Day: June 4, 2015

You get the dog you need, I believe, and Rose was the dog I needed when she came. There was  no Maria then, and now, there is a Maria, and Fate is the dog we need. That is the miracle of the great dogs, they sense what you need them to be and they become what you need them to be.

The winter took a toll on us, as it did on so many. So much cold, so much loss. Ever since Fate arrived, we have been smiling and laughing. She is all about joy. I am open to it now.

Rose was an extraordinary dog, I wrote three books about her – my favorite is the e-book, The Story Of Rose – and she saved my life more than once. Over the past few days I’ve substituted her name for Fate twice in different pieces about training Fate to herd sheep. Many people caught it, social media reveals all, sooner or later, no place to hide.

It isn’t surprising, I suppose, Rose is often on my mind when I think of training and herding. She is first border collie I trained to herd sheep. She was tough to train.

I saw Rose the way Jack London saw Buck  in Call Of The Wild, she was very important to me, there was a lot of wolf in her. She is embedded in my consciousness. This is how the mystical tunnels of imagination work, the fingers do not lie, the truth comes out on my keyboard, even when the mind hides, runs or lies.

I ought to say that Rose and Fate are very different. Both show great spirit, are strong, dominant animals. Rose had great courage, it is too soon to know about Fate. Today one of the sheep ran right over her, flipped her to the ground and trampled her, she got up, shook herself off and went right after her. That is very much like Rose.

Rose never backed down, was afraid of nothing. I still dream of the night she stood in a storm between the sheep and a pack of coyotes coming down the hill. I was at the bottom of the hill and shouted at her to leave it, back off, come down, she could never have survived such a fight. She would not move, she stared the coyotes down until they turned and ran. Then she ran up the hill after them.

Rose was not a sweet dog, she did not care to be cuddled, did not warm to many people, disliked cute talk and oohing and aaahing, the way so many people talk to dogs. I loved her for that, I was her work, keeping an eye on me, on the farm. Fate has many passions – sheep, Red, Maria, most of the people she meets. She is very open to life. There is a wonderful mix of love and strength in her. Rose had one passion, I think it was me and the farm.

She watched over the farm, day or night, she noticed every thing that was different – a lamb in the pasture, an animal in the woods, a sheep in distress, a hawk overhead, a cell phone dropped on the ground. She had a map of the farm in her head, she updated it constantly. I never had to wonder if something was wrong on the farm, she noticed it right away and alerted me.

She had my back, it was as simple as that. No stray dog, belligerent ram, panicking ewe could ever get near me. When I fell on the ice and was knocked unconscious, Rose nipped at my ear until I got up.

Rose never stopped working, did not care for praise, disdained treats. She loved work, that was her reward. Our connection to one another was great, but also indirect and unspoken. I did not speak to her much, she was always around me without intruding on my space. At the time, that was how I lived, she grasped that and reflected it. I was closed to love and connection, I felt it but could never show it.  I never really knew where Rose slept, it was not by my side, but when I stirred or cried out in the night, she was always there.

When Maria came, I think Rose let go of her intense work ethic, it was as if I was okay now, she could leave. And she did. That’s the way it is with spirit dogs, they come when needed, they leave when they are done.

Fate is a different kind of dog, I can see it already. She has great spirit. She has a sense of humor, which Rose did not have. She loves to play, which Rose did not do. She has fun all of the time, which Rose rarely, if ever, did.  She loves dog talk and cuddling, which Rose hated. She rushes to people when they appear, Rose vanished when people appeared.

There was a lonely quality to Rose, a vulnerability and loneliness, I think, that Fate does not possess. Fate is a riotous personality, a good-time girl. She loves to dance and sing and run in the circle of life. She has as big a heart as Rose, but it shows up in a different kind of way.

No two dogs or people are alike, of course, there will never be another Rose, nor would I want one.  I do not look back often in my life, I look ahead.

I love Fate quite a bit, she and Maria make a natural pair, they are both sweet, love nature and celebrate the adventure of life. It works, I can see it, it is natural and beautiful. Red is my dog, and he is perfectly suited to me. Fate is her own creature, and I love her, I can’t wait to see her evolve, she is her own dog, she will be a great dog in her own right, no matter what pops out of the tunnels of my imagination.

 

I am teaching Fate to herd sheep, and I will share the process with you, as always.

Working with a border collie is a challenge and a responsibility, especially when one has as much drive and instinct and heart as Fate. I will do everything I can to do right by her, it is challenging work.

This morning, I let her run with the sheep. She did beautifully for about five minutes, and then she lost it and the chase began. I stopped her and ended the lesson. For several days now I have been working on a lie down with her, one that is strong and quick enough to survive the prey drive and distractions unleashed by herding.

At the other Bedlam Farm, I had a training pen, I could put the sheep inside of it and work the dog on the outside, opposite me. I don’t have that option here. My strategy is to have a recall that works, even in the heat of herding. I want to give her some time each day to move around the sheep with me, but it will be gradual, she gets nothing for free.

