Just Read: The Philosopher and the Wolf

Mark Rowlands
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE WOLF
Lessons from the wild on love, death and happiness
246pp. Granta Books. £15.99.
978 1 84708 059 2

An amazingly simple story, masterly told. A 'MUST READ'!



Read the review in the Times Literary Supplement:

Mark Rowlands and his wild lessons in externalism

by Mark Vernon

One day, the eye of the philosopher Mark Rowlands was caught by an advertisement in his local newspaper, the Tuscaloosa News: “Wolf cubs for sale, 96 per cent”. Rowlands was eyeballing the father of those cubs just an hour later, the wolf’s yellow eyes on a level with his own, the beast’s enormous paws propping it up against a stable door. This encounter had the opposite effect to that which it would have on most human beings, who fear wolves with a primordial terror. Rowlands purchased one of the cubs and his life changed. Within hours, Brenin had savaged his furniture and destroyed the air conditioning.

When Brenin was alive, he was the centre of Rowlands’s life; each day the creature had to be exercised, fed and settled before the philosopher could embark on anything else. The demand the wolf made on him reminds Rowlands of the myth about St Francis and a wolf that terrorized a village. St Francis made a deal with the wolf, whereby the creature would cease his hostilities if the villagers promised to feed him regularly. The arrangement worked, and firm arrangements are what you need to make with wolves if the relationship is to flourish. Now that Brenin is dead, the philosopher still thinks of his “brother wolf” every day. He misses the relationship that was one of the most formative in his life, and confesses to worrying about Brenin’s bones, now that they lie buried in a lonely spot in the South of France.

In his professional life, Rowlands is known for the idea that consciousness is embedded in the world around us as much as within us. For example, our intelligence stems in part from our ability to use language, and language itself exists apart from any one of us. Brenin, he decides, has “mechanical intelligence”: the wolf lives in a mechanical world, solving problems like opening doors in a flash. This differs from dogs who, he argues, have “magical intelligence”: a dog lives in a magical world, in which it deals with doors by looking at them and waiting for its owner to do the opening, though in ways that are entirely mysterious to the dog itself. Rowlands’s thoughts on “externalism”, as his view of the connection between mind and world is called, developed in part because of his relationship with Brenin: “I think there are certain thoughts that can emerge only in the space between a wolf and a man”.

Other fascinating speculations are concerned with human intelligence. It is rational and moral – for all that we can be irrational and amoral, and profoundly affected by emotions. That would suggest that there is a rational and moral world external to us. Inasmuch as that is embedded in language, it might be argued that we create that rationality and morality, on the grounds that we are the makers of the language we speak. An alternative view, though, is that language is a mirror of a deeper reality: might rationality and morality exist externally to and independently of us too? Rowlands, for one, is open to this possibility. That said, wolfish or “canine” traits almost invariably come off better than human or “simian” traits, in Rowlands’s view – at least in this book. This misanthropic thread is partly a reflection of the discontent Rowlands felt about himself over the period the book covers, about which he is painfully honest, notably when he muses on the failed human relationships in his life and his tendency to drink too much.

Rowlands needn’t have been so negative about his conspecifics. Apart from anything else, studies of bonobos, conducted by Frans de Waal among others, have revealed astonishing capacities for kindness and empathy among higher primates. Taken as a whole, though, Rowlands’s memoir is life-affirming, engrossing, thoughtful and moving.

The subtitle is “Lessons from the wild on love, death and happiness”, and I found the lessons on consciousness, animals and knowledge as engaging as the main current of the memoir. The Philosopher and the Wolf could become a philosophical cult classic.






Mark Vernon is the author of Wellbeing, part of the new Art of Living series, and Teach Yourself Humanism, both published in 2008.



Read an excerpt from the book


Brenin never lay down in the back of the Jeep. He always liked to see what was coming. Once, many years ago, we had driven from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, all the way to Miami - around 800 miles - and back again. And he stood every inch of the way: his hulking presence blocking out much of the sun and all of the rear traffic. But this time, on this short drive into Béziers, near the village where we were living in the Languedoc, he wouldn't stand; couldn't stand. It was then I knew he was gone. I was taking him to the place where he would die. I had told myself that if he stood up, even for part of the journey, I would give it another day; another 24 hours for a miracle to occur. But now I knew it was over. My friend of the past 11 years would be gone. And I didn't know what sort of person he was going to leave behind.

