Travels with Casey Read online

  Lacking access to basic medical care, many rez dogs die young from easily treatable illnesses. Some freeze to death on cold nights. On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, considered the poorest place in America, there isn’t a single veterinarian. But dogs don’t die only of neglect on reservations. Many are run over by cars—sometimes intentionally.

  “Dog and animal abuse has increased among our people since the old days,” Begaye told me. A tribal elder I would later meet on another reservation was more blunt. “Some of these teenagers are fools, cowards,” he said angrily. “The younger generation thinks it’s funny to run over dogs. They have no respect for the role these sacred animals play in our history.”

  Native American peoples have held fascinating and complicated attitudes toward dogs. Many tribes kept the animals as hunters, herders, fishers, long-distance haulers, and companions, while some also made use of them for food or ritual purposes. The Choctaw nation were among several Native American peoples who saw the human-canine bond as so important that they would kill and bury a dog with a deceased tribe member to provide him with a companion in the afterlife.

  The Iroquois tribes used to sacrifice a white dog as part of their Midwinter Rites. Tribe members would round up a dog without any marks and kill it by strangulation (ensuring that no blood was spilled), then decorate it with colorful ribbons, paint, feathers, and beads, and burn it along with a basket of tobacco as an offering to the deity Tanyawhagiy, “Holder of the Heavens.” (In contemporary Iroquois practice, the white dog has been replaced with a white basket.)

  Some tribes consumed dog meat as part of political or religious ceremonies, while others looked down on those who did. According to a belief common among Plains Indians, eating the meat was evil but conferred supernatural powers; by experiencing evil in small doses, one could build up a resistance to it. Unlike tribes who partook of dog meat only for ceremonial purposes, the Arapaho enjoyed it as part of a regular meal—so much that they became known among other tribes as the “Dog Eaters.”

  Other Native Americans valued dogs more for their hunting and working ability than their spiritual powers. Several Plains tribes, including the Shoshone and Kutenai, used dogs’ chasing and tracking skills to help them hunt deer and elk. More commonly, tribes used dogs not as hunters but as carriers. Before tribes relied on horses, which came with the Spaniards, they used dogs to transport firewood, meat, and sometimes babies. Even after the arrival of horses (which the Lakota referred to as “sacred dogs”), the Hidatsa tribe preferred using canines to carry their loads.

  But of all Native American tribes, the Yurok people—who live near the Klamath River along the Northern California coast—had perhaps the most interesting relationship to dogs. Though the Yurok valued dogs highly and treated them with great respect, the tribe never named or spoke to dogs. James Serpell notes that tribe members worried that the dogs “might answer back, thus upsetting the natural order and provoking general catastrophe.” The Yuroks viewed dogs as especially dangerous because “the critical psychological line that distinguished humans from animals was constantly in danger of being effaced by their presence.”

  I KNEW nothing of this history—or even that we were on a reservation—when I swung open the Chalet’s main door and stepped out into an overcast, windy early afternoon in Kaibeto. Clay dirt swirled over the cracked pavement of the Spirit Gas Station, which was advertising regular unleaded at under $4 a gallon, a rarity during that point of my journey.

  As I yawned and stretched my arms toward the milky sky, I spotted a medium-sized black dog in an adjacent field of shrubbery and red clay. Though I couldn’t tell for sure, the dog appeared to be playfully chasing something.

  “I’m going to go check it out,” I told Garrett, leaving him to hold Casey by the leash with one hand and pump gas with the other.

  But before I could get far, the black dog spotted me and began bounding in my direction. Then, from behind the gas station, three more dogs appeared. One was long and gray and looked a bit like the wolfdogs I’d met in North Carolina. Another was plump and brindle. The third was white, with steel blue eyes. And then there was the squinty-eyed black dog with a wavy flat coat, who I could now see had engorged breasts and appeared almost red from playing in the clay. All four animals looked up at me and wagged their tails.

  No one paid the dogs any mind. People strolled in and out of the station store as if a pack of dogs hanging out at a gas station was a common occurrence. The only person to acknowledge the animals was a driver who pulled into the station in a beat-up red Honda Accord and honked once at the brindle dog; it was standing in the spot nearest to the store’s entrance.

