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Author Archives: Major

Cotacachi Butch

avatarPosted on February 2 by MajorMay 3, 2017  

The Story of Butch

“Are there many humans here in Quito?” I asked Pack Leader as soon as we were stuffed into a normal car-car by the kind-smelling older human who came to meet us. (If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging fast.)

“Almost three million.” Pack Leader grinned at my surprise. “And you thought Vancouver was big? By the way, it would take a puppy pile of more than three thousand wolves, standing on one another’s shoulders, to get to this altitude. What’s the matter, Major? Feeling a little woozy at ten thousand feet?”

“The air is less jangly here,” I informed her. Humans have no clue about magnetic fields and few of them so much as a decent sense of direction. I think that’s why they built computers—to make up for what their gods held back from them. I wasn’t going to get into that discussion again, however. “It seems very quiet for such a big tribe of humans. Do you suppose there are many dogs?”

“Wait till morning,” Pack Leader said. “You can look out the window and count canines all the way to Cotacachi.”

Morning atop the Old Town of Quito proved misty and mysterious. I caught a few glimpses of non-human activity as we careened down the precipitous streets in yet another car-car but the dogs of Quito were even more ghostly than I. As the sun strengthened and we drew further away from Quito and closer to the little leather-making town where we were to stay, Ecuadorean life became more substantial and I began to see dogs. Dogs without leashes. Dogs without humans. Dogs on their own!

A leather town seemed like a chewy idea. Where there’s leather, there must be meat, no? I whipped my head from one side to another as we drove into Cotacachi, eager to meet my first Latin American canine friends but a little worried over whether we would speak the same language. Pack Leader, I noticed, was making entirely different sounds with her mouth and apparently our driver could understand them. Whenever she was talking to her friend Dawn, another aging female human who had, amazingly, found us at the hotel the previous night, she sounded normal but then she would switch to the new sounds as soon as the driver said something. Full of surprises, my Pack Leader. “Hablas espanol?” She caught my eye and grinned wickedly but I was too excited about the dogs of Cotacachi to take her bait.

In Ecuador the humans have built their dens all in a tight row down the street, with no room between them. No front yards, no boulevards, no patches of grass or bush—a dog’s got to find a comfy spot on the brick sidewalk, or, if lucky, in a shallow doorway, and curl up for a snooze until a social event starts happening. The sidewalks are interrupted every few dog-lengths by poles, wires, trees or various things that stick out from the buildings, which makes for an interesting peemail trail. If another dog comes by and suggests a jaunt somewhere, you just get up and go—your human is probably absorbed in his computer upstairs somewhere and will never even notice  you’re gone.

Heavenly freedom! I thought—until I learned the truth about a dog’s life in Cotacachi.

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Posted in Travel Doggalogues | Leave a reply

Escape to Doguador

avatarPosted on January 31 by MajorMarch 26, 2013  

When Pack Leader stumped up to my grave on the back end of our land to invite me to come with her to Ecuador, I was delighted. Not that our yard is not a nice little forest to be buried in, but being dead gets old fast. I’m lucky if the current young fool of a wolf dog, Lord Tyee, comes up to lift a leg every few days. Even Bruno, my old bear friend, didn’t come by once last summer, which is not like him—maybe he’s been repatriated in one of those bear-trap things on wheels.

I was wagging all over when I got the invitation—until I remembered Car-car in the Sky. I’ve never been on one of those infernal machines but I’ve heard from other canines about the terrible cold, the unendurable noise, and the sense of doom that settles down on you as you huddle in a horrible cage with not enough room to turn around in. “Where is this place? I asked Pack Leader suspiciously. “Do we have to take Car-car in the Sky?”

“Unless you’d prefer to swim down the west coast to the equator.” Pack Leader looked at me quizzically. Then her face lit up. “Oh, you’re worried about the baggage hold? Stop worrying! You can come on board with me. You’re my CSD!”

I am? I thought. What the heavenly milkbones is that?

“Companion Service Dog. With that degree, you’re entitled to sit upstairs with me. Of course, you’re pretty big for those little seats—we all are! But fortunately no one can see you, anyway. Just pad alongside me and everything will be fine.”

I don’t remember getting that degree. It sounded good but I still felt cautious. “No cage?”

“No cage,” Pack Leader said.

“Are there lots of wolfdogs in Doguador?”

“In Ecuador? I have no idea. That’s why you’re coming—to investigate the canine corners where a Two-Paws like me cannot go.”

“Okay!” I hopped into the back seat of the car, only to find Lord Tyee taking up nine tenths of it. “Hey! You’re coming too?”

Tyee glowered at me. “Pack Leader says you’re the elder statesdog. I’m going to my other Pack.” He settled, leaving me scarcely a cat’s length to squat on. “With my girlfriend,” he added smugly. “Didjever have a girlfriend?”

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Posted in Travel Doggalogues | Leave a reply

Paw Prince of Profissey

avatarPosted on November 27 by MajorOctober 12, 2012  

Boredom, up here on the hill in my cosy little grave, was relieved today by a visit from Cranberry the Bear.

“I miss you, Wolfydog,” he grunted amiably. “Not one single wolf on the whole dang mountain to converse with any more!”

“Shouldn’t you be turning in for a long winter’s nap soon?”

Cranberry didn’t seem happy. “The berries were the pits this year. The human beat me to the pears and plums—and she’s stopped eating meat since you’re gone! She has the world’s lousiest compost heap! What’s a skinny bear to do?”

“Skinny was never your middle name,” I informed him. “And don’t insult my adorable human.”

