An Old Soul

I found Mino the dog on April 22, 2009, ten years ago!

I know this because I searched my inbox until I found the emails from the clients I was guiding that very day. Tandy and David, a nice couple from Canada, had wanted to do a hike in the Andes. Fortunately, they settled on the coastal mountain range and a hike to the top of La Campana, a peak also known by Darwin on his 1834 travels aboard the Beagle.

That day, a little dog meandered to a mountain spring and popular resting stop called La Mina at approximately 1300 meters above sea level. The black and white dog probably sunned all morning, and just a few minutes before noon, our fates were sealed. Mina would have been a fine name for a female, but when I saw his little doggy balls, his name became Mino, a word with its own story in the Chilean vernacular. As I tell my 5-year-old daughter, who always asks me to recount the Mino-creation story, I offered him bread and cheese, and he followed us for the rest of the day, from the spring to the peak and all the way back down to the parking lot. After the hike, and after he famously vomited on the Canadians in the car, he was home with me in Santiago. A vet told me that he was a full-grown, healthy pup, at least one year old, maybe two.

Some say Mino has a trait or two of a well-known breed of dogs, most likely pointer, but it does not really matter, because Mino’s breed goes back at least 500 years. He is a quiltro. Quiltro is a Chilean word probably adopted from the indigenous Mapuche and now used for dogs of no apparent breed. Pre-colonial times, the Mapuche associated the quiltro with a small, furry dog. In Chile, you see quiltros on the streets, in the campo, or wearing a sweater and riding a baby stroller through the Vega Central food market. Sin duda, Mino es americano!

Back then, I could not fathom the future and the life of adventure awaiting us. In 2009, I had no five-year plan, never mind a two-year plan; and this uncertainty was even more drastic for Mino. What a stark transformation it must have been to go from a life in the mountains, chasing game hen and grubbing on lizards and bugs, to life in an apartment, sleeping in a kennel, eating processed pellets, and routinely marking a bush in the park that gets peed on every day by dozens of dogs. Indeed, the anxiety of the rescued dog is born out of vulnerability, and it is the rescuer’s job to eliminate the vulnerability with kibble, shelter, love, and companionship.

A week later, on our first drive out of the city, he was sitting in the front seat, and when I stopped at a traffic light, he jumped across my lap and tried to escape through the rolled-down window. I grabbed him mid-air and saved him from a tragic end on Avenida Independencia in downtown Santiago. I can’t blame Mino for wanting to escape. Somewhere underneath those puppy eyes and the submissiveness, dogs are hardwired to make decisions that will improve their chances for survival. That strange sensory input of the traffic jam, the noise, and the smell, had filled him with fear, and our bond was too new to derail the instinct to run, still high on his list of impulses.

An important lesson in being the owner of Mino is that he is not one of those pet store kind of pups, neither the PetSmart nor the Fuzzy Wuzzy mall pet-store types. He was never part of a breeder’s thousand-dollar litter. There are no adverts for Minos, no AKC breed certifications. As such, dogs like Mino wield a genetic supremacy allowing them to live fuller, healthier lives, and adapt to a wider variety of environments. The Chilean quiltro has been pounding the trails for centuries, following the Mapuches through hills and valleys hunting and corralling. All that experience is stamped on their DNA, which is just a scientific word for an animal’s soul. Yet, breeders do the opposite: they remove traits, knowledge, and experience from the dog’s soul, endeavoring to leave a glorious physique or a prize-winning coat, tightly wrapped around a soul populated with glitches. Mino cannot compete with a greyhound for speed, or with a beagle for sense of smell, or with a retriever for duck hunting. But, in overall versatility, in manners, and in grace, Mino beats all other breeds.

Despite never growing another centimeter, Mino continued to develop in unanticipated ways, especially for an (extra)ordinary quiltro. In my first year with Mino, I quickly recognized his versatility, and made his face the logo of my budding trekking and touring company. With clients, we hiked Santiago’s pre-cordillera traverse-a 2-day slog that follows the long ridgeline, summiting Cerro San Ramón (3200m), and goes back down the other side. That year, Mino did the first-possible modern quiltro winter ascent of San Ramón. He wore nothing more than a flannel sweater, and that night burrowed into the end of my sleeping bag, unconcerned by the lack of oxygen. Once the word was out, clients were writing me to confirm that Mino would join them on the hike. Just a year into this new life, and his legendary status was already growing.