  “I’m going to go inside and ask who these dogs belong to,” I told Garrett as he filmed the pack with his camera. (He’d had to shoo Casey inside the RV because the steely-eyed dog, who had a gash on his right rear leg, had approached Casey with questionable intentions.)

  “Do you know anything about the dogs outside? Do they have owners?” I asked the Native American woman behind the cash register. By the uninterested look on her face, I realized I probably wasn’t the first visitor to ask about the animals.

  “They’re strays,” she said. “They just hang out.”

  I walked back to the motorhome and grabbed two bags of freeze-dried Stella & Chewy’s patties leftover from Global Pet Expo in Florida. The dogs loved the food—and the attention. But they somehow knew not to be pushy; they’d learned, it seemed, to be polite beggars. They didn’t jump or body each other out of the way. When I knelt down, they would play-bow or shuffle up to my side one by one and let me pet them.

  Of the four dogs, the black one stayed closest to me. She looked a bit like a miniature black bear. Though I’m terrible at guessing dog breeds, she seemed like she might be part Border Collie, part Flat-Coated Retriever. “There might even be some Chow in her,” Garrett said. It was difficult to make an educated guess, though, because she looked like a clay-covered blob of black fur with swollen breasts. I wondered how recently she’d given birth, and where she might have stashed her puppies.

  Back in the RV, I called a nearby animal shelter, but the woman who answered said the shelter didn’t have jurisdiction to rescue dogs from tribal land. (I couldn’t find any number for animal control on the reservation. I would later learn that there are only five animal control officers for the entire Navajo Nation.) Then I called Patty Hegwood, my contact at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, where Garrett and I were scheduled to arrive the next day. Best Friends runs the largest animal sanctuary in the country, housing some 1,500 dogs on 3,700 acres.

  “You won’t believe what I stumbled on!” I told Patty when I reached her by phone. I sat on the RV’s passenger-side steps as we spoke, with the door open so I could keep an eye on the dogs. “I pulled over for gas on the Navajo reservation, and there are four stray dogs here just hanging out at the gas station.”

  I could almost hear Patty smiling at me as I prattled on about my discovery. “Welcome to the world of rez dogs,” she said finally. “Everyone at Best Friends remembers their first trip through the reservation. It’s gut-wrenching. A lot of people I know will drive way out of their way to avoid the reservations, because it’s just too painful. There’s an endless amount of strays.”

  I told her about the black dog. “She’s so sweet,” I said. “If I bring her with me, would you, by chance, be able to take her at Best Friends?”

  “It’s possible, but we can’t guarantee it,” Patty told me. “If you take her, you should be prepared to keep her.”

  Keep her? As my own? In the Chalet? I wasn’t so sure I could do that. Though the black dog seemed charming and harmless now, there was no telling how she might react to the RV. I knew what to expect from Casey: I could leave him alone in the motorhome without incident. But this black dog was a mystery. I worried that if I left her in the RV while I was away, I might come back to find the inside torn to pieces. I remembered what Neil and Brant’s resc
ue, Amelia, had done to their bedroom.

  I also had no idea if she’d get along with Casey. I knew that Casey wouldn’t mind her (he’s easygoing and friendly with just about anything that moves), but did he really want a permanent little sister? Finally, did I have the time—or the energy—to devote to a new dog while driving around the country?

  I changed the subject and told Patty about the black dog’s engorged breasts. “It looks like she just had puppies,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to take her from here if she’s nursing puppies.”

  Patty instructed me to squeeze one of the black dog’s teats to see if any milk came out. I stood up and walked a few paces to the dog, who was lying on her side on the concrete, dust blowing into her face. I squeezed. Drops of milk dribbled onto the pavement.

  “She probably had puppies fairly recently,” Patty surmised.

  “So what should I do?” I asked.

  “It’s hard for me to say not to rescue her, because it might be her only chance at a good life. And it’s also hard for me to tell you to rescue her, because her puppies might die.”

  “That’s not helpful at all,” I said, laughing at the absurdity of my choices.

