Day: June 9, 2015

I sometimes think the gift of social media is that half of the country now believes they have the right to tell the other half what to do. There is lots of publicity about drug addiction, but not so much about guru addiction, the idea that there is a guru for every aspect of our lives who can and will tell us what to do. Or try.

Dog training is a wonderful case in point. Dog owners spend billions of dollars each year on books, videos, manuals and workshops run by gurus who tell them how to train their dogs. Except that there are very few well trained dogs in America – the North American Veterinary Conference says fewer than five per cent are really trained at all. If all these videos and books work, how can it be that you see most people screaming at their dogs in frustration, so many dogs don’t even know their names?

How can it be that so many people are working so hard and spending so much money to study the things that other people say they can do with their dogs, but that most of us cannot do and will never do? Dog training reminds me of creative writing classes, my friend Keith the poet swears they are a shell game, a few people making a lot of money telling other people things they will never  be able to do.

I don’t wish to be a training guru or a breed snob or a rescue snob. Everyone thinks their way is the only way. Not me. I believe there are many ways. I get the most obnoxious messages every day from people who think they are gurus and who sent me mostly dumb advice that they believe with absolute certainty I should follow. I don’t care for it much. I want to be my own guru, in dog training and in life. I want to make my own mistakes, not somebody else’s, and have my own triumphs.  I am not there yet, but I am getting there.

I believe anyone can train their own dog as well as Cesar Millan or the New Skete Monks or me, for that matter. A good way to begin is by tossing out all of the books and videos and manuals and and start listening to your dog. He or she will tell you what  you need to know.

If you are addicted to one of the dog gurus, you will most likely read hundreds of pages and struggle to do what you are told to do. Then you will feel dumb and helpless and quit, maybe move on to the next guru. But the best training doesn’t come from gurus, it is internal.

It comes from a personal awareness of your life, the nature of your dog, the place you live, the environment you both will exist in, the other people around you. The gurus don’t know the details of your life, neither do I. Only you do. Somebody sent me a message the other day explaining in painful detail how their dog was biting people and attacking other dogs. What did I think they should do? How could I possibly know?, I answered. I don’t know you or your dog. I don’t know what you are like, where your dog came form, or how you live. If there is an answer to your sad and real problem, I wrote, you will have to find it.

When I go out to train Fate, I clear my head of all the things people tell me, of all the clutter. I think positively and clearly. I stay calm and am patient. I try to be clear. I am the guru, I tell myself, I know what it is that this dog and I need to do, and it will happen. Not at once, not right away, but if I persist, it will happen.

I am much enjoying training Fate, working with her, learning from her. We are becoming a team out there. In a few weeks, when her legs are longer and her body stronger, she will own the pasture out there, and all of the sheep in it. I am not sure who is training who, I suspect it is Fate who trained me. I’ll take it, as long as we get there.

If you try being your own guru for just a few days, come up with your own solutions. You may well be transformed, and your eyes will open up to the wonder of seeing  trainer as a partnership, not a scripted exercise from the imaginations and collected experience and wisdoms of others. Think of the fingerprints. Each dog is different. Each person is different. Each home is different. Start there.

Lunch with my editor was always one of the sweetest rituals in my writing life. At least once every year, and once or twice during the writing of a book, my editor would invite me to come to New York to have lunch and meet the other people in the publishing house who might be working on my book – publicists, Internet marketers, jacket designers, copy editors.

I was a New York Times best-selling author, and that seemed to matter in that world, they would pay for my trip into the city. Lunch would always be at upscale and trendy – not luxurious – restaurant. My editor would carve out plenty of time and usually I would meet her or him in her office, sometimes the conference room would be reserved so we could all talk about the publication of my book, the book tour, the publicity plan, special promotions, big media hits.

There was always a snooty maitre’d, a bottle of wine, a bag of new hardcover books for me to read, fresh and hot rolls.

Almost everybody at the meetings in the publisher’s office were female, they were almost all buff and smartly dressed, they said the nicest things about my work, they told me all of the things they were planning for my books, some of which happened. I am not that dumb, I took it all with a grain of salt, but I liked to hear it. When you work alone in a basement all year, praise has to last a long time.

I loved the lunches, I felt like William Faulkner. They usually went out for two or three hours, we took as much time as was needed to catch up with each other, trade publishing news, talk about my book-in-progress. The editor would listen carefully, throw some ideas at me, take notes on chapters, tell me how it seemed the book was shaping up, crank me up about it.  It was the only time I ever got to talk about the book in any detail, and my editors always seemed so eager to hear it. At the end of lunch, they always told me how brilliant my work was,  how fortunate they were to be publishing it, how proud.

I’m sure the editors cranked up all the writers, but they knew how to do it, and I always floated away from my lunches feeling like Hemingway about to launch a great book into the world. The high lasted for months, they know how to get writers excited about their books.

