Day: March 10, 2016

I have many weaknesses as a human being and a dog trainer – I am not a dog trainer, to be honest, I am a writer who trains my dogs  – and the biggest weakness is that I often settle for what I call the “Good Enough” dog. If a dog comes, sits, stays, keeps away from the road and doesn’t try to kill the chickens, I sometimes move on, get distracted, don’t finish.

They are good dogs, more than good enough, but not as good as it is my responsibility to help them be.

Fate is an amazing dog, we are so happy to have her. But she is a handful, as is obvious. Red is a dog who is eager to please, he will do anything he is asked to do instantly, I can’t even recall a time when he irritated me. I can recall about a dozen times a day that Fate has irritated, challenged or thwarted me.

Her recall is good unless she finds some chicken poop or revolting thing in the woods. Then she simply doesn’t hear me. She gets so excited when she meets people that she leaps  up on them, sometimes reaching all the way to their face. She has knocked people over, frightened kids with her enthusiasm.

Recall is important to me, it is not negotiable or a multiple choice proposition – “I’ll come when I feel like it, in my own good time.” That is essential to preserving harmony and often, the life of a dog. We walk on country roads and in the woods and I say “come,” “stay” or “lie down,” it has to happen right away, and it has to hold.  If she goes out on the ice and it is deep, she must come when I tell her to come. Seconds sometimes count.

Often with Fate, that is a struggle. She has enormous will and instinct, and more once, she just looks me in the eye and blows me right off.  Maria is not naturally inclined to focus on training, her mind is usually elsewhere.  Fate is a dog that needs to be trained, and thoroughly. She is about a year old, so it is time to get her to the next phase, she is too powerful and curious to be a “good enough” dog, she needs to be a good dog.

I am fairly loose with my dogs, I want them to follow their natures.  I don’t need robots or automatons. But I will  not tolerate or own a dog that hurts people or other dogs, and I will not put up with a dog that jumps on people. A lot of our friends think this is cute, which is why she still does it in part. “It’s just her nature,” said one, but that is folly in dog training. The nature of a smart working dog is to live in harmony with her humans and obey them when commanded.  I just need to focus and stop it, and for good, before it becomes a life-long problem. I should have done it sooner.

That does not mean being nasty, it means being stubborn and focused and vigilant.

So last week I bought a German made throw chain, 1 by 1 by 1 inch, 3.2 oz. I actually bought three of them, since I know from experience that some will end up buried in manure, lost in the brush, vanished in the tall grass. So far, the results have been spectacular.

Our chickens run free, and Fate got into the habit of hunting and scouring for chicken droppings and eating them, blowing off commands to come or stay.

She was just ignoring us. It’s a mistake to give commands a dog won’t obey, you are just teaching them to disobey and reinforcing it. So yelling wasn’t working, it hardly ever does. A throw chain would work.

With a throw chain, I don’t throw it at the dog, I throw it over their heads. Dogs hate things flying out of the sky down on them and I generally toss it a few feet over their heads, not directly at them. The dog is startled, it turns to the human – me – and I say, positively, “come” and the dog will run towards me and get praised or even a treat. I’m sure there are some people who don’t care for this training method, that is their choice and their business.

It isn’t eating the droppings I mind so much as her learning to disregard commands. That is dangerous for me and for her.

I only had to throw the chain twice and the chicken droppings issue has already gone away.

Now, when Fate turns to look for chicken leavings, I just shake the chain in my pocket. She hears the sound and turns away. This morning, we went out and she didn’t even look at the droppings, I realized later I didn’t even have the chain with me. This is how it ought to work, after a few times, you don’t need to do it any longer. If the behavior returns, you can use it again. But with dogs, so much is tradition. If they are used to a behavior, they’ll repeat it. If they stop, they often forget it.

The jumping up on people will take longer. A friend came over and Fate began leaping up on her. This time, I threw the chain at her, she was ignoring my commands to “get off.” The chain hit her legs, she didn’t seem to notice it. She was dangerously excited.  She heard the once chain, then jumped again, higher. She heard the second chain, and jumped again. I shook the third chain, and she sat when told and stayed calm. In a moment or two, she calmed and was appropriate.

It was my first three-chain event, and I imagine, it will be the last.

I will be taking her out to train her in town, at the bookstore, at the hardware store.  I’ll ask her to lie down around people and wait for a release to sit up and get pats. The chains have already been dramatically effective, out in the woods this morning she began to wolf down some coyote droppings – they are often riddled with parasites and worms – and I shook the chain and said “leave it,” and she turned away and didn’t look back.

