Pets are an important part of a lot of people’s lives. We get pets to be companions, therapy, service animals, protectors, etc. I think back in the day having a dog was mostly for protecting the house and hunting. Nowadays we just love to have them as companions with the added benefits. I remember being a kid and our dogs lived off of dog chow and left overs. Just a big plate of random leftovers from the day and we’d feed it to our dogs. Chicken bones and all. Now we buy the best dog food we can find and afford for them and make sure they don’t eat any bones. We take care of them like they’re our children. They sleep in our beds and sit on our couches. This town takes their love for their animals seriously. That doesn’t change the fact that they are village dogs. They’re our watch dogs, alerting us if there’s a threat wherever we are. They go commercial fishing with us, rides down the beach, hunting trips and so on.
The experiences for village dogs are eventful. I have had one of my dogs, along with 3 of my uncle’s, stranded on the ice in the Bering Sea and luckily for us the coast guard was flying over in their helicopter at the time and Uncle John got on the VHF and asked them to rescue our dogs. They did it. I watched my dog Rockie chase a bear, not once, but twice. One time we were driving and it was dark outside and he just jumped out of the truck, I assumed he wanted to chase a fox cus he did that all the time, but instead this big ass bear ran in front of the truck and Rockie was running after it. I was so afraid he was going to get swatted. He disappeared into the hills for a couple minutes as I rallied into the back trails trying my best to follow. He ran back to the truck maybe five-ten minutes later and was totally fine. Crazy bastard.
I have had 3 of my dogs eaten by wolves. This was years ago, but it happens and you have to be very careful. In the winter when the wolves get hungry the pack will send a female wolf in heat as a recruit to lure male dogs out of town where the pack will ambush and eat them.
We also have the threat of porcupines in town. If your dog gets quills from a porcupine, you have to get the quills out immediately. We don’t have the option to send our dogs to the vet quickly so we have to do it ourselves. On Thursday August 5th my dog Bering got quills for the first time in his life. He’s only 2 years old. Darren, my husband, and I had to get him inside and grab the pliers to start plucking. You have to be very careful in getting them out because they are barbed and if you break them off inside of your dog, it will travel deeper into the tissue. That means it can travel and hit important organs in your dog! That means an ugly little porcupine can literally kill your damn dog. Now, this was not my first time getting quills out of a dog. Bering is a young and tough boy though, so it was difficult. Ideally you’d hope your dog would just trust you and let you pluck the ugly things out while your dog stays still. This is not the case. So, Darren had to man handle Bering while I tried to pluck the quills out with a pair of pliers. We got all of them out, but there was this one ugly little bitch quill that broke off in the middle of his lip, right in that cute little crease dogs have under their nose. So we had to sit there and try and try to get the tip of that one out. It was so hard and I still don’t know if I got it. All I know is when I first checked it, I could feel and see it, but when we were done I couldn’t feel it anymore or see it. So, if you’re reading this, say a little prayer for my boy. We’re monitoring him and keeping a very close eye on his behavior.
It’s stressful to have pets, but when you love your babies like I do you take that responsibility seriously. Shit happens and we can’t control everything, but we do have to be prepared. In the village you never know what’s going to happen. I have tons of stories about village dogs and there will be more posts to come like this.