The wolf
was incredible; his owners moved to the city and couldn’t keep him anymore
because of local laws, but what an amazing animal. I’ve never walked an animal so… strong. I walk a lot of dogs. Many of them are large, Rottweilers and
German Shepherds, but you can gauge their strength by looking at their size. I can stop them, if I have to. This guy was about their size, a little
bigger, but if he got it in his head to chase a squirrel, I would have been
helplessly bouncing along the ground behind him until he was finished. You know those stories you here about dogs
breaking steel chains at scrap yards?
This is the first canine I can imagine actually doing that. Frightfully strong.
Speaking
of fright, I was kind of nervous walking this guy. He was docile, but there’s no doubt in my
mind that if he wanted to, he could have ripped me to shreds. I wasn’t worried about it, but there’s that
knowledge; most dogs, I could bludgeon into submission if it ever got dangerous
(and I use a choke-chain when I’m walking the bigger ones, so I have some leverage),
but I only walked this one because they assured me he was friendly. Honestly, he seemed very… amicable… but not
friendly.
When you
walk a dog, especially at a shelter, the dog wants to get to know you. He’ll smell you, or go for some kind of
approval. They don’t usually just take off. Even the most bad-ass dogs acknowledge the
human holding the leash in some way. In
that sense, he was almost like a cat!
The animal shelter worker insisted on putting the leash on himself, but
once he handed it to me there was no trade-off to the wolf; just going. I’m sure he smelled me, but he didn’t dwell
on it. I felt like he just shrugged and
thought, “Well, I’m out of the cage now, tied to some meat sack.” I walked him about 2 miles, and it was just
an incredible half-hour for me.
The wolf
is one of our principal competitors, millennia before we ever developed much
technology, the wolf hunted what we hunted, lived where we lived, and scared
the bejeesus out of our ancestors. I can
see why. This creature, tame as he was,
carried with him the grace and lethality of a predator that hasn’t been made
stupid by ages of soft living. This
creature’s golden eyes shone with intelligence, echoes of an ancient time when
his ancestors made easy pickings of our livestock and outsmarted our best
hunters. His body, though old, carried
itself with the lethal grace which brought to life, in me, the countless
stories our people tell of the big bad wolf.
He walked beside me, but alone, almost as though he sought his pack.
In my
awe, I also felt a sinking realization.
My
entire life, I’ve loved wolves, their majesty.
I’ve felt that they were my spirit-animals, in a way, creatures which
encapsulate my essence, in some way; alone, dangerous. Self-sufficient. Powerful.
I am no
wolf. Those who call themselves wolves
in sheep’s clothing are children, playing with power they cannot
understand. Don’t deserve to
understand. They are fools, fancying
themselves as something other than cursed to dwell within their own
mediocrity. I was one of them, I see
now. I can think of one man I know who
deserves to wear the wolf’s mantle, and even that connection is tenuous. I may walk alone, but I will never carry
myself with the deadly, ruthless efficiency of the wolf. The indifference to all that is not danger or
prey. It is a terrifying thing, to hold
such mystery, such mastery, on a leash, and be cursed only to gaze in awe. Awe and envy, as this creature was born
knowing itself, adept and confident, while I am wracked by insecurity and
ineptitude. Such is the curse of
introspection, I suppose.
Anyway,
to sum up, wolves are neat.(!).
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