But instead the dog stayed and followed me to my office in the backyard of the cottage. There, it laid down with a great sigh and preceded to ogle me while I worked. I looked over its coat (clean), its heavy tongue (healthy) and its glassy, somewhat foggy eyes (jaundice?!).

I Google-searched “dogs-glassy-eyes.” A few pecks down I noticed a small picture of a dog that looked much like the dog before me.  From an animal shelter Website advertising the dogs they needed to give away, it pictured a Catahoula hound. Ah, would never have guessed. Never heard of the breed before having a childhood-based bias towards shepherds and experiencing the honor of knowing three of them growing up. For some reason I had resisted the urge to get another dog after I’d watched my Karla, a German Shepard, die a long painful death due to hip displacement. With dark thoughts now I hear her back claws dragging on the sidewalk. What was no doubt intense discomfort, even terrible pain, Karla insisted on taking a walk with me. We walked slowly at dusk, she behind me while I talked to her in quiet, reassuring tones. I found some grass and we sat down in the near darkness and I rubbed behind her ears. It was the last walk we would take.

That heart-wrenching story aside, dogs are a real hassle. It always perplexes, even dismays me a little, to see guy walking his dog with a plastic bag and a pooper-scooper. It calls into questions about who’s the owner, the master/dog continuum, and human dignity. Of course it’s the right and proper thing to do if you’re a dog-owner, the latter a term that completely justifies the good deed of picking up shit.

And I’m always on the move and home is not always where the heart is. It wouldn’t be fair, not to mention expensive, to crate around a dog cross country, sometimes across the Atlantic for all these climbing trips.  

My Internet search for Catahoula hound yielded more information than I could take in one sitting, but I did learn a few things that stuck out. For one, the hound is Louisiana’s state dog and they have webbed feet, making them premier water dogs. The Spanish Conquistadors liked these Indian dogs so much they tried to trap and take them home to Spain. I was getting somewhere, and somehow the dog started looking better. That day I coaxed it in the truck and went climbing at the Buttermilk boulders above Bishop. The dog was hesitant at first, but soon was pulling off moves that would give a bighorn sheep pause. I began to really like this dog and by late afternoon gave it a name: Birkie, after Birch Mountain that rises above Big Pine. Wanted to keep it local. By nightfall I found myself negotiating the pet aisle at Vons (Grocery Store) where I found a confusing cornucopia of dog food for sale. What would “my” waiting dog like?