with an easiness in his shoulders and a suppleness in his gait that I hadn't seen the entire weekend or during our first hunt near Lewistown. If anything, he had the looks and the behavior of a classic bird dog, and in a moment proved it.

  His head did a 90-degree swivel uphill. He sniffed twice and bolted into the willows. Two seconds later, a large pheasant burst from the trees and soared overhead. I swung up the shotgun, seeing in my peripheral vision Merle running beneath the pheasant and tracking him. I fired. The pheasant arced from the sky and bounced on the grass.

  Merle sprinted directly to the bird and picked him up in one grab, as if he had been doing it his entire life. Then he trotted back to me smartly and sat before me in a perfect imitation of the other dogs' retrieving style.

  I was thrilled and overwhelmed. Without any reinforcement—except that of seeing his peers hunt—he had learned every detail of flushing and retrieving and hadn't been spooked in the least by the report of the gun. Bursting with pride, I held out my hand to receive this, his first bird.

  But instead of presenting the pheasant to my hand as the other dogs had done for their humans, he spit it at my feet.

  There was no mistaking the scorn in his gesture. He held himself erect and looked at me with enormous defiance.

  I reached down and tried to pet him, but he pulled back his head from my hand, his posture not softening in the least. Ramrod straight and with every muscle tense, he fixed me with blazing eyes.

  "See," they said, "I can do this. I just don't want to."

  Up until this point in my life, virtually all the dogs I had run into had pleased me. A very few—two, in fact—had frightened me. Many had made me laugh. A couple had made me cry. One—this one sitting before me—had made me feel ashamed on the day I had hit him for chasing cattle. Dozens of dogs had filled me with love. No dog, until today, had managed to humble me.

  "I understand," I told him.

  He stared at me hard.

  "I get it," I said. "You really hate bird hunting."

  And as I spoke these words, I recalled the day I had showed him how to walk around a bison, and he had exclaimed, "I get it, don't mess with bison." Today he was doing the instructing.

  Picking up the pheasant, I took a moment to send some thoughts its way before slipping the bird into the pouch of my vest. Then I broke the shotgun and laid it over my shoulder.

  Merle eyed it soberly.

  "Let's go," I said, extending my hand for him to lead. "After you. We're done with this."

  He held my eyes a moment longer as if to gauge my sincerity. Then he turned and, with his head and tail held high—not giving his happy pant, his little jig, or any indication that he was anything but dead serious about what he had just told me—he trotted quickly toward the truck.

  A few days later, back in Kelly, the incident took on deeper meaning when I had occasion to take my rifle from the shed to go elk hunting. Without any hesitation, Merle followed me to the car, wagging his tail enthusiastically. I opened the door and he bounded in. When I got behind the steering wheel and turned the key, he laid his head on my shoulder and pressed his cheek against mine, nudging me a couple of times. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw his eyes, eagerly staring into mine. His tail was wagging very hard, saying, "See, my friend, I still like elk hunting."

  And he always did, helping me to find dozens of elk as well as antelope over the years. But take out that shotgun, and he'd sit on the porch. I accepted his decision about the place bird hunting would have in our lives. Actually, I did a little better than that. I respected it. Perhaps, had I been a smarter or more caring man, I might have learned this lesson from a human partner. But I learned it from my dog: At a certain point you need to acknowledge that your partner knows more about what makes him or her happy than you do. Stepping back, you let that partner be.

  Chapter 14

  White Muzzle

  Over the next year, I tried to apply what Merle had taught me about giving one's partner space to my relationship with Allison. But the analogy failed one critical test: Merle wanted to live with me and Allison didn't.

  We persevered, though, trying to work through our rough spots: sharing the dishwashing fifty-fifty; using first her car, then mine; and negotiating a happy medium on sleep and sex. But of course these weren't the real issues.

  Eventually, we went our separate ways, and she found someone else—someone who she thought would be more compatible with her needs. To her credit, she was blisteringly honest about what these were. Even though no one could foretell the future, she said, she didn't want to take care of a husband in his old age, and the new man was younger than I. Just as important, he played better for the folks back home.

  This was valuable information to have. Despite the fact that we had a lot in common, more than either of us had experienced in any other relationship, it was clear that I'd been barking up the wrong tree. In response, I, too, found someone else, actually several others, none of whom seemed quite right, as anyone not embroiled in the hurt and anger of being rejected could have predicted.

  The dogs rode through this confused time with nary a raised eyebrow. Brower still galloped across the field, did a sideways drift around the deck, and burst through the dog doors to skid into my office with undiminished excitement: "Ted, man! Where ya been? I haven't seen you in ages!" And when Allison would stop at my front door—to ask how I was and to say she missed doing things with me, her face a mask of ambivalence and mixed messages—Merle would lean against her knee and swish his tail with a heartfelt gesture he used with no one else: "Oh, I've missed you. How I've missed you." Unlike me, he didn't then segue into an endless series of whys—why, if we remain so close, if we can converse so intimately, can you not be with me?