It is important not to traumatize the dog or overuse the chain. When she listens, she is rewarded with praise and sometimes, treats. She is getting that. Fate is a very strong and willful dog, she is one of those dogs that loves to test the limits. She is also smart and learns quickly.  It is  critical in the life of a dog that the animal – and yes, they are animals – learns to live safely in our world. There will be a lot less yelling and tension around Fate after a week or so with the choke chains.

She will not just be a “good enough dog,” but a dog who lives in harmony with us, and who is safe. People who love and greet her will be safe also.

If I do my job, the chains will all be lost or forgotten in a few weeks. She will understand soon that it is not cute or acceptable to jump up on people and frighten them. Elderly people on walkers or people in wheelchairs and small children don’t think it’s cute when a dog jumps on them or chuckle that it’s just the way they are.

It’s not the way Fate will be. If I mean it, she will get it. And that, to me, is about the most loving thing I can do for her.

I can hardly believe how my life as a writer has changed in the last few years. Like so many people in our country, a personal and idiosyncratic and yet somehow nurturing and secure a world was upended. I am blessed to remain a writer, but I live in a different writer’s world, sometimes I am just dizzy thinking about it.

I have wanted to be a writer my whole life, and I have been a writer just about my whole life. There is nothing more important than being fulfilled, and I have been fulfilled for most, if not all, of my life. I’m not sure what more I could ask for, except love, and I found that as well.

And yes, sometimes I am sad about some of the things I have lost in my writing life, I am all too very human.

As a life-long book writer with a big New York publisher, I had one editor for much of my career, and our time together was marked by dramas, conversations, lunches, victories and defeats, and a contract with kept with one another. I was a best-selling author, I made a lot of money, my publisher always worried about me and took care of. My editor was my champion and protector. We made books together.

He was my guide, my defender, soother and champion. He shaped my voice and put his mark on my every book.

That was a strong bond.  If I was in trouble, he was the one I turned to, and I loved going into New York City to meet with the editorial staff, people who talked to me about covers, titles, books tours, publicity. I felt like John Updike, even though I had no illusions that I was like John Updike.  I don’t know if I was important or not, but I always felt that I was.

I loved the life of the book writer, holing up in my attic or basement for years slaving over a work of passion, then sailing out around the country to talk to people about it. Nobody would dream of giving me advice, sending nasty messages,  or telling me how to run my life.

I made a lot of money, being a writer was the only thing I ever wanted to be, and that is what I am.

I am still a writer, I still have a publisher, but it is very different. That world is gone. Like most of the people reading this, I live in a sometimes dehumanized world, I talk to messages, rarely to people. I would hardly recognize a single person in the offices of my publishing company if I ran into them on the street. And I understand that I am only as important as the books I sell. Or don’t.

My new editors are very gifted, as editors tend to be,  harried, distracted and pressured. When we do speak, it is almost always by e-mail or text messages.  It would be odd to even suggest lunch or a face-to-face meeting. I suppose I was always on my own, but it never felt like it.  I had few interactions with my readers.

I still work with an editor, but now,  and closely,  also with a free-lance editor, a former New York publishing executive named Rosemary Ahern.

She, like me, has moved upstate to forge a different kind of life for herself than the one she had in New York.

This search for human connection is not just my story, this is almost everyone’s story. We live in a Corporate Nation, we rarely get to work with people who know us or love us. Few of us have callings, most of us have jobs.

We are only as valuable as the money we generate.  We sometimes feel discarded. We sometimes are.  Discarded people are a nation unto themselves in our time. I think so many people are angry and upset about it, you can see it in the political stories and divisions sweeping the country. Everybody seems angry about something, there are demons and villains everywhere..

There seems to be so much space between us and the rest of humanity in the new culture, this new economy. Our leaders don’t seem to be aware of it, they never talk about this new and cold idea of work, the loss of humanity in favor of profit.

Rosemary Ahern has kept her close connection to New York, and has a new batch of devoted and fortunate clients. We have become close and valued friends. Every couple of months I go to her small town diner a couple of  hours from me, or she comes up to visit the farm – she is a passionate animal lover. We talk easily and openly, we catch up.

I love Rosemary as a person and a friend, she has been so supportive of me and my work, but I also love the connection we have to that other world, when writers were seen in a different way, as something beyond profit and sales statistics. I do not ever think the old days are better than the new ones, but I am called upon to change and grow without end.

The world around me has changed, and why should writers be exempt? In 25 years, my descendants will be fondly remembering 2016, that is the way the world works.

I am grateful for my blog, which has given me new identity as a writer, and prompted a wondrous and complex, sometimes difficult dialogue with my writers thanks to so many new tools for communicating. I am growing, learning, writing better than ever.

Rosemary loves writers and respects writers in the other way, perhaps I should say that old way. She connects me to the world I lived in for so long, and which suited me so well. I am pretty happy in the new world as well.

