A Small Furry Prayer (12 page)

Under this model, same-sex sexuality becomes an important form of communication, like another version of grooming: a tactile behavior that feels good and establishes cooperative bonds. And those bonds are the point. “That's why,” says Roughgarden, “you're much more likely to see two chimps working together than one clobbering the other over the head with a rock.” It's also why we see so much homosexuality in our pack. None of our crew is related, so kinship-based altruism isn't an option. But if homosexuality is viewed as a form of tactile communication that abets social cooperation, then it's a viable survival strategy, especially in a pack as diverse as ours.

And this was my third lesson in island living—sometimes it's a tropical paradise, other times a Boys Town disco on a Friday night.

23

Gay dogs were a curiosity. Altruistic dogs were a curiosity. Being cut off from the outside world was a curiosity. Being cut off from the outside world with a pack of gay altruistic dogs was edging toward downright strange. But none of this, truthfully, was as odd as the fact that the majority of gay altruistic dogs in our pack were Chihuahuas. Chihuahuas, now, they're truly odd. But even this—with all its idiosyncratic glory—paled on the peculiarity scale compared to the fact that somewhere, sometime, somehow, during our first winter in Chimayo, I decided that I really liked our Chihuahuas.

Yeah, I know, pretty freakin' unbelievable.

Anyway, it helps to start at the beginning: The world's smallest dogs take their name from Mexico's largest state. The state of Chihuahua is roughly the size of Great Britain, and the dogs of the same name were discovered there in 1850, in the ruins of an old palace. The palace was built by the Aztec ruler Montezuma I, though historians believe the breed antedates his reign by almost a thousand years. There are Mayan sculptures of similar small dogs dating back to the fifth century AD. The Mayan called these dogs
techichi
, and when the Toltecs conquered the Mayans they took a serious liking to the
techichi.
They brought them into their homes as pets and began using them in religious ceremonies. It was the Aztecs who came calling next. After conquering the Toltec, they further elevated the
techichi
's sacred status, believing these dogs had the ability to guide the souls of the dead to the world of the hereafter. Thus when the Aztecs buried a warrior, they often buried a live
techichi
with him.

As these things go, it was mostly the ruling-class Aztec who thought the
techichi
possessed magical powers. The lower classes kept them around for more pedestrian reasons: the dogs were bedwarmers at night and meals the following day. To this end, the
techichi
were further crossbred with the Chinese crested, a breed that had already been introduced into South America by the Spanish. This mix served a purpose.
Techichi
were a medium-sized, long-haired dog, the Chinese crested smaller and hairless, so the hybrid was easier to control (smaller) and easier to prepare for cooking (hairless). And it's the descendants of that hybrid that we know today as Chihuahuas.

As mentioned, when I first met Joy, I had little interest in Chihuahuas. I had the familiar machismo—real men don't like small dogs—augmented by a near decade in Los Angeles—small dogs as fashion accessories—confounded by a professional problem: small dogs tend to be yappy, and it's darn difficult to write with a dozen yappy dogs around. To get around this, over the summer I had turned what was originally a dilapidated barn into an office of sorts. My new office, which we appropriately called the goat shack, sat about three hundred yards away from the house. The house, being an adobe, had two-foot-thick walls. The combination of those walls and that distance was enough to protect me from their ruckus.

As the pack continued to grow, my preference for quietude also meant that Joy and I began to split up the rescue work along size lines. I got the big dogs, and she got everyone else. During the day, the big dogs were with me down at the goat shack; the rest of the pack were up at the house with Joy. We went for separate walks and ate at separate times and—because Chihuahuas get skittish around big dogs they don't know—became much more of a divided household then a united clan. This started to change once winter arrived and the coyotes in the neighborhood got hungrier and more aggressive. We started noticing their paw prints in the neighbor's fields and hearing their hunting howls early in the morning. A couple of times when Joy was walking the Chihuahuas through the badlands, she'd been stalked by coyotes. We didn't want to lose a dog this way, but Chihuahuas are just too high-strung to be denied their exercise. The only way to solve this problem was for us to begin walking everyone together, hoping the big dogs would learn to take care of the small dogs.

