Merle's Door

by Ted Kerasote

  Whatever the case, we'd get up in the morning and take our glucosamine sulfate-chondroitin capsules together, his in a canine form called Cosequin. After consulting with the local alternative veterinarian, Marybeth Minter, I also added fish oil, vitamins C and E, and coenzyme Q-10 to Merle's diet. She said that the fish oil, with its omega-3 fatty acids, was a natural anti-inflammatory agent. The vitamin C would bolster his immune system; the vitamin E would improve his coat; and the coenzyme Q-10 was an antioxidant that helped to slow the aging process. My doctor had recommended exactly the same regimen for me.

  "Voilà, Monsieur," I'd say to him as I opened our various bottles at the kitchen counter, "on prend nos vitamines ensemble." Let's take our vitamins together.

  I'd swallow mine in one go with a glass of water. He wouldn't abide the canine equivalent—vitamins added to his kibble. He'd unerringly work his tongue around the capsules, and I'd find them in the bottom of his bowl. I couldn't imagine giving him four pills each morning the way I had given him medicine in the past—putting my hand over his muzzle, pressing in his lips with my thumb and forefinger until his lips were under his teeth (few dogs will bite their own lips), then inserting a pill to the very back of his tongue and closing his mouth quickly while immediately holding his nose up to the sky and softly stroking his throat.

  After giving it a bit of thought, I knew the answer. Merle loved fat of all kinds. I dabbed each of his pills in a tiny smear of butter, and he lapped them from my hands like candy.

  Even without any mountain biking, however, and with all these supplements supposedly helping his joints, his head bob didn't go away. By the middle of the summer, I was concerned enough to make an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon from the Veterinary Medical Center at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who visited Jackson Hole once a month. A bright, quietly competent man named Erick Egger, he watched Merle walk, manipulated his legs, and talked about osteoarthritis complicated by the possibility of a fragmented coronoid process, a bit of bone and cartilage that breaks off in a dog's elbow and which is often difficult to identify on X-ray, as was the case with Merle when X-rays of his left elbow had been inconclusive. Erick now suggested keeping Merle on his supplements and not allowing him to run. If he continued to have problems, I could bring him down to CSU for a bone scan, a technique that injects a low-level dose of radioactivity into the dog's bloodstream. Accumulating quickly in the dog's bones, it can then be photographed with a special camera. The resulting images are similar to X-rays, but—displaying white "hot spots" that indicate areas of osteoarthritis—can be a better diagnostic tool in determining the source of a dog's lameness. Erick then added something that made my heart stop: Merle's lameness could also be caused by a nerve root tumor, which was usually fatal.

  Over the summer I kept Merle to a walk—at least when he was with me. Some of our walks were long, twelve to fifteen miles, but they were still walks. When we went mountain biking, I'd brake throughout the downhill sections, keeping him at a slow trot, my efforts evoking the most curious looks from him: "What is wrong with you, Ted?"

  "It's not me," I replied. "It's you. You're lame."

  "Ha!" he shot back. "It's nothing. Let 'er rip!"

  Like most dogs, and some people, he had a trait that didn't help him take care of himself: He had the ability to press on through severe pain. Not once, through months of limping, did he complain.

  By October he wasn't significantly better, and we made the long drive from Jackson Hole to Fort Collins, where another team of specialists watched his gait and x-rayed his entire body to discount the possibility of the nerve root tumor or any other form of cancer that would appear on the films. The two hours I walked around the campus with Merle awaiting the results were some of the longest in my memory.

  Finally, when the time was up, I left him in the car and went to the waiting room where Paul Cuddon, a tall canine neurologist in a white lab coat, greeted me. He spoke with an Australian accent and had been extremely gentle while giving Merle a physical exam. He must have seen the look on my face, because he got to the point right away. "He's fine—no cancer." Then, motioning to a light box on which he had placed Merle's X-rays, he added, "But when was your dog shot?"

  "What?"

  "He's carrying a bullet in his right shoulder. It's lying right behind the ridge of the scapula."

