Day: December 8, 2016

More and more, I believe in the importance and urgent relevance of my next book, “Talking to Animals: How We Can Understand Them And They Can Understand Us.”

Every day, I am reminded that we need a wiser and more mystical understanding of animals if they are to survive in our world. There is a widening schism between people who love pets and people who love and work with animals, it is imperiling many animals  – carriage horses, elephants, ponies, working dogs – and driving them away from human beings, their very best chance of survival and safety in our greedy world.

We demand that horses lose their jobs pulling carriages, that ponies be banned from farmers markets, that elephants leave the circuses. But we take no responsibility what happens to them next. Most of them die, and most of them will not be seen again by the vast majority of human beings and children who live in our country. That is a tragedy.

The animal rights movement has lost its way, and seems to have no idea other than removing animals from people and depriving working animals of the work they desperately need, both for their health and survival. Pet lovers, disconnected from nature and the real world of animals believe it is humane to take animals away from their work and connection with human beings, and consign them to extinction, oblivion, idleness and slaughter – their cruelest fate.

Here on the farm, we are considering the future of Chloe, our working pony, and wondering if we have enough work her for her to do. A number of people are shocked by this idea and upset by it. They are questioning it in a civil and open way, I have no quarrel with their questions or their manner. They have the right to ask what our thinking is.

They raise questions that need to be addressed.

Yesterday, on my Facebook Page, Brenda White asked this question: “But does the need to work override the need for love and affection? Ask any human their preference, but I bet you already know the answer.”

I respect Brenda White and her question, and thank her for it, but it is revealing, and it speaks to the reason I wrote “Talking To Animals” and felt so strongly about the New York Carriage Horse controversy and many other animal struggles raging across the country. Brenda White means well, but her question deserves consideration, as does our pony, who is much loved here.

First off, the need to work and the need for love do not cancel one another out, animals deserve and are entitled to both.

I love my border collies and they love to work. They need both, not just one.

Sometimes, I will say, the need to work does, in fact,  override the need for love, if not for good care. Working animals are bred to work, they need to work to be healthy, human notions of love do not necessarily apply to them, that is a projection of human, not animal needs.

It is shocking to many people, but the truth about working animals is that they most need work, not human ideas about affection.

If you ask any human who owns a working dog or horse, Brenda, you will find they will say that animals need work, and they need love. If you ask people who own pets the same question – I imagine you are a pet, not a working horse owner – you will get many different responses, including yours – the idea that human notions of love are what every animal most needs.

And that this is what “any human” believes. I think I qualify as a human, and it is not what I believe,  despite your insistence that it is. I do not presume to know what you believe, please return the favor. If I believe something, I am not shy about telling it.

If my border collies could not find any work with me – sheep, therapy work, agility – I would look to re-home them in a minute, work is like breathing to my border collies, the cruelest and most abusive thing I could do for them is to take their work away and leave them only with my idea of love. I can’t think of a more selfish thing than that.

Maria’s concern for Chloe, a working pony, is that she is not getting the work she deserves. Maria is not riding her, and Chloe spent years helping teach children how to ride. That is a gift that should continue.

We don’t have the answers to our questions about Chloe, but it is both humane and appropriate to ask.  Your valid question and concerns reminds me of the growing gulf I see between working animals and people who love animals. All across our country there are efforts to ban carriage horses from their work pulling carriages, elephants from their work entertaining people, ponies from their work giving rides to children, working animals keeping their jobs working with people.

We need a newer and wiser understanding of animals than this, and I am proud that I wrote a book addressing this question and offering ways in which we can understand animals and communicate with them in a better and wiser way than is the case now.

You can wait until May or you can pre-order the book now from Amazon or from Battenkill Books, my local independent bookstore. If you order it from Battenkill, I will sign and personalize it for you,  you will also get a free independent bookstore Tote Bag and be given the chance to win a potholder or one of Maria’s inventive and very popular hand-drawn Bedlam Farm Tote Bags. You can call the store at 518 677 2515 or pre-order the book online.

