A Dog's Life

I was in Albuquerque the other day with my two dogs, Paco and Star, who know nothing about being in town, so I took them to the dog park as a facsimile of country life. You’ll notice that I use the pronoun “who” when referring to them: considering how often the word “that” is used instead of “who” when referring to people, I think it’s OK to extend the little used “who” to pets “that” we treat as humans.

While I was at the dog park I met up with this lovely Mexicana, a volunteer at the local animal shelter, who was there with six little dogs, all damaged goods. Four of them were hers, the ones she had rehabilitated at the shelter and adopted, and two were “unadoptables:” one who bit other dogs (she had trained him to keep a ball in his mouth so if he opened it to bite he’d lose his pacifier) and the other whose cast had recently been removed but he continued act as if it hadn’t (no one wanted to adopt a cripple who was actually mental).

She told me in vivid detail each dog’s abuse history. I won’t go into it here, but suffice it to say it illustrated the Hobbesian interpretation of human nature. It also elicited a conversation of how the cultural differences in both Mexico, her home, and northern New Mexico, my home, are revealed in the way humans relate to animals. She didn’t accede to political correctness when discussing a dog’s life in Mexico, but I tried to explain it in more utilitarian terms: a dog is supposed to protect the property or round up the cows while a cat catches mice and “rattas” (gophers).

I cop to the bourgeoisfication of owning animals. Sometimes I go so far as to think there must be something wrong with anyone (of my class) who doesn’t own at least one: Mark brought home more strays than I did; both my sons are smitten; my mother adored the two kittens I dumped on her in college; and my two closest friends have four dogs each. My father, who I’ve already written about (see The Swim Team), claimed he was allergic to animal hair, so we had to make do with a parakeet.

After I dumped the kittens on my mother I also dumped college and acquired my first dog, Chani, who I dragged across the country several times, including a trip on the subway from the East Village to the Bronx (the subway police made me get off at Times Square and find a box to put her in; today they would have just kicked us off). I found Judge, a huge Husky-type mix, in the woods of eastern Oregon where I was working as a seasonal employee for the Forest Service. It took me many tries to get near him, but when I finally got him in the car he collapsed and had to be carried in and out of my cabin for a week because his paws were rubbed raw. I brought him back to New Mexico and had him until the infamous dog poisoning in Placitas, in 1981, when some deranged person set out meat laced with poison and killed hundred of dogs over the course of a couple of days.

Waldo, who looked like the movie personality Benji, also succumbed to the poisoning, but he wasn’t strictly my dog. He lived with three families in the village and took turns gracing us with his presence. We tried to tame him—let him sleep inside, took him in the car to go for hikes—but he bought into the philosophy that “it takes a village.”

We also rescued Dutch, an Australian shepherd, from somebody’s bathroom in a trailer park (they left him there all day while they were at work), and adopted a dog named Pooper, from friends with too many other dogs, and renamed him Scooter. Our El Valle dogs were all rescued, too: Luther, after being hit by a car in Taos, and Django, who someone dumped in a culvert on our road. Mark picked up Sammy, a cocker spaniel, running down the streets of Chimayó after folks at one of the stores near the Santuario told him, “You better take him before the dog lady gets him,” the implication being that while the dog lady meant to be kind by rescuing dogs, when you end up with 20 of them all living in the same yard, it’s still a dog’s life.  

The summer after Mark died I had to put Django down, as she couldn’t walk anymore, and Sammy went in December, blind, deaf, and incontinent. Before Django and Sammy died I vowed that I would wait awhile before I got another dog. I gave away my chickens, too, thinking that for the first time in 40 years I could go away on a trip without having to get a housesitter or persuade someone to babysit my dogs or cats (there were 15 cats through the years, but I’ll save that for another story). And this time I was going to choose the dog, not have it choose me.

Or have them choose me, which they of course did. I rescued Paco up in La Junta Canyon when I was there with a bunch of folks looking at the diversion dams that carry water from the Rio Pueblo watershed to the Rio Mora watershed (this is another story as well). He looked like a blue heeler puppy (maybe he jumped out of a rancher’s pickup; heelers are definitely the dog of choice in northern New Mexico) but he turned out tall and lean and has no interest in cows. Star, who, like Waldo, isn’t strictly my dog, is also a heeler mix. She actually belongs to my across-the-road neighbor who got her to keep his other dog company, but she prefers Paco’s company and basically lives here. The deal was sealed when I started letting her sleep in the house (she’d already made herself at home in the house via the dog door, which I close at night). And while I sometimes take her to Albuquerque and the dog park, she really prefers El Valle, so I don’t take offense when she decides to stay home and check in with the neighbor.

So there you have it. I figure animal pets are like children: you take what you get and love them all.