  I thanked Patty and went searching for the puppies. “They can’t be far,” I assured Garrett, as we walked toward the back of the gas station. Garrett looked at me quizzically. “And what if we find them?” he asked. “Are we taking them all in the RV with us to Best Friends?” He didn’t seem enamored of the idea of transporting peeing and pooping dogs.

  I searched under Dumpsters, sheds, pickup trucks, and shrubs. Every once in a while I would look at the black dog and say, “Are your puppies over here?” “Over there?” “Underneath this shed?” She followed me around; maybe she thought I’d misplaced something. I asked a few people standing outside the station if they’d seen any puppies, but they hadn’t. Finally, as the sun was setting over the horizon, I knocked on the front door of a trailer home next to the station’s back parking lot. A young, groggy-eyed woman answered.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but do you happen to know this dog?” I pointed to the black animal standing at my feet. By that time, I’d brushed most of the clay from her fur. She looked slightly more presentable.

  “Yeah, she’s one of the strays around here,” the woman told me. She was friendly and seemed eager to help. “She’s a nice dog. She had puppies about a month or so ago.”

  Finally, a lead! “Do you know where they are?”

  “They used to be under that,” she said, pointing to a dumpster I’d already inspected. “But people took them.”

  “People took them?”

  “Yeah, they like taking the puppies. No one really takes the older dogs, but people think puppies are cute.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about this dog?” I asked her.

  “Well, she got hit by a car a while back.”

  “That explains the limp,” I said. It was barely noticeable, but she favored her right leg.

  “She’s a real sweetheart,” the woman assured me. “Are you thinking of taking her?”

  I nodded. “It’s the craziest thing in the world, because I’m driving around the country in an RV,” I told her. “But I’m considering it.”

  Back in the motorhome, I called Marc. He listened patiently as I told him about Kaibeto, the gas station, the stray pack, and the dog I wanted to kidnap. I explained that there was no guarantee Best Friends could keep her.

  “I might end up with a second dog,” I told him. “Am I being incredibly reckless?”

  Marc was careful not to make my decision for me, but I could tell he worried that a new dog came with risks. “I just know how much you’ve said this trip is about you and Casey bonding,” he told me. “Rescuing a new dog doesn’t sound like it will help you do that. And do you really want to take on the responsibility of a stray dog right now?”

  But, I thought, rescuing this dog might help me atone for my purchase of Casey in 2003. I’m embarrassed to say that back then I knew nothing about puppy mills, which the ASPCA defines as “a large-scale commercial dog breeding operation where profit is given priority over the well-being of the dogs.”

  In my ignorance I’d traveled to a now closed pet shop in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which I later learned allegedly sold dogs from mills. The pet shop was later investigated by the state after customers complained that their dogs suffered from “pneumonia, kennel cough, giardia and campylobacter, parasites that can spread to humans, and a host of other ailments,” according to the Boston Herald. When people would ask me where I’d gotten Casey, I always tried to change the subject.

  I decided to sleep on my decision about the black dog. I got permission from the gas station to park the motorhome overnight in its back lot, but Garrett wasn’t thrilled about the idea. “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I said. I pulled out a small kitchen knife from a drawer and flexed my biceps. “If anyone messes with us, I’ll use this.”

  Garrett laughed. “You’re ridiculous,” he said. “You don’t have mace? Or a gun?”

  Garrett wasn’t the first person to question my decision to travel around the country unarmed. Several friends had suggested I bring a gun, mace, bear spray—anything at all that might keep me alive in a dangerous situation. But I’d decided to put my faith in the good-heartedness of the American people. “You’re an idiot,” one especially paranoid friend told me before I left.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with the black dog overnight. I worried that if I didn’t keep my eye on her, she might meander to another part of the reservation, never to be seen again. But I also didn’t want her to spend eight hours in the RV without a thorough bath. We’d watched rez dogs itch themselves silly; Garrett figured they were carriers of fleas, ticks, and other bugs we hadn’t yet heard of. I was probably more paranoid about bugs than I should have been, given my bed bug scare.