The store takes Paypal and major credit cards, and thanks for reading this.

I’m appreciating my new portrait lens, is is versatile, fast and since it is a prime Canon lens, processes color very well. I love the shape of these wind chimes, and in the late afternoon sun, I liked the red background of the big barn. The lens focused on the chimes, and blurred the background. The lens and I are going to be good friends, and I got it for half of what I expected to pay. Good work, B&H Photo.

“As a white candle, In A Holy Place, So is the beauty, Of an aged face.” – Joseph Campbell.

I love my life, more than I ever have.

I am living a fuller life than I ever have. I am beginning to know who I am, and what my purpose is in this world. I have never written better, captured more meaningful images, thought more deeply.

But I also understand there isn’t going to be too much more of life, or at least not nearly as much as I have already lived. I admit to being cautious about writing too much about aging, I am well aware of the cultural bigotry and bias against the elderly, most people flee from the very subject of aging as if it were a poisonous toxin.

I possess this bigotry myself. I don’t want to write or read a blog just for the elderly. Why would anyone else read it? See how everyone avoids it.

So I write about it only rarely. But I do wish to write about it. We are all there or on the way, one of life’s few universal experiences. And if I am not at the edge of the Abyss, I see it down the road.

Some years ago, I became a hospice volunteer and trained one of my dogs – Izzy – to be a hospice therapy dog. Red has succeeded Izzy, we do some hospice work, some work with veterans, some with dementia patients, some with elderly residents in assisted care, as in the Mansion.

I think I became a hospice volunteer in part to consider my own mortality through the lives – and deaths – of others. Through this work, I have seen hundreds, if not thousands of people, many elderly, and witnessed many at the end and edge of life, and many others who die. My dogs and I have said goodbye to so many people. Everyone’s death is different, but I have seen again and again that the best deaths, the most beautiful and comfortable and meaningful are the most considered.

The people who think about dying and accept it seem to often have the deaths they wish, those who deny it and run from it are caught unawares.

Aging is a rich and remarkable experience, it is a dynamic,exhilarating, frightening and complex process, especially in our country. I am so much happier being older than being young, that was the hardest time of m life. I was no good at it.

Until fairly recently, we could expect to die at home, with little expense, surrounded by our loved ones with our family in our own beds.  Our children and grandchildren saw death and were close to it, people were not nearly as surprised or stunned as they are today by death. Today, almost no one dies at home. Those brave First Responders get almost everyone to a hospital in time.

I know a woman whose best friend died recently, and she said the experience gave her perspective, namely that other people she knew and loved might die. How could it be that she didn’t know this? I see the same thing with dogs and their humans all the time. People are simply stunned that dogs die, and don’t live very long. Many are so shocked, they can’t bear to get another one. What, I wonder, did they think would happen?

Today people die in institutions, isolated from us, hidden out of sight. Death is a taboo subject in our media culture, unless someone is blown up or shot.

The old way of dying is rarely possible any longer, we are expected to die in homes and facilities, at enormous expense, subject to endless regulations, in the care of strangers, and often pointless medications and surgeries. We all expect to live forever, but there is little thought given to how we will be living.

I have two chronic diseases – heart and diabetes, I asked an insurance salesman – he was trying to sell me life insurance – how long an actuary expected me to live. Oh, quite a while, he said, if you take care of yourself, ten to fifteen years, although the premiums go up towards the end. Could even be longer.

Do the tables say how I might live?, I asked, sort of joking. Oh, no, he said, there are no tables for that.

I had this discussion with my cardiologist recently, he said his job was to keep me alive for as long as possible, regardless of any pain or discomfort. And if I didn’t take all of the medications, I could end up with a stroke or awful heart attack and live a long time in a way I wouldn’t want to live.

I didn’t say this out loud, but what I thought of was a good writer friend who took her life when she was 75, she simply did not care to grow old in the new American system of aging. She always planned to leave when she was healthy, and she did. That was awhile ago, and 75 strikes me as too young for me to make that kind of decision.

