James Giago Davies. Photo from Native Sun News

Now just a doggone minute...
Honoring the best friend any Lakota ever had
By James Giago Davies
www.nsweekly.com

Shunka is what the Lakota call the dog. He’s been around a long time so long there is no historical record of his arrival. Back when the only security men had was a blazing camp fire and sturdy sticks sharpened to rib-puncturing points in that fire, wolves circled at the edge of the light, fearsome eyes glowing from the threatening dark of a world where there were no roads, bridges, fences, cities or pizza.

That pizza part truly disturbs me. Life without pizza; that is the definition of a dog’s life.

My dog Nate loves pizza. He’s a hundred pounds, and if he had his way, he’d be one hundred and fifty pounds, fifty of those pounds, pure pizza. He doesn’t like pickles otherwise he’s a top notch highly indiscriminate garbage gut.

That garbage gut is why his kind even exists. The expression wolf it down indicates that a wolf can seriously down chow at levels that would kill you or me. Could you eat twenty hot dogs in one sitting, bun and condiments included? I couldn’t, most any dog can, and that’s because that dog used to be a wolf.

Not something related to a wolf, or like a wolf, but the very wolf itself.

Hunting food down is hard for a wolf pack. Every wolf works hard to keep living. So wolves evolved the capacity to hold prodigious amounts of meat in their gut, amounts no human can match, even competitive eating champions would be shamed easily by the average wolf.

See, the wolf can never be sure that his last meal won’t take weeks to become his second to last meal. So, he can fill that gut up, way past what he can digest in short order, regurgitate it for later consumption, or for other pack members, particularly the pups.

The wolf is a smart animal, and it didn’t take him long to figure out there was chow to be easily had at the fringes of human encampments. Most animals are put off by the scent of man, they find our scent repulsive. Not the wolf, like the dog, he loves sniffing stinking crotches.

At first men ran the wolves off, because they are large carnivores with big scary teeth. And face it even the cutest lap dog that ever existed can make a scary, ugly face in a heartbeat. But some wolves had more nerve than other wolves and they became increasingly hard to run off and then one day the bright idea occurred to some person to toss that wolf a bone, and then another one, maybe a chunk of meat.

Pretty soon the wolf stepped inside the light, warily approaching the weird looking angular two-legged that would become his best friend. Eventually he ate out of the man’s hand and eventually he let the man pet him.

Wolves were handy to have around, they warned of approaching danger, and wherever you went they tended to tag along. They were quick to play the worshipful kid to your hero dad. There was a Fido, Rover, Spot, just waiting to jump out of every wolf. When he did jump out, the wolf changed. His sharp ears fell, his pelt went willy nilly, he gave up the howl for the bark, the four footed lope for the two footed sprint.

Weird thing was, despite a dramatic change in appearance and behavior, internally, he was genetically wired the same as he ever was. He never stopped being a wolf.

Read the rest of the story on the all new Native Sun News website: Now just a doggone minute...

(Contact Jim Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

Copyright permission Native Sun News