I am very wary of nostalgia, I see it as such a trap, but I also see the disconnection that technology has sometimes placed between people and ideas spawns so much anger and confusion. It is easier than ever before to talk to people, harder than ever before to know or understand them.

Rosemary and I have a powerful friendship, a treasured relationship, it would simply not be possible if we did not take the trouble to see each other, meet each other, look each other in the eye, give each other a hug, come to understand the meaning of this look or that. I know about Molly,  her new cat and she knows about Fate and her adventures. She has witnessed the life Maria and I are working to build. She understands my strengths and weaknesses, and accepts them both.

Rosemary understands me as a writer in a way  that very few people do any longer, she believes in me and my work. That is nourishing beyond description. Writers, by nature of their work, are often insecure.  They never feel that what they do is good enough. Editors, by nature of their work, inspire and motivate them.  I think only editors can really see into the heart and soul of a writer, and not too many have the time any longer.

I know Rosemary as one of those tough, difficult and yet empathetic editors who bring out the very best in writers, challenging them to think harder, dig deeper and polish more.  And that has become a friendship.

I do not care to be one of those people lamenting the old days, that is a quagmire of resentment and lament.  I don’t bitch about the price of gas or taxes either. We have to live in the world we live in, not the one we had or wish or hope to have. Without new and disconnecting technology, I would probably no longer be a writer, not really worth the trouble of a big corporate publisher any longer.

Without the magic of human contact, my life would be cold and barren and empty. I have come to embrace the creed called radical acceptance.

Sometimes there are problems that cannot be  solved, simply lived with. Radical acceptance is about accepting life’s terms and not resisting or lamenting what I cannot change. Radical acceptance is about saying yes to life.

I accept the new life of the writer, I embrace it. But I will not ever give up the idea that the relationship between an editor and a writer is precious, sacred to me. And I will keep driving to that diner as long as Rosemary can put up with me. I guess it’s radical acceptance with a flip.

When I was a child, I wet my bed at night. I did this until I was 14 or 15. In many ways, this shape parts of my life, especially my dreams. My father insisted on sending me to overnight camp, he thought it would make me stronger, it was a horror, I hid and ran away until I was sent home. I probably should have stayed.

Bedwetters are a tribe, a community of sorts. No one mentions this affliction much, sometimes it is a physical one, sometimes an emotional disorder. I could not sleep over anywhere, and often had accidents in school, so I was branded in a particular way and every night, my father would wake me, scold me, lecture. I learned how to lie still in my own accident, to shiver in the cold and sweat in the heat and pretend to be asleep when the lectures came, the exhortations to be strong, to have character.

I learned to be still, to wait for the light. I wrote about this in one of my books, sometimes we message one another, compare notes, commiserate and offer support. We remind one another to never do that to our children. In all those years of therapy, I never got to it, really, the experience was woven into my genes.

Once, they took me to our pediatrician, he had me draw sketches of my parents, but he never told me what he thought they mean.

I don’t wed my bed any longer, of course, but I often remember those nights, they are a part of me,  I wake up from my dreams, I lie still in bed, I wait for the morning. I tremble and shiver and feel great fear. Maria asks me why I don’t get up, read a book, meditate, I try to explain to her that I can’t, I wait for the morning, for the light, it is a helpless feeling.

My father was a good man in so many ways, he believed bed-wetting to be a flaw in character, a moral weakness, he told me every night that I could stop it if only I had the strength and the will. I stopped responding after awhile, there was no point to it, I put myself out of his reach.

I cannot be lectured to to this day, I slip into a state of drowsiness, I anesthetize myself. I construct a shell of the mind around myself, I turn inward and become invisible to the world.

It is one of the very few things Maria does not understand about me, why I have to be alone with the fear. I suppose she is right in a way. Those days are so long ago, I am often amazed that I still feel those nights so strongly, they are still so vivid to me, the smells, the fear, the same, the paralysis. I am so easily brought back to my childhood bed.

Once I had those accidents, I entered in a state of utter hopelessness, there was no escape, no respite, no change. Until one day, I just stopped wetting my bed. I waited for my punishment, awash in my shame.

I think it is the feeling of shame that paralyzes me still during those nights sometimes, I don’t write this in lament, my life is good, it is filled with love and purpose. There is nothing more important than to be fulfilled, and I remind myself of that in the night sometimes, and it helps me. Sometimes in my dreams, I return to speak with the boy and tell him it worked out, in a faraway time my nights are so different, we have come so far, I say, I sleep with my arms wrapped around someone I love, someone who cares for me, and that is the morning, that is the light.

It lives inside of me, in the heart.