My writing class is deepening, enriching, challenging. Every week, we explore the boundaries of creativity and fear, creativity and the sub-conscious, creativity and voice, creativity and life. Real people seeking to explore the real issues and challenges and experiences of life in stories, poems, essays and perhaps books.
A doctor seeks to shape her ethical and very loving notions of medicine. A young man explores his agonizing decision to upend his life. A dairy farmer writes about the grinding realities of family farming. A beloved school teacher uses words to come to terms with loss. A single mother seeks liberation from the disappointment of online dating. A professor and missionary builds a new life on faith and compassion.
An artist and writer works through depression to make creativity an integral part of her existence. A young academic and mother carves out time to write.
We talk openly and honestly. I am challenged as often as they are, it is, I hope, as good for me as it is for them. I teach something every week, I learn something every week. We are constructing a safe place to creative a supportive community – something I have often tried and often failed at doing. But not this time, I think, there is a chemistry and commitment in the room that is, I think, for real.
It is good to meet every week at the Pompanuck Farm retreat, the place itself is nurturing and soothing. We signed up for four weeks and are in our fourth month. I hope we go a long time farther. I have often seen and believed that much of the writing teaching that is done to children makes them feel stupid and inept. It is about what they don’t know, and what they do wrong. It promotes fear and discomfort.
Creativity is the opposite of those things. It sometimes requires bravery and hard work, but it is about liberation and identity. About overcoming fear, and taking the leap of faith to find voice and stand in truth.
The job of the teacher is to find the passion in the human soul and draw it out, invite it into the open. To encourage and support. The job of the teacher is to learn something about every student every time they meet. I have a great class.
As many of you know, I spent much of the past 15 years studying and thinking about how we communicate with animals, how we listen to them and understand them. I’ve had Fate for about a year, but I think all that much about who she was as an animal, and what my understanding of her really was.
I got her from the same wonderful breeder and human being that gave me Red, Dr. Karen Thompson, an amazing human being and animal lover.
Her lineage is from Wales, where wonderful border collies are bred, and I assumed she would be as focused on working with sheep as Red. I trained Fate every morning for months, took her out to the sheep, had her stand and give them the eye, worked on commands and directional signals, took videos and shared the experience. But for some time, I thought I was missing something.
I have trained a number of border collies to herd sheep, and Fate was very different from the first.
About a month ago, we were standing together in the barn, the sheep were arrayed right in front of her. She stood still, as instructed and fixed her eye on the sheep, she even went into the border collie crouch. I had assumed she would be moving and driving the sheep more effectively as she grew older.
But she was getting near one year old. It wasn’t happening.
I decided to use some of the deeper communication skills – especially visualization – that I had been developing with Maria these years and have written a book about – “Talking To Animals,” due out later this year or next from Simon & Schuster. In the book, I talk about how I use emotions, food, body language, voice and visualizations to talk to animals and listen to them and train them.
To clear my head of preconceptions and use emotions, which animals sense and smell, to communicate.
I had used some of these techniques on Fate, but mostly she was so keen and had so much instinct and energy I just assumed she would be one kind of dog with some certain skills. A dog like Red, like my other border collies. In the barn that morning, I stopped to listen, to look at her and watch her – I was getting a sense that my expectations were off-track, that I needed to do more listening to this remarkably intelligent and enthusiastic animal.
And I received a message from her in the way animals communicate with people, not so much in words but powerful feelings. “I am not Red,” it said, “I do not want to be Red.” I froze and was still. Fate was telling me something, I was feeling it.
I had seen she was not as imposing as Red, not as focused.She noticed everything, was distracted by everything, curious about everything. If you walk in the woods with Red, he will never ever walk off the path. Fate will almost never stay on it.
Fate did not care to drive the sheep or challenge them, her prey drive was not focused, as Red was, on assertiveness and intimidation. When Red came to the farm, our sheep challenged him aggressively, and Red took no prisoners. Challenged or threatened, he charged, stared, drew blood, asserted himself, took on the mien of a predator and quashed any kind of disobedience or rebellion.
Red is totally appropriate around sheep when they follow instructions, but it is not pretty when he is challenged, he will do whatever has to be done to get the sheep to do his bidding, and the sheep now know it. They never challenge Red in any way. Red has a powerful prey drive, Fate’s is very different, and that was the key to understanding her, I think.
Prey drive is critical to the understanding and training of dogs, yet very few dog owners, I have found, have any understanding of what it is or how it works. Prey drive is the instinctive inclination of a carnivore – all days are carnivores – to find pursue and capture prey. When we talk of “good dogs” and “bad dogs,” utterly inappropriate terms in training, we are often talking about prey drive, which is often misinterpreted as play or evil behavior.
