Lost Dogs of Alaska

A piece of a longer piece of fiction I'm working on, based on some true stuff.

Lost Dogs of Alaska

In the morning I leave the shed and sneak into the main house for coffee, being careful not to wake the old man. I pour a big cup and take it down by the river to sit a spell. The sun is up, orange and beaming over the huge swirling river like a signal calling urgently. This is where to get the best view of the gray mountains rising up on the other side of the village. I’m still too concerned about my dogs disappearing to enjoy myself. In a day, after getting more supplies, it’ll be time to head out again. I have to.

     I take the last gulp and shake the cup upside down once to get the drops out. Then I carry it back to the house, thinking. I can’t give up on them, even though Maria is home waiting for me, missing me. I’ve been gone a long time, but still she waits. They being dogs doesn’t matter. I’d search the same for a human friend. Well, maybe more for a dog friend, especially these dogs. They’re very dear to me.

     I wipe my boots, tap lightly on the door, and slip back inside. The old man is awake in the kitchen fumbling around making breakfast. He’s cursing at the microwave. He sees me and brings it down a notch. “Coffee time,” he says to my raised empty cup.

     “Already had some, but I’ll take another sir,” I say, if you can spare it.

     “You got it,” he says. He holds out the pot and refills my cup. He talks while preparing breakfast. “I never had all these gadgets before,” he says. “We lived in the bush and didn’t need any of this crap,” waving his hand in sort of contempt at the various utensils and appliances. “We had a simple life, a good life.”

     “Would of liked that,” I say.

     “I did like it. I miss it.” He opens the refrigerator to get butter. “Are you going out looking for your dogs again?”

     “Yes sir, probably leave tomorrow, buy some food today. I got to find them.” He looks at me.

     “You want bacon and eggs?”

     “That would be great, thank you.” He holds up an affirming hand while turning back to the stove.

     “It’s a damn good thing what you’re doing, looking for them. Most people would of not even bothered, but you, you’re loyal to your dogs.” He flips the eggs.

     “Well sir, they’ve been loyal to me. I can’t let them down by not searching for them, by not finding them. I got to find them. They’re probably scared wondering what happened to me, petrified actually.”

     “That’s likely. You should keep looking. Stay here whenever you’re in town.”

     “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

     He gives me a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and a hunk of salmon his son caught that he plops down on my plate. “Weather’ll be turning cold soon. That’d be hard on dogs like yours,” he says. “Not much fur.”

     “They’re big Airedales,” I say, “the old school hunting version. They got some fur, but not like a husky. They might starve first.”

    “They might, or wolves could get them, but dogs got a way a surviving. They can handle some really difficult times, stuff that’d surely kill a man.”

     “It’s been a week already. Were your dogs ever starving and cold?” I say.

     “Don’t have any more but when I was a young man like you I used them to hunt and trap. That’s how we survived. There weren’t any jobs, just living off the land, long before this place was a village, and long before goddamn snow machines. Once me and my partner were out two months and got low on food. We didn’t have enough to keep the dogs going. They were in real sorry shape the poor things.”

     I sit, waiting for more of his story. He says, “If the dogs got too weak we wouldn’t of been able to get back. It was too far. My wife and kids were waiting for me. They needed me, depended on me.”

     “What did you do to keep from starving?” I say.

     “Well, we had to stop and hunt,” he says bluntly. “There was no other choice. It was forty below, hard to sneak up on a moose in that kind of cold. But we got lucky and came across one, though, far across a valley. We didn’t think we could get close enough for a shot. He was so far away.” He pauses. “You want more eggs?”

     “Sure, I never turn down food.” He gets up and scoops some out of the pan on the stove and onto my plate. “Thank you.”

     “Yep.”

     “What did you do?” I say.

     “Oh yeah, well, my partner, my brother, who was older’n me and calling the shots told me to go around the valley and come up the ridge from the other side. We had no other choice, so that’s what I did, hiked around to the head of that creek. Well hell, it took me four and a half hours, but I made it. When I came up to look the moose was still there, hunkered down in the snow. I raised my rifle right then and fired before he spooked. Well, we got the moose, and fed the dogs, and here I am to tell about it. I’m eighty now. That was a different time back then. If I was young I’d come with you, help you find your dogs.”

     Well, I’d accept the help,” I say.

     After eating I start washing my dish. “Just leave that there, I’ll get it,” he says. I set it on the counter next to the sink along with a bunch of others.

     “Thank you for breakfast. It’s the best food I’ve had in a long time. I didn’t realize how much I missed it after eating lentils and oats for so long.”

     “Well, you’re welcome young man. It’s great how you’re looking for adventure. Life goes so fast and then you realize you didn’t use it enough and realize your body doesn’t work as good as it used to and never will again. You would think that when you got old you’d be more accepting of death, but you’re not. You’re even more scared of it than when you were twenty.”

