Why a dog...

The strange, and awesome evolutionary connection between dogs and us.

I’ve had a number of incredible dogs in my life. I’ve had a dog since I’ve had memory. How did I get so lucky?

My best friends when I was in elementary school were every bit as much my dogs as were Todd, Jon, Katie, Joe, and Curt. Pete, Reagan, Dusty, Sunny, Farley, Heidi, and Holly. I think I might even be missing a few that lived shorter lives. Life in the country. But they were all classics in their own. A lot of herders mixed in there. A couple golden retrievers. And then a couple origin unknown.

But the last three… These are the dogs of my adulthood, and they’ve carried far more for me. These dogs…

Uma and Caleb have been gone for nearly 20 years, but I still feel like they are around. So imprinted in my mind, I’m assuming I’ll carry them every bit as much into my own departure some day, and here in lies one of my genuine hopes, that may, just maybe there is an afterlife in which if nothing else we get to be reunited somewhere with our dogs. My theories on the afterlife have evolved a lot in recent years, from pure atheism to something more magical, and hopes of my dogs is a big part of it.

Right now I have this dog, Acre. Acre and I pretty much spend every day together as I work mostly from home, and so does he. And on days I have to go the shop, he’ll often keep the truck safe for me. He’s always got my back.

I don’t think having a dog is for everyone, or for every single phase of life, but there is no denying that having a dog, if you are so inclined, will one hundred and ten percent make your life better if you have the time and patience to give to their individual needs. Dogs need to get out. Need to sniff. Need to run. Need to see other dogs. They need to chase some things. The need to bark a little. They need to fetch. They need to play… Dogs love doing. And if you can fit that into your life, you will no doubt benefit from having a dog. If you can’t, don’t do it. Not just for you, but for the dogs sake.

No other creature asks so little and gives so much. All they want to do is literally anything fun, anytime. You will never have to talk a dog into going on a walk, to the park, to play frisbee, fetch, go swim in a creek, climb a mountain, run a trail, hike in the woods, go anywhere, ever. They are always game and always having fun. Have you seen a sad dog lately? The only ones that are sad are the ones that lost the luck lottery and ended up with people that don’t do anything with them. That is the only sad dog.

It’s an incredible evolution we’ve made with these creatures, that they are so able to learn not only our individual language and specificity, but also our emotion and our tone. They have been with us long enough to understand our individual nuances, better than many people I sometimes think.

Acre and I go to the creek every morning. Even on mornings when I think I’ll put off my swim until later, I get out the door because I know he wants to and can’t go by himself (he might if he could.) Then if it’s a work day, around 1 he brings the frisbee to me. I’ll usually make a coffee, maybe call a friend or my parents, and go throw the frisbee in the yard. It’s our afternoon break.

Later in the evening, on his lucky days he’ll get a trail run with me, followed like today by a several mile walk with Ella. I’ve never had a dog so fun to run with. Caleb and Uma were good, but both had a full lack of understanding of the actual thing that is trail running. Uma always took it very seriously and stayed immediately at my heel or immediately in front of me. She was very concerned about being in a close proximity with such a steady pace. Caleb could easily out run me by 100x both distance and speed, and that was sort of the problem. He had a wonderlust. A love of leaving. A love of exploration, sometimes in the next canyon over. Until he was 6 or 7, he couldn’t be trusted, though I tried countless times. I hated to leash such a wild animal unless it was required. And often ended up waiting for him at the trailhead, sometimes for hours. But he always came back. Often, wet, tattered, full of burrs and branches, and always with a big fucking grin. I’m a sucker for such happiness, even if it causes me frustration. If only we all could find such happiness…

Acre is the perfect cross of the two. He does not run on the trail with me, but rather bounces back and forth around the perimeter, but being a herder always reasonably close. I do not trip over him, but he also doesn’t just run off for hours, but, like both Uma and Caleb, you can see the level of happiness when we are in the forest that is just unbelievable, were it not so contagious. When your dogs are having so much fun, it would be hard to not be having the same thing. And that is the magic of dogs… their happiness is contagious and unrelenting.

