I shot a video of the new phase of training for Fate, we took it slow lately, Fate was spayed and I wanted to slow things down. She is back and focused. The goal now is for her to move more slowly, to test the sheep with her eyes, and to widen her outruns, she is too close to the sheep.
I do this by letting her run, then praising her when she goes out and wide, which she seems to naturally be starting to do. Fate is astonishingly surprising to me out in the pasture, she is keen and tuned in. I’m going to keep focusing on the eye, she sheep are still challenging her, but not as much. Her straight on eye work is taking hold, she is routinely pushing the sheep back. Come and see the progress we are making.
A friend wrote me the other day and told me that her analyst one told her that the real job of dogs was to receive human projections, and I thought it was one of the wisest observations I had ever heard about the new work of dogs. How many times have you heard someone attribute a thought or narrative or motive to a dog that says more about them that it could possibly say about a dog?
Technically, according to Wickipedia, a psychological projection, also known in the psychiatric field as blame shifting, is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves. A person who is rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude, a bully may accuse others of bullying, a lonely person may see others as lonely.
The projection of one’s own negative qualities onto others is a common occurrence in every day life, part of the process of self-delusion and a reluctance to really know oneself. Freud considered that in projection, thoughts, motiivations, desires and feelings that cannot be accepted as one’s own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone (or something) else.
What the ego doesn’t want to believe is simply transported to another being.
With dogs, projections may be somewhat broader in definition. People tell me all of the time what their dogs are thinking, who they resent, what they aspire too, what they find funny, who they mourn and how, how they are willful and defiant, jealous or resentful. This kind of thought-shifting onto dogs and cats especially, (horses too) is a very new phenomena in the annals of the human-animal bond, at least on this scale.
Dogs used to exist on the periphery of life, they have recently moved to the center. They have human needs, sleep in our beds, have better food and health care than many people in America. They are often seen as surrogate children.
The culture feeds into the emotionalizing of animals. The Rainbow Bridge, a poorly written, sappy and ludicrous story about how dogs wait for us in heaven so that we can throw balls for them for all eternity, is the most popular – and selfish – dog story in the world. (As if Red or Fate would rather chase balls for me for all time than go find some sheep.) Still, it is a wonderful and successful example of projection – we assume that dogs must want the same thing we want, mostly because we can’t accept the idea of losing them.
Projections often defy science and reality. Dogs do not have our language or vocabulary, they do not know or possess our human narratives, they don’t need or want the same things we want and need, they don’t know what death is, how could they mourn us for years and make plans to play with us forever in heaven? We are an arrogant species, we think if we love something, it must love us in the same way, or be just like us have our emotions and foibles.
I’ve had border collies for years, and they are very smart about many things and very stupid about other things. My dogs have never needed to master hundreds of words I keep reading that they now know – “get the sheep” and “lie down” usually is enough. Rose was a genius at moving sheep around, a blithering idiot when it came to trying to herd town plow trucks in snowstorms. Can’t you tell the difference?, I used to shout, between a big truck and a ewe?
Dogs are, in fact, the perfect receptacle for human emotions. Because they are a blank canvas, because they don’t speak, because they are wholly dependent on us for survival and can’t voluntarily leave. We can take all of our human neuroses, our shit, if you will, and dump it right onto them.
They misbehave because they are abused, they are jealous if we touch another dog, they disintegrate if they are left alone, they miss us so much we can’t leave (or they chew up the furniture.) This is, in a way, blame-shifting. We are reluctant to take responsibility for our poor choices in acquiring dogs, or our confusion or laziness in training them, our need to see them as something they are not. Somehow, it’s always their fault, never ours.
This, in part, is why hundreds of thousands of dogs are now on anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications, something they never needed or had for most of their long history. We are making them as crazy as we are.
If you pay attention to the people projecting their emotions onto dogs – if you listen for a bit – you will learn quickly enough that they are talking about themselves in most cases, not the dogs. When I get or dog or train a dog, I remind myself every day that the key to understanding them is to accept the respect the idea that they are not like us, they are a different, alien species. They don’t speak in words, think in words, project dog narratives onto us, emotionalize us, or love them in the way we love them. We can’t communicate with them if we stick only to our own words and narratives, we have to listen to theirs.
Yes, of course they have emotions, but they have animal emotions, not people emotions. They think in images, not words. Our struggle to understand dogs are complicated by the corruption of modern science and behavioral studies and growing value in the animal welfare industry. No graduate student or trainer or behaviorist has ever gotten a grant or sold a lot of books or gotten on TV by discovering that dogs don’t think like we do, or are not intelligent in the ways we wish them to be.
