Navajo Taboo Dog

Perry 1 Navajo Taboo Dog It was the summer of 2007. My li le brother, Porky, found a dead female dog lying on the road.

It had just been hit by a car. All of the li le puppies except one were feeding from its dead mom, sucking the last love she could give to her children so they could survive another day. The li le kids picked up the li le puppies and took them home. The one who didn’t get milk from its mother was given assimilated “Similac” milk from a bo le because he wouldn’t stop crying. The kids happily shared their bo le with the puppy that night. All of the puppies they took home that day died that weekend, except one. The one who never drank from its mother, the one who only knew assimilated milk. Within a few days, the puppy opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the li le children feeding him. The li le kids had fun sharing their bo le with the puppy and caring for him like he was a member of their family. They were a pack. He survived and was raised to think he was a human child like them, only he had mange.

Some say it is a Navajo taboo for a puppy to be taken away from its mom before its eyes are opened. I don’t say that. It is a factual Navajo observa on that a mother animal will kill or disown their offspring if they carry a human scent. This knowledge is handed down through genera ons of storytelling so I never asked the elders why. It's just the way nature is. It's just not right.

During this same me period, my other li le brother Zegoman, who graduated from NAU, came to visit me and told me he had learned the Navajo Way. He learned how to read the Navajo language. He shared that he knew how to read it, but he didn't know how to speak it. S ll, he had knowledge of my people and I had three ques ons to ask him about dogs that I never dared to ask the elders. I asked him why Navajos don't buy dogs. He said he had read the answer in a Navajo taboo book. He said the reason why Navajos don't buy dogs is that if they do they believe they will always be poor. Then I asked him another ques on, “Why don’t we eat in front of a dog?” He said that was in the Navajo taboo book too.

Navajos don't eat in front of a dog because Navajo people believe the dog will witch them. The dog will sit there and look at us while we eat and wish that they had our food. If you eat in front of a dog you will

2 eventually either feel sorry for the dog and throw him your food or your stomach will never get full.

Finally, I asked him how come we don't talk to dogs? He said we don’t talk to them because it’s going to be the end of the world when they talk back to us and we both laughed.

One hot, summery day, my wife and I were walking home from Bashas. When we returned home there was a li le puppy si ng on our porch, alone and abandoned. I saw that the li le dog had mange. I decided to take it to the Humane Society and have it put to sleep so as to not infect our other dogs. I told my wife and she turned around and hit me. She said, “What if I put you to sleep? That dog has feelings. It has a nose, ears and brain just like you. Leave it alone and let it live. It's not bothering you.” I agreed with her and we kept that dog. We didn't know who it belonged to.

One morning I was making oatmeal and the li le dog tro ed in and was looking at me. I told him not to look at me. “Gowan. Go outside,” I said to him. He kept looking at me. He was looking at the oatmeal I was s rring. My wife was sleeping. I turned around to get up to get milk for the oatmeal and the li le dog said “What dat?” in a high-pitched squeaky rezzy voice. My heart almost jumped out of my body. I got scared. I didn’t know how to respond because I had never heard a dog speak English. I shouted to my wife what happened and she laughed. She said she knew. How did she know? She said that when she was bathing him he would talk to her. She would ask the puppy, “How is the water?” and the puppy would say, “Warm,” in a weak child’s voice. She kept laughing. I said, “Wow! I guess you could stay because you speak English.” I was so happy it spoke to me. He was going to make me famous. Who has a talking dog? I saw them on TV but never met anyone who had one on the rez. Before I went back to s rring I told him it was oatmeal then I made him go outside and fed him some dog food. That li le puppy was so cute. He used to sit out there on the porch every day in that same place by the doorway.

He never wandered off with the other dogs. I got used to him. My wife loved him. In the morning I would let him out and he would mo on to me to watch the sunrise. Then he’d spend his days lonesome

3 wandering inside the house or si ng at that same spot on the porch wai ng for his pack to pick him back up. His life was simple and lonely. I felt his loneliness.

