G L O S S Y L A MI N AT I O N / 4 C / P / E MB O S S I N G

$28.00

Ted KerasoTe
“This might be the most important book about dogs written in a decade. Pukka means ‘first- Higher in Canada

class’ in Hindi, and first-class is a perfect description of Pukka’s Promise. It’s a brilliant inte-
gration of speculation, cutting-edge science and story. Every dog lover needs to read this book.” From the best-selling author who offers
—Patricia B. McConnell, author of The Other End of the Leash “the most utterly compelling translation of
Author of Mer le’s Door
dog to human I have ever seen” (Jeffrey
“Here’s a dog lover who actually teaches his dog using modern training entirely: communi-
Masson), a joyful chronicle of a dog that is
cation, observation, and now and then a clicker — not just to build a bond and a working
relationship but also to create a running conversation. This book also investigates kibble (Is it also a groundbreaking answer to the
really good for dogs?) and vaccinations (Why so many, so often?) and other commercial pres- question: How can we give our dogs the
sures on dogs’ well-being. What a good read.” happiest, healthiest lives?
—Karen Pryor, author of Reaching the Animal Mind

W
theQuest for h e n t e d k e r a s o t e was ready

Pukka’s
Longer-Lived

© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

“Pukka’s Promise is without question the most intelligent, most comprehensive book ever writ- for a new dog after losing his beloved
ten about extending the lifetimes of dogs. Not only that, but it’s riveting. After years of flawless
Dogs Merle — who died too soon, as all our
Te d K e r a s o t e ’s books include research plus a life of valuable experience, Kerasote has produced a masterpiece. From pet dogs do — he knew that he would want to give his

Promise
the national bestseller Merle’s Door: Lessons from owners to professionals, those who think they already know about dogs are in for a real puppy Pukka the longest life possible. But how to
a Freethinking Dog and Out There, which won the surprise.” —Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs do that? So much has changed in the way we feed,

Pukka’s Promise
t ed k er a so t e
National Outdoor Book Award. His essays and vaccinate, train, and live with our dogs from even
“ Ted Kerasote gently and intelligently questions our fixed notions about living with dogs. a decade ago.
photographs have appeared in Audubon, Outside,
I’d like Pukka’s Promise to be compulsory reading for all practicing vets and veterinary In an adventure that echoes The Omnivor e’s
and the New York Times, among other publica-
students.” —Bruce Fogle, DVM, author of The Dog’s Mind Dilemma with a canine spin, Kerasote tackles
tions. Kerasote lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
all those subjects, questioning our conventional
“Ted Kerasote, a born storyteller, writes about dogs with singular brilliance. Pukka’s Promise
wisdom and emerging with vital new informa-
is great fun but is also packed with important, surprising information; with wisdom, compas-
tion that will surprise even the most knowledge-
sion, and love.” —Dean Koontz, author of A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
able dog lovers. Can a purebred be as healthy as a

“Kerasote mixes science with love to take on every dog lover’s question: Can I keep my dog
alive longer? He stirs our hopes for the future and gives us hard information for now.”
The mixed-breed? How many vaccines are too many?
Should we rethink spaying and neutering? Is

Quest
raw food really healthier than kibble, and should
—Jon Katz, author of A Good Dog
j a c k e t d e s i g n © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt your dog be chewing more bones? Traveling the
front jacket & author photographs world and interviewing breeders, veterinarians,
© Jonathan Selkowitz / SelkoPhoto

back jacket & spine photographs

for Longer-Lived and leaders of the animal-welfare movement,
Kerasote pulls together the latest research to

Dogs
courtesy of the author help us rethink the everyday choices we make for
our companions. And as he did in Merle’s Door,
Kerasote interweaves fascinating science with the
charming stories of raising Pukka among his dog
C003941 friends in their small Wyoming village.
Funny, revelatory, and full of the delights of
$28.00 HIGHER IN CANADA falling in love with a dog, Pukka’s Promise will
ISBN 978-0-547-23626-1 help redefine the potential of our animal partners.
Houg ht on Mifflin Ha rcou rt
www.hmhbooks.com 1083381 0213

