Riddle me this.
If a rez dog is walking around outdoors and no one is around to hear it, does Metallica’s “Wherever I May Roam” play loudly from the sky?
Where do I begin?
Skipper the Rez Dog did not belong to us.
That’s the official line.
Technically, he belonged to Grandpa Gerald and Grandma Elsie on Couchiching First Nation. On paper, anyway. In practice, Skipper belonged to gravity, grease, and destiny.
He was black with a grizzled grey frosting coming in like he’d seen things. Which he had. He had one eye—the other presumably sacrificed in some epic saga involving a snowbank, a moving vehicle, and his own questionable judgment. He was also missing one half of his…. anatomy, courtesy of being run over at some point in his early career.
But like all great action heroes, he respawned.
Slightly asymmetrical. Slightly annoyed. Completely unbothered.
He had a grey goatee that made him look like a retired dockworker who’d taken up philosophy.
And he was obese.
Not “aww, he’s chubby” obese. Not “maybe cut back on the treats” obese. He was built like a canine bodybuilder who had retired from competition but kept bulking “just in case.”
When you hugged him, you didn’t feel softness. You felt density. Commitment. A suspicious amount of structural integrity. His torso had the exact silhouette of a root beer barrel laid on its side. His legs, meanwhile, were bony chicken sticks that looked like they’d been borrowed from a completely different dog.
When I reflect to this day, I have never seen Skipper eat dog food. Not once. I saw him consume roast beef, fried bannock, hot dogs, leftover spaghetti, mysterious casseroles and at least one full plate of Thanksgiving scraps. But kibble? That would have been an insult to his station. He was a culinary aristocrat. A gourmand. A dog who smelled faintly of hot dog water and motor oil but carried himself like he had Michelin stars.
His mom’s name was Liquorice, which tells you everything you need to know about the genetic line.
When Skipper walked across Grandma’s hardwood floors, you didn’t need to look up. You heard him. His nails were never clipped. They clicked and clacked like an old woman in church shoes heading somewhere important. You could map his movements acoustically: kitchen. Living room. Kitchen again. Check under the table. Pause. Reverse. Kitchen.
He was phenomenal with us kids. Gentle in a way that made no sense considering he looked like he’d been assembled from spare parts behind a mechanic shop. We would pile onto a twin mattress at the top of Grandma’s dangerously steep staircase—a staircase that absolutely would not pass modern safety codes—and launch ourselves downward like pioneers of bad decision-making. Skipper would join. Or rather, he would commit.
One massive, barrel-shaped dog. Five cousins from Manitou Rapids, Onigaming and Couchiching. One twin mattress. Zero adult supervision.
Down we went akin to the Jamaican Bobsled team.
And Skipper, one-eyed and unstoppable, would ride it like a war chief of chaos. No panic. No barking. Just commitment to descent.
When his regular babysitter (our Auntie Eliza Medicine) left for bingo—an event of high spiritual and financial stakes—Grandma and Grandpa once asked him: “Skipper, where did your babysitter go?
Without hesitation, without rehearsal, this dog threw his head back and howled:
“Binnnnngoooo!”
Not a bark. Not a vague howl. A phonetic effort. Three syllables. Dramatic vibrato.
You haven’t lived until you’ve been verbally mocked by a one-eyed rez dog.
For a period of his life, Skipper maintained a second residence in International Falls. It was a small house behind the Dairy Queen and the Laundromat. Because of course it was. That’s exactly where a dog like Skipper would establish a satellite office.
He escaped constantly.
Not “oops the gate was open” escaped. Strategic, reproductive campaign escaped.
Skipper fathered an untold number of puppies with the local off-reserve dog population. His genetic influence spread like folklore. Somewhere in International Falls right now, there is a slightly barrel-shaped, overly confident, emotionally secure dog with a suspicious goatee and main-character energy.
That’s Skipper’s legacy.
You could probably trace half the region’s dog population back to him if you tried. But that would require paperwork and Skipper was not a paperwork kind of dog.
Here’s the thing about rez dogs.
They are not curated. They are not boutique. They are not Instagram accessories with seasonal bandanas. They are sun-bleached, snow-packed, engine-grease-adjacent creatures who wander between houses like time travelers. They nap under trucks. They appear at cookouts uninvited. They attend funerals. They supervise hockey games. They belong to the road, the bush, the backyard, the shoreline.
They are communal.
You can say “that’s our dog,” but it’s more accurate to say you are one of their humans.
Skipper lived on Couchiching. He moonlighted in International Falls. He had grandparents, cousins, family with whom conducted linguistic experiments, and an extended offspring network across international lines. He was missing parts. He smelled questionable. He was shaped improbably.
And yet.
He was steady with us. Patient. Present. When we were loud and chaotic and tumbling down staircases like reckless pioneers, he was right there in the middle of it. Not judging. Just participating.
Maybe that’s the secret of rez dogs.
They look odd because they’ve lived fully. They’re scarred because they’ve survived. They’re round because everyone feeds them. They roam because no fence quite makes sense to them. They don’t fit neatly into ownership because they exist in relationship.
Skipper didn’t belong to Grandpa Gerald and Grandma Elsie.
He belonged to the hardwood floors, the bingo nights, the mattress launches, the border towns, the leftover plates, the laughter of cousins from three different communities.
Maybe rez dogs aren’t ours.
Maybe they’ve adopted all of us.
And maybe somewhere, in a metaphysical bingo hall beyond time and space, Skipper is still announcing it:
“Binnnnngoooo!”
Robert Horton is an educator, author, orator and linguist. He is a member of Rainy River First Nations.