I have to say I treasured those lunches, they grounded me, inspired me, excited me about my work.

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Life has changed, of course, for you, for me. There are no more lunches with writers, no leisurely talks about the work, not puffing up of the writerly ego, no trips to New York, no face to face meetings with anybody. Editors don’t want to hear about the book, they want a final manuscript and they spend precious little time editing if.  If you want to talk to an editor, you make a phone appointment, usually for weeks in advance, and usually for 10 or 15 minutes. Or better yet, hire a freelance editor so the other editors don’t have to edit much at all.

All of my editors are gone, in recent years I rarely, if ever, got to speak to anyone who knew me or had met me. I got the feeling in the new world that writers like me were now considered a  necessary evil, an impediment to good marketing and profit. Nobody bothered to pretend any longer that we were special or important.  A few years ago, when I was negotiating my last big book contract, an editor suggested on the phone that she would give me a three-book contract if I would agree to buy a puppy and write a book about it.

I was much offended – had she ever read one of my books? – and she was much shocked that I was offended. Buying a puppy to write a book is a disturbing idea to me, that is not a book, that is a cute puppy on a book cover. What would the book be about? Oh, it didn’t matter, she said, you’ll think of something. My agent at the time thought it was a great idea, puppies, she said were so cute, that was all they needed to know. I knew my days in that world were numbered.

I don’t know, dear readers, if you understand how hurtful or demeaning that conversation was to a writer who loved being a writer and aspired to be a very good one and worked so hard at it every day. Buy a puppy and agree to write a book about it without even knowing it? Really?

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So that was then, this was now. Nostalgia is nothing but a trap, an illusion.   Tuesday morning, I drove to Columbia County, about two hours away, and met with my new editor, Rosemary Ahern at the Hillsdale Diner. Rosemary used to work in publishing in New York, she saw the same things I did, and had the courage to break away, move upstate, find a good man to love, and take the risk of becoming a freelance editor. We met about the time we both had started our new lives, we were still nervous, we connected right away.

All over publishing, writers like me – we love editors and need them – are scrambling to find people like Rosemary. She is gifted, honest, experienced and she actually loves writers. She takes the time and care to edit their books carefully.  I am not, as  most of you know, into looking back, it always seems pointless to me. But Rosemary is the kind of editor who used to edit the books of writers like me. Something important was lost, but I still have it.

I am so lucky to have her, she has been the rock and guide for my writing for some years now. I love to have lunch with her. We don’t go to Manhattan, but to a small diner near Hillsdale, New York. When she comes to see me, which she does once or twice a year, we have lunch at the Round House Cafe, she wants to meet the animals I write about. Lunch doesn’t cost $150 like it used to, it costs about $16 plus tip. We don’t have two or three hours, but an hour or so, and the conversation is quite wonderful and it goes by so quickly.

Rosemary is honest with me,  the feedback is polite but direct. She helps me figure out the chapters, the pace, she gives me back anything she doesn’t think is great – she doesn’t think a lot of my chapters are great on the first round. She always makes me feel gifted, important, and supported. Writing can be a strange and lonely business, editors like Rosemary are so important.

Rosemary does not flatter me, or waste too much time on praise. Good editors are like that, it is assumed that you are worth something, or there would be no lunch at all. I loved our brunch Tuesday morning, I felt so good about my writing. I felt like a writer again. I am not sure I would  have survived the transition from the old world to the new without her. Even when she must have wondered how I could ever pay her, she never wavered or left me behind.

Driving back from the diner and the meeting with Rosemary, I stopped and got my Iced Decaf Coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts for the ride home, she had scribbled out a chapter list for my next book “Talking To Animals” – I am half-way done. She helped me figure out the second half of the book, I was stumped, and I am wildly excited about it, there is so much rich material in my life, and in my life with animals.

I have seven more chapters to go, and they are due by Labor day. Rosemary says this may be my best book yet. After my agent, the pages go to my new publisher Simon & Schuster.  Life is just the most fascinating thing, if you can keep your perspective and sense of irony about it.

All those fancy lunches, all those high-powered and polished editors, all those trips to New York and meetings, all that ego-crunching when my writing world fell apart, and here I am, in a diner in upstate New York, sipping on my seltzer water and ordering two scrambled eggs and a piece of dry wheat toast,  wondering how it is that I have the best editor I have ever had, writing one of the most promising books I have ever worked on, and having the most fun I have ever had at an editor’s lunch.

The thing is that Rosemary is a brilliant editor, as good as any I have worked with,  and a very wonderful person. I love you, Rosemary, what a gift you are,  and I never said that to any editor before.

