When I was a reporter, I was taught to check out the bulletin board on Main Street whenever I visited a new town. I still do it, bulletin boards reveal the soul of a town, especially a small one. In Vermont, the geography there has created many small towns, each with their own distinctive culture, the towns are too small for the corporate box stories, so small business can still survive. This bulletin board, in the middle of Saxtons River, Vt., tells me the story of the town.
A lost dog, a swing band, a county fair, used book sale, hay, seeds, a chorus. Small towns are all about community, people need community, so much of the country lives in places that are too big for it. In Saxton River, I can see what is lost, what is there. I am learning to photograph thrift shop volunteers and small town bulletin boards.
I think the worst thing about the Outrage Addicts and informers and amateur prosecutors that now swarm around the animal world is that they discourage people from owning up to their shortcomings and mistakes, they punish honesty with cruelty and ridicule.
Last week, I wrote that to stop Fate from leaping up enthusiastically into the face of a frightened and crying young girl – Fate has a lot of energy and exuberance when she is excited – I kicked her in the stomach. I didn’t qualify it, I didn’t say it was a light tap or that it was very necessary or that I didn’t know the girl would be in the yard.
I don’t like the very defensive culture of qualifying and rationalizing action and thought, although Donald Trump is helping me to re-think that. I work hard at being honest about what I do, mostly because I learn so much from my mistakes and stumbles and so, I believe do other people. It would have been very easy to leave out the kicking of Fate in my training reports – she showed no sign that she noticed it all, but she stopped jumping on the young girl and ran off to the gate to get to the sheep. I could, of course, simply present myself as the perfect trainer, a dog hero and guru, someone with a wonderful dog who makes no mistakes and is all cuteness and fun and energy.
I know that’s the story many people would like to hear. There is perhaps some malevolent part of me that knew some people would get upset when I wrote about the kick, and some did. Not many really, four or five. One woman told me that I should buy a crate and use it, she explained what a crate was.
Another sent me a long letter of Outrage, the emotional drive of social media, and said she was horrified that I had kicked Fate, I should know better and send her back to Dr. Karen Thompson. (Dr. Thompson, I can tell you, is not into letting her dogs jump into the faces of people.)
When I was young, I was often called stupid by my father and my teachers, and I am sensitive to it. The idea that a writer of dog books would not know what a crate was is difficult for me to grasp. I never criticize someone of I have not stood in their shoes, of course I had no idea the girl was in the back yard when I let the dog out. My favorite was the woman on Facebook who said she hoped I had kicked the dog to protect the child and not for any other reason. Like for fun, I wondered?
Kicking Fate was a good and timely move, the girl stopped crying and ended up calling Fate back and cuddling with her. That is what I wanted to see.
But my many missteps and surprises are important, they are what you and I both can learn from. Fate doesn’t go outside now unless I look to see who is there, and when someone is there, I put her into an immediate lie-down and we go slowly and calmly to the visitors, or we do not go at all. The jumping is getting under control. I do this all of the time, except when I forget, which I have done several times.
I think vigilance is one of the most important things about training a puppy, and one of the hardest. We all lead busy lives, full of distraction. I can hardly imagine training Fate with three small children in the house, it would be next to impossible. When she is out of the crate, Fate still needs continuous vigilance – to make sure she eliminates outside, to make sure she has something to chew that is hers, to keep her out of the pantry and bathroom and bedroom, where she will find things to move around and chew that we don’t want her to move around and chew. Sometimes, we see her carrying around pieces of Maria’s fabric.
That does not go over well.
It is, for example, very difficult for me to stop and reconnoiter the yard every time we go out, on a farm life is busy and informal and continuous, it is hard to think of it all the time. I am vigilant much of the time, but not all of the time. And that is okay. I make mistakes, and Fate makes mistakes, the overall arc of her training is wonderful, she is getting more responsive, calmer and easier every single day. I have worked hard and learned so much from her.
My training is far from perfect, but it is good, she is going to be a great dog, she already is. Like my other dogs she is now trained to keep away from the street, she walks off-leash, she comes when called 90 per cent of the time, the other 10 per cent being when there is fresh chicken poop on the ground. And she is getting to be a star around the sheep, calm and keen and smart.
Her herding training has been wondrous, she is really coming along, now she is teaching me. So I insist on sharing my mistakes, the dumb things I do (oddly, kicking Fate was not one of them, under the circumstances), the things I learn along the way. I am no Cesar Millan, you get the good Katz and the bad one, all in one package, if I am not honest with you, I am useless to me and not helpful to Fate either.
I do not sugarcoat me or my life.
The next time you see someone jumping on someone who admits to being less than perfect, think about pointing out that perfection is not a trait known to affect human beings. We are human, that is what unites us, and we are especially human when training our dogs, that is what unites us in our love for them and our wish to train them well.
