Pukka

Pukka: The Pup After Merle

After Merle died in June 2004 it took several years before I could think about meeting another dog. I wanted to write Merle’s biography; I wanted my heart to heal; I was traveling on a book tour that lasted for over a year. In 2009 I met Pukka, the pup who won my heart after Merle. This is his story, told in his words and accompanied by about 200 photos that I and others took. Though it's uniquely Pukka's story, it also recounts how puppies grow and learn and become dogs. It will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the fall of 2010. In the meantime, here are a few pages from the book.

— Ted Kerasote

While Ted was traveling in Minnesota he met my mom Abby, and she reminded him of Merle. My mom was calm and even looked like Merle.

Ted got to see me when I was one day old, but I couldn’t see him since my eyes were still closed.

I guess he liked me and my brothers and sisters because seven weeks later, there he was again, seeing us all grown up and ready for our new homes.

And I was his favorite out of the litter. He thought that I was athletic...

He also said that he liked me because my face reminded him of Merle.

Ted and I hit it off, and I went back to Wyoming with him. He had a big soft pillow in his car just for me and all sorts of interesting food and toys and even a seat belt made for dogs that was just my size.

I think we were in Rapid City, South Dakota when Ted said, “You are quite the pukka dog. Do you know that?” He told me that it was an old Hindi word that meant “genuine” or “first class.”

We went through Yellowstone National Park on our way back to Kelly, where Ted and Merle lived together for many years, and I would soon live. I got to see lots of big animals, including bison. Bison are huge, and I was glad to be in Ted’s arms.

After I got settled in my new house, I started to help Ted write a book about how a Minnesota puppy learns to be a Wyoming dog.

And when I wasn’t telling Ted what to write, I got to eat elk bones. Mmm-mmm-mmm, they’re the best.

And help with the irrigation around the house.

When it was cold—it can snow in Wyoming in June!—I got to relax in front of the fire.

I even went to cocktail parties because Ted thinks puppies should have lots of different experiences while they’re growing up.

I also had a bad run-in with a bigger dog that scared me and Ted a lot. I’ll tell you more about it, and how Ted and I got through those bad days, and then went on to climb mountains and run rivers and play around our house. It's all in my book, Pukka: The Pup After Merle.

Pukka's Life in Pictures...so far...

Web design by Dina Sutin

The Making of Pukka:

The Pup After Merle

Quite a few of these images would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to have made with a film camera. For example, there were times that I was shooting Pukka outside in bright sunlight at ISO 200 when he decided to run into the house and do something charming or interesting. A simple flicking through the camera’s ISO menu allowed me to shoot him at ISO 3200, an undreamed of film speed during the time Merle was alive in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In addition, there were morning walks with Pukka on which I shot four- to five-hundred images in an hour. That’s the equivalent of fourteen rolls of 36-exposure-roll film. Think of the expense. Think of the time involved to change rolls while your puppy is doing something cute! Also consider that modern SLR cameras have very sophisticated automatic focusing and exposure controls. Images like the one above would have been very difficult to make on a film camera, unless one was lucky. This particular image of Pukka leaping over the sage brush while looking for ground squirrels took over a thousand tries to make, during a period of three months. And in this regard, one thing hasn’t changed from the time of film cameras: patience and being in love with your subject.

Digital photography has revolutionized how we see the world, no more so than in chronicling the lives of our dogs.

In the thirteen years I lived with

Merle, I took some 3,000 photographs of him, most of them on film. In the first six months of Pukka’s life, I took 14,000 digital images of him, and three other photographers took another 3,000 of Pukka and me together. From these 17,000 images, I chose some 200 to put in Pukka’s book.

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"This book is much more than a record of the growth and training of a pup, it is a visual record of the development of human-animal bond as well as a breathtakingly beautiful tour of the West."

— Library Journal

See a video of the summer adventures of Pukka: The Pup After Merle

See a video of the winter adventures of Pukka: The Pup After Merle

See a video of Pukka and Ted backcountry skiing near Jackson Hole