     “Jeeze, really? I didn’t know that.”

     “That’s a sad fact, a twist on the expected,” he says. I get up to stretch before leaving, pulling my arms behind my back.

     “I’ll be heading down to the store now. I can’t stop worrying. I want to leave now but my legs are so sore,” I say.

     “You need to rest a day or two. A trip like that, the body might not feel it until awhile,” he says. “Sometimes it takes a couple days before it catches up with you.”

     “I know, but I got to be going in the morning. I got to find those dogs. I can’t afford to wait around.”

     “Maybe they back tracked,” he says. He pours some soap in the sink and runs the water.

     “What do you mean?”

     “Maybe they got on your trail going the way you came like they thought that was the way you were going.”

     “I thought a that. I’ll head back to the Coleen if I don’t find them up on Crow Mountain.”

     “Maybe they joined a wolf pack.” I raised my eyebrows.

     “What, does that happen?”

     “Not likely. More likely wolves would kill them, unless it was a lone wolf. Sometimes a lone wolf needs a friend, and sometimes on rare occasions they try to befriend dogs, or even a young solitary bear. I seen one come in hanging around the dogs who was tied to stakes, wagging his tale and acting all friendly, few years back.”

    “Huh, that’s something.”

    “Sure is, you never know what goes on out there in the bush. It’s a better world than we’ve made. Most of us can’t even begin to understand it.”    

      “I raised my dogs from pups, drove down to California and picked them out myself. We just hiked across the Brooks Range together. Damn, I should have been watching them better, but it was our very last day, up in these mountains right here. I figured it was a done deal making it here. I let my guard down, just once, after all those weeks. Then they got on a moose scent and took off. I figured they’d be right back. I waited a long time, but couldn’t stay without any food. I was a walking skeleton from our trek. After two days I had to leave.” He wipes his hands on a dish towel and walks me to the door.

     “How long you going to look for them?” I ponder the question for a few seconds.

     “A year,” I say. “I’ll give it a year. That’s what I’m going to do if I have to.”

     “No kidding. That’s some real conviction,” he says.

     “Yes sir. My mind is made up. I’ll spend one year searching my heart out for those dogs.” He looks at me.

     “You know, I think you would. I think you will really do that. Being in the wilds got a way of making a man do the right thing. Without it we’re always doing the wrong thing, always wrecking things. Best of luck to you.” He shakes my hand.

     Then he opens the door, stands aside, and I step out, prepared to search for my dogs in the rolling hills and untrammeled wilderness.

Dead Dogs Walking

Dead Dogs Walking

We’re a society that loves dogs, but in the wretched shadows, make a lot of them suffer and a lot of them die, for reasons a dog would probably never understand; for reasons many rational people would never understand either.

     I got my first Airedale terrier when I was eight. He used to chase cars on Ramp Road, trying to bite the tires with his big teeth. Back then everyone let their dogs run loose. The dog catcher wasn’t so strict like they are now. He’d follow my dog Murphy right to our front door and greet my parents politely, like a valued member of the community. “I think I have someone who belongs to you,” he’d say. Then he’d leave, no harm done. After all, a dog was a valued member of someone’s family. No one spayed or neutered their dogs either. There was no need, and it seemed far too cruel. When a female came into heat, the owners simply sequestered her from the males, and mostly it worked.

     We paid a high price for letting Murphy run loose. I think he was stolen and sold to a research facility, along with our neighbor’s dog Skipper. It was a common practice back then. Veterinarian schools and science labs need dogs to experiment on and they’re not all acquired legally. However, some breeders can legally breed dogs just to sell to research facilities. Beagles are a common dog used because they’re very trusting and docile around people, and easy to handle. They won’t bite when they’re being tortured, like a Chow would. A Chow would fight and bite for his life one hundred percent, until his very last breath, but a Beagle wouldn’t do a thing. Beagles die in research facilities, along with other breeds, some in experiments that really don’t accomplish anything. Some of those beagles live their entire lives without seeing a blade of grass or the light of day. They’re bred into oppression and sold to be tortured and killed, purposely. At least dogs who are euthanized in animal shelters were there by accident, not by some psychotic, premeditated plan of brutality. And I don’t buy that ludicrous argument that some dogs must suffer for some future good for an entire species, which may or may not come.

     It’s very traumatic for me to think about what could have happened to Murphy, even to this day. I searched a month for him, thinking he’d eventually turn up. I learned years later that when a dog is gone for more than a few days, he was likely stolen, killed, or critically injured. In some states, the pound will sell dogs to animal research facilities and veterinarian schools for a few bucks. Schools will practice all kinds of horrific techniques on your dog, though, the use of dogs is supposed to be dropping. The dogs are required by law not to be awakened after the procedure and killed humanely, but there have been many cases where dogs were kept alive to be experimented on again. The fear and pain dogs like this experience are off the charts.