We are told constantly how smart they are, how many emotions they have, how much they grieve, how telepathic they are, how they can spot cancer, read our minds, can’t bear for us to leave them, sense death days before it comes. There is a lot of dubious science out there about dogs, take a look at the Amazon dogs page. But if you talk to any vet or serious animal researcher, they will shake their heads in wonder at the new and scientifically dubious ways in which animals like dogs are being viewed.
Science, in many ways, is no different than politics. Scientists need to survive, they often tell us what we want to hear, especially when it comes to animals. Dog scholars like James Serpell of the University of Pennsylvania – he has spent his life studying the domestic dog – are true scholars. They seek the truth, not the emotionalized fantasies of needy human beings. They will not get rich or famous.
Serpell’s landmark book, The Domestic Dog: It’s Evolution, Behavior And Interactions With People, is the best and most seriously researched book I know of about dogs.
I have never found a truer or more helpful guide to understanding dogs, if that is what you really want. You will not see Serpell on TV performing magic with angry pit bulls or selling $30 videos about the Rainbow Bridge. But you will learn what dogs are really like.
Projections are inevitable when it comes to dogs, human nature seems to need to see the domestic pet as an emotional surrogate for disconnected and needy humans. Dogs become what we need them to become, we are much more powerful than they are.
I project all of the time, it is almost an instinct. But I also know that my projections are invariably false and self-serving. Fate does not herd sheep out of love or loyalty to me, but out of her own ferocious instincts. I can read what I wish into it, she can’t tell me otherwise or walk away. I believe that dogs have a greater purpose for us than to be the garbage cans for our emotional yearnings and blame shifting. It is, of course, so much easier to put it all on them then to take responsibility for ourselves. They do pay for that.
Dogs are much more equal than that in my mind, they walk with us through life.
I try and always remember when I can that the key to understanding them is to respect them as the wonderful animals they are, not a neurotic and emotionalized version of us.
I happen to love dogs because they are not like us, not because they are. Dogs are never cruel, vengeful, greedy or envious, they never sue one another or go on cable news programs to shout and argue. They deserve better projections than we can offer them. Perhaps it would work better the other way around: if they projected their acceptance, adaptability, respect for one another and deep affection onto us.
A good friend called to tell us her dog, a Newfoundland, had wandered off in a heavily wooded area and was missing for two days. This is a horrible thing for dog lovers to endure – not knowing – and I offered to take Red and Fate out to the woods to do what we call a “sheep sweep.” Border collies by instinct will sweep an area for stray or wandering sheep, Red’s huge outruns are designed, in part, to capture all the sheep in a pasture, however large.
I began doing this with Rose, who found lost cows or goats and several dogs in that way. Border collies are sensitive to sound and smell and movement, if anything is moving near them, they will hear it or sense it. This morning, our friend messaged us to say her dog had been found in a culvert, where it had somehow gotten itself trapped. The dog was fine, Red and Fate and I went back to our work.
My heart went out to my friend, a passionate and dedicated dog lover. Living in the country, I’ve never worried about any dog running off like that – maybe Frieda, but I do know people whose dogs have vanished in that way and never returned. It is hard to find closure for that. One farmer told me his lab ran off and came back two years later. Dogs are animals, and things can happen to any animal, but I’m glad the dog was found. If it was in a culvert near the farmhouse, Red would have found her, I’m pretty sure of that.
When I look back on my life sometimes – not something I like to do often – I think about my struggles to learn, my life long struggles with education. A life of not knowing or wanting to know. Perhaps now, the system might see me differently.
I got through high school but couldn’t make it through two different colleges. My grades were mediocre, except for English, I was never close to a single teacher, nor was I able to learn much of anything. I know nothing about grammar, and still can’t do even the most elemental math. The only course I ever took that I really excelled in was Latin, at a Quaker school in Atlantic City. I always liked the Quakers, and they always liked me.
This problem was compounded with family problems. My father and I never got along, and I shut myself off from him early on, I can’t think of a thing he taught me that I recall or learned. I remember an incredulous Uncle had to teach me how to knot a tie when I was 15 years old. “Didn’t they teach you anything?,” he asked.
In recent years, as I began to understand myself and undertake the long and intense process of self-discovery, a trip, I now see, is never over, I began to learn. It is never easy for me, but it is getting easier.