Kerasote_PUKKAS_PROMISE_mech.indd 1 11/28/12 10:33 AM

 in the time of the big light 167

It was also during this long light-filled time that Pukka learned some-
thing else, something that I wished he hadn’t learned. He learned to
bark, and not merely in surprise, but avidly, frequently, and, as he got
bigger, with a bawling sonorous bay that rattled every window in the
house and sounded far more like a hound’s voice than a Lab’s. His
learning to bark did not happen incrementally. It happened over the
space of one weekend.
I had gone to my niece’s wedding in Chicago and had left him for
three days with the Landales and Buck, who, among his many shining
virtues, has one fault: he barks uproariously when someone comes to
the door. It doesn’t matter if he knows you; it doesn’t matter if you’re
a family member; it doesn’t matter if he has just seen you only a few
minutes before. He believes that people coming to the door must be
announced. I am certain that in a previous life he was a town crier.
Before I left for Chicago, Pukka’s reaction to someone coming to the
house had been to walk to the door quietly, wag his tail, and wait for it
to open. But on the day after my return, when the UPS man delivered
a package, Pukka leapt to his feet and roared his head off.
Although this was a wonderful confirmation of the many scientific
experiments showing that dogs learn best by observing other dogs, I
was hardly pleased to have the very proof before my eyes or, more ac-
curately, my ears. I don’t like barking dogs, or rather, I don’t like dogs
who can’t distinguish between the UPS man and a burglar. Even when
faced with such a potential threat, dogs can use methods just as effec-
tive as barking, if not more so, to let their people know danger is nigh.
Subdued and considered warnings, however, aren’t what the major-
ity of humans have reinforced over the ages, or at least they haven’t re-
inforced them since the time when hunter-gatherers became farmers
and herders. As a farmer or herder, you wanted to know if a leopard
was slinking toward your cattle or if thieves were about to steal your
chickens. A barking dog was very useful in these situations. On the
other hand, as a hunter-gatherer, you kept no livestock and owned al-
most nothing but your weapons. You were more interested in learning
what animal was slinking toward you in the night rather than scaring

Kerasote_Pukka's Promise_F.indd 167 11/21/12 1:20 PM

 168 p u k k a’s p r o m i s e

it away. After all, it could be a juicy oryx or a big fat water buffalo — a
windfall of protein with very little investment of energy on your part.
In such cases, you wanted your dog to be silent and to tell you about
who was approaching in some other way besides barking: perhaps
no more than an undercurrent of breath murmured in your ear, or a
nudge of its snout against your shoulder, or the dancing of its eyes and
the pointing of its nose, all mannerisms Merle had employed to let me
know that elk were nearby. Villagers, in other words, wanted alarm
and bluff; hunter-gatherers wanted silence and observation. Merle,
having grown up in the desert partly on his own, among coyotes and
herders with guns, knew all about the wisdom of silence. Pukka, with
little danger in his life, and also with what I considered poor canine
role models, needed schooling.
So began over a year of trying to convince Pukka that our house
needed neither a security system nor a town crier. It was a task made
especially difficult because of how much peer reinforcement Pukka
was getting for barking.
Buck was not the only barker. A.J. barked, and Burley barked, and
Goo barked, too. They barked at people walking across the field; they
barked at the UPS man, the FedEx woman, the Lower Valley Energy
man, bicyclists whom they didn’t recognize, and wandering deer and
coyotes. Given how much they barked, it’s surprising that Pukka didn’t
start barking until he spent a weekend at Buck’s, a circumstance that
may have had to do with his admiration for Buck and his leeriness of
A.J. and his crew.
The initial instigators in all this barking, as far as I could tell, were
two American Black and Tan Coonhounds who lived on the east side of
Kelly, chained to two telephone wire spools by their person, a teenage
boy in love with hunting mountain lions. The telephone wire spools
were turned on their sides and doors had been cut in them, creating
little kennels, and night and day, summer and winter, the two hounds
were chained to their small shelters, unless they were out hunting li-
ons, which wasn’t often.
Bored out of their minds, and wildly jealous of every dog in the vil-
lage who had its freedom and walked by them, the hounds bayed end-
lessly in frustration, hour upon hour, while the teenager was in school.
I had spoken to the boy, offering to keep his hounds at my house with
the other dogs during the day.
“You couldn’t let those dogs off a chain,” he said flatly. “They’d kill