  His attitude proved instructive—care for her, but let her go—and his consolation was far better than that which came from the therapist whom Allison and I hired to facilitate our protracted separation. Merle would come into my office and lay his chin on my thigh, not asking for water, a biscuit, or for me to accompany him on a hike. He'd move his tail so that it undulated his body, his soft, comforting motion washing up my leg and into my heart. He had no hands to hold it, but he did so every day.

  I'd put my hand on his head and feel my frustration ebb away, my blood pressure go down—just like all the books say happens when a dog touches us—and, simultaneously, I'd feel him go easy under my hands, the soothing going back and forth, wordlessly but strong: I am here. So am I. I am glad. Me too.

  The behavior he displayed when I was absent also helped me to recover. His favorite house sitter, an observant young woman named Jen Carroll, who doted upon Merle and whom he cared for greatly, would tell me that after a few days of my being absent Merle would leave on his rounds, but before setting off would sit in the middle of the road and howl mournfully. Then, havi
ng had a good cry about my being gone, he'd collect himself and get on with his life, proceeding south into the village, with head and tail erect.

  This behavior was also a gloss on the received wisdom that dogs are unable to tell time. Living in a blissful state without clocks or calendars, they supposedly have no concept as to whether their person has stepped out to get a newspaper for five minutes or headed to the South Seas for five weeks. But clearly this wasn't the case for Merle. He would let several days elapse after I had left, remaining hopeful all the while that I'd return. When that didn't happen, he'd give vent to his feelings of being abandoned and begin to howl on the road.

  His greetings upon my return also showed me that even though he didn't tell time as we did, he knew the difference between my being gone a short time and a long one. If I was gone just a few days he'd welcome me ecstatically when I pulled into the drive, his tail going round and round like a helicopter's rotor, his front feet dancing with joy, his entire body wriggling in anticipation. But if I stayed away a couple of weeks or a month, when I stepped out of the taxi with my gear, he'd plant his front paws several yards from me and howl bitterly: "Wow, that was a long time! Do you even remember me? What were you doing without me?" If I tried to pet him, he'd back off and continue to bay at me angrily. I'd crouch in front of him and beckon to him by patting my palms against my chest. "Oh, pobrecito perrito," I'd croon. Oh, you poor doggy. "Come here. I missed you lots."

  He'd finally step toward me, put his head into my chest, and let me rub his back while he continued to yip his remonstrations.

  Then I'd say, "Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I know you were lonely. But I also remember the time when you were so, so sad when I left and two minutes later you had forgotten me."

  "Yar-yar-yar," he'd yip. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I still miss you."

  He'd continue to voice his complaints with little high-pitched yelps, but they'd soon fade into contented groans as I'd put my nose against the top of his head and kiss him, saying, "Oh, how I missed you!"

  Shouldering my pack, I'd head inside. Panting, "Ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha," he'd begin to dance around me: "Okay, see, I'm over it."

  He was one of the best examples of how to deal with disappointment and ride through anger, for it was apparent that he had no interest in his emotions becoming him. He clung to them for an instant, the way our mountains clung to their weather, then let them roll over him and fade away.

  Sometime during these roiled months—it happened so subtly I couldn't say on what day I noticed it—Merle's muzzle lost its reddish-golden hue and became creamy. On closer examination, I saw that the individual hairs had begun to turn white.

  "Sir," I said. "You appear to have become middle-aged."

  He didn't seem to notice. Staring at himself in Jen Fuller's big mirror, he continued to cock his head this way and that, admiring himself. Nor could I see—other than in his graying face—that the passing of the years had affected him in any way. He could still lope alongside my mountain bike for hours at a time and put in an enormous day in the peaks around the house, ascending and descending ten thousand vertical feet while covering eighteen horizontal miles through the snow. Nor had he cut back on his political duties. He still made his three circumambulations of the village each day, stopping in to see his constituents, his determined trot between visits saying, "I am a very busy dog. I have things to do and people to see." And at the end of his workday, he still had enough energy to tear mad circles around me if I tucked in my head like a turtle, opened my eyes wide, and tried to grab him. If I put some country-western music on the CD player and tapped my chest with my palms, he'd stand on his hind legs, put his front paws on my shoulders, and we'd dance around the great room together while he panted, "This is fun!" Sometimes, he'd even come and find me if some bluegrass music began to play on the radio, jumping off the dedicated quadruped couch, trotting into the office, wagging his tail, and pumping his paws up and down, indicating, "Let's dance."

  It was at these times, and only at these times—standing face to face—that he would lick me. Perhaps this was because he felt somewhat vulnerable after a minute on his hind legs, or maybe he was simply imitating human kissing, which he'd certainly seen enough of. Whatever the case, he'd often give me a big smooch with his tongue.