“Yeah, well, one night she apparently convinced a visitor to leave a cooler full of salmon and crab outside. That was kind. I told my missus to take the kids down there for a picnic. ’Course, the kids had terrible tummy-aches from that see-through stuff humans wrap their food in. I must’ve told their mom a hundred times to teach the kids patience—take that poisonous junk off the meat first. Does she listen to me? Me, the old survivor?”

I had to laugh. “Didn’t you get your share of fresh salmon this year? I heard everybody got stuffed—bears, dogs, cats, humans…. Sorry to miss the fun!”

Damn! When I think about salmon, I sure miss being alive!

“Yeah, salmon was good—for once. A fluke. Everybody knows it. Just as that grizz said, the one who went through here the other day—I can still smell her mark. Whew! Sure am glad I’m a black bear—our girls smell good!”

“What did Her Ladyship say?” I am curious about Grizzly Philosophy.

“Too many humans! Too many tree-eaters! Too many stream-skruckers!’ She claimed to be starving—that they’re all starving. She did look pretty slim—a size 8, say. She said the weather’s different; the snow’s different; dens are flooding, and they’re going to bed for the winter with half-empty tummies.”

A sibilant snarl broke into Cranberry’s story: “Just try bringing up kittens nowadays!” Clarissa! Ms. Schwarzekitty, ubersexy in ways I could never quite appreciate. The merest whiff of that pungent cat scent was enough to turn me around on a pinecone in the path, bang into my human’s legs and absolutely insist on trotting home a.s.a.p.—the hell with pride or elegance. This bitch always means business and I didn’t want me or mine to become part of it!

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Posted in Back in my Day... | Tagged animals, bears, cougars, Gaia, humanity, wolf-dogs, wolves, writing | Leave a reply

Doggisattva of Compassion

avatarPosted on August 2 by MajorOctober 12, 2012 1

If you are a perceptive human, you may have twigged to the fact that the fur persons in your life have come to you for a reason. Companionship. Service. Training (yours and ours). Love. Entertainment. Cats often take this principle a little too far, treating their humans like staff. Many of my smaller K9 buddies focus on love and companionship; some of them get so good at their winsome ways they become TV stars, traveling around in purses held by their humans, even on Car-car in the Sky. Such lifestyles of the Bitch So Famous, however, are not the usual lot of German Shepherds, which is half of me. Sheps live to serve and protect their humans. If, along the way, they get to learn every trick in the book and have their own TV show, that’s fine but it’s still just part of service to humankind.

I want to tell you what my wilder half was sent to humans for. Why does Silva, Goddess of the True Woods, send humans great big K9 galoots like me—a wolf hybrid?

From the start, my four siblings and I were not like other pups. Our mother, a beauteous but romantic young Shepherd bitch, had fallen in love with a wolf, a big black guy, who used to leave offerings of freshly killed rabbits, mice, and, unfortunately, chickens, just outside the puppy pen, for our nurture and edification. I say unfortunately because, not only do chicken feathers make puppies sneeze and choke, but my mother’s human would do a tarnation dance, a shotgun brandished in both front paws, every time a chicken was left for breakfast.

What was his complaint, really? He ate most of the chickens, and rabbits, too. The mice he left for us.

As you may imagine, Daddy made himself scarce during daylight.

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Posted in Back in my Day... | Tagged animals, compassion, family, wolf-dogs, wolves | 1 Reply

Cleanliness is next to Doggliness

avatarPosted on April 28 by MajorOctober 12, 2012  

Several heartbeats before Pack Leader realised it, I knew Computer had quit. My big furry semaphore ears, damaged as they are by a life spent with humanity, had detected the loss of one thread of sound, one tiny voice, well before Pack Leader exploded. “Huh? Son-of-a-Gottverkaltes-eine-kleine-SCHEIZE-geschicten-POTverdomma-maldita-seas!” Credit where credit is due: humans curse more colorfully … Continue reading →

Posted in Back in my Day... | Tagged animals, computer troubles, strange ape habits, wolf-dogs, wolves | Leave a reply

Garbage Day

avatarPosted on February 8 by MajorOctober 12, 2012  

The whole neighbourhood, street or forest, knows Garbage Day has switched to the second morning after the Weekend. Every Fur Person, whether in the Woods or in Town, knows when the Weekend is over, because that’s when the little apes toddle off to their school again. We had just come off a huge Weekend, when … Continue reading →

Posted in Back in my Day... | Tagged animals, bear, city, cougar, food, garbage day, Silva, wolf-dog, wolves | Leave a reply

…and Not a Lick to Lap

avatarPosted on November 20 by MajorOctober 12, 2012  

I nearly thirsted to death in Nanaimo. That gave me paws. Panting, I considered humans’ strange relationship with water. Imagine wearing a thick black fur coat like mine in the summer sun, with nothing but your long, sweaty tongue to cool down sixty kilos of wolf body! That was me at the end of a … Continue reading →

Posted in Back in my Day..., The 7 Habits of Successful Wolf-Dogs | Tagged animals, Nanaimo, nature, summer, travel, vacation, water, wolf-dogs, wolves | Leave a reply

Puppies of the Corn

avatarPosted on April 1 by MajorMay 11, 2017  

When we ran out of growlies on a recent trip to Nanaimo, I was close to crying like a hungry puppy. In case you humans don’t know—you all seem so plump and powerful, after all—it doesn’t take long for hunger to hurt. You can’t think about anything else. Now, humans, for those K9s who have … Continue reading →

Posted in The 7 Habits of Successful Wolf-Dogs | Tagged food, travel | Leave a reply

Los Lobos Locos

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    • Cotacachi Butch
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    • Paw Prince of Profissey
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