  I decided to tie the dog to the side of the RV with a rope. I felt guilty about this, but she didn’t seem to mind. I checked on her every few hours, and each time she looked perfectly content. At one point I thought she’d gotten away, but then I peered under the RV and found the dog curled up next to a rear wheel.

  “Good girl,” I whispered. “We’ll have you out of Kaibeto in no time.”

  I had apparently made up my mind.

  THE NEXT morning, Garrett and I ripped apart several garbage bags in order to create a makeshift tarp for the dog to lie on during the two-hour drive to Best Friends. She was leaking milk and didn’t seem very comfortable in the motorhome, so I wrapped her in the one ThunderShirt I had left and asked Garrett to sit next to her and comfort her while I drove.

  I don’t remember the scenery on the way to Kanab; I was too preoccupied with our new passenger. Her body trembled slightly at first, but she eventually calmed down and appeared to go to sleep. “She really is cute,” Garrett said, petting her on the head.

  We arrived at noon in Kanab, a small city not far from the Grand Canyon’s north rim. It was founded in the 1850s by Mormon settlers, though it’s perhaps best known as “Little Hollywood” because of the many westerns—including Gunsmoke and The Lone Ranger—filmed there over the years. The Best Friends Animal Society moved to town in 1984 and sits in Angel Canyon, a dramatic red rock canyon carved by Kanab Creek.

  Garrett and I parked the RV by the sanctuary’s veterinary clinic, where Patty had agreed to have the dog checked out. But the second we reached the clinic’s front door, the dog stopped. Either she’d never been indoors before or the experience had been unpleasant enough for her not to want to repeat it. We tried all manner of sweet talk to get her inside, but the dog wouldn’t budge until a staff member laid out a trail of treats on the floor. Still, each step was labored and cautious. I got down with her on all fours to encourage the process, but after a minute or two a staff member swooped in, lifted her into his arms, and disappeared with the dog into a back room.

  We had a few hours to otherwise occupy ourselves while they
examined and spayed the dog, so Best Friends’ John Garcia—the star of DogTown, a National Geographic series that chronicled the lives of dogs and staff members at the sanctuary—took Garrett and me on a tour of the sanctuary. John has a soft spot for dogs who “get a bad rap,” which might explain why he’s so taken by Pit Bulls. Not long into our tour, he led us to a large outdoor kennel where a brown Pit wearing a red bandanna lounged in the dirt. The dog jumped up as we approached, his tail wagging as he stuck his nose against the fence. Cuts and scars crisscrossed his face.

  “This is Lucas,” John said. “He was Michael Vick’s best fighting dog.”

  When Lucas and dozens of other Pit Bulls were rescued in 2007 from Vick’s dogfighting compound, PETA and the Humane Society of the United States had recommended the animals be euthanized. But a judge ruled that twenty-two of the “most challenging” dogs be sent to Best Friends for rehabilitation. In Lucas’s case, because of his supposed viciousness and his value to potential dogfighters, the judge ordered the dog to spend the rest of his life at the sanctuary.

  Best Friends dubbed Vick’s Pit Bulls the “Vicktory Dogs,” and Lucas was perhaps the most outgoing and charismatic of them all. He adored people, and everyone at Best Friends adored him back. Lucas and the other Vicktory Dogs received extensive media attention (they were even the subject of a book, The Lost Dogs), which John said helped improve the perception of Pit Bulls.

  “For the longest time people assumed that fighting dogs were beyond hope, but we proved that they can be rehabilitated,” John told us, adding that several of the dogs would soon be adopted into homes. “And every time someone meets Lucas or these other dogs, they realize that Pit Bulls aren’t what they’re made out to be.”

  Best Friends advocates against breed-specific legislation (BSL), which restricts or prohibits the ownership of certain breeds—namely, Pit Bulls—on the premise that they’re inherently dangerous. In the last few decades, hundreds of municipalities across the country have adopted such bans, even though a University of Pennsylvania study found that Pit Bulls are about as likely as Poodles—and significantly less likely than Chihuahuas—to attack humans. (That said, a Pit Bull’s bite can do significantly more damage than a Chihuahua’s.)