For days and days, I wondered who he belonged to? How did he learn to speak English? What boarding school did he go to? You can imagine how sad I felt when we came home a week later and he was gone. My wife hit me thinking I took the dog to the Humane Society, but I loved that li le dog. I never would have thought to kill a talking dog. That would be inhumane. She looked at me and said I be er go find him or I wasn’t going to eat that night. I spent the rest of the a ernoon and evening looking all over the rez for that li le dog. I asked my neighbors if they had seen a puppy with mange. He was light brown, Navajo brown with puss oozing out of his mange. They all laughed at me when I said he talked. “A talking dog. Are you out of your mind?” I would say no and con nue walking calling out for him. I called him Puss Boy because of his mange. I missed Puss Boy and was sad when I came back home empty handed. I wasn’t going to be famous anymore. My wife was sad too and that made me feel worse.

To her, Puss Boy was a baby child we had adopted. She wept that night for Puss Boy. Even the next morning we were s ll sad. I felt like it was my fault.

We cried a week for Puss Boy then my brother Porky came to my house and asked me to babysit his three kids for four hours. One of them was s ll in diapers. We were s ll sad about Puss Boy and didn’t mind watching Porky’s kids because it took our mind off of the loneliness we felt for Puss Boy. My brother ended up leaving his kids for three days (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). On Saturday morning the li le boy in diapers came crawling into the kitchen on his hands and knees like a dog. He smelled like poop and had snot oozing out of his nose. I told him to go get his diaper changed and to go back to bed. I was cooking oatmeal. I turned around to get something for the oatmeal and the li le boy sat up and said his first words to me “What dat?” in a squeaky high pitched rezzy voice. It sounded just like Puss Boy. I told my wife, “Hey! I found your dog!” She came running in and told me she heard the puppy too. I told her the li le baby ate Puss Boy and Puss Boy was speaking to us from his stomach. I looked inside the

4 baby’s mouth and told him to spit him out. My wife hit me, “A li le baby can’t eat a whole dog!” and we started laughing, but I swear that morning I heard Puss Boy, not that li le s nky baby, say “What dat?”

Porky eventually came back with his wife to pick up our children. Before he le I asked him if he had seen a li le Navajo brown dog around my house that had mange and could talk. He told me that it was the kid’s dog. Turns out Porky had stopped by a few weeks back when we weren’t home and the kids accidentally le their dog. He came again a couple weeks later and picked him up when we weren’t home again. I was so relieved and asked where li le Puss Boy was now. He told him that he was missing.

Apparently, Porky was in the habit of leaving Puss Boy for weeks at a me. They went for a week somewhere and when they came back home he was gone. He never came back, just sort of disappeared from this Earth. My wife cried for Puss Boy when she found out what happened. We were comforted that he had a good life for those couple weeks we had him.

Puss Boy taught me some hard lessons. When he asked me “What dat?” I realized I don’t know what oatmeal is. The government gave it to us to survive. When Navajos would grow food back in the day, we would talk to the corn. We would ask the corn ques ons like “What dat?” and the corn would talk back to us. Navajo elders say when you eat food you talk to, it grows inside of you and your children.

Did the government speak to the oats they were giving to us? What kind of things did they feed us in boarding school? To this day, I will never know what kind of food has been grown inside me. Puss Boy also taught me that when you take a child from its mother and raise him to be like you, he will never grow to his full poten al. He will constantly be asking himself, “What dat?” and there will always be a sadness he carries because a part of him will always be wai ng for his pack. You have to be very gentle with these dogs who speak English, who were taken from their mothers. You can’t leave them like the other dogs or they’ll disappear because they won’t know how to survive. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love them. You should love all children. Protect them. Cherish them everyday. Sit and watch the sunrise with them and enjoy them while they are here with you on Mother Earth. Love is love.

5 By: Stanley Perry Dedicated to my nizhoniful wife Carol Perry. RIP Edited by: Millicent Michelle Pepion PO BOX 21 St. Michaels, AZ 86511 StanleyPerry500@gmail.com (928) 309-8807