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Cherchez la Chienne, Part 2

avatarPosted on October 12 by AmaruqMay 21, 2017  

Not long after I came to our den in Garneau, Pack Leader and Mistress decided to hold a Party. You’ll recognize it, Puppies—it’s like a Howling. Humans need to socialize, just as we do. They collect a lot of food and drink and bring it all to one place, where they stand around in clumps and talk out loud while music is playing, sometimes from sundown until deep into the night. Both the males and females will move from clump to clump, sitting down, then standing up; then sitting down again with the next person. At any Party worthy of the name, the music moves them to dance or at least jump around in pairs, leaving those without a partner at the edges of the group, pretending they don’t care. I used to think this was the human version of puppy play but now I understand that the Party is part of the mating ritual. Humans hope to find a mate at a Party. That’s also where they sort out their dominance issues. For us, it’s so simple: all we need is a place to roll and tussle, with maybe a stick or bone to play with. For humans, it’s complicated: a proper Party means ceremony, a big kill, and a lot of that funny flavored water that makes me sneeze.

Neither Pack Leader nor Mistress had chosen a mate yet and frankly, I hoped, in my puppy days, that Pack leader never would. I was selfish, as puppies are, and wanted my new mom all to myself. Fortunately, she didn’t seem too eager for mating rituals. “Meet my puppy,” she said proudly to several male friends in the first weeks of our relationship. I sniffed them all politely. No worries: all but one grizzled old dog, who smelled rather pleasantly of the forest, were less dominant than Pack Leader—or me. I could curl up at her feet and take a nap when they were around.

Mistress, however, was another kind of kibble. She was seriously into the mating game. “You don’t understand!” she wailed at Pack Leader as Chichi, alarmed at her distress, slunk behind the couch and hid. “I’m the poorest in the class! Those girls spend more money in a week than I have for the whole semester! And their clothes…they don’t come to class looking like hippies! You can do that in literature classes but you can’t pull that off in med school!” She began to sob. “I’ll never make it to the end of the year—I just don’t have the money! And I’ll never make it with the guys, either! You watch—not one of them will date me! Especially not…not Laird….”

Pack Leader made Mistress a cup of tea and sat her down. “Listen,” she said as I snuggled under the table near her and Chichi watched warily from his safe little niche, “we’ll get you some really nice clothes—”

“I can’t afford it! Have you seen my budget? There’s just enough student loan to pay rent and food.”

She began to wail again, all about how there weren’t enough milkbones to go around and nothing good would ever happen to her again. Pack Leader stopped her noise with a single question: “Have you ever seen anyone in our society starve?”

I guess Mistress hadn’t, because she shut up. “Well, then,” Pack Leader continued, “how likely do you think it is that you’ll starve if we spend a little of this money on making you look good?”

This must have been the perfect argument, to judge by Mistress’ lessening sniffles and her suddenly hopeful look.

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Posted in Book Excerpts, Wilderness Management | Tagged animals, city, excerpts, family, food, hunting, pack dynamics, parties, True Woods books, wolf-dog, wolf-dogs, wolves | Leave a reply

Doggone Funny Money

avatarPosted on September 18 by TyeeOctober 12, 2012  

Pack Leader’s old friend Major lies buried in our back yard, near my favorite wallow. His spirit keeps nagging me. “Hey, Kid! Written anything yet?”

Kid, he calls me. Grrr. I’m almost two, now, taller than Pack Leader when I place my paws on her shoulders. “He’s still a teenager,” I hear Pack Leader tell other humans. Whatever teenagers are, it must be some kind of excuse for bad behavior. She always says it when I’m on the verge of being B-A-D.

Kid or not, I’m supposed to take over Major’s writing job. I don’t even have my first degree yet! I can’t spell human language—this iz wut it looks like wen eye trie. But Mayjur ashoorz mee pak leedr wil fiks up mie wurds.

“But…wut doo eye rite uhbowt?”

“Rite about munnee, Hunnee—it’s reellee kwite funnee. And yuze yer spel-chek!”

That’s the last I heard from that silly old ghost dog. So here goes, spell-check turned on.

The business of money isn’t funny. It seriously messed up my life. The facts all k9s should face is that (a) humans cannot seem to live without money, and (b) when they do not have enough of it, they do crazy things, things that wolves or dogs would never do.

I should be grateful to money—I met Pack Leader because of it. You see, my previous human never went walkies with me, being busy under the hood of his car; so we didn’t get car-car trips, either. I thought I’d do him a favor by taking myself for walks. My first few forays out into the big bad world went fine: if something spooked me, I’d sidle up to the nearest friendly-looking human, invariably a female, who would then feed me something nice and chauffeur me to the neighborhood dog hotel, called The Pound. A nice chap there, Bob, would talk into a little box, and eventually my human would show up, hand over some money, yank me out of my inelegant quarters—not a moment too soon as by that time I had usually managed to fill up one end with poop—and ferry me home.

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Posted in Half-Breed and the City | Tagged animals, dogs, euthanasia, family, money, wolf-dogs, wolves | 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

Los Lobos Locos

  • 1 Amaruq
    • Cherchez la Chienne, part 3
    • Cherchez la Chienne, Part 2
    • Cherchez la Chienne, Part 1
  • 1 Blue
    • Taming the Beast: dealing with apes when they first wake up
  • 1 Major
    • Cotacachi Butch
    • Escape to Doguador
    • Paw Prince of Profissey
  • 1 Tyee
    • A book in a cloud?
    • I Wuz a 56-year-old Virgin
    • Wolves in the Kitchen

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