Today’s feature appears by special request from Wings himself.
Anywhere else, they’re called “rez dogs.” Young Indians from all over the country who participate in certain cultural subcommunities —arts, music, sports — have adopted “Rez Dawgs” as a nickname, partly tribute to, and partly a feeling of kinship with, the real dogs’ toughness and ability to survive in a world that treats them as outcasts.
Here, they’re Pueblo dogs.
Some have humans of their own; they simply live in the old village with their families, or accompany their humans to work one of the shops or tables under the arbor. Some are strays, looking for a home of their own, or at least a pack. In an area where much larger predators roam the mountainside, there’s safety in numbers. In the wintertime, you’ll see them curled up next to the hornos for warmth. But those who find their way to the old village soon learn its rhythms, and they join in community life in their own way. The guided tours are especially attractive, because there are tourists carrying frybread, and if you’re really lucky — and especially cute — one may be kind enough to toss you a piece. The dogs know well that their best bet lies in making friends with the children of visiting tourist families, who will pester their parents for food to feed “the cute puppies.”
Puppies like this:
This was an adorable little girl who visited the old gallery occasionally. You can’t see it in the photo, but her right hind leg was malformed, either from birth or a very, very early injury. She would come to the gallery, and Wings would give her a bit of his lunch.
She was far from the only one.
We’ve had as many as six dogs at once; together, we’ve had nine different ones, plus two that were sort of “half-dogs” of ours: one that boarded with us for several months; a neighbor pup who thought he belonged here with ours. At the moment, we’re down to three, all rescues: Griffin, who has been with me since he was five and a half months old (he’ll be 14 in a couple of months), and She-Wolf and Raven, Pueblo dog cousins who adopted us early on.
SHE-WOLF
She arrived at the gallery one cold fall morning in 2008, short, skinny, scraggly, and starving. She stood politely at the threshold of the door until I invited her in. Clearly less than a year old, she just as clearly had had no training of any sort — most likely part of a litter from an abandoned mother, with never any option but to fend for herself. But she was unusual among such dogs in that she was unafraid to look me in the eye without meaning it as a challenge, and able to make that clear.
She wanted, of course, a bit of my lunch. I told her to sit; she stood and stared at me. So I stood up, walked over the her, pointed at her hindquarters, then pointed at the floor and said, “Sit.” She sat. I gave her a bit of my sandwich. She grinned at me.
Visitors came into the gallery, so I told her to lie down, and pointed at the floor in front of her forefeet. She obligingly lay down on the floor, then looked up at me questioningly. She got another piece of my sandwich.
Eventually, she moved from her spot on the rug over to the fireplace to soak in its warmth before heading back out the door. But she came back, more days than not, and she came back when Wings was there on the weekends, too. A few weeks later, I happened to mention that smart little girl pup with the tail like a wolf, and Wings had seen her, too. It came out that each of us had been feeding her secretly, not wanting to admit to the other that we may have inadvertently taken on another dog. Later that day, while I was visiting his father, he texted me with a photo, and it was indeed the same dog. She came home with us a couple of months later, on the day before Thanksgiving, 2008.
Last year, she began dropping weight. Slowly at first, not only seemingly nothing to worry about, but apparently a good thing: Like a lot of dogs starved in their first year of life, she had developed a doggie form of metabolic syndrome and tended toward being overweight. Aside from the slight tendency toward weight gain, she was in great shape; she’d gone from being a stunted-looking pup, all bones and angles, to a tall, happy, healthy mix of collie and Shepard and Rottweiler that neared 70 pounds.
Then in late November, the weight loss accelerated. Thirsty all the time. Tired and sluggish. We knew the signs.
Diabetes.
We got it confirmed on November 19th. The vet told us she would be completely blind within two months, four at the very outside. We understood that that “outside” figure meant by the end of January, since in retrospect, this had been developing for a couple of months already. A cataract was already developing her right eye. She would need special food, and glucose testing and insulin injections twice daily. The vet wanted to be sure we understood, because apparently most people don’t, and can’t handle it.
