From the time that I was about ten years old until sometime during my thirteenth year, Mom and I lived on 32 acres of forest, in a rustic cabin nestled in a valley at the end of a mile-long driveway that was situated somewhere between the small Oregon towns of Yamhill and Gaston. Yamhill was a whopping metropolis with a single flashing red light at its largest intersection and boasted a population of 640 people. Gaston was a similar sized town but it was further away and we didn’t visit there all that often.
Our cabin in the woods lacked electricity and running water (though there was a faucet in the kitchen sink that did provide cold water from the stream further up the hill during the wet seasons) and was surrounded by even more forest that nobody was farming or logging or otherwise making use of. Our three dogs had full run of everything and enjoyed their country life without any understanding of things like leashes, fences or collars. When we’d moved from Dallas, Oregon to The Place (that’s what we called our new home), we brought along Ruby, who was a mutt we’d rescued from certain death when she showed up on our front porch. Someone had put a rubber band around her neck, and it was cutting its way through her tissue toward important things like her jugular, esophagus and spinal cord. We’d taken her to the vet, gotten her fixed up, and tried to find her owners. We didn’t find her owners, so we kept her and she was delighted to move out to the woods and spend her days romping through the brush with Farley and Whiskers.
Farley had been named after Farley Mowatt, the author who brought us some great reading, including The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be and Never Cry Wolf. Farley’s parents had been German Shepherd and Canadian Timber Wolf on the dad’s side and St Bernard on the mom’s, which meant that he was an enormous lummox with long orangish fur and sometimes howled at the moon. He had a gentle, yet unstoppable, playful presence.
Whiskers was his polar opposite and was a Miniature Wire Haired Terrier, smaller than the average housecat. We had a cat, too, named Motorhead (this was before the band of the same name made Metal history). Motorhead would have been a black and white domestic shorthair, and his upper half was exactly that, but he always looked like someone had dipped his aft end into a vat of mange. Waist up, decent cat. Waist down, not so much. He earned his name because no matter whether you gave him a treat or tried to scoop him out of the way with your boot, he’d start purring and stay that way for a good half hour. Great thing about this cat was that he ate dog food, so we didn’t have to give him any special cat attention.
A hunter he was not. Though afforded ample available prey, Motorhead’s interest in catching mice or other rodents consisted of him crouching next to the entryway of some little critter’s burrow, his entire being focused on whatever mouse activity was taking place inside. The mouse would emerge and scamper off toward some other mouse hole in the ground a few feet away and Motorhead would – in full “cat about to pounce” posture – follow, his focus never deviating from the thing we all thought he should capture and devour. When the mouse vanished back into the ground, Motorhead would sit upright, seemingly wondering what had just happened, only vaguely aware that he’d missed any opportunity for a crunchy snack. Neighboring rodents had far more to fear from our dogs than this approximation of a cat.
Whiskers remains the toughest dog I’ve ever heard of. He was old and senile and would often try humping Ruby, which never went well. For one, Ruby had been spayed and was hostilely opposed to anything similar to the canine mating ritual. Aside from that, Whiskers was only about 7 inches tall, while Ruby was a mid-sized dog that could easily step right over him if he was in the way. The only opportunities for a union between them occurred when she was napping and he was, for a short moment, able to attempt to mount her. This always ended with a quick snarl and rapid disappearance of his engorged member, followed by a meek retreat.
Fortunately for Whiskers, Motorhead was not only a more appropriate size for sexual advances but he was also either unfazed or completely unaware of them. Every now and again, we’d see Whiskers grinding away at some part of the cat, getting his groove on, while the cat spaced out on something on the other side of the yard. They didn’t actually copulate… part of this was because Whiskers wasn’t completely clear on what part of the cat he should aim for… and part of it was likely because Motorhead was also male. Thus began my acceptance of interspecies and common gender bonding.
