Merle's Door

by Ted Kerasote

  What do dogs want, then? The company of dogs, or the company of people? For many dogs who have the freedom to be themselves, both. Dogs with choices exercise their individual tastes, picking dogs or people, depending on which group meets their needs at a particular moment. Such behavior destroys the illusion that a dog's love is unconditional, but so what? Our love—at least a significant part of it—is conditional, just like theirs. We prefer to be with those who respect our selfhood, who do interesting things, and who smell right.

  During the next year, after Merle's back healed and we returned to a more normal level of activity, my dog—now approaching perhaps seventy-seven in human years—reminded me of the legendary Norwegian cross-country skier Jackrabbit Johannsen. Born in 1875, Johannsen was an early champion of long, slow distance training and the health benefits of aerobic exercise. After coming to North America in 1899, he scouted and cut many of the crosscountry ski trails still enjoyed in the eastern United States and Canada and, well into his sixties, skied thousands of miles each winter. He lived until 111 and could still be found skiing every day into his early 100s, his own life proving an elegant testimonial to what he had preached.

  Following Jackrabbit's tracks, we climbed and descended the powder of Teton Pass; we ski-skated in the Absarokas; and we skinned up Snow King in the dawn before work. It became ever more obvious that Merle was a cold-weather creature, his hoarse, asthmatic panting nearly vanishing in the winter. At the summit of Snow King, he would fling himself upside down in polar joy and rub his back across the snow while his paws kneaded the frigid air. Spine massaged, he'd jump upright and stand on the edge of the mountain, his face rimed with frost, as he stared over Jackson Hole sprawling north to Yellowstone.

  As I'd begin my preparations for the downhill run, he'd trot to my side and watch me intently while his tail carved the air. After folding my skins, tightening my boot buckles, clamping down my heels, cinching the drawstrings on my gloves, and putting on my goggles, I'd ask in my habitual pre-ski banter, "Well, Sir, are you finally ready?"

  "Ready?" he'd snort, stomping his paws. "I've been ready for five minutes!"

  "Let's go, then!"

  And down the catwalk we'd fly—well, not quite. I would do many turns, checking my speed, so as to keep his pace at a trot and not molest his joints.

  We'd be back at the house just as the sun rose, and I'd put out his breakfast. After showering, I'd come downstairs and find him lying in front of the woodstove, his eyes on me as I began to cook my own breakfast. Each time I'd meet his glance, he'd slap his tail hard on the pine boards several times, which was hardly his typical behavior when he'd already been fed and I was cooking something as repulsive to him as oatmeal. No, those tail thwacks had nothing to do with food. They meant, "Oh, what a great ski that was!"

  "It was indeed," I'd reply.

  Finally, he'd close his eyes and have a half-hour nap—a recent concession to his age—before heading out the door for his rounds.

  Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of living with Merle during these years, as he went from a mature dog to an older one, was watching him change two long-standing behaviors. The first involved his bones.

  Like most dogs, he would guard his bones from other dogs who might be on the prowl. Spying such a dog walking on the road, Merle would stop chewing, hold the bone still in his mouth, and level an armor-piercing stare at the passerby: "I see you watching me. Don't even think about it." Since possession is close to 100 percent of the law in the dog world, he never had a problem.

  His glowering at dogs on the road was fine with me—it was like having an alarm system on one's car—but I didn't want him to act this way toward people. So from early on I had trained him not to be possessive of his food by hand-feeding him, then closing my hand over the offering. Soon, I could hand him the juiciest of bones and a moment later hold out my hand and say, "Please give that to me." He'd drop it in my palm. "Thank you," I'd say, examining it. "This is a lovely bone." And I'd hand it back to him. In this way, he learned that a bone would always end up being his, and perhaps this was one reason why he felt comfortable leaving his beef bones by my bed.

