Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

For us hunting wasn’t a sport. It was a way to be intimate with nature, that intimacy providing us with wild unprocessed food free from pesticides and hormones and with the bonus of having been produced without the addition of great quantities of fossil fuel. In addition, hunting provided us with an ever scarcer relationship in a world of cities, factory farms, and agribusiness, direct responsibility for taking the lives that sustained us. Lives that even vegans indirectly take as the growing and harvesting of organic produce kills deer, birds, snakes, rodents, and insects. We lived close to the animals we ate. We knew their habits and that knowledge deepened our thanks to them and the land that made them.

How many abused souls—dogs and humans alike—have remained in an unloving place because staying was far less terrifying than leaving?

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

Nobody needs to control or be controlled by cues and signals all the time; living creatures are not a bunch of machines.

Then, having 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.

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?

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.

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.

For us, hunting wasn’t a sport. It was a way to be intimate with nature, that intimacy providing us with wild, unprocessed food, free from pesticides and hormones, and with the bonus of having been produced without the addition of great quantities of fossil fuel. In addition, hunting provided us with an ever-scarcer relationship in a world of cities, factory farms, and agribusiness—direct responsibility for taking the lives that sustained us, lives that even vegans indirectly take as the growing and harvesting of organic produce kills deer, birds, snakes, rodents, and insects.

Ralph was tall, affable, and handsome—Christopher Reeve as Superman—and Scout was frumpy, opinionated, and a little overweight, the canine version of Gertrude Stein.

as your dog becomes more self-actualized, he may hold up the mirror for you, and the face you see can be humbling.

hallmarks of the syndrome—a powerful individual’s coercing a captive into submission, and even the demonstration of affection—have now been identified in cases of dependent children, battered wives, prostitutes, prisoners of war, and victims of hijackings.

[A] puppy does not automatically love you because you feed it.

whereas the first llama had previously become annoyed, stomping his feet, he now became infuriated. He turned and spit into the second llama’s face.

humans began to erect fences to protect their property from the wild. Some of these fences were actual ones, like corrals, and some were symbolic, like the Jewish faith’s sanctioning human dominion over all of Earth’s creatures, and, later, the Christian faith’s decreeing that humans had souls but animals didn’t.

They love being wherever they are. The reason, and it is a great lesson, is no doubt that they are perfectly content to be who they are, without torturing themselves with alternatives: They love being dogs.

never paralyzed by the need to judge and to compare. They don’t dwell on the fact that today’s walk isn’t as nice as yesterday’s, or this forest isn’t as interesting as the one they were in last week.

when she was three to five weeks old. It is during this time that puppies learn to play together and begin to understand the difference between biting for real and biting softly during sparring matches.

Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin,

at scars that never felt a wound.

You’re doing the right thing, letting the process happen. He’s not in pain. It’s what we see in dying that is uncomfortable to us.

Can you provide the necessary care? (I could.) Will such care so interfere with your own life as to create serious problems with you or your family? (It wouldn’t.) Will the cost involved become unbearably expensive? (No.)

Is the condition prolonged, recurring, or getting worse? (Yes.) Is the condition no longer responding to therapy? (Don’t know.) Is your dog in pain or otherwise physically suffering? (After hearing from the neurologist, Paul Cuddon, my answer was no.) Is it no longer possible to alleviate that pain or suffering? (No.) If your dog should recover, is he likely to be chronically ill, an invalid, or unable to care for himself as a healthy dog? (Don’t know yet.) If your dog recovers, is he likely no longer to be able to enjoy life, or will he have severe personality changes? (Don’t know yet.)

I knew for certain that being accorded a biography isn’t dependent on one’s species or one’s fame.

We made small talk while waiting, the conversation circling back to dogs—the ones we had, the ones we had known—and how it seemed unfair that parrots and turtles lived so long.

endorses massage therapy for dogs, as well as the use of “nutraceuticals

These techniques should be regarded as surgical and/or medical procedures under state veterinary practice acts.

(acupuncture) and acutherapy are considered an integral part of veterinary medicine.

It’s very important for an athletic dog like you to have a massage each day.

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.