This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. The book is “Running with Sherman” by Christopher McDougall.
Chris McDougall was an almost accidental war correspondent, wandering after college, eventually landing in Madrid, Spain, teaching English for a bit, when he applied for a job with the Associated Press. He had no journalism training or credentials but, Susan Linnee, the AP bureau chief in Madrid was, writes McDougall, “a battle-hardened newswoman who scorned the hothouse-flower desk editors that New York headquarters kept sending her.”
Susan Linnee had her own method. MacDougall thought he had failed the interview. Linnee told him to report. She was going to train him.
They had an opening, the guy before, was heading for the Bosnian war. They needed more fresh meat. So, McDougall eventually wound up in the massacres of internal warfare in Rwanda, traveling with Tutsi soldiers. He started in a small band of reporters and photographers. That small band became smaller as wounds, both physical and psychic, cut into them. He writes:
| “My photographer left after we entered a schoolhouse and found the bodies of dozens of young children who’d been hacked to death with machetes; the next morning, he found his hands were still trembling. When the Tutsis finally chased the murderers into Congo and the fighting died down, I was desperate for a rest. Instead, I couldn’t sleep. It was time to go home.” |
I get that about bouncing around and winding up places. Sherman did too. The people who first took him in had no idea how to care for a donkey. They almost killed him. McDougall had no idea about country life. He learned, and Sherman became a major part of that learning.
We had a dog who had been raised mostly confined, certainly not socialized. We got our dogs, usually older, from Wayside Waifs. Candy, found living rough, was apparently used to produce several litters, each, no doubt, taken from her. She would tremble in her sleep, curled as tightly as she could curl herself, huge heaving, despairing sobs, crying out loud in her sleep. Yes, dogs cry.
Despite all that, despite being some undetermined mix of bulldog and pit bull, she was one of the most gentle souls you could have around. Although, at times, I suspected something in the nature of learned helplessness. And like Sherman the donkey, who was basically infested and mud caked, Candy had untreated skin problems which she managed to make worse with scratching. She smelled. Badly. I became very nose blind to her. We had medicine from the vet but it didn’t solve her skin problem. I understood her night crying. I understood her to the bone, and at the same time I didn’t understand her even so much skin deep. All the other things that her life had been, just being a dog, seeing the world on four feet and from a foot and a half high, darting out to grab someone’s thrown away fast food leftovers.
But we could meet in the middle. Out for a walk, me, Candy, and Digit, our three-legged dog, two front legs, one back leg, we would come around the far corner of the first block on the way back home. It was about what Digit could handle but Candy wanted to go farther and she wanted to go elsewhere. She pulled hard to go there. Seemingly stubborn. So, I would stop, kneel down next to Candy and put my head close to hers, Then I would talk to her, tell her we needed to go home now for Digit but promised I would then turn around and she and I would go for a longer walk.
I will never know exactly how that worked in Candy’s head but in some way she figured that out. She would then come right back with me and Digit, wait for me to put Digit inside and then Candy and I would head out for another two miles, alternately running and walking. She did seem happy with that and always held me to it. As long as she knew she was part of the decision making, she seemed content with the result.
MacDougall quotes Curtis Imrie about donkeys saying, “Because when they like you, they’ll do everything short of open the gate and jump in the trailer. They become your partner. Your buddy. They join you for the adventure.”
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR Radio Readers Book Club.
