Day: May 24, 2013

I love the Hardware Store dogs discussion and although I am not a huge fan of Internet conflicts, this was and is a fascinating one, it has grown and spread and reflected so many things that are compelling about our culture today. You have only to look at the tepid op-ed (ghettoized opinion) pages of our fading newspapers or the degradation of political discussion  and journalism on cable news  to see how  bland and timid commentary in our society has become. I ran into the owner of these dogs and he was quite flabbergasted at the furor over the photo of his dogs waiting for him at the hardware store.

He takes them everywhere in his truck, but never when it’s too hard and rarely in the summer. The idea that his much loved dogs would become poster children for abusive dog owners was a bit heart-breaking to him. He doesn’t go online much, I told him to relax, people lose perspective sometimes.

The left talks to the left and shouts and the right and the right talks to the right and shouts at the left and this passes for discussion in our time and  the compelling discussions about a free culture that Jefferson hoped for so passionately are very rare and rarely revealing.

The hardware store dog discussion has only deepened, drawing animal rights advocates, breeders, dog loves, journalists, photographers and artists. Several people have suggested I was too harsh on Anita, even though she called me “dangerous” and irresponsible, and she urged me to repair the “great damage” my photo caused by linking to hot-car-danger sites, it was okay, she was just worried about the safety of dogs, and that trumps just about everything else. I wondered this morning why this touched such a deep chord – it drew more comments and replies than I have ever received on any topic, and we’ve had some wild to-do’s on the blog.

Some of my thoughts:

– We are all responsible for our words. I know I am more powerful and have a bigger platform than Anita, and I have no wish to pick on her. I ignore most messages I don’t like, but this was one was important to me. I am responsible for my words and she is responsible for hers. Because she cares about dogs, she doesn’t get immunity from reply. She has a right to her opinion, and so do I, especially on my own blog.

– My frustration with her and many people who identify themselves as animal rights activists is that they sometimes lose perspective, go too far, see everything in the world through a single prism. The fact that some people abuse animals doesn’t mean that everyone does, or that every photo must pass a sensitivity screen to make sure no idiot anywhere does something foolish.

– Blogs are different than newspapers. One reason that blogs are thriving and newspapers are not is that blogs have drawn some of the best and most interesting and free thinkers in our culture. There are very few of those left on TV or newspapers. Good writers once flocked to journalism, then they largely abandoned it for publishing. Now publishing is fading and struggling and changing and many good writers have taken to blogs to shape and develop their own ideas and express themselves more freely than any newspaper columnist can. Papers have become tepid, and thus, largely irrelevant to many people. Blogs are increasingly popular and relevant, precisely because people like me don’t have to run all of their thoughts through somebody else’s filter. If Anita doesn’t like my photos, she can start her own blog and publish her own. I don’t wish to ever be intimidated into not publishing a photo I like because there are bad people in the world.

– Art is different than public service and journalism. My photos are not public services messages, they are not subject to the censorship of politically correct ideologues who only see their world in narrow and stringent terms – animal rights, the left, the right.  I am not running for office or looking to mass market my ideas. That is corporate, not free thinking. A corporate website would have read Anita’s message and killed it in a minute – why offend a customer or rouse people who call themselves animal lovers? That is why the issue is important. In our market-based society, strong ideas can be bad for business and the stockholders, not Thomas Jefferson, come first. The rule is to never offend, not to always inform or inspire. The TV networks love to have “left” and “right” commentators because they never have to reach any conclusions or offend anyone, they just cover their butts. Thank God for blogs.

One newspaper editor suggested that I caption photos like the hardware store so that people in warm climates understand that these dogs were cool. I will never caption my art, and I hope to never see captions on paintings in museums to explain that artists once liked to paint women with large breasts or show hunters impaling deer and rabbits. Newspapers have nearly choked to death on such narrow thinking, and reading the hundreds of comments, it was   refreshing to see that many people are sick of ideologues stifling the free expression of images and ideas. I know I am.

– Not all animals are abused. The rescue culture and the animal world’s focus on abuse is running away with itself. We can’t only see animals through this narrow prism, it is only part of their story, not the whole story. Some animals need rescue, the vast majority do not. Dogs like the ones in the photograph are the luckiest animals on the planet, they are treated better and more lovingly and carefully than any animals in the world have ever been treated. If we sometimes need to be reminded that animals are abused – and we do- then we also need to take care to remember that most are not. My photos are not about what Anita likes, they are about what I like, and that is the measure of any artist and  his or her work.

I liked that hundreds of people – including a good number who did not agree with me – took the trouble to comment. Only one or two got nasty, which is important. Lots of fascinating ideas and responses and values were reflected in this vigorous discussion.

One woman e-mailed me that she was leaving the blog because she only wanted to see photos of animals, not discussions. I wish her the best. I love being a writer, and I am glad my writing and photography is not only about cute animals and pretty flowers, although I do a lot of those. The highest calling of a writer is to do something that newspapers long ago stopped doing – get people thinking, and they are paying the ultimate price for it. Thanks for being here and being a part of this experiment which is, to me, what writing and journalism were meant to be about.