  He pointed to the X-ray, but he didn't have to. The small-caliber bullet was as clear as day, its nose slightly flattened from the impact.

  "I don't know when he was shot," I said, and went on to explain how Merle and I had met on the San Juan River. "There wasn't a trace of a wound, and he could walk fine. In fact, he's always been a fantastic runner."

  "Then he must have been shot very early on when he was a pup," Paul said, "and the wound healed with no permanent damage. The bullet's not his problem, and I wouldn't recommend taking it out. It's encapsulated and not causing him any discomfort. But I think we need to go to a bone scan to find out what's bothering him."

  "Okay," I agreed, "let's do it." Then, staring at the X-ray, I added, "Well, at least I know why he doesn't like guns."

  Paul blinked. "I should say so."

  Since Merle's urine would be radioactive, he had to stay at the facility overnight. I handed his leash to a technician and as the man walked him down the corridor toward the lab, Merle kept turning toward me and tugging at the leash with a look of dazed incomprehension. It was the first night since we had been together that he was kenneled.

  Twenty-four hours later, I met him at the end of the same corridor. He was padding along quietly, but when he saw me, he ripped the lead out of the technician's hand and ran toward me as I kneeled with open arms. Mobbing me, he began a wild dance of jubilation, moaning and woofing and panting, "Oh, I am so glad to see you! I thought I'd never see you again! We're back together! We're back! We're back!"

  A middle-aged woman, who had been filling out an admissions form in the chair next to mine, looked up and said, "That brings tears to my eyes."

  "Mine too," I said, not using a figure of speech.

  A few minutes later, Merle and I were seated in a consulting room with Paul. On the light box was a full-body view of Merle's skeleton. Standing in front of the bone scan, Paul pointed out the hot spots along Merle's spine and in his elbows. The left elbow was particularly "hot," very white, and Paul said that the attending radiologist had concurred with Erick Egger's diagnosis of a problem with the left medial coronoid process.

  Later, when we saw Erick, he looked at the bone scans and suggested arthroscopic surgery to clean up the joint. He, too, read my expression in an instant. "Take your time," he added. "This isn't an emergency."

  I said I would. It wasn't that I didn't trust Erick—his reputation was gold-clad, as was Paul's; it was the feeling I had that I should be patient and give Merle time to heal on his own.

  We went back to Jackson Hole and I put Merle on a new kibble with extra supplements and vitamins. I bought him natural dog biscuits. And I had Marybeth start acupuncture treatments. These she did at our home, for she made house calls in the old style of a family doc, carrying her black leather bag with its medical supplies and seemingly endless store of ostrich jerky that she used to distract her patients into compliance. Before she'd even open the bag to take out her stethoscope, Merle would run his nose along the top of the bag, his tail waving in happy arcs: "I smell something yummy in there."

  After having his strip of jerky, he'd stand calmly in the middle of the great room while Marybeth—dressed in jeans and hiking boots, her glossy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail—put needles in his head, elbows, and spine. I'd sit before him, rubbing his chest, and she'd attach the needles to a small battery-charged device that provided electrical stimulation. When he was all hooked up I'd get him to lie on his side, and I'd recline by his outstretched paws and put a hand on his chest to keep him calm. It was hardly necessary, for he so liked Marybeth and how the acupuncture felt that he was soon sleeping. His deep bre
athing relaxed me and I, too, dozed off, waking twenty minutes later as Marybeth began to remove the needles.

  She also showed me how to give Merle a full-body massage and manipulate his legs through a range of therapeutic motion. When I'd break for lunch, I'd whistle him up if he wasn't inside and get him to lie in the middle of the great room. Kneeling over him, I'd begin by massaging his neck, saying, "C'est très important, Monsieur, pour un chien athlétique comme toi, d'avoir un massage tous les jours." It's very important for an athletic dog like you to have a massage each day.

  Groaning in pleasure, he'd stretch to the tip of his toes and scrunch his neck under my hands, asking me to press harder. I'd say, "And now let's do those problematic elbows." After massaging them, I'd go to his back, saying, "And now your back, and those ribs, your hips, your knees, and finally each and every toe."

