Maria communing with donkeys. Communing with donkeys is one of the joys of life.

 
 Rose helped the last of eight sheep to leave the farm for a sheep farm in Vermont today – sheep lover and friend Darryl Kuehne. He’s never worked with a dog, but after wrestling with sheep for a half hour, Rose showed him what a good working dog can do. She got everybody moving and into the trailer.

  July 24, 2009 – Got my camera back, all the dust and bugs cleaned out. Mother came down out of the rafters in the barn to greet me. Going back to work on “Rose In A Storm.” Got to edit the first two children’s books. Some sheep left the farm today for Vermont.
  Like Freud said, love and work.

Maria and Frieda on the path, Izzy herding up front

 Lenore resting after her mud bath. Lenore is all about love. Food, too.

July 24, 2009 – The question for me about unconditional love (I suspect I could make a lot of money doing a book about it – never got so much e-mail, cept for Lenore and Brutus) is why would anyone want it?
  I want someone to love me for myself, and for the person I can be, not without condition or work. The idea of love as an unconditional gift is appealing, and I can see why people would want it. But I’m with Socrates. Love is not a gift but a responsibility. It asks something of us, and we have a right to ask something of it.
  I want the person who loves me to think of me, support me, work to understand me and encourage me in the difficult challenges of any life. A life lived in fear and dread is pointless, a life lived without the acknowledgement of both is barren.
  I am in love, and I ask myself every morning, how can I love this person? How can I help her in her life? What can I do for her? Those are conditions. I hope she will demand much of me, and tell me what she needs and challenge me to be the person I want to be. That is a building block of growth and evolution, the stuff of life for me.
  I don’t want her to love me unconditionally, because I exist.  I am not a Hallmark card.
  I want anyone I love and who loves me to have expectations – conditions -  I need to meet.
  Yes, it is different with a child. And yes, it is different with a dog.
  In our time, we have seen the epidemic emotionalizing of animals like dogs, the relentless transformation of them into child-like extensions of our own emotional wants and needs. Nothing has advanced this more than the notion of unconditional love, as if dogs had any choice in the matter. I think the challenge of loving dogs is that when it is pure, we treat them lovingly and well because our kind of love is beyond their consciousness, thus what we do for them is truly generous and loving, even if they can’t reciprocate in the ways we might like.
  Speaking only for me, love, unlike fear, is not an idea. It is a great responsibility. For my sake, I hope it stays highly conditional.