The puzzling coincidences that surround me, at times leave me splendidly befuddled. I sit here writing under the watchful gaze of a very large, very beautiful and very unusual dog. This dog was given to me by a complete stranger, just a couple of months ago, on my birthday.
I have made a habit for some time of frequently searching the internet ads for the words Akita and Nubian. The former is the name of the dog breed that I am endlessly fascinated with, and the latter is the breed of goat that I am currently keeping.
In order to keep goats for milk, as I do, you first have to breed them. There are choices to be made when it comes to this. Ideally, you should have the buck on the premises, dedicated to your does alone. This is what I refer to as "owning the testicles." Otherwise you have to race off, in a moment’s notice, with your doe in tow, to the remote location of the testicles you seek.
My point is, in order to have goats milk you have to throw kids, and in order to throw kids, you have to get your doe knocked up. Therefore, I am always looking to acquire a good set of testicles at a fair price. This is the reason I search the internet ads for the word Nubian.
When it comes to the word Akita, I have something less certain in mind. I have owned, since soon after her birth, an incredible dog named Willa. She is three quarters Akita, and one quarter American Staffordshire terrier. I have never known a more beautiful or intelligent animal in my life.
Since I first held her in my arms, I've had the notion that her offspring would be with me for the remainder of my days. It did not occur to me at the time that I should own those testicles, but one day my search for the word Akita produced an ad.
Sure enough, he was a pure bred Akita, he had testicles, and he was a nice guy- so they said. They were out of town for a while, and when they returned we would get together and see if we could work something out. So I waited a couple of weeks.
It happened that the day the owner had chosen for us to meet was also my birthday. The meeting was to take place in the parking lot in front of a bakery I frequent, which sits on Mud Bay. There are some wild lands behind it on the edge of Puget Sound. I thought it would be a good place for us to introduce our dogs. What I saw in the back of their pickup truck when it pulled in was stunning.
In all honesty, compared to the way he looks today, he was a mess. He was drooling, had big eye boogers in both eyes, and his coat was matted and stuck with all manner of things. I looked directly into the dark holes that made for his eyes, and he looked directly into mine. He smelled badly, and he seemed unhappy about something. Maximus was soon taken to a professional groomer, where a lot of money was spent on him.
Willa and I are tight. Tighter than I am or have ever been with an animal. This is saying a lot, as she is my seventh dog, and I have been immeasurably close to every one of them. The addition of Maximus to our family has not fazed her a bit. But the early moments were a little rocky.
Maximus is huge. He is a long coat Akita. The long coat is associated with a couple of other traits, and they are all the result of a recessive gene. The traits most often associated with the long coat are big bones, and an extremely calm demeanor. He is definitely in possession of these qualities.
When I first got him, he was forced to lie on the porch until his grooming could take place. The weather was still nice, and the door was open, so he was just lying there in the sun when a friend of mine pulled into the driveway. I could hear him coming, and Willa was typically wildly alert. I would not want to tangle with Willa. Maximus though was just lying calmly on the porch, his body betraying nothing.
The car stopped, and he began to inhale. The door opened, and his breathing paused. A leg extended out of the car door, and he slowly rose. The door closed and he calmly exhaled. With each step taken by my friend, Maximus slowly and deliberately began to move his massive limbs. After perfectly calculating his pace down the sidewalk, they met for the first time at the edge of the cement. He made the most intimidating and reassuring sound I have ever heard a dog make, a sort of low woof. My friend stopped and greeted him, and they have been on excellent terms since.
Willa has always been an amazing dog. She is so sensitive, and so expressive. We have an extremely powerful connection. She will often reach across the front seat of my truck and carefully grasp my hand with her cupped paw, indicating her desire to be petted. She will wait patiently for me, and enthusiastically break her meditation when I snap my fingers. She follows me into every room, and then after inspecting it, sits in the doorway. She leaps to attention and leads me out of the room when I stand to exit. She does this from some primitive instinct; I have honestly trained her to do very little.
Willa is at her most impressive when she is in the woods. There has never been a more aggressive and unyielding dog. I have seen her come straight down the side of a steep embankment, technically slowing her descent with a few spare steps, crashing into the terrain below, clutching and grabbing and landing already poised to sprint away up the creek.
Willa also has an uncanny understanding of what it is I would like for her to do, and she does it. She will run ahead of me on the trail until she reaches the top of a rise, and then she will move left or right along the horizon, so I never loose sight of her. If she hears a gunshot, or a dog barking, or smells a horse on the trail, she will return to me and offer her head up for the chain I loosely hang around it. She is impossible to restrain, except by her own will.
Maximus is much more curious about the world, and he would like to go off and meet the dogs he hears barking. I do not let him, and he seems to be coming to accept this. He is learning a lot, especially waiting for me to tell him he is free to move. I think in a year or two they will be entirely self regulating.
A few weeks ago, Willa entered her fall heat. The scene around here when she had reached the culmination of that biological process was pure comedy. Maximus, this giant imposing animal, was reduced to the stature of a clown. He would stand in place and shake his head while alternately stamping his front feet. For three days he slept in the front seat of my truck, and he was glad to be retired to it each night.
Willa of course was delighted. She thought it quite entertaining, and would tease him early in the heat, before they had been separated. I learned an awful lot about the reproductive process of the domestic dog, by preventing two very formidable animals from satisfying their desire to procreate.
Before I acquired Maximus, I was given the book The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski in the form of discs. I would listen to them as I lay down to sleep. It was an interesting listen, and it served to fill my head with ideas. It is a story about a man who breeds dogs, exceptional dogs.
Recently a friend of mine gave me a copy of the book Dog Man, by Martha Sherrill. It is about a fellow named Morie Sawataishi. The similarities between Wroblewski’s character and this man are obvious. But I have been struck by how much more similar my experience with these dogs resembles Mr. Sawataishi’s.
I too run my dogs in the hills everyday, and marvel at their intelligence, poise, and depth. I am endlessly fascinated with them, and cannot wait to see the puppies they produce. As you can tell, I am prone to go on and on about them. There is one thing in particular that resonated with me about the way he treated his dogs. Neither her nor I tend to teach our dogs to obey particular commands, instead we learn to trust the dog as much as ourselves, and work together with them to resolve difficulties.
My dogs are fed kibble, but they are also fed fresh raw goat milk, and the bone, organs and assorted parts of animals that are slaughtered for food on the farm. The first time I placed a stainless steel bowl with a warm animal organ in it before Maximus, he proceeded to bury it. He did so by simply brushing soil and debris up over the entire bowl with the tip of his nose, until there was a perfectly symmetrical mound of fine material over it. I would walk up to the mound and point at it, and he would gently brush a little more material up with his nose, as though he were perfecting the symmetry of his mound. Willa, of course, eats entire lamb tongues in just a few seconds. She crushes it with her jaws and teeth, folds it up a time or two, and swallows it practically whole.
Maximus is like some reincarnated Buddhist monk, returned to guide me through my life. Willa is much more of a beast, I am not sure I have ever met anything or anyone as alive as she is. Not in the spring, but a year from now in the fall, I am going to allow them to consummate their relationship. I am thinking that will be the beginning of something interesting.
Willa, Maximus