     Let me make some important points. A family dog could be stolen or hauled off to the pound, then sold to a veterinarian school, and then experimented on and killed without the owner’s knowledge. Never put up an ad for your dog saying free to a good home, because there are people who go around scooping up these free dogs to sell into experimentation. Vet schools teach castration to sterilize dogs and virtually no other less invasive methods. Plenty of research shows that dogs without their reproductive organs develop a whole list of health problems. These altered dogs wind up in vet hospitals, costing owners more money than they would have if they had not been altered, so vet hospitals make more money off altered dogs. Money can be an incentive to keep a dog less healthy. They tell you it’s healthier for your dog to be spayed or neutered with no scientific data to back up this claim. This is called propaganda, and often muddles the truth.

     People love dogs. There are a lot of dogs because there are a lot of people, and the ratio is about three to one, one dog to every three people in this country. So people don’t really want to stop all breeding or there’d be no more dogs. There’d be no dogs for animal research, and this is a multi-billion dollar industry involving people with a lot of power and money. They need a lot of dogs or a lot of people would lose their jobs. Vet hospitals need sick dogs for good business, and altered dogs get sick. Dog rescue operations have to clean up the mess of industries who put out a lot of dogs, like greyhound racing and Class A breeders of Beagles. You can go on line now and find a Beagle to rescue, one who was originally bred for research but saved for some reason.

     Quite simply, there are two massive opposing forces working against each other here, both legal forces. One is the combined masses of normal citizens who simply love dogs and want to reduce the unwanted dog population, so they spay and neuter thinking this is the right thing to do. Sometimes it is, but mostly they’ve been duped. In some countries it’s illegal to spay or neuter your dog. The other opposing force, which may not contain as many people, but has a lot of power, are the industries and institutions that need a lot of dogs to make money or justify their existence, so they must ultimately support breeding dogs, which can lead to the unwanted dog population that the above force is trying to nullify. Veterinarian hospitals, veterinarian schools, research facilities, dog pounds, dog catchers, animal shelters, dog racing facilities, guide dogs, dog shows, police dogs, military, dog dealers, pet stores, dog spas, dog boarders, etc, all need dogs. The list goes on. Dogs are not just man’s best friend anymore. They make big money for a lot of people, so not only do average dog-loving people need dogs, but so too do institutions and industries who exploit them at various levels of barbarism for gain that usually doesn’t take into account fully the well-being of the dog. I don’t think we’ll outlaw dog breeders anytime soon, maybe just the hybrids, which are the ones we should breed. They’re more genetically sound. The powerful would never allow an end to dog breeding.

     If you step back and look at all this, it may seem that the whole spay and neuter propaganda machine, whether intentional or not, whether it does any good or not, is a diversion from the real problem, which is the harm big business is doing to dogs and the money they’re making because of this. Propaganda is good at hiding the truth, and the truth is, even though most people love dogs, some people make a lot of money off their suffering.

For the Animals

Animals don’t have rights like people. They should. We should look out for them, not torture them. Our entire society is set up for humans to dismiss the suffering of animals so that we can go on like everything is rosy and that their pain doesn’t exist. It does. Suffering is suffering. This weighs heavily on my mind, always has. I cannot ever lose my sympathy for people of course. This goes without saying. But also, I cannot ever lose my sympathy for animals. To do so, would make me a blight on the planet; a real asshole stinking up the place. In an ideal world, the only meat I’d eat would come from an animal who died naturally, say of old age or an unfortunate mishap like he drowned or something. Then in my mind I would not be adding anymore suffering. I rarely find these kinds of animals though. Eating happy farm animals who died of old age would work, if I could find them. Stores should label this info so I could check it out before eating them. Shooting an old buck in the woods, I could live with, if I truly needed to eat right then. I couldn’t lose the respect. When I find an animal lying by the side of the road injured, or any other place, it is my obligation to try and help him (if I’m not starving) and not pass blindly by. I do not want to fall into the trap of saying, it’s only an animal. Nothing can be done. Or that I shouldn’t interfere in the natural process. Because truth is truth, pain is pain, and the golden rule applies to everyone.   

            I’m trying hard these days to become a minimalist, and more importantly, a vegetarian. And to know where my goddamn food comes from; how the plant or animal was raised, how they lived, and how they died. Mostly, I’m just trying not to eat that much in general, to alleviate the tangled uncertainly of it all, the barbarianism of the market-place food. When I die, preferably very old and happy, I hope a poor starving polar bear and her cub can make a nice meal out of me, so I can give back, rightly so, to animals.

