Day: October 11, 2015

Fate was cut loose at the Open House and I spent a good chunk of weekend calling her out of one mess or another. I like to list the adventures of Fate whenever we have a public gathering. Fate was a huge hit, we did herding lessons about a dozen times over the weekend, one of them in front of a well-known herding instructor, Jim McRae of Rutland, Vt. Fate did very well.

She personally greeted every single child. We all teach our children not to scream and run in front of puppies or dogs, but of course, children are children, and they forget this. As a dog owner, I expect them to forget it and they all did. Fate found great pleasure in running down screaming children, jumping on them and licking them on the nose.

She can outrun any child, and does, happily. She barked at the big horses, then tried to rush into their enclosures to get to know them and greet them, as she does Chloe. She was obsessed with a young German Shepherd puppy at the Blue Star table, barking and growing at him for a day and half before she settled in.

Fate tried to sneak into the back of the horse enclosure and eat some fresh manure, and she succeeded a few times.

She vanished behind the portable toilets and couldn’t be found, I tracked her there and found her gorging on some old rotting sandwich in tin foil. She stuck her noses in various purses and backpacks and bags looking for food. After working, she was in a border collie trance, running here, there, back to the gate, ignoring me sometimes, not others. Everyone loved her (not me, sometimes.) Every time I looked up, she had found something to steal, something disgusting to eat.

But I have to say, she did us proud with the sheep, getting more responsive every day, moving well around them, testing them with her eye. She is a great dog. She is just a puppy, people kept telling me. Yes, I know. She had perhaps the most grueling day of her life, chasing the sheep all over the place in front of huge crowds four or five different times, racing back and forth amidst hundreds of people, trying to jump up on every one.

But you know what? I accept this dog and her great enthusiasm for life. I will surely not allow her to keep jumping on children, but I see her great enthusiasm and love of life as something to be preserved and cherished. The more we see Fate, the more we love her, she is an incredibly sweet, trainable and exciting dog to have.

It’s hard to imagine an Open House without Tyler, our neighbor and friend who works so had, and so efficiently, and who has become as much a fixture of the Open Houses as the donkeys or the dogs. Parking can be chaotic at the Open  Houses, we had an awful lot of people Saturday and Sunday. Taylor is 14, but I sometimes think he was born much older than his age, he has a maturity and wisdom that is impressive at any age.

We love Tyler and his family and we trust him. He has been an immeasurable boon to us and our lives on the farm. As always, he helped make the Open House safe and comfortable for so many people. In the next few weeks he will return to football after suffering a concussion. He says he is ready to. Tyler is tough and focused and mature. If he says he is ready to go, he is. I trust Tyler to make good decisions for himself more than many adults I know.

It was great to see Ken Norman back at work, so competent and comfortable after surgery that replaced both of his knees, battered by years of farrier work. He trimmed Lulu, Fanny and Chloe this afternoon and talked about equine hooves. We learned this Open House that we always need to have a farrier and a shearer on hand. People gobbled it up and it was great to see Ken there with a bunch of very loving and good horse people. The Open House is organic, it evolves and changes every day.

People were fascinated by the big horses, Pamela and  Brian and Mithra put together a workshop to talk about the history of the horses, the work they have done in so many different ways, and the ways in which they are harnessed and bridled. People were glued on the horses and on the stories about them and the way they are trained and managed and worked. I think people will be talking about the horses for a very long time.

People loved the big horses so much at our Open House, one good friend cried all the way home, he was so touched by them. We were having some poetry readings when I saw people gasp and point up to the hill. Brian from Blue Star had hopped on to Piper and taken her for a ride on one of the meadows across the road and down from us. It was a striking image, I caught my breath. At first, I wanted to move out and cut the wires out of the photo, but then I realized that my favorite photos are authentic and de-constructionist, not posed or predictable. I think of my approach to photography as emotional realism, not cliche. In some way, the wires highlighted the beauty of the scene and the inevitable contrast between history and modernity.

it was an unexpected sight, in the context of a beautiful work horse, and it was honest – this is what I saw – thus the right photo for me.

Once upon a time, Brian would have ridden this horse through the pastoral woods and meadows, not this recently mowed hay field is bounded by electric, cable and telephone wires, soon to be obsolete themselves.

I understand why my friend cried. He doesn’t cry when he sees a car or truck or new condo going up. He cries because these animals are part of all of our pasts, and we need them and they need us, if we are to be whole.

This magnificent animals – we had a Shire and  Percheron at the farm this weekend – are being pushed out of our world by development and by the animal rights hysteria, which is currently threatening more  horses than any slaughterhouse could. Blue Star Equiculture is fighting for what my friend was crying about – we need to honor these animals, and fight to keep them in our world and everyday lives, not push them to the edges of oblivion in the false name of helping them.

This weekend, they were in the everyday life of our farm, and I have rarely seen people so moved, touched and affected. That’s why Blue Star is important.