It was Bella who learned first. She was part pit bull and part heeler—the perfect combination. Pit bulls are protective in general, and heelers are herding dogs and protective of their flock. Instinct is instinct. Bella didn't care if she was herding sheep or Chihuahuas; she took her responsibility seriously all the same. We'd hit the trail and the dogs would spread out in a very long line. Smash, being the fastest, always took point. Squirt, being the fattest, always lagged behind. The other dogs would mostly romp around in between. But by our third hike together, Bella had taken to patrolling the perimeter, running circles around the Chihuahuas, ensuring that nobody got lost or left behind or turned into lunch.

Perhaps the other big dogs just wanted some of the attention we were now lavishing on Bella or perhaps they too were starting to understand their roles, but it didn't take long for this protective behavior to spread. Pretty soon, Ahab and Leo were guarding the Chihuahuas' flanks, while Otis policed from the middle of the pack. All of which produced comedic results.

The
techichi
started out as pack hunting dogs, and Chihuahuas inherited this trait. One of the reasons I disliked these dogs so much was their skittishness. But this turns out to vanish when you have a pack of them. In a group, Chihuahuas are considerably more courageous than they are on their own. Then add in a few bigger dogs to serve as bodyguards and their bravery verges on insanity. Any hole in the ground becomes fair game for Chihuahua exploration—despite the fact that bobcats and bears live in some of those holes. Occasionally, ranchers let their cattle wander free in the badlands. When they're on their own, the sight of a cow is enough to send small dogs running for cover, but with the big dogs backing them up, the Chihuahuas began charging at the cows, rushing in between their legs, biting their ankles, barking them off to other pastures.

Of course, all of this newfound courage made Joy a bit nervous, but I found it inspiring. With every new foray into the badlands, the Chihuahuas got braver and braver. It felt like I was watching my kids grow up and come into their own. After a month in the backcountry, never mind the cows, the Chihuahuas had completely lost their fear of the bigger dogs. This was when the real fun began. It didn't take long until our hikes became less about getting from point A to point B and more about the game of rugby along the way.

Over the summer, even during the madness of Chihuahua play hour, wrestling matches were mainly separated along size lines. But after the group hikes began, it became anything goes and all the time. Small dogs would gang up on big dogs; big dogs would bum-rush small dogs. Surprise attacks—when five Chihuahuas would disappear down a side arroyo and lie in wait until one of the pit bulls came to investigate their absence, only to pounce on them once they arrived—became common. We also started to see role reversals, where a stronger animal lets a smaller one win, and repeated incidents of self-handicapping, which is the technical term for what happens when our miniature Chihuahua decides to wrestle our bull terrier.

Otis outweighs Gidget by over sixty pounds, but to keep their matches even, he flops onto his back and fights with one paw. Rolling over and letting a smaller animal wrestle the “top” position is self-handicapping. Only using one paw is self-handicapping. But with Otis things go further. While he may fight only with one paw, Gidget fights with everything she's got—including her teeth. Occasionally she'll bite his face and not let go. When this happens, Otis likes to stand up and strut around, with Gidget dangling off him like a long furry earring.

Despite how common play fighting is among mammals, it has taken a surprisingly long time for scientists to understand this behavior. For most of the last century, researchers had a red-in-tooth-and-claw view of nature and a survival-of-the-fittest view of nurture, so assumed play fighting between kids was practice for real fighting among adults. About twenty years ago, University of Colorado biologist Marc Bekoff and University of Idaho animal behaviorist John Byers began to rethink these assumptions. Since play fighting was supposed to be training for real fighting, what they wanted to know was if there was any correlation between roughhousing in juveniles and brawling among adults. Did the kids who won the most fights grow up to become the most dominant adults? Did less aggressive children become subordinate adults? Most important, was play actually combat practice or was something else going on?