Kerasote_Pukka's Promise_F.indd 168 11/21/12 1:20 PM

 in the time of the big light 169

a cat” — he meant a house cat — “just like that. Besides, they’ll just run
away.”
So the dogs bayed on and on, and one afternoon I walked down the
road and across the creek, upset at what I was hearing in their baying.
It wasn’t merely frustration; it was pleading: “We want to play with the
other dogs. Let us off our chains.”
No one was home — the dogs didn’t bay when their people were at
home — and the two coonhounds erupted when they saw me approach.
Leaping against their chains, they rushed me, bawling at the top of
their lungs and looking ferocious. Their vicious behavior was why
everyone in the village gave them a wide berth. But they weren’t growl-
ing in the least.
I knelt before them and said, “Oh, you poor buggers. You just want
to play, don’t you?” I made some kissing noises with my mouth, and the
bigger dog, the male, pricked his ears, looked at me carefully, and then
did a play-bow. Putting my hands on the ground, I play-bowed back
to him. He wagged his tail exuberantly, and edging closer I cupped
my palm low before him and let him smell it. He wagged his tail even
harder; I stroked his chest; a few moments later he turned on his back
and let me rub his belly, wagging his tail fervently.
I would have taken both of them home right then and there, but
they were not my dogs. Around the world, dogs are still property, and
I could have been prosecuted for stealing them, even though people
are rarely prosecuted for treating a living being as these two dogs were
being treated, chained night and day, eighty degrees in the summer,
twenty below zero in the winter. The recent passing of anti-tethering
legislation in some municipalities may finally bring this deplorable
practice to an end.
The teenager left for college and took his hounds with him, but the
damage to Kelly’s dog culture had been done. There had been no bark-
ing dogs in Merle’s time, in those halcyon days no dogs being perpetu-
ally chained. Now, having heard the chained coonhounds baying, A.J.,
Burley, and Goo decided that barking might not be a bad idea. Instead
of being a passive observer, a barking dog could make things happen:
he could make people move away; he could keep them at bay (bay-
ing dogs themselves having put this far-reaching idiom into the lan-
guage); and, if the person was a dog lover, a barking dog could make
that person kneel and talk to him sweetly, asking what was wrong, as I
had done with the coonhounds. In all three cases, the dog was noticed,

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 170 p u k k a’s p r o m i s e

not ignored, and up and down the main road of the village dogs began
to bark.
With this much peer pressure, it was enormously difficult to con-
vince Pukka that I knew better than all of his buddies and that he alone
among them should be silent. But I didn’t want to live with a bark-
ing dog, and so I tried to teach him not to bark. In fact, I tried every
technique I could find in the training manuals. I tried diverting him
with other behavior — having him sit, for instance. Pukka soon learned
to sit and bark simultaneously. I tried having him sit while feeding
him raw elk burger for not barking, and I soon discovered that a dog
can sit, eat raw elk, and resume barking all at the same time — at least
Pukka could, strangled though his barks were. I tried the “going bal-
listic” technique, as some training manuals call it — yelling at the top
of my lungs, “No barking!” This certainly frightened poor little Pukka,
but had no lasting effect upon him except to make me feel despicable.
Yelling is not my style — had it been, I might have lived happily with a
barking dog — and I abandoned the going ballistic technique after a
couple of attempts. I also found the offshoot of this advice — strike the
dog sharply across its muzzle with an index finger — beyond the pale
and did not so demean Pukka or myself.
I tried talking to him sweetly, kneeling by his side, putting an arm
around his shoulders, and saying, “You really don’t need to bark like
those other dogs. It’s unnecessary and raises your blood pressure.”
Hearing A.J., Burley, and Goo barking from across the field, he would
tremble, rumbling in his throat, and the instant I would stand up from
our tête-à-tête, he would join them in barking. I tried giving him time-
outs in the bathroom. He would remember them for an hour or so and
then resume his barking. I bought two bark boxes, which emit a high-
pitched sound that dogs supposedly don’t like, and placed them at the
front door and at the sliding glass door, where Pukka habitually would
bark. Within two days, he learned to walk fifty feet beyond each box
and bark. When I placed the small rectangular black box on his collar,
as it was meant to be placed, he was dismayed, but quickly adapted.
He began to woof, just loud enough not to set the collar off. This was
a step in the right direction, but hardly a solution. I didn’t want to live
with someone who was constantly grumbling under his breath.
At last the dog who began Pukka’s barking career helped me to end
it. One afternoon I was watching Buck and Pukka play. Buck was lying
on Pukka’s bed, where they had been mouthing each other and crying

