Boundaries
by Jack Nisbet

Jack Nisbet is the author of The Mapmaker's Eye, Sources of the River, Purple Flat Top, Singing Grass, Burning Sage and Visible Bones. His newest, The Collector, is due out in October.

Dog Rules
September 2008

Dogs and humans have been tied up in a complex and confusing relationship for a very long time. Many scientists believe DNA studies will eventually shed clear light on that relationship, but for now the information floating around on the web and in a raft of dog history books seems full of contradictions.

All of these sources agree that every one of our modern breeds of dogs trace their lineage back to wolves rather than foxes, coyotes, or any of the numerous wild dogs around the world. What they disagree on is when and how that split resulted in domesticated animals who provided humans with an important food source and also cooperated with them in matters of herding, hunting, and carrying.

One mitochondrial DNA study indicates that the split between wolves and dogs happened around 100,000 years before the present; another claims to have discovered that the ancestors of all modern breeds of dogs lived in China about 15,000 years ago. An archaeological dig in Germany unearthed human and dog bones side by side that dated to 14,000 years old; Danger Cave in Utah shows the same kind of juxtaposition about 11,000 years ago. Some papers claim to have proof of domesticated dogs in China in the 6-7000 year-old range; in Sweden there are clear dog burials from 4-5,000 years ago. But there is a lot of space for interpretation within all of these time gaps, and at all of these sites.

Modern researchers have developed the concept of "pariah" or "primitive" dogs, little-understood animals that live on the periphery of human settlements and scavenge for food without ever being formally tamed. Australian Dingoes, New Guinea Singing Dogs, East Indian Pye dogs and Thai ridgebacks sound exotic enough, but Carolina dogs turn out to be the rangy yellow-brown mongrels I heard barking from the swamps as a kid in the South -- a possible renegade that survived four hundred years of human settlement in much the same form as the dogs seen by the first Spanish explorers in the Southeast. Similar stories, of a dog that looks like a distinct breed somehow unchanged by time and outside influence, crop up from James Bay in the far North.

In the Pacific Northwest, tribes here had their own dogs, as well as a wide range of their own traditions about how the relationship between people and canines worked. In 1934 Thelma Adamson recorded a Cowlitz story from Vancouver Island that described how Dog used to live with his brothers, Wolf and Coyote. Those brothers had fire, and when Wolf and Coyote went out to hunt they always left Dog behind to tend to it. But one day when the pair had the fire to themselves, they didn't take good care of the flame and it went out. So Wolf and Coyote sent their brother Dog to the people who lived nearby, where he had to beg for more fire. Those people treated Dog kindly and invited him into their house. They gave him camas to eat, placing a bulb in the little hollow that every dog still has at the base of each footpad. Dog decided to stay with the people, and never went back to his brothers again. Wolf and Coyote had to live without fire from then on, and blamed their misfortune on their brother; that is why both will kill any dog they see on sight.

The first white visitors to our region not only brought dogs with them, but also carried their own European ideas about what dogs were and how they should be treated. The newcomers' movements mixed the breeds and blurred those ideas, making it difficult to tell exactly what a dog's life was like here during the period of first contact. Stories and paintings from the era address many of the same questions dog owners today ask themselves all the time.

What did dogs and people share two centuries ago? The same Cowichan tribe that told the story of those three brothers groomed their thick-furred dogs carefully and thoroughly, then spun the loose hair into fine wool. In that culture, the dogs both provided and received shelter from the people.

Did the dogs work? Fur trade agent Daniel Harmon described Cree dogs hauling heavily-loaded travois across the prairies, but each tribe had different conditions and needs. When David Thompson arrived in the Lower Kootenai country in the spring of 1808, he found a world of extensive wetlands and bands of people traveling by canoe or on foot. Horses floundered in such wet country, so the Kootenai draped small saddlebags across the backs of their dogs. They trained the same dogs to swim underwater into the entry holes of beaver lodges and chase the occupants out. When Thompson saw Kootenai wearing fine hooded robes made from beaver hides, once again it was shelter provided by dogs.

Did the dogs misbehave? Anyone who has ever had their dog jump over a fence to get into the neighbor's garbage, or been woken up at three a.m. by frantic barking, knows that dogs don't always fall in line with human expectations. David Thompson described how, after a long stretch of bad hunting and short rations, he finally got on the track of an elk. He lay on his stomach for most of an afternoon, trying to wriggle close enough for a clear shot at the animal. Just as he had it in his sights, some bad dogs from the fur trade post caught the same scent, raced up behind him barking their heads off, and scared his supper away. Thompson was furious, and eventually had to kill one of the dogs for a meal, but wasn't happy about it.

Did dogs in the north Columbia country socialize with the people? While no one thinks that the dogs of the fur trade era could be called pets in the same way we treat them today, the animals lounging around in artist Paul Kane's sketch "Game of Al-kol-lock," painted at Kettle Falls in the summer 0f 1847, were certainly not pariah dogs. In Kane's watercolor these long-legged dogs rest comfortably among the crowd, watching people lay bets on a game of skill and chance. They seem to be acting very much like our own pets might on a lazy afternoon in the back yard.

Did they come inside? Paul Kane only painted a few interior shots of tribal dwellings, but in several of them, such as "Interior of a Chinook Lodge" from the lower Columbia, there are dogs in there with the people.

Did people allow their dogs to sleep beside them in the bed? Today this question still separates dog lovers all over the world. Some trainers decry it as a terrible habit, while others see it as a key aspect of the emotional bond between the people and the dogs. But after asking any kids if they like to snuggle with their pets, it's easy to get the feeling that many more adults sleep with their dogs today than those who are willing to admit it.

Apparently this bending of the truth has been going on for some time. In the summer of 1826, when the naturalist David Douglas visited Fort Walla Walla, he was bothered during the night by an especially noisy pack rat. In one journal version of the incident he wrote:

I lifted my gun (which is my night companion as well as day, and lies generally alongside of me, the muzzle to my feet) and gave him the contents.

In another journal, written at almost the same time, Douglas proved to be a little more honest about his sleeping companions

I raised my gun, which, with my faithful dog, always is placed under my blanket at my side, with the muzzle to my feet, and hastily gave him the contents.

Maybe over the last few centuries, or even the last few millennia, things have not changed quite so much as we think they have.

Illustration: Paul Kane, 1847. Interior of a Chinook Lodge. Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas.

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