The dark French midwinter could not have contrasted more starkly with that bright Alabama evening, in early May, when I first brought six-week-old Brenin into my house and into my world. Within two minutes of his arrival - and I am by no means exaggerating - he had pulled the curtains in the living-room (both sets) off their rails and on to the ground. Next, while I was trying to rehang the curtains, he found his way out into the garden and under the house. At the rear, the house was raised off the ground and you could access the area underneath by way of a door built into the brick wall - a door that I had obviously left ajar.

He made his way under the house and then proceeded - methodically, meticulously, but above all quickly - to rip down every single one of the soft, lagged pipes that directed the cold air from the air-conditioning unit up through various vents in the floor. That was Brenin's trademark attitude to the new and unfamiliar. He liked to see what was coming. He would explore it; embrace it. Then he would trash it.

I was a couple of years into my first job - assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosa is best known for its university's (American) football team, the Crimson Tide, which the local community embraces with a fervour that surpasses the merely religious - although they're heavily into that, too. Life was good; but I had grown up with dogs - mostly big dogs like Great Danes - and I missed them. And so, one afternoon, I found myself looking through the want-ads section of the Tuscaloosa News.

For much of its relatively short life, the United States of America pursued a policy of systematic eradication of its wolves - through shooting, poisoning, trapping, whatever means necessary. The result is that there are virtually no free wild wolves in the contiguous 48 states. Now that the policy has been abandoned, they've started to make a comeback in parts of Wyoming, Montana and Minnesota, and on some of the islands in the Great Lakes. They have even recently been reintroduced, over the strident protestations of ranchers, into the most famous of US natural parks, Yellowstone.

This resurgence in the wolf population, however, has not yet reached Alabama or the South in general. There are lots of coyotes. And there are a few red wolves in the swamps of Louisiana and east Texas - though no one is really sure what they are, and they may well be the result of historical wolf-coyote hybridisation. But timber wolves, or grey wolves as they are sometimes known (inaccurately, since they can also be black, white and brown), are a distant memory in the southern states.

Therefore I was somewhat surprised when my eye was caught by an advertisement: WOLF CUBS FOR SALE, 96 PER CENT. After a quick phone call, I jumped in the car and headed off to Birmingham, about an hour to the north-east, not entirely sure what I was expecting to find. And so it was, a little later, that I came to be standing, eyeball to eyeball, with the biggest wolf I had ever heard of, let alone seen. The owner had shown me around to the back of the house, and the stable and pen that housed the animals. When the father wolf, Yukon, heard us coming he jumped up at the stable door, just as we arrived there, appearing as if from nowhere.

He was huge and imposing, standing slightly taller than me. I had to look up at his face and his strange yellow eyes. But it was his feet I will always remember. People don't realise just how big wolves' feet are, much bigger than those of dogs. It was his feet that announced Yukon's arrival, the first things I saw as he bounded up to lean over the stable door. They now hung over that door, much bigger than my fists, like furry baseball mitts.

One thing people often ask me about owning a wolf: aren't you ever scared of him? The answer is no. Not because I'm brave, but I think it's because I am very relaxed around dogs. And this is largely the result of my upbringing. Looking back, I realise that, when it comes to dogs, my family are just not normal. We would often take in Great Danes from rescue centres. Sometimes these were lovely animals. Sometimes they were positively psychotic. Blue, a Great Dane unimaginatively named - not by us - after his colour, provides a good case in point. Blue was about three years old when my parents rescued him. And it was easy to understand why he found himself in a rescue centre. Blue had a hobby: the random and indiscriminate biting of people and other animals. Actually, that's not fair: it wasn't random or indiscriminate at all. He just had various, let us call them, idiosyncrasies. One of them was not permitting people to leave the room when he was in it. You could never afford to find yourself in a room with Blue on your own. You always needed someone to distract him while you exited. Of course, they would then need someone else to distract Blue should they wish to leave the room. And so the great wheel of Blue's life turned. Failure to adequately distract him before exiting the room would often result in one's hindquarters being scarred for life. Just ask my brother, Jon.

My family's abnormality exhibited itself not just in their willingness to accept Blue's idiosyncrasies, it was in the way they regarded this rather disturbing facet of Blue's personality as a source of enormous mirth: indeed, as a rather enjoyable game.