Acre checks in by looking at me. Once eye contact is made, he goes back about his business.

When you read about the relationship humans have with dogs, it is no wonder many of us feel a strong sense of bond. This relationship dates back ten if not tens of thousands of years. There are graves as far back as 12,000 years in which humans lie next to their dog. We’ve been living and working together a long time, it is a relationship that clearly has itself ingrained in our dna, and in theirs. Dogs not only have an uncanny ability to use their facial expressions to communicate with humans, a trait that required developing a different set of facial muscles than their ancestors in the wolf world, but they are adept at communicating with humans by both pointing and gaze alternation, which they use to not only signal our attention to potential food sources, but also to in a way ask us questions about something in front of them. So long we’ve been hunting and herding with one another that we have an innate ability to communicate even further resulting in bonds around friendship and safety. Dogs not only possess the ability to warn and protect, but even aid people both in things like drowning, and finding help for someone injured. Their instincts are wildly aligned with our own.

And each dog has its own qualities. A friend pointed out that it is important to know the breed, because then you can better understand the dogs instincts, needs, and wants. Acre is a pure herder. When I ride my bike with him trained to run next to me, he sometimes reaches over and bites my foot. He can’t help it. Pure excitement. He is doing what his genes tell him to. When he was very young we were camped in the mountains and overnight some free ranging cows wandered into camp. Acre anxiously awoke me, concerned. He and I crawled out of the tent to assess how many. Roughly ten had come in and around the tent, and more were heading in from an opening in the forest. He looked at me with a look of utter excitement. A look asking “Can I?” I nodded and gave him the “ok.” and without ever having been around cows, without ever having herded a single thing or seen a herding dog in action, he circled around the cows, barking, pushing, barking, backing them up and away from us, and within 3 minutes all the cows had been effectively and swiftly herded from camp, all pushed out the same direction.

Caleb, who was a Eurasier, had an instinct that was wildly fascinating to witness and one I miss living in bear country. In all my years with Caleb I heard him bark less than 50 or so times, total… in his life. He was not a barker. He reserved barking for two things, bears and moose. He was a total wanderer. And if he got onto a deer scent he’d yip. And he’d chase his nose to the opposite side of a drainage. But, having an incredible nose, he always seemed to find his way back to me before I encountered any wildlife myself. And when it was a bear, or a moose, he would position himself equidistant between me and the animal. But here was the unusual part of the instinct. He’d sit down. Look back to make sure I was paying attention. Then face the bear again. And let out one or two giant barks. No nonsense barks. For a dog that rarely barked, when he did, there was no questioning it. He then would check on me, look back at the bear, take two steps closer to it, sit again, and bark again. The bear might sit passively through one or two rounds, but eventually he pushed off every bear we encountered with this method. He did it enough times to for me to see it was something deeply engrained in him, a method of protection inherited from generations of being in forests with humans and bears.

Unlike the herders I’ve had, who want to be close proximity at all times, Caleb was a creature of the mountains. He made sure we were alright, but he had other agendas as well. He would sometimes wander off for hours, but always make his way back. He is the only dog I’ve had that I would have zero concern about in terms of survival. He had an instinct for mountains far beyond my own.

Caleb at the firepower we called home for several summers. He was made for mountains.

I know with every dog I’ve had I have possessed the ability to signal them for not only simple tasks like recall, staying close, jumping over something, but also for alertness, or even sending out to search. And while I certainly lacked some patience to train previous dogs I’ve lived with to their full potential, Acre is exceptionally adept at learning new things, anything I’ve tried to teach him, based most likely on the sheer volume of time we spend together.

Dogs are a wonder. And life is better with them. Yes, they shed. They scratch doors. They need things to chew on. They bark. They require getting out frequently. They get sick from eating things they probably ought not to. But there isn’t a single day that passes that I am not appreciative of what good companions they are, and what an utterly optimistic outlook they have on life. It’s contagious. Life is better with dogs.