Maybe I won’t call 911 one day in the future, maybe I’ll walk out in a raging blizzard and go to sleep. Or stop eating. All of those are legal choices, and may be good ones for me one day. And I don’t find the idea the least bit depressing, I find it quite liberating.

When I do my therapy work, I always wonder if these are places I would want to live. I think the Mansion is the best institution Red and I have been in, the most caring, the most thoughtfully run. The residents are grateful to live there, and I have not yet met a one who would wish to leave, even as they often miss their old lives. Do I want to go there? I don’t know.

I am healthy and content, in love and engaged in meaningful work. I feel my body changing, sometimes I feel like a clenched fist in the morning, and I am working to accept the things I can do and cannot do. I continue to reject what I call “old talk,” the denigrating way in which older people are taught to speak of themselves.

“At our age. We older folks,” etc. Self-defeating and demeaning language. At our age we can achieve wonders. We can find love, paint beautiful things, write wonderful books, practice forgiveness, grasp history, learn acceptance, make friends, love animals, share the wisdom and humor of a lifetime, carry our knowledge forward, mentor others, spoil grandchildren, pass some truth along.

Many of those things are things the young do not yet know how to do. They are precious things.

At our age, I am finally learning how to live, and learning what it is to be a human being. I can even pass some of it along. And despite my chronic diseases, I am healthy and able to do just about anything I wish to do. My head has never been clearer.

Aging is not about hanging on, but accepting life. The creative act is not about hanging on to life, but yielding to a new phase of life, a new creative moment. Awe and openness are what move us forward, not lament and nostalgia.

It is, I think, only when we approach the abyss that we can begin to see and discover the treasures and power of life.

We have a flexible routine when we come to the Mansion. Red and I visit five or six people in their rooms, and then we patrol the hallways. Yesterday Peggy and Brother Pete were in the hallway, they each wanted to touch Red. It was an especially beautiful image for me.

We talk a lot about Chloe this days, we kicked up a bit of an inevitable dust storm – we are so used to this –  when we wrote we were thinking about whether she needed to move to a home with more work than we can offer right now. Maria and I are up to our neck in work and responsibilities, Maria, in particular, has this idea that Chloe needs to work, as most horses and dogs do.

I’ve been down this road many times, I know the accusations and the arguments by heart. I don’t play that game anymore.

We are happy to be living with her and to keep living with her, we have settled on this idea that if she could go to a place where she could work with children, or do therapy work with children and adults, we would be okay with that. If such an opportunity presents itself to us, we’ll consider it. If it doesn’t then we’ll keep her right here.

There is a broad schism in America between people who have pets and people who have animals, especially working animals. They need to work, to have focus and purpose and stimulation in their lives. They suffer when they don’t have those things.

As a matter of philosophy we have always accepted the idea that if we can improve the quality and depth of an animal’s life, we should consider it. That’s where we’re with Chloe.

For some reason, people think I want to know whether or not others are comfortable with our decision. It is always usefuls to hear the thoughtful and civil observations of other people, but I won’t lie to you, we do not care much what other people would do or have done or think we should  do.

I always read the experiences and observations of other people, they are very welcome. I pay very little mind to the nasty or self-righteous  tomes that are epidemic on social media, sort of like helium balloons zipping through the air, squeaking on their way by.

If we listened to the advice of others, we wouldn’t be  here together on our farm today. I wouldn’t live upstate, be a writer, be with Maria.

As I told one snarky woman who was outraged at the thought we would give Chloe away to a better home, we did not ask for her advice we do not care much what it is. Get lost, I said. She huffed and puffed and blew herself away.

I will continue to share this story, it’s important. It is always good to think about the lives we are giving our animals, we do need a new and wiser understanding of them. Chloe is a good pony, we love her and are happy to keep her. If there is a better deal for her – doing therapy work with kids who need her – that is a good shot to take, and will probably take it.

Animals are not human children, they are happily re-homed all the time – just look at the Katrina dogs, or the millions of other successful rescue situations every year. I haven’t heard or a one dying or starving together in grief over moving to a good place with work for them to do.