Yesterday, Maria made another remarkably distinctive and interesting hanging piece, and I waited as we did our creative ritual together. Well, she said, I know that no one will buy this, but I can save it for the Open House in June. I used to say, “well, of course somebody will buy it,” but I came to understand that she could not believe me, dismissing her own life and work before someone else did it was her lifelong defense against disappointment and the absence of encouragement.

I learned awhile ago that it wasn’t for me to tell her what she was worth, husbands are supposed to do that, she had to come and see it for herself. Day by day, I am happy to say, I think she is. I just waited for the inevitable and not ten minutes later she came into the house and said “I sold it,” kissed me on the nose and went back to work. This has become a rite for us, an unacknowledged ritual.

The hanging piece was wonderful, it is called “Today I Need Wings,” and I had no doubt it would sell in a flash. I am not unbiased about her work, but I am not alone in loving it either. I thought about the exchange and I had a revelation. Life, I think, is full of big defeats and small triumphs, and that is a piece of insight that has enormous spiritual implications for me.

The big defeats are the most painful. We want the big triumphs so badly we often fail to see the small ones.

Life can hit very hard, defeats come fast and hurt. The death of a friend, the loss of a job, a family member taken ill, a father with cancer, a dog that dies, a brutal winter, the rain of ugly and disturbing news from the other world.

We keep looking for the big triumphs – the big book, wealth, great love, a family that supports us, a happy child, but the triumphs seem to be smaller, that is a more likely thing to accept. I am not going to have wealth, the big book, a family that nurtures and nourishes, a heart that stays healthy on it’s own, dogs that live forever.

But I see plenty of small triumphs – Fate herding sheep, a dog like Red, a new pony, Maria selling her piece so quickly.

They  balance and heal the big defeats – divorce, death, disappointments, recessions, financial struggles.

Yet is seems that the big defeats are the ones that shape and define us.  They are, in some ways, always a gift to me.

My open heart surgery was one of the great gifts of late middle-age, I came to love my body and understand how to be truly healthy, healthier than I ever was. My divorce, one of the great defeats of my life, led to my finding a love I only imagined and did not believe existed. Lenore and Frieda and Simon died, and her is Fate and Chloe, bringing light and focus to our lives. The recession drove me out of the first Bedlam Farm and into the second one, a place we belonged, a place that fits our lives.

I talked a friend today who is helping to guide her father through Alzheimer’s, she was saddened by his diagnosis, but happy and engaged with helping him navigate this new chapter. I was struck by how happy and peaceful she seemed.  It was, in some way, something she needed. A big defeat, a small triumph, or perhaps a big one.

Friday is the fifth anniversary of my marriage to Maria, a big triumph following a big defeat. Life is tricky, it mixes up revelation, it shuffles the deck whenever it wants.

One day Maria will look back on the big defeats and sorrows her life, and the small triumphs will do their magic. Today she needs wings.

It is a sad thing that so many people have forgotten how to listen to the messages from the animals. In my strange and sometimes sorry existence, I have forgotten too, but they started talking to me some years ago, when Julius and Stanley, my wonderful yellow Labs, taught me about the discipline and loneliness and beauty of becoming a writer. Orson spoke to me of regaining my lost life, Rose talked me about being brave on my first farm, Red speaks of community and connection, Fate speaks to me every morning of joy, enthusiasm an laughter.

And the carriage horses…what can I say about them? They have been speaking to me for more than a year, they have changed my view of the world in so many ways, awakened me, connected me to the spirituality of animals, given birth and rebirth to some of my writing. Horses have come into our lives, and literally, Maria has her pony Chloe. Horses are on Bedlam Farm now.

Maria has a powerful connection to the big and beautiful horses at Blue Star, a very close connection to Chloe. She loves her, talks about her often, thinks of her. I have been watching this evolving and deepening relationship and I think Chloe’s message to Maria is about strength.

It is a strengthening thing to groom a horse, to walk one, to ride one. Maria has been growing in strength ever since I met her. This Friday will be our fifth wedding anniversary and I never imagined that Maria would want a horse or ride one, or that we would have one. She draws strength from Chloe, they speak every day. Sometimes Chloe wants to do what she is told, sometimes she doesn’t. That is the nature of the pony.

Each day, she asks Maria to find her strength, to call upon it, to trust it. Each day, she does. It is a beautiful thing when people open up to the messages of animals, learn to trust and believe them. Animals are not about being cute or cuddly, although they are sometimes that. We patronize and trivialize and emotionalize them all the time.

As I see every day with Fate, there is serious stuff between us, they deserve to be taken seriously. It is a sad thing in New York City to see so many people live among the horses and fail to see them, or hear their true messages. They are not asking us to take them away, they are pleading with us to remain.

Maria has an open heart and soul, and Chloe will be able to talk to her more easily than any dog has talked to me, at least until now. I believe in the messages of animals, Chloe is talking to Maria about strength.