Dog Days

      He showed up during the Dog Days -- those days of late summer when the Dog Star, Sirius, rises. Its emblem shone on the top of his head: a white "star" between his ears. Now let it be said: I am not a "dog person." I always identified so strongly with the cat, the dog always seemed the outlandish "other." I have known all my life I am not a "dog person," and raising that puppy only confirmed it. A puppy is at least ten times as needy as a same-aged kitten -- and needy is unbecoming in a companion. Nevertheless, as our lives entwined, we came to an understanding. He came to accept my boundaries and need for space; I came to see the qualities which "dog people" no doubt already knew.
      Caspian. To some extent it is a reference to the Narnia books -- I always enjoyed reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, in which King Caspian the Navigator sets out on a quest to find his eight lost lords. But as importantly, it refers to the Caspian Sea region, which in my subjective iconography represents a stark, windblown land inhabited by roving bands of horsemen, Amazon-like female archers, and fierce mountain tribes; emblematic of the adventure-filled life I wanted to give the children I never had. A quick Google search with the words "Caspian Dog" turns up many dogs named Caspian, from a huge Colorado mountain dog to a little Maltese, and every size in between. And what a way to see the multifarious life of planet earth -- every corner of the world with its own distinct canine tribe! That was where I began: I sent a DNA sample from Caspian to Wisdom Panel, to figure out what sort of dog he is.

      "Caspian seems to be a fairly mixed dog, and we found no evidence of a purebred parent or grandparent." So said the report from Wisdom Panel. That was the best possible news -- he is an all-around dog, a little bit of everything, perfect for someone like me who could not choose a favorite part of the world if my life depended on it. The report went on to name some of the tribes detected in Caspian, spanning right 'round the world: Labrador retriever, from the Canadian Maritimes; Shetland sheepdog, from a rugged archipelago off Scotland; Shih-Tzu, from the mixing of lines from Tibet and China; Shiba Inu, the brushwood dog of ancient Japan. Well! With a pedigree like that, Caspian must surely be just about perfect.
      Of course right away I had to look for evidence of the canine tribes the DNA test identified. His color could be seen as the Shetland Sheepdog's sable, or the Shiba Inu's sesame: reddish hairs with black tips, the black forming the same pattern as that of the gray wolf -- traces of the old Palearctic Spitz from which Sheltie and Shiba alike descend. But what is this little white "star" on the top of his head? Is it the white forehead blaze of the Shih-Tzu? The only physical trace of that tribe that lived in emperors' palaces? He has no trace of the flowing Sheltie coat, nor the long hair of the Shih-Tzu; but lush, thick fur like the Shiba. But at 50 lbs., he is bigger than any of these, showing his Labrador blood, and likewise has the head shape of a Lab.
      A creature of such heritage should never be condemned to a life of walking around the block on a leash. His wild spirit resonated with mine, and I knew the proper life for him was the life of the wild places. And so from puppyhood, as soon as he was old enough, he roamed with me through the pinelands and cypress swamps of the North Carolina Coastal Plain, herded spindrift (there's that Shetland Sheepdog instinct!) on the Outer Banks in the bleakness of winter, swam with me (there's the Labrador Retriever!) back and forth across the Tar River in the heavy heat of summer. To be a proper dog for me, he had to learn to negotiate fallen trees across the trail, thickets (there's the brushwood dog!), and the single log which is the only way across a deep ditch. He had to learn the hazards of nature -- thankfully, his first snake lesson was with a scary but harmless rat snake. He had to learn the bounty of nature -- whether digging up tasty (to him) June bugs, or sniffing out a delectable (to him) half-rotten sea turtle carcass.
      I soon found out he knew things I never taught him. If he saw me digging up sweet-potatoes in the garden, he would help me dig up sweet-potatoes. If he saw me pruning fruit trees, he would drag each branch out of the way as soon as it fell. Once, when the land was blanketed in snow, unusual for that part of Carolina, I held his lead and, on a whim, stood on a piece of plastic sheeting I found and said, "Mush!" Sure enough, he began to run, pulling me a few feet on the makeshift sledge (there's the ancestral Spitz!). He perceived what life was like in our pack, and joined in that life wholeheartedly, instinct and intuition teaching him more than I ever could.

      After seeing all this from my little sable/sesame "wolf," I found that the dog-training advice seen on the Internet and in books seemed more and more wrongheaded. "Dog people" seemed more and more like control freaks. At Caspian's puppy training class, when the instructor mentioned in passing that she tends to have control issues, I thought inwardly, "Of course you do -- you chose a career in dog training!" Reading some of these websites about dog training, I almost want to say no dog should be cursed with a "dog person"! But, no, that is unfair. Not all "dog people" are petty tyrants; not all love dogs for their servile obedience, and not all keep dogs to have their egos stroked.
      I picked up a hitchhiker with a little long-haired Chihuahua on his lap -- another ancient canine tribe, one that saw the pyramids of Mexico when they were new. He told me that the Chihuahua had detected his cancer before the doctors had, barking and tapping on the spot on the man's chest where the cancer turned out to be. I have known Yorkshire terriers who monitor the blood sugar of their diabetic humans. I'm pretty good at navigating off trail, but when Caspian veers off on a different azimuth than mine, I know I need to pay attention; sure enough, he homes in unerringly on the exact location of the gear I cached. Dog trainers will emphasize the need to get the dog to trust you; but sometimes, you just have to trust the dog.

      It is a cruel irony that some people, admiring the wild qualities of some creature, take the creature captive in an attempt to bring some of that wild spirit into their own lives. This is akin to "Pave paradise, and put up a parking lot," in the words of Joni Mitchell. Humans have been acquisitive for so long, we hardly know, anymore, how to relate to anything without possessing it. Parrots are snatched from their jungle homes and caged in northern climes, in an attempt to capture a flavor of the exotic. Archaeological sites are plundered so that modern man can feel close to whatever he imagines primeval man was like, by possessing the artifacts. We visit a transcendent nature place, and can hardly resist the temptation to carry home a rock or a shell, some talisman to assist us in keeping the place alive in our souls. Countless walls of outdoors people are encumbered with stuffed and mounted heads of deer and antelope, ducks posed as if in flight, fish on slabs of wood. But the inert, unmoving marlin above the fireplace -- it looks more plastic than real -- hardly conveys any of the majesty of the living marlin slicing through the waves. The piece of jasper on the desk somehow doesn't look the same as it did on the bank of that remote river; in that sense, it is as dead as the marlin. The moment we try to possess the wild, it ceases to be wild.
      Clarissa Estés, in Women Who Run With the Wolves, reminds us that "When a life is too controlled, there becomes less and less life to control." I am glad there were places where I could allow Caspian simply to be a dog -- to dig holes if he felt the urge, to eat grass, to cool off by lying in a mud puddle. Every dog deserves this; it is the canine birthright. Women, and men, too, have run with the wolves since time out of mind -- sable wolves; black-and-tan wolves; white wolves with black spots; wiry-haired, moustachioed wolves; curly wolves with funny-looking haircuts (the vegetarian's hunting dog, tracking down truffles); wolves with more fluff than flesh. The wolf nature lives in every dog, if we but allow, and help, the dog to remember.