What the Dog Knows Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t like the character, even if Harrison Ford had played him. Yet the description fit Solo to a T. Charismatic. Selfish. Brash. A talented, reckless misfit.
    A loner.

2
Death and the Dog

    Although they have been cherished for their good qualities—hunter, guard, herder, friend, worker—the inverse dog is the spoiler of human graves and eater of corpses, the keeper of hell’s gates. . . .
    â€”Paul Shepard, The Others: How Animals Made Us Human , 1997
    Two months after Solo’s arrival, I found myself in Nancy Hook’s backyard in Zebulon, perched on the edge of an aluminum folding chair. Nancy slumped back in her sturdy canvas chair, her hand wrapped around a foam beer insulator wrapped around a Gatorade. She was mellow except for the warning she occasionally gave the dogs quarreling in the kennels next to the yard: “Don’t make me come over there.” They stopped. It was mid-July and too hot to fight, in any case.Japanese beetles clattered past. Tent caterpillars had wrapped up and skeletonized half the leaves of the huge pecan tree we sat under.
    I knew Nancy from when I’d taken Zev to her parking-lot obedience class some years before. She had been welcoming and kind to both of us, though not particularly interested in Zev. He had been so mild-mannered that he tended to disappear in a dog crowd.
    I hadn’t seen Nancy much since, but I started to remember as I pulled into the drive and read the black bumper sticker on her pickup: “Gut Deer?” modeled after the “Got Milk?” campaign. Her hair was still copper, her dark chestnut eyes still surrounded by smile wrinkles. She wore camouflage pants.
    I had e-mailed Nancy in desperation, remembering her sense of humor and practicality. I needed both. Sure, she said, come on out to Camp Hook. Bring the dog. She was competent and relaxed; I was edgy and talkative. Solo, more obnoxious than any four-month-old German shepherd should be, was hackled and humpbacked, wild-eyed and ungainly. From time to time, he surged toward the kennels, a dark hybrid of colt and Tasmanian devil. He would snarl and bounce off the cyclone fence. I bounced off the lawn chair, wrestling Bil-Jac dog treats out of my fanny pack, trying to distract him and minimize the behavior that Nancy was witnessing. “Solo? Solo? Watch me! Gooood dog!” I funneled liver into his mouth.
    â€œStop chattering at him,” Nancy said. “And stop giving him so many treats. You’re making him into a wuss.” My hand froze in mid-dive. “He’s just a jackass,” she said. “What do you want to do with him?”
    And with that simple question, my weird dog world started righting itself. By “What do you want to do with him?” Nancy didn’t mean endless rounds of dog counseling and dog tranqs, creating a sedated and submissive shepherd who needed an occasional cautionary Dog Whisperer “hisst” with an index finger held up to keep him in line. Nor did she mean that I could click-and-treat this dog into executing perfect obedience routines. That didn’t work with him; besides, Iwas bored with the obedience ring. Nor did she mean that Solo was capable of becoming the quintessential park dog who would allow me to sit on a bench with other tranquil owners, gossiping, watching our dogs romp and bark into the sunset.
    She meant: What would you like this dog to do?
    I had no idea. I wanted him to be so busy that he didn’t have time to do what he was doing in front of Nancy. I wanted him to have a job, if possible. Not a pretend job that would simply exercise out his little heart of darkness. Probably not a job as a therapy dog in a nursing home, because of his rhino ways. I wanted his work to have meaning, as I was constantly struggling to find meaning in my own work.
    Nancy didn’t indulge my angst for long. “Stop thinking so much,” she said. “That’s part of your