Scottie, our inscrutable rat terrier, is the end product of thousands of years of canine domestication. It left him with an aversion to popping campfires, a naiveté about coyotes, and a willingness to subsist on the dry kibble we offer him twice daily, with a probiotic thrown in to aid digestion. For his first seven years, our city dog was basically an anxious parasite, but one we grew to love.
That’s not to say he has no admirable qualities. He’s a sleek, eighteen-pound rocket made of fast-twitch muscle and sinew, shaped like a greyhound and colored like a Holstein. Bred for anti-rodent work, he has a cobra’s reflexes and has always considered himself an apex predator, though oblivious to the wild beyond. As a result, he has the misguided self-confidence of a trust funder on safari.
But in 2016, my wife and I decided to leave the balmy life of Southern Californians to stage our third act in the rural Rocky Mountains,
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