Maria’s work on the Fiber Chair is beginning to draw a crowd. Fate sits and waits for her to finish, Flo and Minnie both came around to see what is happening, the chickens march back and forth behind it regularly. At our farm, the animals are part of life, they are woven into our lives, just like the baling twine is woven into the chair.
I think the most interesting time I have had in my years of writing about animals and living with them was the year I spent at the University Of Kentucky, studying animal attachment theory as part of my research for The New Work Of Dogs, one of my favorite books. The ritual of this book was by then familiar to me, it became the pattern of my book writing life – a book out of its time, great reviews, few sales.
We all have to know and accept our true place in the world.
At the University, the psychiatrists and researchers there – they specialized in studying attachment theory, researching why we love the dogs we love and why, took me and agreed to teach me. We spent months watching people and their pets through one-way mirrors, observing them, interviewing them, drawing conclusions about them.
A dog, I learned, is much like a video of a human beings earliest emotional development. They reflect our earliest emotions, the environments in which we first came to consciousness. We treat them either as we were treated, or as we wish we had been treated. I learned how to watch a person and his or her dog and tell them almost precisely what their mother was like. I am very good at it, I have been doing it for years and am nearly 100 per cent on the money.
Although most people rarely wish to know much about it – it makes people very squeamish to understand the reasons they love their dogs – our emotional connections to our dogs are quite often reenactments of our formative years. There is a reason why people like rescue dogs, or border collies, or big dogs or small dogs, or lap dogs or hound dogs. To understand this, we have to understand ourselves and many people would prefer to focus on the dogs, quite understandably.
Psychologists and scholars have always identified different periods of a child’s life as periods of intense unhappiness and confusion. It is not necessarily a reflection on the family, it is an integral part of childhood development, Burlingham called it the latency period, a time of great transition for children. Choosing a rescue dog is not a random act, it is not disconnected from our own experiences, it is often a clear reflection of them.
Dorothy Burlingham, the famed British author and analyst and child development specialist, wrote quite powerfully about the birth of animal fantasies in children. The lonely and unhappy child, often disillusioned by his or her family, seeks a way out of loneliness and finds solace in daydreams and fantasies.The child takes an imaginary animal as his intimate and beloved companion. “Subsequently,” writes Burlingham, “he is never separated from his animal friend, and in this way he overcomes his loneliness and disappointment”
The animal offers the child what he – what every child at some point – is searching for: faithful love and unswerving devotion. Our familes, even the most loving ones, often fail us.
Doesn’t this talk of love and companionship sound familiar to us, aren’t these the very qualities people say they love the most about their dogs? Isn’t this the very narrative of that unconscionably sappy and selfish colored bridge?
There is nothing, writes Burlingham, that this fantasy animal cannot understand; speech is quite unnecessary, for understanding comes without words. These animal fantasies are thus an attempt to substitute for the discarded and unloving family an uncritical but still understanding, often dumb, but unwaveringly loving creature.
Children in the latency period often have disturbed and uncertain relationships with their mothers. It is a phase of development. The imaginary dog replaces the mother who the child can suddenly not love, and who, she feels, no longer loves her. Since children can not live without love, the dog gives the child what he or she longs for, at least in fantasy.
I have always been aware of the great conundrum of dog love. To understand the dog, I have to understand me. It is rarely about the dog, it is almost always about me, the great lesson of dog training. i saw this clearly in Maria’s relationship with Frieda, her friend, her companion, the dog that always protected her, understood her, kept danger away. The dog she needed.
Think of my relationship with Red and the way in which I wrote about him. I was a lonely and disillusioned child, the empty holes in my life filled with fantasy and need. If you read my writings about Red, you will find many references to him as an intimate and beloved companion. I am never separated from my animal friend, he is always there, always loving, always dependable, and in this way I still work to overcome the loneliness and disappointment so deeply embedded in my neural system.