  As Merle became older, however, and he realized that bones weren't a scarce resource, I began to notice that instead of chewing every last vestige of flavor from them before letting them out of his sight, he would clean them of meat and gristle, gnawing on them for perhaps an hour, before leaving them in the grass and climbing onto the deck for a digestive nap.

  Now, one could say that Merle was no longer gnawing his bones into powder because his teeth were failing. But even though some of them were worn, the eagerness with which he attacked his bones in the first hour of acquiring them demonstrated that he was feeling no pain. What would often happen next was confirmation that his behavior vis-à-vis bones had changed.

  If the wind happened to be blowing from the north—from our house toward the village—one of the neighboring dogs would soon appear and cast an appraising eye over the scene. Did Merle send the dog an ominous stare and rush to protect his bone? Never. Lifting his head, he would calmly meet the other dog's gaze, his composed body language saying, "Yes, I am done with that bone over there. You can have it if you wish." And thus assured, the dog would trot up, take the bone in its mouth, and head back to its own land.

  Having watched this interchange take place between Merle and eight different dogs, over several years, I was reminded of the behavior of coastal brown bears whom I had photographed in Alaska. With an endless supply of salmon in the rivers at their feet, they will catch a fish, bring it to shore, and high-grade it, eating only the roe and the brains, which contain more fat than the flesh. They then walk off and leave the rest of the carcass for smaller bears.

  In the age-old debate over whether nature or nurture is the most important factor in determining an individual's character, the behavior of brown bears with respect to abundant salmon and Merle's behavior with respect to seemingly endless bones are examples of how a change in the environment—an increased richness in the food supply—can alter what appears to be hardwired behavior. Brown bears who live far from salmon streams do not readily give up food to other bears. Likewise, most dogs do not easily give up still succulent bones to other dogs.

  What might then be said concerning the true nature of brown bears and dogs? Simply this: Given the right stimuli, their nature is plastic, even through old age.

  The neurologist Antonio Damasio touches upon this issue in his book Descartes' Error, where he describes how some of our genes can't unfold their potential until they have been modified by experience. As he puts it, "What happens among cells, as development unfolds, actually controls, in part, the expression of the genes that regulate development in the first place. As far as one can tell, then, many structural specifics are determined by genes, but another large number can be determined only by the activity of the living organism itself, as it develops and continuously changes throughout its life span."

  The second behavior that Merle changed in his older years had to do with bird hunting. One fall afternoon as I walked from the shed to the car with my shotgun, he fell in by my side, wagging his tail.

  Astonished, I held out the shotgun to him and said, "I'm going grouse hunting. See, it's the shotgun."

  "I can see it's the shotgun," said his steadily wagging tail.

  Though I could see that his tail wasn't wagging as enthusiastically as it did when he saw the elk rifle, it was wagging nonetheless, indicating, "I want to come with you."

  "Merle," I replied, "let me get this straight. You can see the shotgun. You can see me wearing my bird-hunting vest, and you can smell it. And you still want to go with me?"

  Wag-wag-wag went his tail.

  "Okay. You never cease to amaze me."

  I opened the door of the Subaru and he jumped in. When we got to the trailhead, he loped ahead of me, looking this way and that, smelling here and there, noting what he usually noted: "Oh, just a robin. Hmm, badger hole. Oops, coyote t
here." Up went his leg, quick squirt, scrape, scrape, "ha-ha-ha." Obviously, he was not concerned with finding grouse, and we found none.

  The following afternoon was no different. He asked to come along; we had a pleasant stroll through the aspen, and never saw a grouse. But on the third afternoon, not fifteen minutes from the roadhead, a grouse flushed before us in a noisy blur of wings. The boom of the shotgun resounded through the forest. Merle watched the bird fall into some thick underbrush with complete disinterest.

  I wondered if he had gone slowly deaf, managing to compensate for his loss of hearing, and I hadn't noticed it. If he couldn't hear the sound of gunfire, perhaps his main reason for not going bird hunting had vanished. He was slightly ahead of me and in the quietest undertone I said, "Merle."

