Day: June 17, 2012

Red and I had no trouble bonding. I needed another guy around here. Red is an obsessive, like border collies, but an especially sweet and even-tempered creature. He has the professional air of Rose – nothing really distracts or interests him but sheep and the people who bring him to sheep. He paid little attention to the dogs, the barn cats or the donkeys.

Red wlll be here this weekend for the Farewell Pig Barn Art Gallery Show, “Anointing The Goddess,” Saturday and Sunday, 11 to 4. A wonderful lineup of artists. Details on Maria’s site. I’ll see how he does with sheep this week and maybe we can patch a demo together Saturday or Sunday. Simon does not like dogs, so this will have to be managed also.

Tomorrow I’ll work with  him in the morning and then take him into Cambridge, walk him around a bit, see how he does there. Like my other dogs, he does not need a leash. I will start street training tomorrow. Tonight, into the crate. He isn’t housebroken I don’t think so we’ll keep an eye on that. My sense of him is that he won’t have many accidents inside. We’ll see. Freida and he did some sniffing, and then Frieda completely accepted and ignored him.

Red has a good appetite and he ought to sleep tonight after the outruns he did in the meadow. I ought to sleep too.

There is no better way to bond with a border collie than to go and herd some sheep with him. An hour after Red arrived, we walked over to the meadow. He balked the first few times – just wasn’t sure of me, and I could see he was anxious. I started moving around, got to the other side of the sheep, and he clicked – after a few calls to Karen Thompson.

He is an amazing worker, wide sweeping outruns, confident with the sheep close-up yet moving with a lot of clarity and authority. The sheep had never worked with a dog before, but it didn’t take Red long to get them moving. He was butted two or three times, and responded with an appropriate nip on the nose.

He is a very different dog than Rose. I’ll write more about that later, once I think about it more.

Tomorrow Darryl Kuehne is coming to pick up some sheep and we will need Red. I think he will do well. More photos on Facebook.

My world has changed again, and is richer still. Red arrived this evening, and he is quite a dog. Within an hour, he had met the dogs, acclimated to them, walked with us on the path, and after some confusion and hesitation, worked with me and the sheep. Lenore was delighted to see him, and Frieda did a bit of woofing and sniffing and is quite at ease with him.

We love him already and are very grateful to Karen Thompson for letting him go. Red is that rare combination of dog – a worker, and a lovebug. He just loves people and is lying at my feet now panting. He has the biggest outrun I’ve ever seen on a border collie – he almost made it to Vermont, but is a sure and skilled hand at working sheep.

At first, he was hesitant about following my commands, but after two or three rounds – wow are my feet sore – in the pasture and several phone calls to Karen, we started clicking together. I’ll put up an album on Facebook. This dog is going to change my life, as others have. I cannot imagine the limits on what might be done working with him. He has the focus of working dog, the manner of a therapy dog and now we will begin the process of helping him be a companion dog and a pet. What a gift, what a blessing.

Dogs mirror our lives and mark the passages of time. Last year the same photo had Frieda, Lenore, Rose and Izzy. I remember them, and I will move on. Every dog I have ever owned has helped me grow, change and become a better human. Red has his work cut out for him.

Whenever a new animal comes to Bedlam Farm, we work to establish trust and communication. There are several reasons for this. First, there are times when we need to control animals like sheep and donkeys, get them into the barn for medical or breeding reasons. There are questions of safety. We want them to be calm around us, to not panic when they see us, harming themselves or people. We want them to feel at ease around people. These new sheep avoided us for several days, especially the two young ones.  We study communicating with animals. It is important to us. Maria has a natural gift for communicating with animals, and so do I, although I often keep my distance with the camera. Or a dog.

If you feed an animal too often or too much, they can become aroused, obnoxious, associate people with food. We seek a balance. Each morning, Maria comes out to the sheep with a small bucket of grain. At first, they were too skittish to approach. She is quiet, patient. She waits for them to approach.  Today, for the first time, they all approached us and ate from her hand, and from the bucket. As we build this foundation of trust and interaction, we withdraw the grain. Now, when we shake the bucket, they will come into the barn. They do not run away when they see us.  Food is the first foundation of trust. If an animal knows you are the source of food, they will pay attention to you and come to see you as safe. If you overdo it, they will only see you in that way.

But it is only the first, especially with dogs. Training is the most important language for communicating. More about that later.

Being a father is a profound experience, one of the most meaningful and challenging occurrences in my life. I was not close to my father, nor did I understand his difficult life. I have not always been close to my daughter. On this father’s day, I pray for my daughter’s independence and well-being, and for her to know she is loved and supported, and I pray for my father’s life and soul. He did his best, as do most of us.

I also offer this prayer for me on Father’s Day, on what I hope it means to be a man for me.

I pray that we take responsibility for the violence and bloodshed we have caused in the world, for the wars and brutality, the aggression and rape and bullying, economic and environmental depredations and insensitivity that has come to characterize the very idea of being male.

I pray that I can continue to learn to encourage and support women as they make their way through their great transition from dominated servants to precious and proud and free – and equal and independent beings.

I pray that I can learn to be a better husband every day. To remember the small things, to work hard to understand love. I pray that I will always ask myself every single day how I can be a better husband, be more understanding and supportive, so that at the end of my life, my wife will say of me that I was a good man.

And what is a good man? What does it mean to be a man? For me, it means being gentle. Understanding. Creative. Generous. Loving. Strong when the people around me need strength and loving when they need love. I pray that no person is ever afraid of me, or feels dominated by me. I pray that I always remember that I have no right to tell other people – most especially women – how to live their lives.

I pray that every daughter and son look back on their fathers one day and say that they were encouraged and supported and learned from them how to love and be generous to those in need.

I hope to live long enough to see that being a man becomes something different. That we teach our sons and ask of our brothers that they help to save our Mother Earth and become warriors for love and fulfillment, not death and domination.

That is my prayer for me on Father’s Day.