In any event, I've never been afraid of dogs. And this transferred naturally to wolves. I greeted Yukon in the way I would an unfamiliar Great Dane - relaxed and friendly, but none the less observing the standard protocol. Yukon turned out to be nothing like Blue. He was a good-natured wolf, confident and outgoing. But misunderstandings can, of course, arise even with the best animals. The most typical reason for a dog to bite - and I suspect a similar story can be told for wolves - is that they lose track of your hand. People reach around to pat the back of the dog's head or neck. Losing sight of your hand, the dog becomes nervous, suspects you might be attacking it and, accordingly, bites. It's a fear bite - the most common sort. So I let Yukon sniff my hand, and petted him at the front of his neck and chest until he became used to me. We got on like a house on fire.

Brenin's mother, Sitka - named, I assume, after the variety of spruce tree - was as tall as Yukon, but far rangier and nowhere near as massive. She looked more like a wolf, at least like all the pictures of wolves I had seen - long and lean. There are numerous sub-species of wolf. Sitka, I was told, was an Alaskan tundra wolf. Yukon, on the other hand, was a McKenzie valley wolf, from the north-west of Canada.

Sitka was far too preoccupied with the six little bears she had running around her feet to pay me too much attention. And little bears is the best way I can think of describing them - round and soft and fluffy, with no sharp edges. Some of them were grey bears and some of them were brown, three males and three females. I had intended only coming to have a look at the cubs, and then going home to think carefully and soberly about whether I was ready to take on the responsibility of owning a wolf, and so on. When I saw the cubs, however, I knew I was going to take one home: today.

Picking the cub was easier than I thought it was going to be. First of all, I wanted a male. There were three of those. The biggest male - indeed the biggest of the litter - was a grey, who, I could tell, was going to be the spitting image of his father. I knew enough about dogs to realise that he was going to be problematic. Utterly fearless, energetic and dominating his brother and sisters, he was destined to be the alpha male and would take some controlling. I picked the second-biggest cub from the litter. He was a brown and his colouring reminded me of a little lion cub. Accordingly, I named him Brenin: the Welsh word for king. No doubt he would have been mortified if he knew he was named after a cat.

He didn't really resemble a cat in any respect. He looked more like one of those grizzly cubs you see on the Discovery Channel, following their mother around Alaska's Denali National Park. Six weeks old at this time, he was brown flecked with black, but with a cream underbelly that ran from the tip of his tail up to the bottom of his snout. And, like a bear cub, he was thick: big feet, big-boned legs and a big head. His eyes were very dark yellow, bordering on honey - and that is something that never changed. I wouldn't say he was 'friendly' - at least not in the way puppies are friendly. He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, enthusiastic, gushing or eager to please. Rather, suspicion was his predominant behavioural characteristic - and, again, that was something that would never change towards anyone except me.

It's strange. I can remember all these things about Brenin and Yukon and Sitka. I can remember holding Brenin up to my face and looking in his yellow wolf eyes. I can remember the way he felt, with his soft cub fur, between my hands as I held him. I can still picture clearly Yukon standing up on his hind legs, staring down at me, big feet hanging over the stable door. I can still picture Brenin's brothers and sisters running around the pen, tumbling over each other and jumping back to their feet in glee. But of the person who sold me Brenin, I can remember virtually nothing. Something had already started; a process that would become more and more pronounced as the years rolled on. I was already starting to tune out human beings. When you have a wolf, they take over your life in a way that a dog seldom does. And human company gradually becomes less and less significant for you. I remember his story - at least I think I do - but I don't remember the man.

He had moved down from Alaska, bringing a breeding pair of wolves with him. However, it is against the law - I'm not sure whether that was state or federal law - to buy, sell or own pure-blood wolves. You can buy, sell and own wolf-dog hybrids, and the highest ratio of wolf to dog allowed by law is 96 per cent. He assured me that they were, in fact, wolves, not wolf-dog hybrids. Since, a few hours earlier, I had never even known I could own a wolf-dog, I didn't really care. I paid him the $500 I had extracted from the cash machine, pretty much emptying my bank account in the process, and took Brenin home with me. And there we began thrashing out the terms of our association.

After his initial destructive surge, which lasted about 15 minutes or so, Brenin went into a deep depression, making himself a den under my desk and refusing to come out or eat. This lasted a couple of days. I assumed he was devastated at losing his brothers and sisters. I felt so sorry for him, and very guilty. I wished I could have bought a brother or sister to keep him company, but I simply didn't have the money. In a day or two, however, his mood began to lift. And, when it did, the first rule of our mutual accommodation became clear - very clear, in fact. The rule was that Brenin was never, ever, under any circumstances, to be left on his own in the house. Failure to abide by this rule involved dire consequences for the house and its contents; and the fate of the curtains and the air-conditioning pipes was merely a gentle warning of his true capabilities in this regard. These consequences included destruction of all furniture and carpets, with a soiling option also available for the latter. Wolves, I learnt, get bored very, very quickly - about 30 seconds of being left to their own devices is generally long enough. When Brenin got bored he would either chew on things or urinate on them, or chew on things and then urinate on them. Very occasionally, he would even urinate on things and then chew them, but I think that was just because, in all the excitement, he would forget exactly where he was in the order of proceedings. But the upshot was that wherever I went Brenin had to go, too.

