My first village dog was shot and killed. I barely got to know him before I was lifting his body from the pile of dead dogs at the dump. I needed to give him a proper burial; I couldn’t just leave him there.
Now when I say village, I mean a native Alaskan village deep in the bush — disconnected from any road, only accessible by a wobbly bush plane, millions of acres of wilderness between you and Anchorage. I moved out there to teach at the school. Generally, the only outsiders in those villages are the teachers and they often don’t last.
Life for dogs out there is hard. They are left in the roads to starve or freeze. They are tied up permanently. They are shot by the town when too many accumulate. I did not know that and unfortunately lost my only friend. After he died, I didn’t want another dog. But now I believe that I
