Happy trails to you...

Jack, who never met a mud puddle he didn't like, and who left us too soon. We miss you already.

Not such a ruffian

“Is he a big suck?” asks the man behind the counter.

For a minute I am not sure he is talking to me. I am distracted by the fact that Murdoch did not start barking angrily at my back as I walked away from him and is not currently causing a scene in the parking lot.

I glance out through the glass door at my car where it sits at the gas pump, the passenger side window open just enough for Murdoch to stick his big head through. He stares at the building into which I have disappeared, his bottom teeth visible as if he is in the middle of saying something rather important, his brown eyes wide with mild concern.

How odd, I think, pondering the normalness of my dog at this moment. I very much want to reply, “Yes, he is.” But I can’t.

“Sort of,” I answer the man, thinking about how Murdoch likes to lay his head in my lap sometimes or lean against me when I am sitting at the computer, but then how it all usually ends in growling and sometimes bared teeth. And he’s really not very good with strangers at all.

“He kind of swings between big suck and I’ll bite your face off,” I elaborate.

“He looks like he could,” says the man with a laugh.

“Yes,” I say, wondering if perhaps I was too harsh. But it is not often Murdoch is out in public and I want to make sure we are all on the same page. I want people to know that my cuddly-looking dog will not delight in being approached by a well-meaning, dog-loving person, and I want people to know I have no delusions about what a well rounded, wonderful canine he is. I am not certain at all that Murdoch won’t bite. It is best just to lay that out for people.

But I am taken aback by this man; I have never had anyone ask me if Murdoch is a big suck, and I really wasn’t prepared with an answer. That was the kind of language reserved for Bear whose big black shape would loom inside the car while she looked forlornly out the window or jumped into the driver’s seat and honked the horn while she waited for us to return. No one had to ask if Murdoch was a big suck because he was usually throwing some kind of tantrum in the car, bouncing off the windows, barking intimidatingly and showing off his giant jaw with all those sharp white teeth while Morgan and I pretended not to know him.

As I look at Murdoch through the window of the store, I try to see him from someone else’s eyes, someone who has not wrestled for their life with this dog, someone who has not been dragged face-first down the road behind him in hot pursuit of a truck, someone who has not had to apologize to family members and friends when he has growled and snapped at them just for being friendly.

“He misses you already,” says another man who enters the store as the cashier hands me my change. I glance at Murds, then at the new arrival. “He’s whining for you.”

“Really?” I say and then I smile at them and skip a beat because the most appropriate thing to do next would be to comment on what a big baby he is, but in lieu of what I’ve just said I think better of it and instead stick with, “Huh. Weird.”

Not so much weird that he is whining, but weird that these two people have both taken the time to comment on my dog and I am not trying to deny that he is mine or explain, “Well, he’s a rescue,” to a series of understanding nods.

Perhaps, I think, as I head back to the car and pat Murdoch on the head, there is hope for the big suck after all.

A warrior just the same

Murdoch and I sit on the deck, side by side in the dark, his black shape invisible against the black, black forest. Above, the sky is full of stars. Ragged treetops are silhouetted against the not-quite-blackness of it and form a sort of ring in this clearing where we sit, as though a hole has been ripped in the deepest black fabric of the universe to peak beyond at another place entirely.

It is a warm evening after a string of warm days, a small and brief resurge of summer, and the air smells like yellowed leaves. In the woods somewhere, in that complete darkness of a moonless night, a bird sings a short refrain and then it is silent again.

I arrived home in the dark and called to Murdoch at the door, “It’s just me,” when I heard the uncertain deep rumble in his throat. I did not want to frighten him again like we did the other night when he didn’t know it was Morgan and I, and we literally scared the crap out of him.

That night we did not go directly to the house as usual after we pulled the car into the driveway, instead we stood in the dark discussing one thing or another before wandering up the gravel path to the door. Murdoch was not silent like he usually is when he hears us coming, but barked loudly, uncertainly and, in hindsight, I suppose alarmingly.

