Day: May 1, 2017

The Army Of Good remains undefeated in its own kind of struggle, the war for good rather than argument. Friday, I mentioned that the Mansion Activity Director, Julie Smith, desperately needed a new printer. She wouldn’t ask me, she thought all the support should go to the residents, but  several of them corralled me Friday and asked if I could help Julie get a printer.

“She does so much for us,” they said, “we just wondered if you could do something for her.” Well, I could, as it turned out, with some help. Computer printers are not that expensive, so I just mentioned it once and briefly in a blog post over the weekend. I had all the money I needed by Saturday morning.

The printer I wanted costs about $80, assuming it’s the right one for Julie’s computer and I have received about $130 by Sunday evening. I asked people to make their donations small, this isn’t an expensive thing. The extra money will go for a printer cartridge and some paper.

The Army Of Good is getting pretty powerful, it might just be unstoppable. Everything is a gift, even turmoil and unease. We don’t argue about what is good, we do good.

I told the residents – they were nervous approaching me – that I was grateful to them, in Julie’s work a good printer is not an option but a necessity. In any case, we have what we need here in this case, thanks so much.

Tomorrow, another chapter in my life and work,  my 25th book comes out, it is titled “Talking To Animals: How You Can Understand Animals And They Can Understand You.” It is published  by Simon and Schuster and is available anywhere books are sold, including Amazon.

My book tour begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 2, at Battenkill Books on Main Street in  Cambridge, N.Y.

Maria, Red and Fate will be joining me for the kick-off,  this will be Fate’s first chance to jump on people in a bookstore despite being told not to. I will talk and answer questions. I begin every book tour at Battenkill.

Thursday, I’m off to the Connecticut Library Association meeting at the Mystic Marriott in Mystic, Conn., to talk (with Red along) at 4 p.m. The event is open to the public.

Battenkill Books is an important launch site for me, it is my wonderful local bookstore, and they pre-sold and sold 1,200 copies of my last book “Saving Simon.” I hope to do even better this time.

I will sign and personalize any book purchased from Battenkill, and Connie Brooks, the owner will give every one of the first 1,000 customers who pre-order the book a free and classy custom tote-bag. They take Paypal and major credit cards.

You can also call the store at 518 677-2515.

There are about 300 tote-bags left, we are shooting for 1,000 pre-orders by this week.

The book is an important book for me, a challenge for all of us to listen to animals rather than just project our own emotions onto them, and a sharing of the ways I have learned to communicate with my dogs and other animals over a lifetime, often in the most surprising and unexpected ways.

They are not our siblings or dependent creatures, they are our partners in the world, we need to understand their real needs and welfare. We can not only view them through the prism of abuse and rescue, they need to live alongside of us if they are to remain on the earth.

The book is faithful to the spirit of author and naturalist Henry Boston, who called for a more mystical understanding of animals a century ago. We are not there yet. We need a new animal rights movement that fights to keep animals alive and among us rather than shunting them all off to private preserves, slaughterhouses, or oblivion.

Sadly, or perhaps understandably, this view is controversial.

The early reviews are lovely,  but this is America, after all. (The San Francisco based Bark Magazine refused to even read the book, telling my publisher “absolutely not!”) I do not see myself as particularly controversial, but I also recognize that every book I have written has been seen in that way.

I think “Absolutely Not,” would make a wonderful blurb on the book, but my publisher didn’t bite.

This all tells me that I am alive, and usually, either ahead of or behind the curve.

If we want to keep animals in the world, we have to change some of our ideas about them, and soon.

The way we look at them now is proving to be a failure, a catastrophe for them, given climate change and runaway development and assaults on animals working with people or entertaining them in any way.

More than half of the animals species of the world have vanished in the last generation, according to the World Wildlife Fund. We have to save domesticated and working animals especially by giving them important and humane work to do with us, not apart from us.

Animals like carriage horses don’t need to spend their lives standing in private preserves eating hay and dropping manure. Working animals need work in order to be content and healthy, that was the message I took from my three years of writing about the New York Carriage Horses.

This will be exciting to talk about on my book tour. In the book I also describe the dogs, steers, goats, sheep, barn cats,  donkeys and ponies I have lived with, and what I have learned about talking to them, including the use of food, emotion, visualization and body language.

If you’re interested, please consider pre-ordering it. I want to get to 1,000 orders this week, and I want to support a wonderful independent bookstore, and also the very idea of books. If they are to remain among us, like the horses, we have to support them.

And thanks. You can pre-order (or just order) here. And thanks.

Robin seems to me to have a wry and fairly joyful view of the world. I don’t get photos of her crying or screaming, which she does sometimes, but she seems to get a kick out of life. She doesn’t yet take the world too seriously, and I think she grasps our foolishness.   I hope she never forgets to take life with a grain of salt and to know  laughter.

This is good way to start the week. Robin has the gift of making people smile, so go to it. Our world is too grim. She might already be a Brooklyn wise-ass, we’ll see.

I will do my best to make her time with me joyful. She is coming to Bedlam Farm for three days at the end of this month, May. I think the rascal in her will connect with the rascal in me. She is coming in about four weeks, and I think I now have everything she will need her, so Emma will not have to carry  many things.

I’ve got a folding crib, a high chair, a car seat, a stuffed fox, a baby monitor, mattress, pad and sheet. I’ve got to pick up some wipes and diapers. I haven’t had a baby crap on me in years, it will be interesting to re-visit the experience. I hear she hates spinach, too, which is good.