In late August Brenin and I headed into the University of Alabama for our first class together. The summer had seen him grow up fast and strong and big. From a chubby little bear, he had become long, lean and angular. Although he was not quite six months old yet, he was already 30in at the shoulder and weighed around 80lb. I used to weigh him, much to his chagrin, by picking him up and standing with him on the bathroom scales. And the days were drawing to a close when I could do that - not so much because I couldn't lift him, but because we were collectively getting too heavy for the scales. His colour had remained the same: he was brown, flecked with black, with a cream underbelly. He had inherited the big snowshoe feet of his parents and always gave the impression that he was about to trip over them. He never did. There was a black line that ran down the dorsal edge of his snout, from his head to his nose, and this was framed by his eyes, still the colour of almond; eyes that had now taken on the hooded, slanting shape of a wolf's.

In those early days he could barely contain the power he must have felt coursing through his body. During the summer months, our departures from the house had slowly developed into something bordering on ritual. I would announce our departure by saying, 'Let's go.' This would be the cue for him to initiate his party piece: a cartwheel that he would perform on the living-room wall. His method involved running at and jumping on to the settee, then continuing his run up the wall. When he had got as high as he could, he would swing his back legs up and around, then run back down the wall. It was the same story every time we went out. Often Brenin would do his trick before I had said anything at all, as if to let me know that we had people to see and places to go. So I think we can safely say that it was with some trepidation that I drove into the university for that first class.

In fact, there were no major disasters that morning. I had tired him out with a long walk before we went in, and after he had become used to there being other people in the room, he lay down under the table at the front of the room and went to sleep. He did wake up and start attacking my sandals around about the time I was running through Descartes's arguments for doubting the existence of the external world. But I think everyone agreed this was a welcome distraction.

Things didn't always go so smoothly. There would be the occasional mishap. After a few weeks, he started to enjoy a post-nap howling session halfway through the class. At other times, he would decide to stretch his legs, wandering up and down the aisles, having a little sniff around. One day, when he was feeling particularly bold or hungry, or both, I saw his head disappear into the back­pack of a female philosophy major - someone who was, I think it is fair to say, a little nervous around dogs at the best of times - to emerge, a few seconds later, with her lunch.

When Brenin was a young wolf, his favourite game was to steal cushions off the sofa or the armchair. If I was in another room, perhaps working in my study, he would appear at the door, cushion in mouth, and, when he knew I had seen him, he would tear off through the house, through the living-room, the kitchen and then out into the garden, with me in hot pursuit. The game was one of chase and could go on for quite a while. I had already trained him to drop things - so I could have ordered him to drop the cushion at any time. But I didn't have the heart; and, anyway, the game was much more fun. And so he would charge around the garden, ears back, tail tucked low and eyes shining with excitement, while I thundered around ineffectively behind him. Until he was about three months old, Brenin was quite easy to catch - and so I just pretended he was too quick for me. But the pretence gradually shaded into reality. Soon he was throwing me little shimmies - feinting to go one way while actually going the other. When I caught on to this trick, the shimmies would become double shimmies. Eventually the game was played in a confused blur of feint, double feint and triple feint - feints nested within feints. Of course, this sidestepping practice worked wonders for my rugby skills. I had always based my game on the idea of running over people rather than around them. This worked well in Britain, where I grew up, but not as well in the US, where the people are generally much bigger and have been raised playing American football, where the tackling is ferocious. They are, however, much easier to confuse and, with all this instruction from Brenin, I became a twinkle-toed, sidestepping demon of the south-eastern United States.

My failure to catch Brenin bred a certain cockiness that he expressed in an early innovation to the game. After I was suitably exhausted, he would stand facing me and drop the cushion midway between us. 'Go on,' was the message. 'Take it!' As soon as I bent over to pick it up, he would leap in, seize the cushion and the chase would begin all over again. No matter how quick I became at bending and seizing the cushion, Brenin was always just a little bit quicker. It was a useful transferable skill: he once played the same game with a freshly cooked chicken that he had stolen from the kitchen during a momentary lapse of concentration on my part. I could have made him drop it, of course. But what was the point? I really didn't fancy the chicken after it had been in his mouth, and so we played the game of chase.

