The Dog: A True Story
Photo Credit: Katrin B. from Pixabay
by
GM Kemman
September 2014
The dog had strayed into her life and despite attempts to find its owner and after learning animal control considered him (the dog) armed and dangerous, a fugitive from canine justice, possibly headed for death row should he be caught and detained, she let him stay.
The woman (as she would discover) had opened her home to a real dog, a dog who, in these days of mass confinement of canines, felines, and humans alike, had managed to escape attempts to control him and created a wide territorial loop for himself through the wooded regions bordering the ubiquitous subdivisions.
This dog valued freedom equally with human affection. Smart, persistent, and energetic, a canine Houdini, his skill at escaping collars, tethers, fences, latched doors, animal control officers, and even humans he knew and loved, in a sensible world would have earned him respect but instead just caused him trouble; yet his will to be free persisted.
Thus, despite the excellent food and other creature comforts smitten humans, such as the woman was, provide, he still wanted, when a deer passed through the yard, seeming to taunt him in his confinement, or when a feral cat tried in vain to pass unnoticed across the well-kept lawn that joined one section of wood to another, he wanted, he was compelled . . . to hurl himself at the storm door and hope the latch would give way or to run to the edge of the fenced yard and spring into the air catching his front paws over the top of the wire, using his rear legs as pistons . . . to launch himself into the wild again.
Once free, in the realm of the canine spirits, no human command or plea could stop him until miles of running broke the fever. True, he'd been successfully distracted once by fellow canine scents and scooped up like a puppy, ripped from his reverie, and scolded. Another time he'd been slowed by a skunk he was carrying, the one he'd killed the night before, getting heavily doused in the process with a perfume so thick four baths of baking soda and peroxide could merely dilute it, a skunk the woman had set aside to bury but that had proved so enticing to the dog he'd no sooner been let out the door than he scaled the fence to retrieve it. Thus, freighted with the skunk and perhaps feeling too pleased with himself, the dog was thwarted by a promise of affection from an observant and friendly neighbor, giving the woman time to slip a leash around his neck and take him back.
Despite the woman's increasingly sophisticated attempts to prevent the dog's escapes he succeeded now and again, often being discovered soon enough for the woman to run after him until he reached the woods and disappeared. The first few times he had escaped, not realizing the pattern to his wanderings, she walked the neighborhood frantically calling or got in her car and drove anxiously through the adjoining streets, hoping he might appear. But after a few times, the woman saw that he made a loop through the long woods, passing through the neighborhood before beginning it a second time, then tiring by the end of the second and willingly returning home.
With that knowledge, the woman stopped the anxious pursuits, saw no sense in it and saw it could cause more trouble if she wasn't home to greet the dog, and so she waited to try to catch him after the first loop or at least to bring him in after the second, an exhausted, stinking, brier-scratched, grinning-with-his-whole-body, panting canine, then scold him and put him in the laundry room with a bowl of water, to do his penance.
After one break-out, the woman ended her pursuit at the woods' edge and headed back to her house, apparently, she later learned, having been observed, tried, and convicted by a neighbor. When the woman went back outside after about half an hour, to try to catch the dog on the pass-through, the neighbor, lying in wait, raised her voice to the woman, adjusting its tone to contain equal parts contempt, malice, and condescension, and called out, “Don't you even try to catch your dog?” The woman, surprised, pained, tried to explain. Later, she would learn that nothing she could say would matter; predators do not show mercy, especially ones who care a lot.
Another time, the woman, failing to notice a deer lurking in the dark just beyond the fence, let the dog out for his late-night eliminations and turned her back just long enough. A nasal call pierced the still air, then a low growl and rattling wire; another runabout commenced; the dog disappeared into the night. But the woman, knowing what she knew and realizing the utter futility and possibly dangerous nature of wandering through yards and woods in the dark to look for him, went back inside to wait.
The neighbor's determined knock came soon after, followed by a blustering judgment which smacked the woman's face as she opened the door, “Your dog is loose! Aren't you even going to look for him?” Never mind that it was near midnight. Never mind that it was very dark. Never mind what the woman knew. Never mind anything she could say to explain. It wouldn't matter, though she said it anyway; she made a useless but heartfelt appeal for understanding, a good faith attempt to break through, this time, for the dog's sake.
He returned on schedule. And this dog, claimed by the neighbor to be a cat-killer but never verified or believed by the woman (a cat-chaser, yes, but cat-killer?) but known by the woman to be a skunk killer (a skunk violating the dog's territory? any self-respecting dog would have killed it), now this dog, this killer, bore in his mouth a precious cargo indicating he'd crossed paths in the night with a feral cat moving her kittens.
The mother cat would have sacrificed one to save the others, dropping it from her mouth onto the forest floor and leading her pursuer on a wild chase away from the nest. Whether the dog chased the mother cat then went back for the sacrificed one, or whether he stopped then and there, the woman could never know, but she did know the dog had not shaken the kitten to death or left her to fend for herself, desperately pining for her mother; instead, he, the dog, this cat-killer dog, had brought her home, likely a result of his bird-dog instinct, finally releasing the tiny feline from the surprisingly tender grip of his canine jaws into human hands. And the woman knew that now the dog considered this mewling little bundle, her eyes barely open, one of his own, and now their own. The woman knew.
But what she knew and what we all know that should matter most of all, the deep knowledge that smacks of the reason for living, that reeks with the truth, that sings from the heart, that should explain everything to anyone, is so often cast aside in the name of caring. To use logic and reason, to remain calm in the face of difficulty, to trust in what you know, these are considered sins in this caring world.
To care you must confine at all times, and should confinement be escaped, panic accordingly, sufficiently that you are noticed, so that the magnitude of your discomfort can be used as the inverse measure of your transgression, to thus determine whether your lapse in judgment or vigilance can be forgiven or should instead be reviled and used to undermine your reputation as a carer, forever discounting your credibility.
About the woman, some of the more caring neighbors liked to say, “She doesn't even look for her dog.”
Obviously a kindred spirit:
https://www.thethings.com/dog-arrested-chasing-after-deer/
An urban example of claiming freedom: