Day: November 4, 2011

 

Simon, waiting for me. At the feeder.

Sat with the chickens for a half hour. They are industrious, excitable creatures. I like them. I don’t love chickens, but I love photographing them. Pecked pecked at my lens and I yelled at her.

 

In the crisp cold, I went out with my Canon and caught some shots of the Fall Afternoon at Bedlam Farm I’ll put them up over the next few hours. See the light.

 

Life is funny, life is strange. A couple of years ago, I would not have dreamed of doing an animal communication with Rose or any of my animals. Now I really look forward to it. Some of this is due to Jeannie Lindheim, with whom I feel viscerally comfortable. She is a warm, bright, positive  spiritual human being, and I think she has a gift for capturing the accepting and attentive way in which animals think. And I simply trust her. She is like that.

I  always come out of these sessions feeling as if I understand my dogs and animals better, and have a different perspective on their lives. Jeannie is the real deal. We talked on the phone from a lovely inn – The Wimington Inn – in Wilmington, Vt. As always, Jeannie said the animal in question – in this case Rose – was listening in. I asked Jeannie the questions, she asked Rose.

I believe in being open on the blog, and that will not change,  so I have written about my sense of Rose as tiring, changing, losing her ability to keep ahead of the sheep, her edge and drive. I said I was not going to rush to treat this medically, to give her tests, pills.  Since then, the first question I usually get at every reading is “how is Rose?” And I get e-mail every day from someone urgently advising me to go to a vet, to consider one disease or another, to try one medication after another. All well-meaning, all in good faith, and I seem to have asked for it, even if I didn’t intend to. In our culture, there is always alarm, drama,  urgency about change, and we often think we can fend  off life with doctors, pills, remedies advice. We sometimes think we know what is best for other people, and also for their dogs and other animals.

So I was especially interested in talking with Jeannie. She and I (and Rose) did a communication this morning at 8 a.m.. Jeannie said that Rose told her that she is well. That she has some stiffness in her legs and is no longer able or interested in working the way she once did. She told Jeannie that she is comfortable, not in any way confused or disoriented. She is, she said, just settling into this phase of life, and she told Jeannie that she was doing this in connection with me. I am the center of her circle, said Jeannie, not the sheep or any other work. I am her work, and she has sensed that I am more and more settled into my life, and also am less frantic, less restless. So, then, is she. She is where she wishes to be, and is content.

She did not want advice from other people, did not want pills and tests any more than  I did.  She did not wish to be taken to places to be examined. She was not in pain, did not wish drama or sympathy, did not need any. This change is not something dangerous or alarming to her, but her life, and the nature of her life.  She and I were connected, she said, in the circle of her life,  and while we were in the same place before, coming to the farm and working with sheep and together  in much hard work and adventure, when we were often alone together struggling with our lives, and we are in a different place now, and the farm is a peaceful place, and what she loves and needs is to be of the earth, to sit in the pasture, to parallel her life with mine. We were one, she said, and we each becomes what the other needs, we are not independent beings with different ways to live. She wished she could be with me more, but there are always other dogs around me, and she doesn’t care to be with a pack of other dogs all of the time.

She wished, she said, that I would sit up on the “the hill,” (the pasture?) with her and sit with her and I told Jeannie to tell her that I would do that, starting today and that I would sometimes go out into the front yard and sit with her there, one of her favorite places. And I told Jeannie, I would sometimes bring Rose in alone to sit with me while I write.

I appreciated this communication, it is what I saw and felt with Rose but didn’t quite understand, and now I do, I believe.  I do not know if Jeannie talks to animals, or how, and it seems irrelevant to me at this point, as she seems to have a powerful grasp of animals and their spirits and their perspective.So this is where I am leaving it with Rose, and I do not consider her ill or in crisis in any way. Like me, she is living her life.

Next week, Orson.