Rusty

Layne calls me a helicopter parent to Rusty. I suppose that must be partly true but as much as I fuss over his welfare I also like to see him run free. Or not…

Over the years in the Keys  I watched him vanish into the mangroves and leave me standing on the trail waiting for him to return. At first I worried he would get lost or injured and would disappear but pretty soon it became obvious to me he was more at home in the swamps than in suburbia. As much as he irritated me by refusing to come when I called I never stopped him running free and waited for him to come back to me at the side of the road. 

Then there was the time I couldn’t wait and according to a passerby he saw me drive off to an appointment without him. He ended up in jail and only next morning could a friend on his day off run over to the Marathon SPCA  and pick him up and bring him home for us. After that episode he never failed to come when I whistled so from that ghastly lemon we made lemonade. 

I never worried about him running off in Mexico. He was scared of the street dogs in a country where canines are not quite family members among the working classes. They get fed scraps to live, they hang on the streets like school yard toughs and when some middle class American dog walks through their neighborhood they gang up and try to see him off. 

The quiet streets of North America suit Rusty, the place where well fed  dogs spend  all day locked up and only come out wrapped in harnesses and bibs and all manner of restraints. He looks with scorn at the poor devils restrained in yards half mad from boredom and loneliness. Dogs are pack animals and Rusty knows his pack. We are his gang. 

When we arrive somewhere he sits outside and watches the world go by. I keep him leashed where I have to but he doesn’t need to be tied up. I even have a long tether for the rare occasions we use campgrounds where leashes are a requirement. Check out the Mexican campground in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán the only place in Mexico where the rules said we had to keep him tied up. Obviously  the tether stressed Rusty out completely: 

His home is GANNET2 and when he does get stressed or just wants to let go without worrying about being taken by surprise, he hops in and jumps up on his bed which travels on top of our bed. He sits up there and checks the world through the back windows. 

His other favorite spot is under the van. He’ll lay out in the sun for a while, then he’ll seek shade. Rusty isn’t a lap dog. He’s an American dingo and he lives like one. He survived being dumped in the Everglades so I know if we get desperate he knows how to keep us alive! For now we keep feeding him his treats. 

He learned to love to beaches in Mexico, a place where he couldn’t be ambushed. Seen here near La Ticla in the dangerous part of the coast of Michoacán…dangerous for turtles as we watched a cheerful man on a motorbike raid a nest. Rusty just played, no danger to anything. 

It was up in the mountains of Baja that I had one moment of worry for Rusty. I was enchanted by a condor circling over us only until it occurred to me that Rusty could be lunch. A quick swoop, a push over the edge and he would have been a fifty five pound meal on a cliff for the bird to pick over at its leisure. We spent a couple of nights at the vista point but I never expected it to live up to its name of “Condor Lookout.” Surprise, surprise. 

I try not to worry about him. Is he happy? Are we stressing him by driving him all over the place? 

A few months after we got him we took a planned trip to Canada. He was in his running free phase and we had a few scares when he disappeared but always came back. We spent a great time touring the  Ile d’Orleans and here is checking out the St Lawrence River:

I like to think he enjoys traveling as much as we do. Of course, if he doesn’t we are still going to keep rolling, so my fussing about him is to some degree empty self serving nonsense. Layne says he’s happy just to be with us. I agree. 

I try to imagine what a small abused abandoned dog thinks when he finds out the world includes temperate forests, cold winters and deserts so wide open he can run all day and not reach the end. 

He eats whatever kibbles we find along the way and much to our surprise his favorite treats are sticks we found in a Mexican supermarket. We call them licorice sticks they look so dark but they smell of meat. We’ve been rationing them out since we got back to the US to make our supply last. I don’t suppose he’ll miss them when we finally run out next week.

I am fond of saying you don’t get me without my dog and Rusty does his best to keep his side of the deal. Webb Chiles has never had a pet but he likes Rusty a lot. The best dog he’s ever known and Rusty is actually glad to see him. They are like old friends when we get together then he sits apart on his leash and watches us talk boats from his spot in the shade. 

They say the dogs you bond with most tightly are the hardest to train and the most resistant to domestication. Rusty fit the bill. I used to despair of myself, wondering if I was the right person for him he was so willful. Even now he sometimes refuses to walk or sits and stares at me until I give him what he wants. However he also knows when I really need obedience by my tone of voice and the balance is restored. 

We’re in the woods a few days, taking advantage of the cold front in North Florida and enjoying a wild camp before hunting season begins in a couple of weeks. Mornings are cold, 42  degrees, and when we let him out I wonder if he thinks back to all the places we have been where the cold set him free to be a dog. 

I hope he enjoys the journey as much as I do and the memories we make because without him the experience would be far less rich than it is, trying to see the world through his eyes. 

For some reason I don’t understand what breed of a dog you have fascinates people. Rusty is what I call a Miami Street Dog but a chance encounter with a stranger in Key West in 2016, the year we got Rusty, put me straight. 

https://bittersoutherner.com/carolina-dogs

Our vet’s best guess puts him at nine years old. His behavior makes me think he may well be a Carolina Dog. Who knows?