Whiskers had lost all the fur from his tail, so he looked a little like a big rat. Unlike the cat, he liked eating mice and frequently busied himself tearing what was left of the upholstery in our derelict cars apart as he sought his worthy prey. The result of this was an occasional meal of baby mice (the adults had plenty of time to flee) as well as a profound hernia. His lower abdomen was completely distended as he’d torn apart all the muscles previously tasked with keeping his guts inside. But his hide was tough and that he managed pretty well being all herniated like that.
Every now and again, the dogs would be gone for a couple days. We figured they were chasing coyotes or carousing with other dogs in the area, and they always came back. Usually they came back dirty or smelling like a skunk but otherwise healthy. Whiskers’ diminutive size was not to his advantage, unfortunately, and at one point he had an argument with Farley over a piece of cheese or some other dropped tidbit of human food. Farley picked Whiskers up in his mouth and shook him around for a bit; and in the excitement Whiskers bumped his head against the post that held our patio roof aloft. The patio was fine, but one of Whisker’s eyes popped right out of its socket and remained exposed to the elements until Jason (the other boy who lived in the woods with us) was able to carry him to the nearest neighbors – a half mile through the woods and across the field – to catch a ride to the vet. When they arrived, the vet determined that the eye had already quit working and gave Jason the choice of poking it back in so Whiskers would look like a normal two eyed dog, or tossing the eyeball out and sewing the lid closed. A dud eye would require cleaning and other attention that just seemed infeasible given Whisker’s active and outdoorsy lifestyle, so Jason made the smart choice and Whiskers came home with one eye sewn shut. It didn’t help that his remaining eye was heavily clouded with cataracts and his already poor concept of special relationships (recall attempts to mount a female three times taller than himself) suffered further.
During one of the dogs’ jaunts into the woods, Whiskers came home a day later than the others. It was clear that he’d been jumped by a band of wily coyotes and that they’d chewed on him a bit. What wasn’t clear was the method by which he’d made his escape. Certainly, he couldn’t outrun them. Bud, Jason’s Dad, figured he’d either sneaked into a hole where the coyotes couldn’t get to him or that he tasted awful and they abandoned any notion of making him into a quick snack.
And this dog knew the liberation that was reserved only for birds before the Wright Brothers changed the course of transportation. From any vantage other than the ground, he really did look like a big rodent. If you’re wondering: looking like a rodent in a landscape well patrolled by raptors is not the road to a long and healthy life. One day we came home and wondered where he might be. He wasn’t hanging out with the other dogs, and he wasn’t dry humping the cat. We called but he didn’t answer.
Three days later, one very uncomfortable, dazed and barely-able-to-walk Whiskers returned to The Place. On one side of his torso were two serious punctures, and on the other were several more. Bud said “Looks like a bird picked ‘eem up. Bet he was s’prised.” Seemed the bird had picked him up and at some point realized this wasn’t a snacky little rat suitable for family dining back at the nest – but was instead a nasty little dog full of piss and vinegar – and must have dropped him. Whiskers went to the vet, who explained that these talon punctures weren’t the kind of injuries that called for stitches, and he sent us home with a squeeze tube full of antibiotic ointment. I got a new level of understanding of how skin works when Bud squirted the ointment into the wound near Whisker’s hip and it oozed out all the other wounds, even the one all the way up on his neck above his shoulders. Whiskers soldiered on.
None of this was good and none of it was bad. This was how things were. The dogs got into arguments sometimes but generally got along really well. Most of what they accomplished was to ensure that we never saw any wildlife anywhere near the house. The woods were well populated with deer and other pretty animals that people like us would like to have seen once in a while, but long before any of those came into sight, the dogs saw/heard/smelled it and would suddenly erupt into a throng of hunters bent on giving respectable chase to Bambi and similar ilk. Farley and Ruby could really move with a quickness. Whiskers barked a lot and hobbled after them but usually they’d return from across the valley before he’d made it beyond our line of sight.
Being dogs, they sometimes practiced their predatory skills. One night we came home to find a very bloody – but still alive – possum near the house. There was no doubt but that the dogs had harassed and brutalized this dull creature. It could stand, but couldn’t really walk.