  Gray Cat, still on the couch, would look at us with bored disdain. He'd be even more put out when his buddy Brower came over. Instead of starting an immediate game of chase and somersault with him, Brower would leap up at me and plead, "Me too! Dance with me too!"

  I'd move Merle's paws to my left shoulder, pat my chest, and let Brower put his paws on my right one. With an arm around each dog, I'd coast them around the room.

  Occasionally, as I was reading on the deck an hour later with Merle lying on one side of me and Brower on the other, the phone would ring. It would be Allison, asking, "Is my dog over there?"

  "He's reading with Merle and me on the deck," I'd reply. "We were just dancing."

  "Could you please send him home."

  "I can try, but I don't think he'll leave."

  I could hear her sigh, and then she'd say, "The power of the guys."

  "It's the Omaha connection, you know. He never forgets."

  By her silence, I could tell that my subtext had jabbed her, as I had intended.

  "No, he doesn't," she'd say, her voice carrying sadness about how things had turned out and frustration with me for bringing up a tired subject. "I'll pick him up on my way into town."

  Since Brower never forgot what we had shared, and because he continued to visit often, forcing Allison to fetch him, she and I went through many variations of this conversation, teasing apart the endless strands of who we had been as a couple and who we might become. One might say that it had been our dogs who had cemented us together romantically and our dogs who helped us to reshape ourselves into enduring friends. And if it was Brower who was primarily responsible for Allison and me talking about our past, it was Merle, with his newly minted white muzzle—his newfound expression of debonair worldliness and kindly wisdom—who helped me to slide into the future.

  On more than one occasion, he and I would be walking in town, and a woman coming the other way would spy Merle, catch my eye, and angle toward us.

  "Oh, what a beautiful dog you are!" she'd say, kneeling in front of him and putting her arms around his neck. "So distinguished and so gentle. And look at those eyes."

  Moving her arms down his back, she'd rub her fingers through his fur, and I'd give Merle a scratch as well—she and I now talking about him and dogs in general—the woman's hands and my hands coasting by each other while carefully avoiding any contact, for it was clear what was happening: We were petting Merle so as not to touch each other so soon after meeting.

  Merle would look at me out of the tops of his eyes, feeling what was going on and also smelling it, the air heavy with pheromones. "Here we go again, my friend," his glance would say. I'd wink at him, meaning "I owe you big time," and I did, for he continued to be a chick magnet.

  Yes, this was one of the primary ways I healed. I wanted to be told by someone I found attractive that I was still attractive. I wanted to be able to make plans with someone for Friday night, for the weekend, so as not to feel like some transoceanic sailor, alone in his cockpit, with nothing before him but the empty sea. More often than not, I couldn't find anyone to fulfill this role; but there was always Merle.

  Without telling a soul where we were going, we'd set off into the backcountry, following our noses to some remote lake or valley that neither of us had ever seen. And even though some of the books I read during this time pointed out that my wilderness trips were just as much an escape as my getting involved with new women, that I was avoiding sitting with my pain, I found my mountain journeys the sweetest of balms, camped there in the high pines with my dog, the stars above whispering their eternal comfort, a small reminder that the poet Mary Oliver has translated better than anyone:

  You do not have to be good.
/>
  You do not have to walk on your knees

  for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

  You only have to let the soft animal of your body

  love what it loves.

  I'd wrap my arms around Merle's shoulders and bury my nose in his ruff, smelling his crisp, sweet odor, like roasted nuts with a hint of lanolin. "Oh, you smell good!" I'd say. And he'd stuff his nose against my chest, breathing in deeply and shuddering on the exhale while thumping his tail: "Oh, you smell good, too!"

  In this way, holding him, I let go of her.

  Then, in the spring of his eighth year, he began to limp badly, walking with an abnormal gait known as a "head nod." He'd let his head drop as his sound forelimb, the right one, would strike the ground; he'd lift his head as the opposite leg—the sore left one—made contact. The odd, jerky motion was his way of trying to reduce the weight he was putting on his injured leg. I couldn't recollect an instance of his recently falling or even stumbling, but trauma wasn't the issue; it was overuse. All those fast downhills while we were mountain biking had finally caught up to him, taking their toll on his shoulders and elbows. His vet prescribed Rimadyl, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, and the termination of his mountain biking career.

  I could sympathize. My career as a marathoner had recently ended after too many years of long-distance runs compounded by carrying heavy packs in steep terrain. X-rays of my neck, lower back, knees, and ankles showed bone spurs, compressed cartilage, and bulged discs. In fact, Merle and I were now exactly the same age—forty-eight—according to one dog–human age comparison in which the first two years of a dog's life equal twenty-four years in human years, and then each subsequent year of the dog's life equals four years for the human. Another, more recent, study also discounts the traditional notion that one year of a dog's life equals seven human years. It factors in a dog's weight and breed to calculate its age in human terms. According to this study, Merle would have been about fifty-six.