  Instantly his ears snapped toward me. He turned his head. "Yes?"

  Not deaf.

  I went to the alders into which the grouse had fallen and tried to force my way in. The thicket was almost impenetrable.

  "Could you please give me a hand," I said, "and get that bird."

  He gave me an uncooperative look.

  "Go in there," I said again. "You're not above eating grouse when I grill them. Come on now, get that bird for us."

  "Ha!" he panted, laughing at me. "You know I don't fetch."

  "I do know that. But since you came along, you could be useful. Please." I motioned once again to the underbrush, and his body posture slumped into grudging agreement: "Okay—for you."

  Taking his time, he pushed into the dense alders. I heard some thrashing, and ten seconds later he emerged with the grouse in his mouth and tossed it at my feet.

  "Well done, Señor!" I cried, and clapped my hands.

  He was a sucker for applause.

  "Ha-ha-ha," he panted. "I guess it wasn't that bad."

  From that day on, he went bird hunting with me, at least most of the time. Occasionally, when I took the shotgun from the shed, he'd look at it and say, "You know, I think I'll stay home today." And he would. Did that mean he wouldn't go the next time? Not at all. Sometimes, in fact, he would even flush grouse. But did that mean he would retrieve them? Never willingly, and then only in thick underbrush. I would have to ask him several times to "please get that bird" before he'd fetch it, bringing it to me as if he were Sisyphus himself condemned to retrieve grouse for eternity.

  What had caused him to change his mind about going bird hunting? Since I wasn't taking him elk hunting as often, had he decided that spending time with me was worth the cost of being around the noise of a shotgun? Was he tired of his mayoral duties and wanting a break from them?

  I can no more say why he changed his mind about bird hunting than I can say why he decided to prefer tahini to butter for taking his vitamins. Or why, after a year, tahini no longer appealed to him, and he would take his vitamins only if smeared with Lamaderm dog food. Or why one day, when on a sudden lark I put a bandana around his neck as we went out the door to a party, he accepted it with jovial prancing. Was it that I was dressed in party clothes, and he knew we were heading someplace with music, people he liked, and tidbits to scarf? Why, then, even when he knew we were going elk hunting and was beside himself with joy, would he grow instantly sober when I put on his red collar? Was it because the red collar had come upon the heels of the choke collar and would be forever associated with his loss of chasing cattle? From that party on—and he was a party animal—bandanas joined dog panniers as meaning fun.

  And so what do dogs want? They want what they want when they want it. Just like us.

  Chapter 16

  A Looser Leash

  During these later years of Merle's life I went to the Alps each spring to write about ski mountaineering. I always made a point of stopping in Chamonix, the small French city that lies at the foot of Mt. Blanc, for as Kelly felt like home, so, too, did the Chamonix Valley. Great white pillows of glaciers, capped by granite spires, rise twelve thousand feet above the birch trees and violets. The ski routes are long and elegant. The food—bread, cheese, wine, fruit, coffee—still has a rich handmade taste, and there are plenty of cafés where I'd sit and gaze up to peaks I had just climbed. But what makes Chamonix so special is its dogs.

  On any given day, two dozen or so free-roaming dogs occupy the central square of Chamonix, the Place Jacques Balmat, as well as the surrounding cobblestone streets. This is particularly remarkable because Chamonix, despite its quaint atmosphere, is hardly a village. Ten thousand people live in the valley, and its population swells to 100,000 during the summer tourist season. Vehicular traffic is heavy. A superhighway comes up the valley from Geneva, skirts along the edge of town, and heads through the Mont Blanc tunnel to Italy. In the other direction, a major mountain pass connects the Chamonix Valley to the autobahn that runs through the Rhône Valley in Switzerland. And in between—among apartment buildings, boutiques, restaurants, and throngs of people—the dogs play, snooze, go into and out of cafés, and occasionally jump into the central plaza's fountain to bathe. Then each night they disappear.

