Merck and Craige: Old Dogs II
So… on the first part of this bit on old dogs, I covered the
groundwork for this breed; i.e. Border Collies.
Career working dogs. Our first
retiree is named Merck and he was 13 years old when he took up residence
here. This is old for most dogs. We have had other dogs and none of them made
it to thirteen. Closest was old Max who
passed at twelve. At thirteen though
Merck is still pretty spry. He never
barks and we suspect he is pretty hard of hearing.
He was a breeder, so he is what they call an in-tact male. But at his age he doesn’t have any
aggression. Merck is the most laid back
dude. He’s maybe thirty pounds and long
haired black with bright white color blazes around his neck and on his
feet. He’s a handsome devil. And he has huge feet. Way out of proportion for his body. Somehow though, like the cool dude that he
is, he makes it work.
Because our youngest daughter has some developmental delays
and is the gentlest and most sensitive person you will ever meet, any animal
guests in our house MUST be gentle and totally trustworthy. Must not bark (a lot), bite or scratch. Our dogs are going to get hugged and fawned
over. They have to be on board with
that. Merck-man is fine with the huggy
attention, he doesn’t require it … he doesn’t seem to be emotionally dependent. A cool guy who just wants to hang out, get
fed and wander about in the woods around our rural homestead.
We grew to like Merck so much that we told the breeder lady,
who also runs a business using Borders to scoot geese off of airplane runways
and golf courses. This is really the
most humane and natural method of helping the birds to find safer places to
nest. Because they are bred to
constantly attempt to bring wide spread groups of other animals into small
dense groups, the Collies take after the birds and try to herd them together, which naturally just causes birds, who can fly,
to take off.
After enough of this harassment, the birds just look for a
quieter neighborhood.
This keeps them from crashing airplanes by getting sucked up
into jet engines or crashing through the airplane windshield and killing the
pilot. No good. On golf courses, yes they crap all over everything
in big tubular greasy dumps. This makes
greens, fairways and cart paths very unpleasant. Golfers don’t pay large amounts of money to
wade through goose crap. It just takes
the fun out of the game, somehow.
But also golf courses tend to dump a lot of herbicides on
their grass(es) to avoid nasty weed plants from ruining the postcard look of
the place. When exposed to, and often
ingesting, these herbicides, the gosling chicks either don’t hatch, or they
have two heads and maybe one wing.
Is affection a thing? Is just being furry and lovable and devoted a
thing? I think it is. I think it’s a pretty important thing to have
a companion who just accepts you. That’s
it – this furry lovable animal just wants to be near you. It likes you to stroke its fur and talk to it
with returned affection. So because the
ole Merck-man was so affectionate and cool to have around, despite his weird
arthritic walk and being mostly blind and mostly deaf, we wound up with taking
in his work buddy, also know as
Craige. Merck and Craige had worked
together for several years and had become rather inter-dependant.
However Craige is a couple of years younger than Merck and
we suspect somewhere along the way, in his resumé, he had a trainer (dog
worker) who wasn’t all that kind to him.
He will not allow himself to hugged around the neck. This makes him jerk back and sulk in a corner
for an hour or so. Doesn’t bark or
snarl, just quite obviously finds that gesture very uncomfortable. However, he also seems very insecure, so he
is always nudging people for petting and other forms of affection. He insists on being in the same room as my
wife, who is kind of his pack alpha –
for some reason. Not me, the male who
has to carry all the luggage and move the refrigerator for Saturday
cleaning.
And, both have decided that they won’t obey me if my wife is
anywhere present. These dogs are bred
and programmed to establish an alpha and that person is the one who has to give them commands. Which is good if they are working and there
are a lot of people around and especially if those other people also have dogs
with them. Our guys almost never take
their eyes off my wife, she gives a command and bam! Off they go to do that command. The only time when they will listen to me is
when I take them out by myself. Then for, at
least that short time, they will do what I tell them.
Merck widdly-waddles along the dog path in his odd sort of
carb-walk. Big strangely huge feet –
kind of like a dog-Hobbit –plopping twisted outward. Even at his age with all his infirmities, he puts off this perkiness vibe. Kind of a
perky-confidence. As I say kind of
“dude-like”. Doesn’t really give a shit
what anybody else thinks. Craige never
gets much farther away from his handler (owner-trainer-alpha) than maybe fifty
feet, unless he is given the command to chase. Then he is off like a bullet. As soon as he has made some other animal,
like a bird or squirrel or snake, take off, he looks back at the handler to find out if there is anything
else for him to do. At the command Craige come! He trots right back. Because often these dogs work in pairs, the
handler has to use their names before each command.
All of this hardwired instinct combined with good work training,
makes these old dogs a real pleasure to take out for walks. They are too old to get in much trouble, they
are bred and trained to obey commands, they respond delightfully to respect and
affection. All in all, although we may
only have them for not too many more years before they pass on, they are getting a dignified retirement and they still can perform a very useful purpose;
extending love and companionship for a small family that loves dogs, but just
need low maintenance family members.
I don’t think there is much of a stretch to maybe extend
this kind of thinking to our human culture.
dalepeterson.us
Just published “Twelve
Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar
disorder”
No comments:
Post a Comment