Wild Thing

Nicholai is a wild boy. While recent advances in dog training, and dog psychology if you will, reject the notion of dogs as domesticated wolves, Nicholai makes me wonder about that like no other dog I have had in my adult life. My previous girls, Kali and Molly, were enamored of their creature comforts. Once while camping with us on the Olympic Peninsula, they opted to sit in the car rather than at the campsite with us and they looked quite insulted by the suggestion that they sit on the ground like mere dogs.

Nicholai loves to hike off leash, to roll in smelly things, and to swim in rivers. He has little patience at parks where groups of dogs mill about trying to socialize or obsess on games of fetch, and people stand with lattes in hand, looking slightly lost. When a tight schedule has precluded our normal jaunt to further reaches and we find ourselves at one of Portland's dog-parks, he whines at me saying, "Let's go, let's get this show on the road!" We have done brisk laps around our neighborhood park, pretending that we're out somewhere, hiking like the Wild Things that we are.

In accordance with his "born-to-be-wild" nature, Nicholai is enamored of eating all kinds of things that I find disgusting. Like many a dog, he nabs a good bite of poop – cat poop is a favorite, but human poop, when he can get it, well that's pretty good too. Once he found the remains of a dead and bloated nutria – a rodent that looks like a cross between a giant rat and a beaver. As he settled in the tall grass near the Sandy River to devour his prize, I came around the bend, and seeing him with that gross and hideous thing, I tried to grab it from him. He growled at me – my main man! – and scuttled into the low brush. I left him to his treasure, hoping that ingesting it would not kill him. I never saw evidence that it affected him in any way. There are voles that live underground in an area that we frequent and I have seen Nicholai nab one and swallow it, the little guy's tail still wiggling as it slipped between his lips. He's murdered squirrels more times than I can count, but I have always managed to stop him eating them, I have images of worms and disease (as if bloated nutria wouldn't cover that territory). One fine afternoon, he caught a rabbit and proceeded to devour the entire thing – plush ears, floppy feet, soft bunny tail. At once horrified – poor little bunny – and fascinated, I couldn't take my eyes off the spectacle. That afternoon as we drove along the freeway back toward home, Nicholai sat in the front seat next to me. His energy was intense, upright and alert, all whites-of-the-eyes. "You've gone over to the wild side haven't you?" I asked out loud. He turned and stared at me, shivering, filled with fresh bunny and dreams of being a fierce predator. He has finished off the deer-kills left by coyotes, crunching down entire rib cages, forelegs, back legs, and hooves.

I have taken a philosophical approach to these adventures, leaving Nicholai to his culinary delights. His scavenging and vole snacking remind me of Farley Mowat's tales of the wolves he studied in Alaska who survived on carrion and field mice. I love my dog like crazy and I recognize that he's a dog, not a furry human. I try to give him the latitude to be a dog, even when I fail to relate to his tastes and longings. For a decade, this philosophy had not gone awry. Apparently, there is an end to everything.