To enter the pasture, she sits and stays. To walk up to the sheep she lies down, gets up, then lies down again. Today, even as aroused as she was, she began to listen to me, to hear me, to respond to me. I was amazed by that, and greatly encouraged. We can work together. She has the “walk up,” command – walk slowly to the sheep – down. She is beginning to lie down quickly – maybe 70 per cent of the time, she obeys the sit command almost 100 per cent of the time. We are getting there. I will take nothing for granted, ask her to do nothing I can’t enforce or follow through on.

I use a long lede – maybe 15 feet, so I can stomp on the lede if she gets crazy. Which she will.

In the second lesson, I left Red out of the pasture. you can see in this photo that Fate and the sheep are both looking at Red, I need them to look at one another. This happened without Red in the ring. I am feeling my way here, every border collie is different, every circumstance is different. This one is over the top with instinct, she needs to do this, Maria and I both believe. She has a sweet disposition and loves to be with us, that is a fortunate thing.

Fate is determined and impulsive, I am more determined than she. That is the paradigm. I hope.

She is like Red in that as intense as she is in the pasture, she puts it aside in the house and elsewhere and is very much with us. The real working dogs are either in crates or out with sheep, that will not be Fate’s life. But she will get plenty of sheep and plenty of us.

Unlike many people with border collies, I am uneasy with the culture of the herding trials. I’ve got four ribbons hanging on my wall, i hang them proudly, but I did not care for many of the trials I went to. The sheep weren’t having much fun, neither were most of the people and dogs that I saw. Competition is not often good for humans. I have great respect for the people who do it, and they do amazing things with their dogs, but it is not for  me, not fun for me to watch or join.

So this is where we are now. Tomorrow morning, I will let Fate run again, be silent while she scarfs up sheep droppings, mark her behavior when she lies down or does an outrun. Herding training is a marathon, not a sprint, and I am not blessed with a lot of patience or a long attention span. So the trainer was right when she said every dog offers us the opportunity to be a better human. I will show Fate how to herd sheep safely, she will hopefully make me a better man.

See you tomorrow.

 

Five years ago, an Internet marketing firm contacted me and suggested that I offer subscriptions to people reading the blog. It should not be free to anyone, they said. I refused, in part because I couldn’t imagine asking for money, and because I want the blog to always be free to those who love it but can’t afford it. They stood by me, I will stand by them.

Since then, the old world tottered and began to collapse. Publishing was upended by Amazon and e-books and corporatization.  They do not support writers much any more. Perhaps that is a good and right thing, we ought to be able to support ourselves. Many cannot.

The same people bringing you the latest cereal are bringing you the latest books. Then there was the recession, the divorce, the collapse of the real estate market,  and a spectacular, Biblical crack-up on the top of a remote farmhouse hill. They all hit me in the same month, I will not soon forget it.

So I was pulled rudely from my high horse and pulled into the new world, where I labor happily, and quite continuously. I still have a foot in the old world, I love my books and write them, but I can no longer make a living writing them, they are now  just one part of a writer’s puzzle, not the whole of it.

So two years ago, I began offering subscriptions. The blog is still free to anyone who can’t pay, and everyone gets all of the content, no matter how they subscribe or when. People can subscribe using Paypal or their credit cards, it is simple to do and subscriptions can be cancelled at any time with the click of a button. People are given reminders when their subscriptions expire.

The subscriptions are to pay me for the work I do in writing the blog and taking my photographs, it is pretty much a full-time, seven-day a week job. I am moving to make the great transition to new models of information and revenue – lots of people contributing small amounts of money. They call it macro-marketing.

You can pay $3 a month, $5 a month, or $60 once a year, the content is the same, the idea is to give people different options, as people have different incomes. Of the millions of people who read the blog each year (about 400,000 are unique visitors), a very small percent subscribe at all. But each month when I mention the subscriptions, a few more people sign up.

It matters, it makes a huge difference. The blog is expensive to maintain, I need to spend at least $5,000 to upgrade the blog delivery system so that it is more efficient for mobile users, a growing percentage of my readers. I can’t afford to do that without subscriptions. In fact, I can’t afford to be a writer without subscriptions, I will be candid about that. Photography is also expensive, and my photos are available free to anyone who wishes to download them and use them. I do not ever bookmark my pictures.

I consider them and my stories to be little angels, I send them out into the world to make their own way.

I never imagined asking for subscriptions, I do so with pride and comfort now, it is good to be paid for my work, good to pay people for the work they do. Many people tell me that and I appreciate it. My goal is to be self-sufficient through my blog so I can improve it, so that it will be free, and so that I can continue to earn my living as a writer. Being paid for ones work, I see, is a matter of dignity.

For some time, people balked at the idea that Internet content should be paid for, I think resistance to that is declining. If people don’t pay for the content they like and enjoy, there will obviously not be any soon enough.

