How to Keep a Human, as told by Amaruq

Portrait of the Patriarch as a Young Mutt

Kids, puppyhood will soon be over. Yes, the time has come, according to your mother, for the Old Boy to tell you what to expect. You won’t be puppies forever.

Haven’t you noticed, Taku? Your mom isn’t very interested in nursing anymore. She wants you to learn to eat dog food—yeah, that stuff in the pan that you keep falling into, face first. If you want to be a puppy forever, try to be a human next lifetime. Humans may be a little thick-headed and hard to train, but they live at least seven times as long as we do. Their young will still be puppies when you are silver-muzzled grandparents like me.

How do I know? You do ask the most hackle-raising questions, Taku! Okay, let me think…how do I know about this seven-times thing…?  Oh, yes, now I remember: I had a young friend, Beowulf, whose great-grandfather—that’s four paws—told him that his own grandmother—that’s another two paws—had the same human her mother had. I think that’s seven paws…almost two whole dogs…wow….  However you chew on it, humans live almost forever!

My puppyhood? You want stories from my puppy days? Don’t you want stories about your naughty mother? Okay…the good old days, so called…settle down, now. Cuddle close, and listen.

No, Seelah, I never mushed those famous races your mother loves to talk about—never mushed at all, in fact. We’re freighters, our family. The glamour and hype and nonsense of the mushing world is not for us. Freighters don’t race—we pull. We do real work. Don’t forget: we’re all part malemute and part wolf. Our strength and brains are perfect complements for human weaknesses, you see. What would our humans do without us?

Right on, Taku—we’re tough. Northerners, from the True Woods, near the Arctic. But your grandpa wasn’t born in the True Woods, or even the North. North of Sixty, the humans call our homeland. Most wolf-husky pups in Big Ape City come from North of Sixty, and never escape the City again. My life moved the other way, back to the True Woods. You might think of Grandpaw as a backwards wolf.

When I was born, I was supposed to be a City dog, yarded, penned, domesticated, petted, raced, brushed, doctored, inoculated, medicated, photographed, bedded down—a fancy-life canine. You little wolfy dogs wouldn’t even be here if Something Wonderful—and Something Terrible—hadn’t happened when I was just a baby.

No, I won’t tell you about the Something Terrible! Grandpas aren’t supposed to scare the ears flat on puppies! Well, all right, the Something Wonderful, then. Just until you fall asleep.

I’d noticed, as soon as my eyes unglued themselves on what my mother said was the ninth day of my noisy, sucking, milky baby life, that we were all adorable, my seven siblings and I. Just as adorable as you, Puppies! How did I know? Seelah, you’re such a smartypaws, aren’t you?

Of course I couldn’t see myself, nor had the humans introduced us to mirrors yet, but I must have looked a lot like my brothers and sisses, with snub muzzles, bright eyes, and the softest fur imaginable arranged in cute masks on our faces. Yes, yes, just like you! (Lick, lick, yes, I love you all. Ow! Chimo, let go my ear!)

Even our mother was not proof against the onslaught of our eager little warm tongues licking her muzzle. “Oh, all right,” she’d say, and either cough up the latest food goodies, if she had any, or subject each of us to a bath, just as your mother does for you.

The humans came around the puppy pen a lot, and they always made that sound that means they want to pick you up and squeeze you: “Aww….”

Oh, we were cute—no doubt about that. So darned cute that, about the time my mother wanted to stop letting us have her milk, my bros and sisses started disappearing. One of the young humans would arrive and start the “Aww” routine, and before we knew it, little legs belonging to a brother or sister would be kicking madly above us, struggling their way out of our lives. First Sylvia disappeared, and then Phil.