As a travel partner, he was forced to adapt to his surroundings, growing spiritually and intellectually. He did not adapt to just a new house or apartment, he adapted to a whole new world. For several years, Mino walked nearly every footstep I walked.

The streets of Addis Ababa became just as familiar as the Andes. Of course, much of this has been documented, here and here.

When I walked up and down the bustling sidewalks of Addis Ababa, I often heard somebody shout Mino, Konjo! from fruits stands and coffee shops, as it was the name Mino that they heard me say over and over. When I moved back to Ethiopia in 2015 and Mino lived in Utah for one year with my parents, several random Ethiopians came up to me asking me Mino’s whereabouts.

Without romanticizing the human-dog love fest too much, there is a thought-provoking question on our mutual adoption: does the human become what the dog needs or does the dog become what the human needs?

While there is a mutual satisfaction, dogs are more reliant on their humans, and in the course of the leader-follower relationship, they learn to read us, maybe as much as we read them. This ability results in a stronger bond, and by understanding our feelings and motives, dogs eventually determine right from wrong, always looking for cues in our emotions in order to construct a their own morality roadmap.

Here’s an example: Before moving to Ethiopia, on one final hike in the Andes, I vividly remember Mino chasing a herd of cows in a field below the enormous Juncal glacier. Granted, I often incited Mino to chase and rile up the livestock, deriving joy and satisfaction from seeing a 12-kilogram dog move these massive cows through the Andes. Once we had settled in Addis Ababa in 2010, I realized some rights and wrongs were not clear, and it was largely my fault. His chasing a herd of goats through the streets of Addis Ababa did not bring me the same satisfaction, rather it put me in embarrassing situations, in which I had to confront urban goat herders who were cursing me and threatening my dog.

Over the course of the next three years, Mino and I worked hard on ignoring the farm animals.

We had plenty of adventures in the mountains of Ethiopia that you can read about here and here.

One day, high up in the Bale Mountains, Mino chased a goat deep into the forest. The village elders sent their children off to find the goat, but warned me that if not found, I would be responsible. I reprimanded Mino for disobeying me and chasing the goat. When the goat was finally found and returned, we celebrated by purchasing a different goat from the farmers. The goat was quickly sacrificed, cooked, and served.

That was a confusing lesson in right and wrong, even for a human. One minute, I’m telling Mino not to chase goats, the next we are eating a goat, together.

For more on Mino’s experience with Ethiopian customs, go here.

When my wife and I started a family, Mino adapted again. We moved to Liberia, where I still shared a jungle adventure or two with Mino. Mostly, we integrated him into our budding family. My pregnant wife came down with typhoid, and for several stressful days, Mino remained next to her bed playing a silent but important role. For Mino-the-dog does not wonder whether you will improve your health. He requires neither diagnoses nor opinions. He asks no questions. His presence is the epitome of silent empathy, with no limits and no restrictions.

The first baby came, and Mino uncovered his watchdog instincts. He was now a member of a family and not just the one side of a binary-partnership. A few years later, we had another baby, and Mino’s role as loyal companion expanded. If one of the girls cries on the playground, Mino’s on the move to the action. He never walks too far ahead, he stops and waits for the family.

Dog Souls?

I suspect humans need to believe their dogs have a soul more than dogs themselves need a soul. A soul-carrying dog permits us to justify all the emotion, money, and energy that we invest in bonding. And all the money Americans spend on doggy spas, schools, and medicine; would we do the same for a goldfish?

In Ethiopia, Mino and I lived in a tiny room with one window, no closet, and a homemade bed. I look back and remember being alone in a far-away country and thinking that neither of us truly existed without the other, that our lives were intertwined by this quixotic journey to discover the world. Sometimes I wonder what Mino remembers from those days. Does he look back and wonder about himself? He surely wasn’t thinking about the size of our room or any other possession I had acquired along the way.

Today we celebrate ten years of Mino, half of that time as the family dog. Since moving to Colombia, Mino has entered the phase of the cliché wise, old dog. His eyesight is nearly gone, and he walks into walls and steps into “invisible” swimming pools, a tragic irony for a dog who has seen so much. Just as humans often face their own mortality, maybe I too should respect Mino’s ‘dogness’ and step away from anthropomorphizing him too much, no costumes, birthday parties, and social media accounts (!).

Whether a dog has a soul or not is unsettled, but we might as well give them the benefit of the doubt. It is far more important to ask ourselves whether we have offered a piece of our own soul to our dogs.