No financial information of any kind is stored on my website or on the service of my Internet hosting company, I cannot cancel or start subscriptions, I have no access to your money, everyone’s best protection. I do not manage your subscriptions, your credit card companies or Paypal do that. I have two Internet security firms who monitor the blog traffic and protect it.

Bedlam Farm is an idea, not simply a blog. We believe in creativity, independence, free thinking, a life with animals, a perspective on life and a respite from the fear, anger and hostility that permeate some parts of our public world. So it is time for my monthly reminder about subscriptions, they matter, they are important, they are the future of me and my writing life. I was listening to a public radio fund drive, hearing the urgent pleas of the fund-raisers. I used to feel sorry for them, asking for money all of the time, now they are my brothers and sisters.

I thank those of you who subscribe, those of you are thinking of it, those of you who can’t afford to subscribe but are reading me anyway. I appreciate all of you. You can subscribe here.

The farm is rocking with life, and there are changes here and decisions to be made. Chloe is uneasy with the sheep, she has been chasing them around the pasture, she doesn’t know what they are, so we put them in the side pasture for a few days. We have decided to let Fate do some work with sheep, she is so keen and gifted with herding drive. But we have to train her carefully.

Chloe and the donkeys seemed to have bonded, and Chloe seems very happy on our farm, and very connected to Maria.

Maria and I turned to one another out in the pasture this morning and said “wow, it’s so much fun again.”

Millions of people in America had a hard winter this year and we got through it fine, but it did seem joyless sometimes, a grind. There is only so much fun one can have when the temperature goes below -20 for a week. We are having fun now. The sheep were running away from Chloe and burst through some of the five-wire fence, we have to figure that out.

I have to decide how to train Fate, re-focus on patience and clarity. We have to groom and care for Chloe in a different way than we have to care for the donkeys. Soon, Maria will be riding Chloe all over the place, yet another chapter in our lives.

This weekend we will plant the Dahlia gardens and on Sunday, we plan to go and visit Pamela Rickenbach at Blue Star Equiculture, see how she is doing. People romanticize owning a farm, in part because of people like me. A farm does not guarantee happiness or fulfillment, some people argue everyone should move to the country and iive on a farm, I do not.

It is not for everyone. The problem with moving anywhere is that you bring yourself with you,  and whatever problems you have or things you are hiding from will come also. A farm is hard work and expensive work, it is a system of never-ending chores and responsibilities.

But there are times when it is mystical and magical. A life with animals. Spring. A sweet and happy horse coming into the mix. Wonderful dogs who love to work and help. Mists on the hillsides, sheep to work with, wool to shear and sell, chickens marching around industriously, the connections and values of small town life.

It is wonderful to get to know animals, to watch them, learn about them, talk to them A farm is a game of chess, all kinds of moves to make, changes to make, things to try. Maria took Chloe over to the fence where the sheep were and let her get close to them, she made sure she saw they were not dangerous. I think that is working. I am very happy with the work we are doing with Fate, she will be a great dog for Maria, for us.

This is one of those sweet times, it is great to be at Bedlam Farm, to have these new animals to learn about, new issues to consider, new strategies to adopt. Maria and I love it, and we especially love doing it together. That takes it beyond fun, and into the realm of meaning and joy.

I saw a beautiful thing  this morning, I brought Fate into the sheep pasture and Maria and I watched while I sent Red out – “away to me,” the counter clockwise outrun, and Fate came along with him.Red seemed happy she was coming along, she was thrilled and kept up with him (mostly). This turns out to be a very good thing for all of us. Red herds the sheep as if Fate were no there, he gets his work in, she gets to work and wear herself out and train well (border collies will do anything to get to sheep, even lie down) and then Fate spends the rest of the day with Maria in her studio, walking with her in the woods, going into town to do chores.

There was the usual annoying busybody on Facebook (a few still e-mail, but social media is the favored forum for know-it-alls and armchair diagnosticians) suggesting that because I was working with Fate, she wouldn’t bond with Maria, and we would have to get another dog for that.

Honestly, I sometimes wonder what smartphone or computer screens due to people’s manners and common sense, there might be something to this radiating the brain phobia. I’ve had a bunch of border collies, and they do love those who bring them work, but they love a lot of other people as well. Fate follows Maria everywhere (so does Red, quite often) and loves to go to her studio all day.

It is, in fact, the healthiest thing for border collies to share the nature of their lives and work, it keeps them from being obsessive and addictive. It is pure joy to see Maria and Fate together, it lifts my heart. And I am crazy about Fate. There are two wonderful dogs in our family again, and what a gift it is to be able to give both of them full and balanced loves, just as Freud suggested, love and work.

Things are falling into place here, the farm has sprung back to life again after our draining winter. Fate has a joyous spirit, she and Red compliment one another so perfectly. Two wonderful pets who also love to work.