As I reached for the outer wooden screen door, Morgan, in a playful mood, whispered, “Wait!” then he stepped in front of me and banged on the door, rattled it on its hinges, and then pulled it open and threw open the main door behind it. We stepped back, expecting a wild beast to come leaping across the threshold, but it was silent and as I peered through the window I could see Murdoch had backed up as if to hide behind the door.

“I think we scared him,” I said.

“No way,” said Morgan, and then called, “Come on Murds!”

But he didn’t come out. He was busily sniffing the floor in a distracted manner and as we stepped inside we were greeted by a heavy muskiness, his scent had exploded over everything and on the floor, a little brown lump.

We were stunned for a moment and then our hearts sank. “We really did scare him,” said Morgan. “I feel terrible.”

“He’s trying to clean up.”

“He doesn’t have to do that,” he said, and ushered both Murdoch and I outside. Where Murdoch paced at the door until I managed to distract him with a stick and we played fetch by flashlight.

So, tonight when I again came home in the dark and heard the beginnings of an uncertain bark, I spoke to him through the door, let him know I wasn’t some giant dog-eating bear emerging from the woods, and invited him outside with me on to the deck to sit and look at the stars.

Beside me, Murdoch’s furry bulk is reassuring, companionable, and I feel such remorse for scaring him the night before, for embarrassing him. I never expected him to react the way he did, my big ferocious dog who will show his teeth before he licks your face. But then, I think, what better way to mask your fear in a situation you don’t trust. Be the first to intimidate.

I wrap my arm around his shoulder, squeeze him closer, kiss the side of his face. He growls. I nod to myself and smile and think about all the things I don’t know about my dog as we sit side by side in the black night, content in the quiet and solitude, just he and I and the stars brilliant overhead.

Lucky dogs

“You know what would be great Murdoch?” I say to his back as he trots a few feet ahead of me down the trail, “is if you came when I called you.” Golden light from a late afternoon sun highlights his shiny black fur between dappled shadows as we move beneath the trees. “You know. The first time,” I continue as we pass by a clump of dried thistles edging the trail, their seedpods half-scattered to the wind, just a few white tufts still clinging to the brown plants. “Instead of the 500th time.”

Overhead, beyond the treetops of green leaves threatening to turn yellow, blue sky stretches on forever. “When I go for a walk with my dog, I like to actually walk with my dog,” I say. And I imagine Murdoch’s eyes rolling skyward, as if he were a sullen teenager.

It has been a long time since we actually walked the trail at the end of our road. We have ventured to the trailhead and investigated the giant, spreading puddle that overflows the edges of the trail, but we have not waded through it to the other side. At least I haven’t. Murdoch has no problem getting his feet wet. I require rubber boots.

So, today, with my boots on and Murdoch and Jack running happily ahead, I sloshed through the puddle and made my way along the well-trodden path, occasionally yelling to Murdoch’s retreating black shape to “wait up” and “come back”.

He stops at the sound of my voice, looks back to where I inefficiently pick my way through tangled grasses and around puddles of indeterminate depths, but then he is off again, running further ahead, nose to the ground, a spring in his step. I call to Jack too, but it is well established that he mostly does his own thing, so I am not as adamant that he should stay within my line of sight.

It is one of those perfect late summer days, the sun’s warmth cozy, not sizzling, all but the most determined of the biting bugs gone thanks to colder nights, and that stunning crisp blue sky stretching from mountain top to forest stand that makes you feel happy just to be alive.

The dogs root through long grasses, yellowing and drying in the sun and I call to them frequently so they remember why they are here, to walk with me, not take off on the trail of something much more exciting. Plus, if I talk loudly enough, I think, we will be less likely to startle a bear if there are any nearby.

Sometimes the silence of the trail, even in the middle of the day, can make you feel very small and very aware of your smallness in the vast wilderness spreading around you. So, when the dogs finally do disappear and I can no longer hear them in the distance rustling amongst spindly trees of the growing forest I decide to turn around and start heading back down the trail.