Some professional animal trainers would regard our game with horror. I know this because they have told me so. Their objection was twofold. First of all, the game by its nature was likely to make Brenin more excitable - not a characteristic you want to encourage in a wolf. Second, my failure to catch Brenin might have led him to the conclusion that he was physically superior to me, and therefore caused him to bid for alpha status. Maybe these were legitimate worries; but with Brenin they never materialised. And this, I think, is because the games always proceeded according to a well-defined ritual that had a clear beginning and end. If I was in the living-room, I would never allow Brenin to take the cushions. His attempts to do so were met with a firm, 'Out!' This told him that the game was something that could only be played at certain times. And the games always came to a definitive conclusion. I would say, 'OK, that's it!' Then I would make him bring the cushion to me and drop it. Then we would go inside and I would give him a treat of some sort, which both reinforced the end of the game and made him associate this ending with something good.

This all worked well for a while. However, when he got to be around nine months old, he decided to take the game to the next level. One morning, while I was writing in the study, I heard a succession of loud thuds from the living-room. Not content with taking the cushions into the garden, Brenin had decided it might be a good idea to take the armchair too. And the thuds were caused by his repeatedly banging the chair against the door frame as he tried to drag it through. It was then that I realised a more radical approach towards Brenin's entertainment was required, an approach based on the premise that, all things considered, it would be best for both of us if Brenin were constantly exhausted. And so we began running together.

Trying to keep a wolf under control by making sure it's constantly exhausted is one approach. But even a moment's thought will tell you that it's not a very good one. Our runs did tire Brenin out initially. Me too - but that was of lesser importance, since I wasn't the one trying to drag the furniture out into the garden. Brenin, on the other hand, became fitter and fitter, and therefore more capable of wreaking havoc on the house and its contents at any given time. Soon, runs that used to plunge him into an exhausted slumber for the rest of the day he came to regard as a gentle loosener. And so the runs, of necessity, became longer and longer. But, of course, Brenin just got even fitter; and you can probably see where this is going. Bicycles were an option. But folks didn't take kindly to bicycles in Alabama back in those days - a fact I discovered through a near-decapitation incident involving me on a bicycle and some liquored-up rednecks with a baseball bat and a pick-up truck. Only pinko, commie, hippie bedwetters travelled under their own propulsion in Alabama back in those days. And so the bicycle option wasn't one I was really keen to explore at that juncture.

And so I kept running, and Brenin kept running with me; and we both got fitter, and leaner, and harder. This pragmatic impetus for my new-found fitness, however, quickly changed into something else. On our runs together, I realised something both humbling and profound: I was in the presence of a creature that was, in most important respects, unquestionably, demonstrably, irredeemably and categorically superior to me. This was a watershed moment in my life. I can't ever remember feeling this way in the presence of a human being. But now I realised that I wanted to be less like me and more like Brenin.

My realisation was fundamentally an aesthetic one. When we were running, Brenin would glide across the ground with an elegance and economy of movement I have never seen in a dog. When a dog trots, no matter how refined and efficient its gait, there is always a small vertical vector present in the movement of its feet. Depending on the type of dog, this movement will be obvious or almost indiscernible. But it's always there if you look carefully enough. With Brenin, you could see no such movement. A wolf uses its ankles and large feet to propel it forwards. As a result, there's far less movement in its legs - these remain straight, and move forwards and backwards but not up and down. So, when Brenin trotted, his shoulders and back remained flat and level. From a distance it looked as if he was floating an inch or two above the ground. When he was especially happy, or pleased with himself, this would be converted into an exaggerated bounce. But his default motion was the glide. Brenin is gone now, and when I try to picture him it is difficult to furnish this picture with the details necessary to make it a concrete and living representation. But his essence is still there for me. I can still see it: the ghostly wolf in the early-morning Alabama mist, gliding effortlessly over the ground, silent, fluid and serene.

The contrast with the noisy, puffing and leaden-footed thudding of the ape that ran beside him could not have been more pronounced or depressing. I wanted to be able to lope. I wanted to glide across the ground as if I was floating an inch or two above it. But no matter how good at running I became - and I became very good - this was always going to escape me.

One afternoon, during the long, hot and extremely humid Alabama summer, I decided to go for a run. I also decided, uncharacteristically, to leave Brenin behind. He had been a little off colour for the past couple of days and I didn't want to risk him in the heat and humidity. My decision was one with which Brenin vehemently disagreed and he had made his displeasure known. I left him with a girlfriend looking after him.

