They’re always with me, the cohort of dogs, yapping and rushing back and forth, their eagerness making the trip for them thrice as long. They bolster me. The feeling is literal; I am mired in my mind and they raise me, lift me out of the muck and help me float. They buoy me up. I feel like the leader of the pack and also the snuffling newcomer to their world of senses and electricity, the wordless hum of their shared mind. They ruin my carefully framed mushroom pictures. They in turn refuse to pose for portraits. They have no patience for my forest-floor-gaze. They are pathfinders. They hear everything except the owl that alights from the leaves five feet before us. They know where home is. They like detours. They weave around my legs and trip me up; they hurry me along and frustrate my pace. They do not mind getting wet. They are the reason I know rabbits live here. They are my snake-alerts. I always have a game plan for saving snakes from them. I need a game plan for saving them from snakes. They chase cattle. They herd pigs. They hunt goats for no reason. They kill a kid. Two years later, a nanny. The valley feasts. I look the dead goats in the eye. They fight. They bite. One bites me. It’s a pain unlike any I’ve known. The feeling of betrayal is not new, but fresh. The bite betrays a feeling. I only beat them away from their prey. Later I imagine myself a she-bear a tigress a wolf-mother, tower over them in turn, growl my loudest declaration that I’M IN CHARGE I’M THE BIGGEST. THESE TEETH THOUGH BLUNT ARE BIGGER THAN YOURS. FEAR ME RATHER THAN FIGHT EACH OTHER. They cower. Their upturned bellies delicate, woundable. I feel like a dog’s belly. I find their wounds. I pick fleshy bulbinella leaves that ooze gel over all our cuts. It is like glue. Our wounds and the way we lick them, pick at them, worry. They carry on. I cower. Wanting head scratches and treats, wanting to be tucked in, wanting more. Instead I rewatch the Big Bang Theory and wonder what I’d been thinking the last time I did. Instead I run my own bath. Instead I dress my own sores. Instead I tell myself not to want, much less need. There is a man in me that wants to battle on, that can’t stand the thought of defeat at the feet and teeth of these two bitches. I smother him in his sleep. I carry the biter so she doesn’t stumble from her shoulder that’s tender and fat. My throbbing finger wakes me and when it does my feet find the other, silky and warm and trusting. In the morning I open the door to find the boys waiting for me, their day already long but empty until now. I touch them. They start chemical flows in my body, serotonin combustion that sets me going. Again, I resolve that today will be a good day. We walk in.

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Jané Dowd (b. 1987) is a South African poet, living in the mountains, aiming every day to become more like an animal. She writes about the hope that refuses to leave, the sorrow that trails like slug slime, the bright days that scorch the eyes. She loves words and what they can do. She wonders if we might be better off language-less.