  He'd shudder with delight and let out a huge sigh. "Oh, that feels so good!"

  Rolling him to his other side, I'd repeat the massage, ending by placing him on his back and rubbing my hands from his chest to his belly.

  "Voilà," I'd announce, clapping my hands, "c'est fini." We're finished.

  I'd step away, and he'd dart out a paw to catch my leg. Opening an eye, he'd hold mine: "Really? Are we finished so soon?"

  "Yes, Sir," I told him. "I have to go back to work, or else how will I pay for that high-priced kibble and dog biscuits you're eating?"

  All these treatments—acupuncture, massage, and supplements—may sound a little woo-woo, but are endorsed by those vets at the cutting edge of their profession. The American Veterinary Medical Association, for instance, is a proponent of acupuncture, stating, "Veterinary AP (acupuncture) and acutherapy are considered an integral part of veterinary medicine. These techniques should be regarded as surgical and/or medical procedures under state veterinary practice acts."

  Dr. Kurt Schulz, who teaches at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, and is the lead author of the extremely helpful book The Pet Lover's Guide to Canine Arthritis & Joint Problems, also endorses massage therapy for dogs, as well as the use of "nutraceuticals"—a newly minted term that refers to "naturally occurring products that are eaten to improve health."

  And there was Marybeth, who simply by watching Merle suggested to me that his thyroid levels might be low. Sure enough, a blood test showed that she was right, and she prescribed a drug called Soloxine to bring his production of thyroxin back to normal.

  By early December, Merle was walking without any head bob and sliding downhill through the new powder as if he had never had a joint problem in his life. I was certain that two of our oldest known therapies—time and tenderness—had worked their magic along with prescription drugs, supplements, acupuncture, and massage. The coming of winter had also helped, the cooler weather invigorating him to an astonishing degree, which should have come as no surprise since older dogs have a more difficult time at thermoregulation and use more energy when they're hot.

  "Ski Dog!" I exclaimed as he popped out of the snow above me, his tail lashing in glee. "You are restored."

  "Ha!" he panted. "I feel like my old self."

  "You look like it," I added, "except for your white face."

  Diplomat that he was, he didn't mention the white streak in my forelock. He gave me his biggest grin and leaned his shoulder against my leg. We were getting older together.

  Chapter 15

  What Do Dogs Want?

  One cold winter afternoon, as Merle ran along the frozen shores of Yellowstone Lake, he found a nest of pigeons. He grabbed the mother bird and shook her, the chicks peeping, as I yelled at him to leave her alone. He dropped her, and we took a few steps toward a spring where some splashing made me think that otters were playing among the rocks.

  Suddenly I found myself in ankle-deep, shin-deep, then knee-deep water, the bottom falling away, the ice I had been walking on sinking fast and leaving no land. Waist-deep in the freezing water, I turned around and grabbed for the solid shore, but it was gone, everything around me moving like a river. Turning, I searched for Merle and found him swimming behind me, his eyes worried. Glancing ahead to where the frozen lake had been, I saw only wide gray water, wide as the sea, with icebergs tumbling over a horizon toward which we were now being swept. When I looked around for Merle, there he was, swimming strongly by my side, his face steady and calm.

  Wrenching myself awake, I saw his chin on the edge of the bed, his deep brown eyes staring into mine, his tail moving back and forth inquiringly: "Are you all right?"

  Putting my hand on his head and bringing my nose to his, I said, "Just that old swept-away dream."

  He increased his tail's tempo: "I'm right here."

  I held my hands against his cheeks, feeling his steady comfort, like a living rosary, a connection to gravity and ground. Perhaps that's why, in my dreams, he was so often beside me as I was swept off by forces beyond my control. And in those dreams, he was always young and so was I.

  In the waking world, of course, we were not. But though we were getting older, we were far from our dotage. In fact, for a couple of years after we saw Paul Cuddon and Erick Egger at the CSU Veterinary Medical Center, Merle seemed not to age at all. Marybeth Minter periodically gave him acupuncture; I gave him his daily massages and supplements; and he ate a specially formulated senior kibble along with frequent additions of elk and antelope meat and their bones. His weight stayed at seventy pounds, and the worst that happened to him during this time was that he occasionally had bad breath.

