CATORCE THE COYOTE DOG

I can still see the face of every dog I owned. See their ears perked, eyes wide, bold, wanting to please. I see them all clearly, life like, here in the room with me. I thank the years for having known that kaleidoscope of loyal, pleasure giving pooches: Tubby, Tippy, Jet, Gypsy, Rusty, Kirby and Catorce. Yes, even Catorce, the dog I never owned, the dog no one ever owned.

  I met Catorce while paddling near Pull-Tite Spring in Missouri . She lazed aside the bank a sack of bones, shedding brown fur from ulcerated skin—a rotting drape of a once magnificent dog. Her muzzle studded with bloated blood sucking ticks, feasting in her ears, around her nose and above her lips. Across her flanks someone painted the number fourteen. She lived in the campground, drifting from campsite to campsite, working for meals—our dog-for-a-day. 

  That night, Jill, my spouse, named the animal Catorce, Spanish for the fourteen blazoned on her flanks. The derelict gratefully ate our leftover spaghetti. Next morning she lapped ranch beans and bread for breakfast, finished that, then looked down the shoreline toward a wisp of smoke curling above the brush, the tell tale sign of a camper in need of a dog. Our allotted time expired, Catorce limped off to claim the next grub stake.

  We packed our gear, broke camp, and pushed off, just as a National Park Service truck rolled down the access road. Two workers dressed in full Park Service regalia, hopped out and put a wrench to a water spigot. I shipped my paddle and shouted, wanting to know more about the dog they ignored, “Anyone own that dog?”

  The man looked up from the spigot. “No, he’s yours, help yourself.”

  “Why the number on her side? What’s the fourteen mean?”

  “That’s how many days she’s got to live,” he laughed, they both laughed, the fat ranger and the skinny ranger.

  “It’s a Coon Dog, isn’t it?”

  “Nope,” said the heavy set fellow, “it’s a “Coyote Dog”.”

  “Coyote Dog”?”  I shook my head in disbelief. “You mean a wild dog?”

  “No! It’s a “Coyote Dog”.”  The skinny ranger corrected me.

  “What’s a “Coyote Dog,” I asked.

  “It chases coyotes.”

  “Like a “Coon Dog” chases coons?”

  “Like that, but different: Coon Dogs tree coons; they keep a coon treed until one of us can shoot him. But a Coyote Dog, half Greyhound, half Ridgeback and full Hell Hound, runs a coyote until it drops, then kills it.”

  “This dog kills coyotes, no way!” I hesitated, then continued, “My wife named her “Catorce” because of the number. Is she lost?”

  “The skinny ranger hitched his pants and speculated: “Could be she swam the river chasing a coyote. She’s worn out. She’ll rest a day or two, then wander home.”

  “So people just turn a bunch of dogs loose to kill coyotes?”

  “Day and night, we get in trucks, set up along intersections and listen to the dogs sing. We talk back and forth on radios, use Garmins for location, and tell each other which direction the dogs are running.”

  “So you follow the dogs. You ever shoot the coyote?”

  “Not necessary, not usually, if the pack catches the coyote, then,” he pinched his lips and shook his head, “it gets messy, for the coyote and the dogs.”

  We pushed off, entered the river’s fat tongue, and paddled. From a distance, I watched Catorce, edge closer to the new camper’s fire. I shook my head, tried to shake the thought: a dog killing a dog. Does that make sense? They’re brothers, aren’t they, one animal having evolved from the other? Maybe that’s why Catorce ran off. She refused to kill her own kind. That’s people business, killing their kind. It comes natural for us, but for a dog to kill another dog, it has to be whipped and prodded and brainwashed, like Hitler trained the Schutzstaffel.  

I looked back, saw Catorce wobble over a bowl, tail down, ears drooping, her fear flagging with every bite. I whispered under my breath, “Welcome to my pack Catorce.”

(NEXT: SELWAY NIGHTMARES coming June 1, 2010)

Eleven Point River, MO.  Highway 19, forty miles north of Arkansas: trout, paddling, Ozark Trail, and Coyote Dogs.