Most days, I put a question relating to dogs up on my Facebook page and this has become an important element of my blog and social media use. The questions drawn hundreds of responses, and they are not debates, simply declarations of thought, a chance for my readers to speak up, since I get to speak up all the time. This morning’s question was “What Do you Think Is The Best Way To Get A Dog?” and the answers are, as always interesting. I write about this question in my new e-book “Listening To Dogs,” out next Tuesday.

Most of the people who replied – there were scores with in minutes – gave the same answer. There is only one way to get a dog, they said, and that is to rescue one, go to a shelter, adopt don’t shop, stay away from breeders while so many dogs are in shelters facing euthanasia.

I put my own reply in. I said I like getting a dog from a breeder most of all, that has worked the best for me, although I have and have always had dogs we call “rescues.” I have thought a lot about the best way to get a dog, and tried many ways. For me, life with a dog begins before you get one, and that is openly and thoughtfully. And if you think there is only one way to get a dog, then you are probably not open to that process. That’s unfortunate, because I think there are several good ways to get a dog, and the very best way is to get the right dog for you and your family. For me, that isn’t a moral decision but a practical one.

Choosing the right dog means understanding temperament, genetics, background. Thinking about what you and your family need, where you live, what you are like, who lives next door, how often you are home. Sometimes that means a rescue dog, sometimes it means a breeder or a shelter dog.

Good breeders keep some of the best traits of dogs going. People love to watch border collies herd, or swoon or loving Labs, or see the exploits of search-and-rescue and bomb-sniffing dogs, but they don’t like to consider where the wonderful traits in dogs come from. Red comes from good and careful breeding. So did Rose. So does Lenore. Some breeds are food aggressive, some are bred to be fighters or nose-dogs running through the woods. If nobody buys dogs from breeders, there will be no border collies herding sheep, no Lenore’s with irreproachable temperaments.

When you say the only way to get a dog is through rescue or adoption, you are talking about what you need, not necessarily what the dog or your family needs. It’s a good way for some people, a bad choice for others. So many dogs are returned to shelters, so many others are grappling with behavioral problems and health issues. Getting a dog is not simple, there is not just one way to do it, and dogs, as usual, often end up paying for their exploitation as emotional tonics for humans, ways of making us feel good in our disconnected society. We love to use animals to feel better about ourselves, that’s why so many dogs end up in so-called “no-kill” shelters where they languish in crates for years so people can feel better. We have lost any respect for death in the animal world, just as we hide from it in the human realm.

One reason I wrote “Listening To Dogs” was to challenge people to form their own idea about dogs and training and living with them. This begins with thinking about how to choose a dog. There are lots of good ways to get a dog, including rescuing them. I hope to encourage people to consider all of them. I’m excited about “Listening To Dogs.” Hopefully we will be talking about it a long time.

We had some excitement last night when “Listening To Dogs: How To Be Your Own Training Guru,” went up on Amazon by mistake. I announced this on Facebook and some of my faithful readers scrambled to download the book on their Kindles during the half-hour or so that it popped up on Amazon’s Kindle Page. As mysteriously as the book appeared, it disappeared. This is an important step for me. My first e-book original “The Story Of Rose,” was published by Random House last summer and made the New York Times Bestseller. Like “Listening To Dogs,” it sold for $2.99.

“Listening to Dogs,” which will be officially published next Tuesday, the 28th, is a different kind of book. I am publishing it with my agent, Christopher Schelling of Selectric Artists in New York. My next paper book, “The Second Chance Dog: A Love Story,” will be published by Random House this November. It is not clear where writing and publishing are going, but it is clear where I am going: forward. Sunday I’ll record a podcast about “Listening To Dogs,” and all next week I will talk about it on blog, on Facebook and other social media. I think this is a big part of the writer’s future, of my future. I don’t think paper books will disappear, but writers like me will have to create new platforms for our work – like this blog.

Creatively, “Listening To Dogs” is an important book for me, especially as it relates to dogs. It is an empowerment book urging those of use who love dogs to turn to ourselves – as I have done – rather than magical gurus for all of our training ideas philosophies. Just a few decades ago, people trained their own dogs and did well. Training can be simple, powerful, spiritual. Gurus do not know you, your dog, your family, your home and environment. You are the best trainer of your dogs, and you are free and you know your dog better than anyone. I talk in the book about some of the things I have done and others have done, and I review some of the most popular training books – like Cesar Milan’s.

I have had great luck with dogs, and many of you have followed that journey in words and photos. I’ve had great failures too, and failure is one of the best teachers if you learn from it, I have. So this weekend I hope to get some feedback from the people who got the book on Amazon and read it and next week I hope to help pave the way for my own writing future and that of others. This summer I’ll be publishing another e-book with Christopher, “Love And Light From Bedlam Farm,” some of the most colorful and hopefully inspiring photos I’ve published on the blog. Next will should be a fun ride. Come along.

I see there is come concern about Ma, our ewe chewed up a bit in a confrontation with Red. She was freshly shorn, tried to run off and then challenged him and he grabbed for wool which was not there and got some of Ma – three bites on the skin, not in the flesh. At least two got infected, we cleaned her up and are giving her penicillin and pain-killers. She seems fine, eating well, moving around, minding Red pretty well. This kind of wound takes a long time to heal, and it won’t be completely clear that she is well for a week or two, but so far, so good.  I think she’ll be fine.