Why I Walk

Why I Walk

Once long ago when I was living in a dingy one-bedroom apartment working a dead-end job I started having panic attacks. They were far worse at night, when the gloom of winter had a tight grip on me. Each night without fail I’d wake up at about two o’clock shaking in terror. Remarkably, I learned that you could have panic attacks while sound asleep. I’d come to consciousness, not wondering if, but knowing with absolute certainty that in about an hour I’d be dead. That is the nature of a panic attack. You don’t think you’re dying, you know it.

I’d jump up, pace my room, get dressed, shoes on, keys and wallet in pocket, and get ready to rush off to the emergency room, if I could make it. Most of the time, I didn’t go. I simply paced until I regained control. I started sleeping fully clothed, shoes and jacket on and everything, in case I had to rush off to the hospital. Time was critical. Maybe in a last-ditch effort they could save me. That’s what I thought. A few times I actually drove there and walked around the parking lot for hours watching the bright neon light that read emergency. If it came down to it, I could go in there. You’d be surprised the things you see late at night in winter on the hospital grounds. There was the dense fog descending and the street lights trying to penetrate through, a lone raccoon, darkly silhouetted, waddling out from behind the dumpster, a lone car engine trying to crank over after the night shift, a slouching janitor shambling out of the automatic sliding doors to empty the trash, and me thinking I was going to die on my feet traipsing across the parking lot, which was much better than sitting around waiting for it to run me down like the grim reaper.

            I didn’t think anything could be done for me, to cure my terror-ridden mind in the dark hours of those long-ago frigid dawns. Sometimes I’d walk all night until it got light before the fear finally dissipated enough so I could drive home and get a couple hours of sleep before work. I had a dismal job in a windowless factory making computer wafers.

The fear always dissipated if I walked long enough. Sometimes in the day I’d have the panic too, but being around other people helped. The nighttime was always worse. I used walking to rid my fears of some phenomena I did not understand. It was like that movie Speed. If I slowed down a bomb would go off, probably in one of the arteries of my brain and I’d die on the spot. Or my aorta would implode. You see, when you’re in the midst of a full blown panic episode you’re not thinking straight, just in a state of flight or fight from the crippling dread. I would have run, but I was too afraid to muster the concentration for that. I needed it to battle the fear. I used walking to keep myself together, every day for hours until one day after about two months the panic vanished as mysteriously as it had come. I think the lack of nature had made my brain ill, and the walking healed it. In the years afterwards it never really came back. Oh, I get afraid sometimes. Who doesn’t? Of what, I’m not really sure, probably that I’ll sit around too much doing nothing and my life will pass me by. I vowed to keep walking so that it would never come back again. I wouldn’t wish that kind of terror on anybody.

            I walk long distances. I have too. I spent three summers walking across Alaska. I walked across Oregon and Washington, parts of Borneo, and s short stint in the Amazon. I go for a walkabout every year. If I can do it for two months I seem to remain pretty bullet proof to the panic returning. Now I’m on my way across Canada, from the Yukon River to Quebec. Well, of course I don’t really think I’ll get that far, and I don’t care. Maybe I’ll decide to go somewhere else instead. I just need to be on the move and this gives me a destination to shoot for. Walking is good, but other forms of bodily movement work too I think, canoeing, cycling, skiing, rowing, walking, whatever. The key is to use my body so my brain won’t get all jammed up and unravel out of control. I cannot let my mind get away from me ever again, so I’ll keep heading east every summer through the wilderness. I’d like to hike Mongolia, the Chaco Boreal, and the Tumucumaque Range someday. They say there are people there who still feel free. The wilderness setting works better for me than a city. There are no damn distractions, things to get in the way that really don’t matter one smidgen in the big scheme of things.

I have a Buddhist partner now, which is perfect for me. She says to the effect of what I already know; that you don’t have to really be anything, except a speck of dirt floating free in the universe; to reach a high state of nothingness so to speak. She tries to get that by sitting for long periods of time meditating, chanting; emptying her mind of all the garbage we fill it up with in the smart-phone modern world. Today is worse than ever for that. I tell her that what she is doing is virtuous. I told her about my panic attacks years ago and that I need to be on the move, steady and rhythmically to reach the state of nothingness, or tranquility, or whatever you want to call it, that she talks about. She understands. There is more than one way to reach this peaceful state. My favorite travel writer, the late, great Bruce Chatwin once said something like, people get depressed because they stay in one place too long. I understand those words better than ever, so this is why I walk in the wilderness every year. I made it across the Olgilvie Range this summer, my body suffering, but my mind becoming unbreakable, an immovable rock in a raging river.

I’m feeling as placid as ever at home now. I go for long bike rides daily, and I race every fall. It’s not for the ego aspect of it. It’s all for the sake of retaining my serenity. With a healthy body comes a healthy mind, and vice versa. Next summer when I start out from the middle north region of the Yukon and head east through the vast tundra and taiga, I’ll have that clearly on my mind while aiming for the empty horizon in the wild, northern sky. I walk for the health of my brain as much as for anything else.