I had a very frightening relationship with my mother, she was alternately too loving and too vicious, I never knew which one to expect. I always sought refuge in animals, especially dogs. I went to sleep every night with the animal fantasies Burlingham writes about and here, today, they are, lying at my feet as I write this.
If you read what I have written about Red, how I have come to see him and portray him, you will experience him in this way: speech is quite unnecessary, understanding comes without words. I am unconditionally loved, in my mind, I am completely understood. He will never leave me and never fail me, unlike so many of the adults in my life. I trust him completely. Sometimes, I think he sprung to life out of the pages of Burlingham’s books.
In this way, Red makes perfect sense to me. He is the dog I need him to be.
So what of Fate, a new dog, a very different dog? Why did I get her, why do I love her as much as Red?
Because she is the other path. She is the child I wanted to be, yearned to be, athletic, adorable, fast, strong, dominant, sure of herself, adventurous, curious, brave and daring. She never gives up, is never intimidated, is up for everything, bursting with love and energy.
We either replicate what was done to us, or what we wish was done to us.
Was there ever a creature, I wonder, who better personified the things I wasn’t but wish I was than Fate, bursting at the seams with life? In such sharp contrast to me, who hid from life as often and as completely as I possibly could. Fate never runs from life, she runs right towards it.
Our love of dogs is a fascinating thing to me, it helps me to understand who I am, helps me to heal, it is not enough for me to love them unconditionally, I don’t care to be loved unconditionally. That would have no meaning to me. Love for me is very conditional.
I want to deserve being loved, I want to earn it. I see many things when I look at Red and Fate, but quite often, I see me reflected in the mirror of love and memory, I see my life reflected before me.
I think that is why I need dogs and love them, and I hope I can always understand that and admit it.
Fate enters her meadow by way of the deer paths which criss-cross the field. I can only imagine the traffic here at night, we find bear and coyote scat, deer trails and rabbit fur all over the place. A neighbor saw a bobcat her two weeks ago. Fate scans the horizon, usually spots something moving, and she takes off, romping through the brush, picking up some ticks, popping up here, then there.
She is Queen of the Meadow, she loves running through it, her secret mystery life, and I love watching it and taking photos of it.
Fate is doing it, this morning she stayed still on the road for three minutes. Then she did it again at home, she’s beginning to get it, and I am beginning to muster the patience to help her do it. This is important to any dog, but especially to a high-octane border collie, who is never still.
The good trainers all say a dog doesn’t really know how to stay until she or he stays for three minutes without moving. I put her in a lie down, tell her to say. I had to get the release command clear in my head, a lot of dogs think the release command is “good dog,” we talk too much to them during training.
My release command is “OK,” she gets that from working with her on the gates and doors. I thought this would be difficult, Fate is so distractable and explosive, but it was simple really, I just had to be patient, calm and clear. You have to give them a chance to succeed, not a chance to fail. I am intensifying this training, it is essential to her long-term stability, herding work and life as a pet in a house.
This is a dog who really wants to please, even when she just can’t. A milestone, for sure, I am not a patient person, standing still for three minutes seems like an eternity to me. I imagine it’s worse for Fate, but I see that she likes it, takes to it easily, and it settles her down. We are going to have fun with it. More to come. I’ll do five minutes by the end of the week, I think.
Maria started working on her fiber chair more than a year ago, she takes the baling wire from the hay bales each day and weaves them over and around the old rattan chair, which sits outside in the sun and rain and wind all day. Minnie the barn cat loves to sit on it. The chair is getting more elaborate and beautiful, Maria has a great discipline about it, she works on it every day for about five to ten minutes. I usually go inside then and start making breakfast.
At first, she would ask me if I was annoyed that she was outside working on her chair while I was making breakfast, and I was surprised by the question. Of course not, I said. Creativity comes first around here. And it does. I can’t count the number of times Maria has pulled the car over or turned it around while I spent long minutes trying to get a photo.
Creativity comes first here, that is our work.