Maria gave me this gift for my birthday (a bracelet she wove, also), it is metal sculpture of Diana, the Roman goddess of women, the hunt and childbirth. We are not sure, but think it was the cover for some kind of jar or container, it is heavy and beautiful. I’m going to keep it in my office.
I was reading about Diana, a powerful feminist figure, and I was also thinking about how the idea of the hunt as it relates to animals has evolved so dramatically. I am not a hunger, but a number of my friends here are, and the ones I know are good and ethical people, most are environmentalists, they know the woods and nature and care for both.
For many thousands of years, the hunt was life and death for many human beings, it was not controversial in any way. Diana was believed to have great power over animals, she spoke with them whenever she wished.
The idea that hunting animals is cruel was unthinkable. In the age of Dr. Palmer and Cecil the lion, the hunt has come to stand for something else, even though most hunters I know do not consider trophy hunting to be hunting, but something different and distasteful.
In Roman and Greek times, the great philosophers began to argue for more humane treatment of animals. Judaism called for animals to get one day of rest just like people, a brand new idea to the world. Later, Thomas Aquinas was to argue that we need to be merciful to animals so what we could learn to be merciful to people.
Aquinas would have been shocked, I think, to consider our times when the argument is that we need to be merciful to animals so that we can learn to harm and hate the people who we believe mistreat them. I heard from a lot of people this week who told me proudly that they wish Dr. Palmer could be killed in the very same way that he is believed to have killed Cecil the lion. This was spoken in the name of loving animals.
Aristotle and Plato both believed – before Diana – that the existence of the human conscience meant that human beings were superior to animals, who do not have consciences and are not creative. They don’t write books, plays, invent political systems, work to better themselves, know the difference between good and evil, are not aware of death, make career choices, or take the initiative to change their lives. They tend not to want more than they have.
And they don’t have our complex language to invent all of our stories and narratives. They aren’t vengeful or vindictive, they don’t sue one another.
The great philosophers did not believe animals had human-like souls, they would also be surprised to see in our time that animals are often and increasingly consider superior to human beings, many people have essentially begun to worship them, seeing them as idealized and romanticized spirits of pure love and innocence, incapable of harm or wrongdoing. More and more, animals are seen as abused and piteous, in desperate need of being saved from the deprivations of humans, who are often seem as being outside of the moral community of people,and too evil for redemption or negotiation. (Just ask the New York carriage drivers.)
I am sympathetic to Aristotle’s point of view. I love animals, but do not worship them, I believe they have powerful spirits, but the human conscience is an extraordinary thing, unique to human life. We don’t always act to the best callings of our conscience, but still, it is there, we can reason about the value and ethics of our lives. Animals can’t.
I love many animals more than I love many people, but i do not believe that animals are superior to humans. To me, animals are our partners in the earth, not our superiors or inferiors. They do not have perfect lives any more than we do, they share the risks and joys and sorrows of life, just as we do. They are not owed and cannot be given better lives than we have.
Like Aquinas, Aristotle and Plato would be surprised at the animal worship of our time, the idea of the rescue dog, where some dogs are taken from other countries so that they can be brought back and rescued here (rescuers might go to Newark and Detroit and Philadelphia first, there are plenty of dogs to rescue right here). They might wonder at the no-kill shelter, for instance, where hundreds of thousands of dogs and cats, perhaps millions, languish as prisoners in their crates, living the most unnatural lives possible for dogs, often for years, in order to feed the egos and need for well-being, of human beings.
American dogs are perhaps the best treated animals in the history of the earth but more and more, we see animals only through the prism of abuse.
I like to think of Diana talking to animals, maybe because i am writing a book about talking to animals. Perhaps she can give me a hand, show me some things. She is one of my goddesses now.
Diana gives me a lot to think about. This is a time of goddesses, I think, I am happy to have one on my desk. She is already inspiring me, challenging me to think.
It is fascinating to see Fate maturing, she is developing Red’s laser-like focus on the sheep. She is still somewhat distractable, but she is only four months old. In the morning, we come into the pasture together, Red gets set, ready to go one way or the other to move the sheep where he is told. Fate watches him, ready to follow his every move. After he gets to work, then I put him inside and Fate gets to work. Every day she grows, changes, matures.
I think Red has been an inspiration to her, and a role model. He rarely pays any attention to her, but he always knows where she is. They are a powerful team together, something I had not really thought to much about, but something that is very beautiful and joyous.
In the morning, moments of love and connection. I see a pony and a human being talking, exchanging emotions and feelings, making contact with one another. This is why animals need to remain among, and not be banished to rescue farms and preserves. We need them, they need us.
