This loving woman squeezed Red so hard I was worried he might back away, but he turned himself over to it, stood absolutely still, trusted her completely. One of the wonderful things about Red in therapy is that I can trust him completely, I know he will be still and calm.
However good the care is in an assisted care facility – and the care at the Mansion center is clearly good – some of the residents get lonely, they feel shunted aside, out of the mainstream of civilization. Visitors matter, they connect people near the end of their lives to the world.
People came out of their rooms on walkers and in wheelchairs to see Red, they leaned over and petted him, hugged him and talked to him. He seemed to open people up, they stayed with him, lingered as long as they could. “Let me touch you,” said one woman.
We spent much of the morning at the Mansion Assisted Care facility in Cambridge, N.Y., Red showed again how comfortable and effective and loving he is as a therapy dog, this is as much his calling, his work, as herding sheep. He made a lot of friends. Six of the residents are coming to the farm in late September to see Red work and meet the donkeys.
Red was wonderful, he approached the residents carefully, allowed himself to be petted, pulled, hugged and sung to.
Almost all of the residents once had dogs, many cried while remembering them. They never seemed to tire of holding, patting him, looking into his eyes, he never seemed to tire of it either. It was touching to see how much our visit meant, how much they wanted to touch them, how easily he made them smile.
Everyone happily gave permission to be photographed, I will try to print these photos out or put them on discs so they can remember them. We sat on the porch, visited private rooms, walked the hallways. “Don’t ever go,” one woman said, sitting with Red in the quiet of her room.
Red made some sad, then happy he seemed to bring back a flood of memories and feelings everywhere he went. I met some sweet and loving people, living on the edge of the world, out of sight. The rooms were clean and comfortable, the staff empathetic and present.
This is wonderful work for Red – and for me – to be doing, I took names, asked questions, got comfortable. I love hearing their stories, what they did, where they lived, when they came into assisted care.
It took Red just a few minutes to figure things out, to approach a resident patiently and affectionately. And tune into them. Red has a long attention span if people want it, he will move away quickly if they don’t.
Some grabbed at him, tried to force him to shake,tugged his ears, but I don’t have to worry about Red. He can handle it. They talked to him, told him their stories. We are going to visit regularly, once on the weekend, once during the week. We’ll see how it goes. I feel very good about it, the elderly lead curious and complex lives, but even though their bodies are old, their spirits are vibrant, they are sensitive and full of feeling.
This week, I received a number of panicked, sometimes angry e-mails from people driving by the Round House Cafe.
There is a big and ugly “For Sale By Owner” sign in the front and side window. The cafe is closed this week for a much-needed Labor Day holiday, but for people driving by, it appeared as if the cafe had gone out of business. How else to read a closed building with that sign in the front window?
The inside of the cafe is lovingly and precisely organized – fresh flowers on every table, warm shutters and beautiful tin ceilings. The signs almost seem an insult. The cafe is very much in business.
In fact, the cafe will re-open on Monday, September 12th, and I am sure of this because I talk to Scott Carrino almost daily and my portrait show is hanging on the walls inside. This seemed an ugly and troubling – even hostile thing – to me. It throws the building and the interior off balance and strikes a troubling note, even as real negotiations for the building are just getting underway.
Is it pressure? I don’t really know.
Several months ago, Scott and Lisa Carrino, who have been slaving for several years to keep this cafe in our community, and to make it a place where we can all gather, launched a gofundme project to raise $75,000 to buy the building. It has been on the market for nine years, and the owner is asking $250,000.
The crowdsourcing project has been spectacularly successful, it has raised more than $57,000 from local people and others from all over the country. People have been coming into the care steadily offering envelopes with cash and personal checks, they have contributed several thousand additional dollars.
It is not yet enough, Scott and Lisa say they need between ten and $15,000 more to buy the property at a price they can afford. It promises to be a difficult and complex negotiation, made more intense and wrought by these signs that have suddenly appeared in the cafe windows.
Scott will have to make his own decisions about this building and I have no idea what it is in the landlord’s mind. My first response to the signs was anger. I wanted to take the signs down, and I even went down to the cafe, but the signs are inside the window and, of course, it is up to Scott to take them down, not me.
So I just took a photo.
The cafe means a great deal to the two and to many others. So many of our community institutions are gone, this is the story of rural life in America, the land the politicians left behind. Here, we are determined to keep our community intact, this is one of the only places for miles where we can gather and talk to one another.
There is, of course, some grumbling here about the gofundme. Why should we give money so they can buy their building? This is an almost inevitable by-product of crowd-sourcing, a radical and very democratic way of raising funds. People know precisely where the money is going, they can contribute or not.
Many hundreds of people voted for community when they gave $60,000 to Scott and Lisa to keep their cafe in Cambridge, and to vote for community. We must have more than empty store fronts, box stores and franchises in our towns and villages if the very idea of community is to survive.