I yell Murdoch’s name at the top of my lungs until the sound of it vibrates in the back of my throat and makes me cough. I walk slowly, listening in the silence of the afternoon for any distant sounds that might tell me where they are. I scan the ground for any signs of fresh paw prints indicating the pair of them have doubled back and have already made it home. They have done that to me before. But there is nothing.

When I reach that spot on the trail where I can peer down through the trees to the dirt road, stark white in the glare of the sun, I stop to consider my options. There has been no sign of them and I can’t see their frolicking shapes at the road. I could go home and then sit and worry about what kind of trouble Murdoch is causing, or I could turn around and walk back to where I last saw them, start this search all over again. So I do. I march up the trail and then back down again, purposefully, calling Murdoch’s name the whole way.

It is when I decide I have had enough and it is time to go home that I hear a crashing in the distance. I stop and listen to it get closer, a tiny part of me wondering if maybe it is not one of the dogs. And then Murdoch comes thundering down an overgrown side trail, streaming through the three-foot tall grasses. He is soaking wet and covered in various specimens of clinging seeds, stuck to his coat in great clumps of greens and browns.

“Good boy!” I say, because he has finally returned, even though technically he is not a good boy for taking off in the first place. “Where have you been?” I ask, as he turns on his heel to trot down the trail just in front of me. He seems quite pleased with himself, I decide, and quite oblivious to the passage of time.

“What did you do with Jack?” I ask, though I am not worried about Jack, he always shows up at home before we do.

It is at the trailhead as I stop in the sunshine to reattach Murdoch to his leash and pick off some of the seeds that have begun winding their way in to his fur, that I realize he smells like a swamp. “Nice, Murds,” I say, and he grins up at me with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. In the distance I see Jack making his way home and I wish, for about the millionth time, that I could tag along on one of their escapades.

“You’re a couple of lucky dogs,” I tell Murdoch as we head for home, past bulrushes and swaying grasses the same height as me, and trees marching off towards the distant mountain. “You don’t even know.”

The edge of the storm

It is pouring again. Murdoch, Jack and I make our way home down the road where rain falls so hard the ground looks like a sea of fish, their little mouths opening and closing at the surface of some great lake, churned brown from the rain and a million flapping fins.

We are soaked. My pants stick to my legs and direct water down into my boots. But I don’t hurry. I hide my camera under my jacket and watch the rain obscure the landscape around us in silvery sheets. There is a flash of lightning and Murdoch starts, then jumps when thunder cracks overhead.

Just moments before, before the rain poured down, I stood at the edge of the storm where slate gray clouds crowded in at the trailhead at the end of our road and the landscape reflected light in odd ways. Thunder rumbled just out of reach around the mountains and over the trees, quietly taking stock of the world below as I took stock of it, existing in the stillness. It was like standing outside of time.

I stood with the toes of my boots touching the lip of the great puddle that flooded the trail from previous rainstorms and beaver dams and watched the sky. I could have easily sloshed through the water, but I did not want to disturb the stillness, break the quiet of the woods ahead where the trail disappeared amongst the trees. The only sounds were the tentative rolling of thunder above and the rustle of grasses just off the trail where Murdoch and Jack tracked unseen things.

I saw the raindrops before I heard them, spreading out in rings over the puddle at my feet. They were sporadic at first, unpredictable, becoming steadier and larger until they were plinking loudly on the water’s surface. It wasn’t until the rain became a wall with the blare of static and the dogs appeared at my side that I turned and headed for home.

The rain is warm despite the fall-like temperatures we have had in the evenings and the damp days and the wearing of sweaters. Murdoch stays glued to my side unsure, it seems, of the driving rain as Jack trots ahead and makes a dash for his house. The light has changed again, filtered through the bucketing rain, it is more yellow, more menacing even than the dark flat gray of earlier. Still, I don’t hurry.

When we turn into our driveway it is like we are emerging from the ocean. Beneath the trees, the rain is not so heavy but it changes pitch, becomes louder, as it clatters down amongst the branches. Part of me wants to stay outside, but there is thunder and lightning and trees. And anyway, the edge of the storm has moved on, taking with it that stillness and that moment out of time. So we push through the once towering flowers that have collapsed across the path to the house and disappear inside.