After an apparently short process of trial and error, Brenin managed to open the garden gate - basically by smashing it off its hinges - and charged off after me. Since we didn't have a set route - it would change from day to day - I presume he was following my scent. About 10 minutes into my run, I heard a screeching of brakes followed by a loud and sickening thud. I turned to see Brenin lying in the road, having been hit by a Chevrolet Blazer. A Blazer is an SUV. The European version is the Vauxhall/Opel Frontera. But the Blazer, being American, is bigger. It had passed me a moment earlier travelling at, I would estimate, somewhere in the region of 40 to 50mph. Brenin lay in the road for a few heart-stopping seconds, howling, and then he picked himself up and ran off into the woods at the side of the road. It took me nearly an hour to find him. But when I did, he was largely OK. Jennifer, our vet, confirmed that there were a few cuts and bruises, but no broken bones. And in a day or so he was back to normal. In fact, the Chevy came off distinctly worse.

That Blazer would have killed me. But Brenin's physical scars healed in just a few days. And, psychologically, there didn't seem to be any scarring at all. The very next day, he was pestering me to take him running and he never showed any subsequent fear of the cars that would fly past him on the road. Brenin was a very tough and together animal, both physically and psychologically. I want you to bear this in mind when I tell you the next story.

We were out running again, but this time it was a few years later. We had moved to Ireland - specifically Cork - and were running together along the banks of the River Lee. Leaving Lee Valley Park behind us, we headed out into the fields of cows that lined the river. Most people think of cows as stolid and slow-witted creatures, their lives expended in a miasma of standing and chewing and staring. Brenin and I knew differently. Every now and then, when the sun is just right and the wind carries on it the promise of summer, they will forget what they are - what 10 millennia of selective breeding have made them - and dance and sing out in their celebration of what it is to be alive on a day like today.

The cows seemed inordinately fond of Brenin; and he clearly returned the sentiment. On spring days like this, whenever they saw us, they would stampede up from the furthest corners of the fields, baying and braying out their greeting. I suspect it was because they had just had their calves forcibly removed from them - they were dairy cows - and probably mistook Brenin for one of their own, a prodigal young returned to the green, green grass of home. Perhaps Brenin thought they took him for a god: the god of cows. Whatever the reason, he would trot up to them, giving each one of them a lick on her big wet nose. He may have not liked other dogs, but he really was quite fond of cows.

There were electric fences in those fields to keep cows in. When we were on the return leg of the run, I grabbed hold of Brenin's collar, and we ducked under one of the electric fences. My elbow brushed the fence and the shock passed through to Brenin. Brenin took off in an undignified manner more reminiscent of a scalded cat than the god of cows. And he didn't stop until he reached the car, a couple of miles away. He was there waiting for me when I eventually got back, anxious and breathless. We had gone on that same run most days, rain or shine, for the best part of a year. But he never went back again. He refused point blank, and his decision would remain unchanged no matter what form of begging, bribery or coercion I employed. That, apparently, is how horrible electricity is for wolves. That is how much they must hate it.

Perhaps you might think Brenin was just being a little histrionic. It was, after all, only a mild electric shock. If you are tempted to think this, just remember the Chevy Blazer. On balance, it seems that for Brenin a mild electric shock was a lot worse than being hit by an SUV.

Brenin and I were inseparable for 11 years. Homes would change, jobs would change, countries and even continents would change, and my other relationships would come and go - mostly go. But Brenin was always there - at home, at work and at play. He was the first thing I would see in the morning when I woke - largely because he would be the one to wake me, around daybreak with a big wet lick to the face - a looming presence of meaty breath and sandpaper tongue framed by dawn's murky light. And that was on a good day - on bad days he would have caught and killed a bird in the garden and would wake me up by dropping it on my face. (The first rule of living with a wolf: always expect the unexpected.) He would lie under my desk while I wrote in the mornings. He would walk or run with me almost every day of his life. He would come into class with me while I did my lecturing in the afternoons. And he would sit with me in the evenings while I worked my way through innumerable bottles of Jack Daniel's.

It was not just that I loved having him around - although I did. Much of what I learnt, about how to live and how to conduct myself, I learnt during those 11 years. Much of what I know about life and its meaning I learnt from him. What it is to be human: I learnt this from a wolf. And so thoroughly did he insert himself into every facet of my life, so seamlessly did our lives become intertwined, that I came to understand, even define, myself in terms of my relationship to Brenin.