It was never a questions. She gets her special food, in multiple meals throughout the day. We both handle the glucose tests and the insulin injections, and she’s a trouper: She made the connection instantly between the first shot in the vet’s office and how much better she felt in a matter of minutes. Now she comes back inside on her own to wait for me, a few minutes before 9 AM every day, because her internal clock tells her that it’s time to get tested.
I did my research; we put her on a protocol of natural supplements in addition to the dietary changes and insulin. Nine months later, she still has most of her sight. She’s happy, healthy, her glucose stable, and she’s one of the most sensitive, emotionally intelligent dogs we’ve ever had.
RAVEN
Raven was actually the first dog to show up regularly at the gallery, but he was also the most skittish: not merely abandoned and starving, but also abused. They all were, but his case was worse than the other two, and the effects most ingrained.
He disappeared for a while, returning at the end of the day before Thanksgiving in 2008, just after Wings bundled She-Wolf into the car to take her home. He came up to me and put his head on my knee and looked at me wistfully, as if to say, “I knew you first. How could you take her and not me?” But he wouldn’t get anywhere near a vehicle.
He spent that whole fall and winter with us at the gallery. Every day, he’d be lying on the walkway in front of the door when we arrived; he’d come inside with us, perhaps lie down immediately, or just check in and go about his way, coming back off and on throughout the day. He always got food, of course; the meals from us were clearly the only food and fresh water he got, and we began keeping kibble, water, and dog dishes in the back room just for him.
There are, of course, no utilities in the old village, which means no modern plumbing. Shopkeepers had to close up and walk up to the public restrooms outside the wall, just like everyone else. Whenever I’d walk up to the restroom, he’d escort me. While I was inside the restroom, he’d sit waiting patiently at the bottom of the ramp, then escort me back. He was my guardian and defender, and took the role seriously.
And when the Pueblo closed for the winter ceremonial season (that year, it would wind up being just shy of three months), we knew we had to bring him home or he’d never survive. On February 5th, 2009, the last day before the closure, Wings picked me up in the truck, collar and leash in hand. We managed to get it onto him, and get him lifted into the bed, leash wrapped multiple times around my wrist. And we drove ten miles home, in the icy wind, with me sitting in the truck bed, leash twined around both arms, both arms wrapped so tightly around Raven that he couldn’t lunge out of the truckbed in terror, despite his best efforts. Buy the time we got home, I was so stiff and frozen I could barely unwind myself enough to let him out.
Oh, and the name? We didn’t know what to call him. “Wolf” didn’t seem to fit; none of the other obvious ones did, either. One day, he was lying outside the door of the gallery, gazing inward at me. A raven circled noisily overhead, its presence there unusual. Then the raven flew up to the nearby post, perched there, and began squawking insistently at me through the open door. I got up and walked to the doorway; the raven was bobbing up and down, rocking, chattering and cackling, looking repeatedly from the black brindle dog to me. The dog, in turn, kept looking from me to the raven and back again.
“What are you two trying to tell me?” The raven squawked louder, rocking more furiously in the direction of the dog.
“is that his name? Is he Raven, like you?”
The Raven cackled, rocked some more, then settled back triumphantly.
I looked at the dog. “Is your name Raven?” He settled back, crossed his paws, and gave me a doggy grin.
“Okay, I get it. You’re Raven.”
The bird cackled once more and flew away.
Raven charges headlong into situations occasionally, and has gotten injured a bit a couple of times as a result. Both times, before I even knew anything was wrong, flocks of ravens arrived at the house, chattering, watching, as though standing guard. Each time, when the dog recovered (once, after a few days of this), the ravens returned whence they came.
Raven also has half-siblings still at the village.
This one was a miniature version of him, taken about four years ago:
This one is a mirror image, of the same age, and possibly even the same litter:
Black and tan brindle in the exact same pattern, but with colors reversed: black on tan instead of tan on black.