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 in the time of the big light 171

out in delighted playful yelps. After a while, Buck grew tired of the
game. Not so Pukka. He leapt at Buck and backed off, and when he
got no response he pawed at Buck’s face, then bit his ears, Buck yowl-
ing in high-pitched annoyance, almost a plea, “Please stop. I’m trying
to rest.” This only fueled Pukka’s exuberance: more biting, more paw-
ing, more lunging, until Buck moved his head sharply against Pukka’s
face, not striking him with his eyeteeth, but rumbling furiously in his
throat: “GRRRRR! Stop it!” Instantly, Pukka backed off and lay down
a few feet away. That’s all Buck had to do — emit one deep menacing
“GRRRRR!” — and Pukka left him alone.
I considered what I had just seen and filed it away. Buck went home,
Pukka had his dinner, and in a bit A.J., Burley, and Goo broke into a
fusillade of barks when a cyclist went by. Pukka leapt up from the floor
where he had been napping and raced out the dog door to join them,
bawling, “AwRooo! AwRooo! Danger! Alert! Scramble for action!”
Flinging open the door, I rushed after him, fell to all fours alongside
him, put my cheek against his head, and said, “No barking.” Then I
growled dramatically, “GRRRRR!”
His shoulders fell. His tail went between his legs. He ducked his
head and whined, pawing my face submissively and trying to lick me
on the mouth. “We don’t bark here,” I said. “It’s pointless. It’s unneces-
sary. It disturbs the peace. And it hurts my ears.”
He looked at me.
“Grrrrr,” I added.
He pressed his head against my shoulder: “Oh, please don’t growl at
me.”
“I won’t have to, if you don’t bark,” I replied sternly.
Cowed, he lowered his head. Suddenly I saw his eyes brighten with
an idea. Rushing through the dog door, he disappeared for about ten
seconds before bursting back outside. He had a bone in his mouth.
It was the one I had given to him at midday, and it was still filled
with marrow. I had remained on all fours, and Pukka now leaned his
shoulder against my upper arm and gently pressed the bone to my lips.
His eyes looked into mine and said, “I’m sorry, and here’s my bone to
prove it.”
It’s difficult to be upset with a dog, and a young dog at that, who
has developed such a refined sense of statecraft. I had spoken to him
in Dog, and he had responded in kind, making reparations with the
greatest treasure he owned, his still-juicy bone. Taking it from him,

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 172 p u k k a’s p r o m i s e

I said, “Thank you, Pukka. It’s a lovely bone.” I sniffed it. “Mmm, it
really is. And I’m touched that you would give it to me. Apology ac-
cepted, and please have it back.” I handed it to him, and demurely he
took it.
And that was that. I won’t say that he no longer barked. But get-
ting down on my hands and knees and growling at him — talking Dog
to him — worked better than anything else over a period of months to
make him a quieter dog. He had his relapses, to be sure, but more of-
ten than not, when Goo, A.J., and Burley barked, Pukka would sit on
the deck, rumbling softly in his throat as he gazed across the fi

“No barking,” I would remind him quietly.

Another soft rumble: “I’m not barking, I’m rumbling.” And this, it
proved, was his negotiated settlement with me: I was his person, but
he had his peers — the canine culture surrounding him — and he would
split the difference between the two of us.

eld atthem.

Kerasote_Pukka's Promise_F.indd 172 11/21/12 1:20 PM