In almost all predators, prey drive follows five steps: search, stalk, bite (grab-bite, kill-bite), dissect, and consume. In some breeds – Labradors, retrievers, border collies, these steps have been reduced (in some, amplified) by human controlled selective breeding. Labs love to hunt and retrieve, but they don’t bite or consume as a rule. They bring the prey back in their soft mouths.
Border collies herd by “eye-stalk”, the sheep see the dogs as predators and can easily be controlled through fear and intimidation using the eyes of the dog. The sheep think their lives are at stake.
Red’s “eye-stalk,” undoubtedly developed in breeding, is powerful and relentless. Fate has a lot of drive and much instinct, but her “eye-stalk” is very different, as is the case of herding dogs. She loves to stalk the sheep, be around them, but she has little “grab-bite” or “eye-stalk” instinct. I talked to a well known border collie trainer about this, and he said it just happens sometimes, he has two dogs like that himself.
“They just don’t want to drive or bite the sheep, they don’t enforce any discipline. They’re not into it.”
And this is what I saw in Fate, what she was showing me, telling me. She loves to work, she is a joyful creature, full of enthusiasm. She has no interesting in pushing or driving sheep or making them do her bidding. They have absolutely no fear of her, no matter how close she gets, or how she uses her eye. It took me awhile to grasp that, I finally started to listen actively and use my own communications techniques.
Fate’s identity does not bother me in any way, Fate is a remarkable dog and we are thrilled to have her, she fits us and our lives perfectly, she loves to work around the sheep – she runs and runs and circles them, is viscerally sweet, she spends much of her day in Maria’s studio, she walks with us in the woods, rides around with us, adores Red and runs with him. She has enriched our lives in many ways.
But as I communicated with her, listened to her actively, I felt I had a very different kind of dog than Red, and she finally let me know that when I was paying attention. I suddenly saw the life that was appropriate for her.
Fate has fun doing so many things – swimming, jumping, running, tossing toys in the air, rushing to work in the pasture, exploring meadows, hiding bones and treats, tormenting Red, running with him, running through the woods and exploring them. She loves people and is affectionate and biddable. She is a Joy Dog, not really a working dog.
I also worked on communicating with her. I released her from my own narrow expectations, I happily accepted and appreciated the wondrous and loving creature that she is, not just the one I had in my own head. You cannot have a better dog than Fate, and I am once again blessed with two wonderful dogs, they compliment and define one another and have strong and different roles to fill in our lives.
Fate was letting me know if several ways she was not Red, did not wish to be Red, and needed to be seen and understood in a different way. That unlocked all sorts of gates and opened all kinds of doors.
This liberated and opened up our relationship, redefined it. You can learn so much from dogs and other animals if we are willing to work and develop a wiser understanding of them. If we see them only as piteous and dependent and abused creatures – surely some are – then we can never really know who they are.
I showed Fate my own love and acceptance, and she has shown me the kind of dog she is, the kind of life she chooses to live. She settled down, listened more, abandoned a number of stress and behavioral problems – gulping down chicken droppings, blowing us off when we gave simple commands. We have very few issues now.
This has transformed our relationship, deepened it, and enriched it. Talking to animals is a great adventure, Fate has reaffirmed the power and rewards of it for me. People are always telling me what their dogs are feeling and thinking, yet I rarely encounter few animal lovers who really know. I love learning how to do this work, I am rewarded again and again.
Chloe is an intelligent animal, startling sometimes. At feeding time Maria and I go into the big barn and we cut open the hay bales and haul the hay out to the feeders. Chloe knows this, she goes to the windows and tries to peer in, then rushes to the gate to meet us when we arrive with hay, and then she dances to the feeders. Once in awhile, she tries to open the gate. Once in awhile, she succeeds.
Flo is often sitting or hiding or hunting up in the big old apple tree. She is a fierce hunter, and a sweet pet, a symbol of the famed duality of cats. They love people, sort of. She loves the view from there, she can spot a mouse in the pasture a long way off, and she usually comes back with it.
The Fiber Chair will be finished as soon as there is enough grass so we can stop giving the animals hay every day. That should be in a month or so, although if the weather stays warm, it might be earlier. Maria is faithful to the chair, it has become part of of the Bedlam Farm landscape. After we feed the animals, check for eggs (see two of them parked on the chair) Maria faithfully taes the bailing twine and adds to the chair.
This chair is a two-year project, I have no idea what Maria will do with it when it is done. She doesn’t either. I will somehow miss her working on it thought.