ANIMIKIINS
The name means “Little Thunder Being.” Like all of our animals, he actually had multiple names, despite being with us for only parts of six days. We came out of the gallery at the end of the day one day in May of 2009, to find a small crowd clustered under the arbor next door, around a crying puppy. He’d apparently been bumped by the fender of a vehicle and his hip was injured — what would turn out to be nothing more than a slight abrasion and bruise, fortunately.
Wings couldn’t reach the local rescue coordinator, and not knowing his condition, we couldn’t leave him there overnight in the cold, possibly injured, so we brought him home until we could get him into the vet the following Monday. She-Wolf wanted to play with him; Raven wanted to bully him; he cocked his head and looked sideways at them both and barked them off. He was a Rottweiler mix, and a little tough guy, so much bigger than his tiny stature.
He also had distemper. We would learn that on Monday, following his check-up, and that it was too advanced for him to be saved. I held him on the vet’s table; he curled up into the crook of my arm, and just before the needle went into the vein, he looked up at me as if to tell me he understood and that everything was okay. I would swear that he smiled a little puppy smile. Then he nestled his head into my arm and promptly went to sleep, before the needle touched his skin. The tears dropped onto his little body,and the table, and the floor; they continued to flow in the car all the way home, and onto the blanket covering him as we laid him in the ground, and onto the stones marking his resting place.
REZ DOGS
Rez dogs have been a part of daily life at most rezes I’ve visited over the years. Dogs generally tend to be a part of our cultures, although their roles vary widely. In some, they’re brother to Wolf, and treated as exemplars of spirit beings of a sort. In others, they’re brother to Man, but are kept on their own separate path when it comes to ceremonial events. In still others, they’re an integral part of ceremonies, in ways that would horrify outsiders, but that have deep cultural significance, and that are a sign of the esteem in which the people hold them and the character traits they represent. And, of course, there are the Dog Soldiers, the fiercest warriors of the Northern Plains, the ones who would stake themselves to ground and take all comers to ensure that hose who most needed their protection got it; they understood and honored the warrior-like loyalty that Dog displays, and adopted his name in tribute. But dogs do not appear in most Native art to any significant degree.
Here, the dogs tend to be much like dogs all over: a mix of breeds, mostly a combination of pit bull and Shepard, with some Rottweiler and cow dog of various types thrown in for good measure. At the old village, though, are a number of chow mixes — fuzzy, fluffy, teddy-bear like dogs with huge ruffs, in all colors, and you will frequently see them tagging after the tour groups. Their image found form in one of the pieces created by a friend of ours, sculptor Randy Roughface, carved in his inimitable vintage syle:
This little dog by Randy Roughface (Ponca) greets you with tail wagging every day. He’s carved from pink alabaster in the old vintage style, coaxing form and flow and a sense of motion from the stone, without imposing extraneous detail. Like many of the chow dogs in the old village, he has a luxuriant ruff, a noble upturned face, and a curled tail. Stands 2-1/8″ high by 2-3/4″ long by 1-1/16′ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Pink alabaster
$150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Randy usually specializes in horses, and his customary media are most often sandstone and slate. Occasionally he uses calcite or various shades of alabaster, and he’s been known to carve buffalo, deer, and the occasional eagle. This is the first dog he’s ever made for us, and it’s wonderful: The alabaster is cool to the touch, but the curve of the stone fits right into the palm of your hand. The stone’s matrix follows the line of the what would be the dog’s fur, inviting you to stroke it. It’s a whimsical little piece, but one with lots of character — for dog lovers, the kind that makes you smile just looking at it. It’s our one and only “dog” piece.
Of course, for dog lovers like us, knowing that dogs are happy and healthy makes us smile, too. Maybe this last photo will bring a smile to your face for today:
She-Wolf and Raven, now nearly six years post-rescue, romping in the wind.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