  Like Kelly, Chamonix had a canine mayor, a black Newfoundland in the prime of his life whom I could see from my hotel balcony each dawn as he trotted briskly down the bike path along the Arve River, his body language saying, just as Merle's did, "I have things to do and people to see."

  During the day, when I strolled through the central plaza, I would see him passing in the opposite direction, returning from his rounds of the city and maintaining his position, as did Merle, not with pushiness or aggression, but with quiet good cheer and diplomacy. Pausing to greet his constituents, he'd give them about ten seconds of his time—"Je suis content de vous voir," It's good to see you, sniff-sniff—and then proceed on his way.

  The first afternoon I met him, I was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, for the May weather was warm. I had seen him weaving among the pedestrians, too preoccupied with his mayoral duties to stop and socialize with mere tourists. But as he came by me at a trot, his head turned. He slowed and stopped. Standing still, I cupped my palm for him. He took a sniff and let his wet black nose drift to my thigh. He inhaled deeply and his eyes went soft, his posture changing from hurried efficiency to reflection. Lifting his warm brown eyes, he met my gaze.

  "Bonjour, Monsieur." His rear end swayed in a greeting. "Votre odeur m'intrigue." Your smell intrigues me. "Le cerf, peut-être?" Deer, perhaps?

  "Very good," I replied. "Nous avons les cerfs aussi où j'habite." We also have deer where I live.

  The Mayor of Chamonix took another appraising breath of my leg and let out a small sigh: "Ah, Monsieur, j'aimerais bien rester plus longtemps et vous connaître, mais comme vous voyez je suis un chien très occupé." I would like to stay a little longer and get to know you, but as you can see I'm a very busy dog.

  Raising his shoulders, he gave me one more look: "Alors, au revoir et à bientôt, j'espère." Good-bye then, and see you soon.

  And with that he hurried off, touched noses with several dogs around the fountain, and headed toward the river.

  Anyone who lives in a city, including many French people, will at this point be puzzled—loose dogs among thousands of pedestrians, a great Newfoundland with the run of the city? What about leash laws? Poop laws? Health laws? Yes, the French attitude about dogs is very liberal—well-behaved dogs on a leash are still allowed to accompany their humans into many a restaurant—yet the Chamonix example is a bit extreme, even for France. After all, there is a national law mandating that unleashed dogs be within earshot of their humans and under their immediate control.

  I, too, was puzzled by Chamonix's toleration of so many free-roaming dogs, and one day I set out to discover how the situation had come about. I interviewed the chief of police, two veterinarians who practice in the heart of the valley, and the head of the local branch of the Société Protectrice des Animaux, an animal-welfare organization that was founded in 1845 and is the French equivalent of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the ASPCA.

  Fi
rst off, I was told, none of the dogs were strays. As I could see, all the dogs wore collars; all belonged to people. Some were owned by shopkeepers whose places of business surround the Place Jacques Balmat; others lived farther off, in residential areas on the hillsides above town. They were walked by their people in the morning or let loose to do their business in their yards and the greenbelt near their homes. Then, on their own, they proceeded downtown to spend the day with their friends. And, as was apparent from walking downtown, the dogs had mastered the art of pooping at home or in the woods—the streets were clean of dog droppings.

  Along the river paths, however, where people frequently walked their dogs for the purpose of having them do their business, poop-bag dispensers had been erected. The chief of police, a darkly handsome man in a trim blue uniform named Gérard Frau, also told me that he hoped that sand pits could be installed at strategic locations in town to make it easier for dog owners to find locations where their dogs could relieve themselves in a sanitary way.

  More important in facilitating easy relations between free-roaming dogs and humans, he felt, was France's 1999 law prohibiting the importation and breeding of dangerous dogs such as Pit and Staffordshire Bull Terriers. Unfortunately, this law was being increasingly flouted, with the result that more people were being attacked. In Chamonix, however, he couldn't recall a single instance of a pedestrian being bitten by a free-roaming dog.