You might not know this, but the central nervous system that equips a possum is exactly like the one that you and I have. So if a couple dogs chew a possum to within inches of its life, that creepy tail hanging critter feels pain just like we would. The dogs got one of the only scolding sessions they’d ever know and we went inside the cabin. Bud went back outside to do something about this suffering possum and was back inside after a few minutes.
“Is it ok?” I asked. I worried over animals even if they’re creepy.
“No. Too far gone to save.”
“What did you do?”
“Killed it. Buried it.”
“How did you kill it?”
“Shovel.”
This wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It just was. The dogs did something we didn’t want them to do – but they were dogs and that’s how it is sometimes. Then Bud had to do something he didn’t want to do. He didn’t like it, but we lived in the woods and that how living in the woods is sometimes.
One summer day, the Yamhill County Animal Control fellow came by, waving dog treats to ensure a friendly reception. I think he hadn’t realized that dog treats were the best guarantee that our three dogs – each with a different reach – would instantly cover his entire outfit with muddy paw prints and lots of dog kisses. I wondered how he knew that it was safe to get out of the car and how many times he’d been bitten. After a short conversation with my Mom, he wrote us three tickets – one per dog for failing to license them.
I wondered why a dog would need a license. Cars need to be licensed, but firearms don’t and dogs were more like weapons than transportation. The possum told me so.
Mom went to court to argue our case before the judge, and I went along because I always went along for things like that. There isn’t really a “dog license violator” courtroom, so we joined everyone else who’d received a ticket for whatever infraction that required a court appearance. We listened to the other poor souls in court as they explained why they’d been driving without a license, or why they’d been arrested for the tenth time, or why they just couldn’t stop stealing cars or selling drugs. And then it was our turn to stand up in the front of the room to face the serious and unapologetic man in the black robe. First, he mispronounced our last name. Everyone does that.
“Loovray?”
“LoveRee.”
“Lohvreh?”
This game gets old quickly if you’re one of us, and all that really mattered was that they’d spelled it right when they wrote up the three infractions, so Mom gave up trying to teach a man of the bench all the nuances related to the pronunciation of an Americanized misspelling of what was a Norwegian name with ancient Germanic origins.
After a few rounds of the name game, he addressed my Mom.
“How do you plead?”
Mom had a plan. “Two thirds not guilty and one third guilty, your honor.”
The judge raised an eyebrow as giggles crept through the courtroom. “Two thirds?”
Mom continued, “We have tickets for each of three dogs. Two of the dogs don’t actually live there, and so they don’t need to be licensed in Yamhill county.”
“Okay, let’s just take these one at a time. Now… Whiskers. Is he guilty?”
Giggles gave way to open laughter. None of these car thieves and burglars had heard of a dog being charged with anything.
“Absolutely. Whiskers is guilty.”
“Okay, now Ruby Begonia?"
Laughter. A room full of laughter.
All our criminal peers were laughing. The recorder and the clerk and the bailiff and even the judge himself were clearly amused and barely stifling their own snickers. We’d managed to bring a bit of levity into this otherwise somber room, and everyone on both sides of the law seemed to really appreciate it.
“Ruby is innocent. She lives with us in Dallas, so she’s licensed there.” We still owned the house in Dallas, so we could sort of honestly make this assertion, and Mom had the foresight of getting Ruby’s license before we came to court.
“Okay, then… and where does Farley live when he and Ruby aren’t visiting Whiskers?”
Giggles.
“Portland. Farley lives in Portland.”
Mom paid the fine for having a single unlicensed dog in Yamhill county, then got Whiskers his proper tags and we went home without any inclination toward putting a collar, let alone a license, on any of the dogs. Bud had already explained that putting a collar on a dog that runs in the woods is a good way for the dog to hang itself, and we didn’t want any of that. Mom and Bud were happy enough to live unencumbered by clothing when it was warm enough, so that standard was certainly good enough for our canine companions. Besides, we didn’t really own them so it wasn’t up to us how they might dress. We fed them, we loved them, and they loved us. We were their people. They were our dogs.
