I trust my dog: Off-leash forest walks and "folk nonsense"
There is magic in building a social bond with another species
Written on October 2nd; edited and published a week later.
I just got back from walking our campsite’s narrow forest road with Scout. I poured her a dish of diluted chicken broth before reaching for my own water bottle; now we’re resting in the shade, collectively out of breath.
I hope she feels as satisfied as she looks.
Scout flushed three grouse on our walk. (I didn’t realize she had it in her, timid dog of little hunting prowess; me of even less.) While I’m sure the flush lacked technical precision, what I cared about was how she stayed near me—without a word—as the birds rushed off.
Then the grouse sent a nearby doe prancing through the underbrush. Of course my cattle dog wanted to chase. I let her follow the scent trail at a trot, nose pressed to the ground, tail high in the air, and trusted the entire time she’d come back.
Eventually she risked venturing out of sight. I called three repeats of “Scout-o” in quick succession. She appeared at my feet, tongue lolling, eyes bright, body loose, just as I knew she would.
There is not much I love knowing more.
I said to Sean yesterday, after a different success telling Scout not to chase a deer in close proximity, that I think few dog owners feel confident in their ability to do it without an ecollar. (For the record, I am not anti ecollar; I still consider getting one for Scout on occasion.) I worry as I write this that I sound too much like I’m trying to be special—trying to assert to everyone else that my dog is so special—but to me it is remarkable: this trust I am able to share with her in these wild environments, this thing we have been building imperfectly for years, climbing atop, falling off, dismantling and putting back together, resurfacing, strengthening.
She is remarkable.
Scout has not always been reasonable around prey. One of my worst dog ownership moments saw me bawling on the sidewalk shortly after we moved to Florida. I could not, no matter what I tried, get my heeler to pay attention to me around the sunshine state’s bold squirrels. I felt like a failure. I felt like a fraud. I felt like the least important thing in her world. Some of today’s sweetness is a direct result of that day’s heartache.
There is a large Instagram influencer I dislike. She’s been known to boast about how she doesn’t “train” her dogs. She lets them loose—gives them freedom—before they have any sort of foundation. Because they learn it’s commonplace, it isn’t such a big deal to come back once in a while.
I find this fundamentally misguided. I care too much about public respect in shared spaces to take such chances. But I understand a version of what she’s saying.
The less I ask Scout to do arbitrary, unenjoyable things? The more she listens when I do. There’s something to that.
I know, I know: The mantra is “use it or lose it”. We have to practice skills like dismissing prey and recalling through distractions and regulating arousal. But we still have a finite capacity for impulse control and effort on any given day. We can build that average capacity over time—it’s one of the greatest goals of self improvement—but we can also exhaust our supply. It’s like running so hard my legs can no longer hold me and the next day it’s a struggle to walk at all. That’s not the kind of exercise that gradually strengthens my muscles and convinces me I’m ready for the 14-mile hike I’ve been dreaming of in Banff. It’s the kind that dulls me, drags me down.
I avoid asking Scout to be Hercules whenever possible. I see it pay off. It’s yet another balance between sneaky juxtapositions. These things seem mutually exclusive—practicing skills so we can use them later and resting so we have greater capacity—but they aren’t.
I sometimes struggle to embrace our complex, social relationship without devolving into “folk nonsense”. Scout is not a mind reader. It is not enough in the majority of our modern-human-world environments to simply fall back on an ancient connection without considering precisely how to communicate.
But sometimes we forget how social dogs are, how emotional, how intelligent—in ways people can readily recognize—if we give them the chance. Scout cares about me. She cares about Sean. And while this afternoon’s walk was a product of organized training sessions and reinforcement history and all those vital pieces, it was also more than that.
It was a product of our social relationship, creature to creature.
Our bond is not flawless. I startle Scout, worry her, more than I like to admit. (She startles and worries me right back.) But as we increasingly lean into our connection—the mythical thing first forged tens of thousands of years ago between our ancestors—it feels undeniable. Scout asks for things. I ask for things. We negotiate, we consider, we listen. We communicate. My dog brushing her paw against the van’s sliding door seems so small I can almost take the gesture for granted, but when I sit with it the only possible reaction is how incredible she knows how to say she wants to go outside? She will ask, she will wait, she will watch our movements, she will exude patience before finally reminding us again when a full minute’s gone by—it’s brilliant.
Ours is a relationship like none I’ve ever known. I fear I’ll never know it again.
I love this creature with whom I can stroll through a forest. Whom I don’t need to keep constant eyes on. Who requires no micromanaging in these most natural of situations.
Love—that ill-defined, amorphous verb-noun—is not enough, of course. But it’s a damn lot.
When we move like this, in tandem, almost dancing, laboring up a steep slope coated in aspen leaves the color of gold… I lack words.
I got so lucky, I think. Scout’s sensitivity breeds heartache but also depth. (I hope the same for mine.) If I believed in soulmates or a universe metaphorically larger than ourselves, I’d say we were made for each other. I don’t actually think that’s true—nothing is meant to be—but we made our own meaning. We shaped each other’s forms. And now we sit in a clearing of fall trees in the middle of Utah with dirty paws and no leash and mutual awe, and she is mine, and I am hers.