The barn cats have a mystical life. All night, Minnie marauds in the meadow, stalking moles, mice, chipmunks, torturing and killing them, leaving their dismembered parts for me in the morning. Every day in the late afternoon, depending on where the sun is striking the barn, you can find Minnie in the warmest and brightest spot, cold weather or hot. Like most of the other animals on the farm, she trusts me with my camera and lay still for me. I love the mystical life of the barn cats, it is almost unique in the animals world, this mix of loving and wild.
Dennis Ambrose meets Red and Rocky. Lovefest.
For more than 20 years, ever since I wrote “Running To The Mountain,” Dennis Ambrose, the head of the copy editing department at Random House has supervised the editing of my books. He was always a voice on the phone, then another voice lost to e-mail. Dennis was always patient, gracious, responsive, meticulous. But I never met him, never knew what he looked like or really, was like. The relationship between a copy editor and a writer is intimate. Dennis knows everything about my life, including the many errors, details, confusions that never made it into print.
Two weeks ago, when I was at Random House, my editor Jen Smith thoughtfully went to the trouble to introduce us. I hugged him like a brother, and wished I had a brother I was as close to. Dennis said he was coming up this way on vacation and would like to stop at the farm and talk and meet Maria and the animals. We had the most wonderful visit with Dennis and his wife Marlene, a psychologist in Manhattan. Dennis is true animal lover, and he melted around Simon, but he especially connected with Red. You see it sometimes, animals like Red just connect with some people. Red loves as hard as he works.
When I brought Dennis over to see the New Bedlam Farm, he connected with Rocky too. Dennis connects to animals the same way Maria does – he kneels down and waits for them to sniff him and come to him. And they do. Red joined in and I was fortunate to catch the moment. I feel as if I made a new friend today, as a name became a face, and the face was intelligent, warm, empathetic. We are going to get together in New York. A special day for me.
“The Story Of Rose,” my first E-book original, will be published August 6, 2012 for $2.99. I was informed this morning that even though it is only available for pre-ordering, it is already the best-selling dog and animal book in America. You can check it out on Amazon and elsewhere. The book is only available for pre-ordering until August 6. It can be purchased and read on Kindles, Nooks, Ipads, Iphones, most smartphones, computers (through Adobe Reader) and on Amazon, Bn.com and through Google Reader at independent bookstores.
I think this is the new book, a new way of fusing images and text to bring a subject to life. It is an all original book, more than 40,000 words with scores of photos. Apple is offering an enhanced version with video through Ibooks, Amazon the text with photos. I am so excited about this book, I have been wanting to do an e-book original for some time, and this is a very appropriate subject for me – a tribute to Rose, the wonderful dog who shaped, even saved my life. I said in the book that I believe you get the dog you need, and no human ever needed a dog more than I needed Rose when I came to this farm in 2003. I’ve had bestsellers before, but never a month before the book was on sale.
I’ve rarely seen a more beautiful thing than Red and his magnificent outruns. If I didn’t have a fence, he might go all the way to Canada. Karen Thompson calls them overruns and has some voice commands that shorten them. I am getting some messages from some border collie people pointing out that they are too long and wide, and this is true. They are too big by at least half. The concerns are legitimate because when he runs that wide, the sheep can just take off and leave the herder standing there until Red zooms around.
As it happens, they don’t take off but wait for him to get close and then they move. I love these outruns. They are inspiring to me, spiritual experiences all of their own.
I won’t try and correct his outruns. He has been superb in long and short work, and I am not an Irish farmer or, God forbid, looking for any ribbons at a herding trial. Red’s outruns are just like Simon’s bray to me, his love of life. His call to life.
I strongly believe in training dogs, and mine are mostly very well-trained. But it sometimes important to not train a dog out of a defining and elemental behavior. I have many close friends in the border collie world, owners, breeders, trialers, trainers, and there are some in that community who do not care for my philosophy. It works for me, and for my happy, loved and engaged dogs.
I love seeing Red take off on a whisper, soar through the fields, the embodiment of the animal freed, the dog left to do that rare thing, live his life. I have driven dogs nuts trying to correct some behaviors, and myself as well. I won’t inject that into our relationship, not unless it is dangerous to him, me or the sheep. So far, that is not a problem. Come and see this beautiful thing for yourself.