So it seems we are at a crossroads.
Scott and Lisa are working hard to raise the additional money, it continues to come in. They can’t possibly work any harder than they are working now or do better work. The cafe is now successfully embedded in the soul of the town. It would be devastating to lose it.
I know Scott well, this is all about community for him, and he is not someone who ever plans to get rich or who ever will get rich.
So we are approaching the final chapter.
Scott and Lisa and their landlord will have some hard decisions to make, and we will all be affected by the outcome. I hope the good guys can win this one, the corporate tsunami is engulfing community everywhere.
I am going to contribute more to this project and others will have to make up their own minds or that others may join this campaign. I hope Scott and Lisa can raise the funds they need, I hope the landlord will take those ugly and jarring signs out of the window.
I hope there can be a real negotiation conducted openly and in good faith.
The idea of community is precious, it is time in my mind to reverse the awful flow and fight for community. You can see the project here.
This morning, I wrote a post questioning the way I trained Fate, it is beginning to look to me as if my training method was responsible for her choosing to race around the sheep rather than confront them. We are happy with Fate, I wouldn’t change one hair on her head.
But the truth is important to me, and I need to acknowledge mistake when I make them, which is very often.
The point of this is about whether or not I am comfortable admitting mistakes. The piece this morning was not transmitted properly to Facebook due to technical issues, so I am linking to it again here and writing about it a bit more, as I got an enormous response to it despite the problems.
I can’t recall the last time any public official or politician admitted directly and without pressure to admitting to a mistake, either in deed or judgment. In a year of political speech-making and campaigning I have not heard a single politician admit any kind of error.
In our country, it seems our leaders no longer lead, with few exceptions they pander and follow. Mistakes are no longer acceptable in our society, even though they are, to me, the pathway to learning, authenticity and true spirituality.
I don’t need to rehash the Fate question here, you can read the post.
Two people raised the issue of Fate’s training last year, specifically her racing around sheep rather than confronting them in small spaces and developing the “eye” necessary to move and control sheep. One was Dr. Karen Thompson, the wonderful breeder who got me Red and Fate. No one knows more about border collie training than she does.
Another was a curious and distasteful character, a border collie obsessive, who sent me jeering and often hateful messages about the way I was training Fate (and other things). It happens online, these people are a cross between stalkers and trolls.
I don’t respond well to obnoxious or hateful messages and rarely consider them.
Had this person – I asked her five or six times to stop messaging me, which makes her guilty of harassment legally – spoken to me in a civil way I might have heard her, but the rise of digital messaging requires us to protect ourselves emotionally from the angry and the cruel.
It is an essential skill if you are a public person being open about life. Some people appreciate it, some people will drink the blood of honest, just like vampires.
Karen’s caution didn’t register, she is polite and careful to respect others, and I wasn’t sure she was correct at the time. She doesn’t put her way into something if she is not invited.
We never meant for Fate to be a working dog, we shifted gears and I think by then, it was too late. As Maria says, Fate is the perfect dog for us in just about every way, it could not have turned out better.
She is absolutely no trouble and lives completely within the boundaries we set for her, and they are many.
But I do think Karen and the troubled border collie obsessive were correct, in retrospect I was mistaken in the way I tried to train Fate to herd sheep. It is not simply a matter of her whimsical and fun-loving nature, although that is there, I had much to do with it, I think.
I believe owning up to mistakes is essential to becoming a fully-developed human being. It is essential to authenticity. It cleanses the soul and strengthens the heart. There is no greater act of love than to say to someone you care about that you were wrong. I have said it to Maria a thousand times.
I can look anyone of you in the eye and say I have no secrets now, nothing to hide. Owning up to mistakes is perhaps the most liberating discovery I have ever made. And one of the healthiest. I know that only the strong can admit mistakes, the weak can never do it.
In a sense, people who never make mistakes – or admit to them – have died a kind of death of the soul. Making mistakes is about being human, not evil or dumb. The smartest people I have ever known admit their mistakes freely and openly. The best way I know to be dumb is to never make mistakes. Mistakes are the step-children of the thoughtful and creative.
I am so grateful to be a person who was out in the fields every morning in all kinds of weather working with this beautiful and enthusiastic little dog. Wonderful moments, I wouldn’t trade a one for a blue ribbon.
And yet, how rarely do we ever hear these words: “I was wrong. I made a mistake.” I think I might have them tattooed on my forehead.
And then, there is the letting go. We love Fate, she is happy and healthy and adored. It turned out fine. Time to move on. You can make mistakes and the world continues to revolve around the sun, and life goes on. And that is a good thing, as I will hopefully be making mistakes well unto my last breath, and hopefully, admitting to them.