To find their answers they reexamined forty years of research on play fighting in squirrel monkeys. Almost immediately, they noticed what should have been long obvious: during actual combat squirrel monkeys bite each other, but this rarely happens during play. This is a problem because only the repetition of exact patterns of movement can produce muscle memory and only with muscle memory does practice make perfect. There were other problems as well. The monkeys who played the most as children didn't win the most fights as adults, and the monkeys who won the most play fights when they were younger didn't win the most real fights when they were grown up. In fact, everywhere they looked, they found almost no correlation between play fighting and real fighting.

Next they expanded their inquiry and examined the data on other species. The results were the same. Then Washington State University neurobiologist Jaak Panksepp discovered that the neuronal circuitry behind aggression and the neuronal circuitry behind play were completely different. When people tried administering testosterone to research animals—known to increase acts of aggressive dominance—they found it actually inhibited play, while drugs that curbed aggression did nothing to diminish it. All of this caused Bekoff and Byers to back up and ask a different question: if play fighting wasn't training for real fighting, then what purpose could it possibly serve?

Turns out the purpose is moral. Take Otis and Gidget. Otis is our pack's resident silverback. So why would an alpha male self-handicap—essentially go out of his way to display weakness? What the research shows is this isn't a display of weakness; it's a display of a willingness to lose. “The fact that all animals self-handicap,” writes Colorado State University ethologist Temple Grandin in
Animals in Translation,
“might mean that the purpose of play fighting isn't to teach animals how to win, but to teach them how to win
and
lose. All animals probably need to know both the dominant and the subordinate role, because no animal starts out on top, and no animal who lives to old age ends up on top, either.”

And perhaps this is even more critical in a pack such as ours. There are dogs both bigger and smaller than Otis, and by parading around with Gidget hanging off his cheek, he's letting everyone know that around here might does not make right. By displaying subordination, he's telling the others that they're safe, part of a community, and no matter their size or strength or stamina, their needs will still be met. Essentially, Otis is doing the same thing politicians do when they kiss babies: he's advertising morality. Bekoff believes this is the primary function of these bouts, writing in his
Animals at Play
: “In their games, young animals learn the rules of living in a group—how to communicate or ‘talk' with each other. They learn to cooperate and play fair. Life in the wild can be tough. It's even tougher when you're alone, so play helps create bonds and a sense of community.”

And this is exactly what happened to us. The hikes, the danger of the hikes, the cooperative behavior that resulted from the danger, the play fighting that resulted from the cooperation, the agreed-upon standards of behavior that emerged from the play fighting, the community that emerged from these standards—all of it knitted us together that much tighter. It was like the sexual revolution had let all the dogs know that they were safe being themselves, then the group hikes had let them know they were safe being together. And with the goofy results, it didn't take long for my old opinions to begin to fade away. Once I started hiking with the small dogs, I really started to enjoy the company of the small dogs. I know how it sounds, but just so there's no misunderstanding, let me spell it out: I, Steven Kotler, being of sound mind and body, being heterosexual, fond of football and whiskey and flannel shirts, able to drive a stick shift and operate heavy machinery, having once flown a Mig-17 fighter jet, with some experience climbing mountains and surviving in rain forests, not scared of snakes or spiders or such, hereby do admit, out loud and in public, that I have become extremely enamored of Chihuahuas.

And here's why: with a dozen of them around, it's just pretty damn hard to be in a bad mood.

PART  FIVE

O Lord, despite a great many prayers to you, we are continually losing our wars. Tomorrow we shall again be fighting a battle that is truly great. With all our might we need your help and that is why I must tell you something: this battle tomorrow is going to be a serious affair. There will be no place for children. Therefore I must ask you not to send your son to help us. Come yourself.

—The prayer of Koq, leader of the Griqua nation,

before a battle with the Afrikaners in 1876