  "Sir," I'd say, recoiling from his panting, "you could clean copper pans with that. I'm sorry. I haven't been giving you enough bones. Here, let me get you one."

  Within a day or two of his gnawing on an elk or antelope femur, the bones would have worked their magic, scraping off the accumulated plaque while also changing the chemistry of his digestion. I could safely plant a kiss on the end of his nose without thinking of buying a gas mask. However, the opposite didn't hold true for him. If I offered him a kiss within an hour or two of brushing my teeth, he'd back away with a pained expression. And if I tried to brush his teeth, no matter what flavor of dog toothpaste I used, he'd wear the same pained look and flick his tongue in and out as he tried to rid himself of what he obviously considered an unpleasant taste. After half a dozen trials with a variety of toothpastes, we stuck to nature's dentifrice—bones—for his oral hygiene.

  The memory of toothpaste lasted, however, and there were times that I thought he actually dreamt of it. As he slept on the dedicated quadruped couch, I could see him flicking his tongue over his incisors, his face wearing that same mildly disgusted look as his feet twitched and his eyes darted in REM sleep. On other occasions when he was dreaming, he'd emit little yelps, his paws running faster and faster, and I'd wonder if he was chasing Zula or a bison. Sometimes his dreams seemed to be full of the white Shepherd, for he'd growl angrily and draw back his lips as if tearing into her. Once in a while, though, his growls turned fearful, as if he were being chased by some great beast, a grizzly bear perhaps, or an ancient canid enemy looming in his subconscious, who I could barely conjure. Maybe it was even the person who first beat him or fired the bullet into his shoulder.

  There were also times I saw him dreaming peacefully, his paws moving languorously, his face calm, and I wondered if he was dreaming of us, as I often dreamt of us, not being swept away, but walking or lying in a green meadow whose beginning and end could not be seen. Or maybe he was dreaming of Shayla, as I often dreamt of my loves.

  I thought it significant that he always had his most violent dreams on the dedicated quadruped couch and his most idyllic ones upstairs on his plush, green L. L. Bean bed in the corner of our room. Perhaps his worst nightmares were not of some mythic short-faced bear or angry shepherd on the Navajo Nation, but of Gray Cat himself, finally emerging from deep cover and unleashing his claws.

  Now and then as Merle and I walked or skied up Snow King—the ski area that looms over Jackson—we'
d see Allison and Brower. She had moved away from Kelly, to the other side of the valley, and we ran into each other less frequently—a blessing, we both realized. Brower, of course, didn't think so, and he'd greet both Merle and me ecstatically before falling in by Merle's side as we began walking up the ski hill, Allison and I talking about where our lives were taking us—she had gone to graduate school and had become a psychotherapist; I was writing more books and fewer magazine articles. Perking their ears, the dogs listened to us while matching each other stride for stride. Brower would look at Merle out of the corner of his eye and say, "See, I'm a big dog now." And Merle, matching his pace, would return the look, replying, "That's true, but I can still keep up."

  At the parking lot, I'd open the back door of our Subaru, and Merle and Brower would both jump in. Allison would call Brower to come, but he'd refuse to go with her, lifting his head and laughing, all the while retreating farther and farther into the car, which she took as his taunting her, but I translated as "Why don't you come with us so we can all be together? That's what I want."

  Of course, I wouldn't say this. The time for saying such things was over—at least from me.

  She'd have to drag him out by his collar as he'd dig in his front paws. Scooting him into her Toyota, she'd say, "It never stops. The power of the guys." There was no edge in her voice, though, and I'd answer, laughing, "We smell like elk."

  She'd laugh, too, and we'd give each other a hug and go our separate ways.

  Then, in Merle's tenth year, he developed what his vets called "an elongated soft palate," which made him wheeze with heavy exertion. We'd be walking up some trail in the dark, hoping to find an elk, and as the trail steepened, he'd begin to pant with a raspy intake of breath that was audible for hundreds of yards.