I learned how to love and be loved, and most essentially, I began to learn how to live my life in a knowing and responsible way. Before that, I took responsibility for nothing. I didn’t handle money, balance checkbooks, fix even the simplest thing. I never talk to repair people, took part in any kind of repair, asked for estimates, worried about cost, learned a thing about how the world really works. For me the world worked this way: you carried an American Express gold card around and bought what you want. Somebody else saw the bills and paid them.
I thought I was stupid for much of my life, and so did many of the people around me, including most of my teachers, but I know now it wasn’t that simple. Even I knew that you can’t write 28 books and be totally dumb.
I was too distracted and frightened and disturbed to learn, and because I was able to hide my problems, no one ever really picked up on them, until eventually, as was inevitable, I fell apart. One way or another, you pay the piper for obliviousness and denial.
I was totally dependent on others, and spent money thoughtlessly and recklessly on things I could have done myself, or done more cheaply and sensibly. Since I learned nothing and knew nothing, I was responsible for nothing. When I got divorced, I was quite suddenly alone with the details of life, and I began to learn. When I broke down, I began to learn more. To gain perspective, to take responsibility. It turns out I am not as bad a learner as I thought, although I have a long ways to go.
The crisis over selling Bedlam Farm has helped me mature and face reality. It has taught me quite a lot.
I was made aware of the change in me yesterday, in a surprising way.
Maria and I were putting up storm windows in her studio and the glass on one of the broke. We couldn’t push the window into it’s frame, I said we have to get a planer. The truth is, I didn’t even know what a planer was, I heard a carpenter mention it while he was fixing our rotted porch.
Maria knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, but she hated doing restoration work for much of her life, and it upsets her to do it So I decided to handle this one myself, perhaps the first time I ever decided to learn about even the most simple thing dealing with windows or carpentry. It was the sort of thing I always called on someone else to do.
It upset Maria to even think about it. She worried it would be too expensive to take it to the hardware store, wondered if she should be doing it herself. It was obviously very upsetting to her to be doing this work again, I could see it was bringing her back to a dark place. That’s when I really knew I had to learn about it. I started to learn. I Googled “planing,” I knew the term but wasn’t sure what it meant or entailed. I learned this was what the window needed.
I took the window to the hardware store and left it there to have the glass repaired. I ask if they knew about planing. They said they had an electric planer for $89. I asked if there was such a thing as a hand planer, I thought this would be cheaper. I was aware as I asked this that I never thought this way before, I would have just bought the electric planer.
They said they didn’t have any, and couldn’t order any. I ordered the electric planer and paid for it. On the way home, I was bothered by this. It didn’t feel right to me. We only had a few windows, the others were all in. Did I really need to spend $89 for an electric planer? I got back on line, watched a You Tube video or two on planing, and I saw many hand planers for a lot less money. I am learning that I don’t need to go to class and face scowling and disapproving teachers, there are many new ways to learn.
Then I went on Amazon and found a bunch of Stanley hand planers, one for $14 that was in stock and that I could get quickly. I went back to the hardware store and cancelled the order. The cost of repairing the big window would be $50, they told me. Hmm, I thought, we can do all of this for less than $70. A carpenter or fancy planer would have practically doubled the cost. I am quite conscious of money these days, it feels good to save money, to find responsible and less expensive ways to live. I do it all the time now, with food and dog treats and many other things. It is coming naturally to me to think about the cost of things, about our budget, our bank balance.
Today, we had the planer and the window together. I called the hardware store and went out to pick it up, the Stanely planer came via UPS. I wanted it all to be a surprise for Maria, who was still kicking herself for not replacing the glass herself. She had, she said, done it too many times to count. I had never done it.
I could not figure out how to adjust the blade in the planer, mechanics and things that have to be assembled are still something that is frightening and confusing to me. Maria put it together in a snap. We planed the window in about 30 seconds and installed it. It all felt good. It is frightening to live in a world that is so unfamiliar, it feels good to begin to learn how it works. That is, after all, how you take care of yourself. You never learn if you always let others do it.
The odd thing is that I like learning very much. I am learning about money, checkbooks. I am learning about the cost of things, about what I really need and don’t need. I am learning to ask questions, search online, talk to friends, ask for advice. I am now learning all of the time, and I love learning it turns out. There are great new tools for learning, they are free and available.
Sometimes this makes me sad. I wonder what would have happened to my life if I had been willing and able to learn, and if someone – anyone – had seen the trouble I was in. I try not to make that mistake with other people.
But you know what? If I had been able to learn, then I wouldn’t be me. I probably would never have ended up on Bedlam Farm, never been a writer, never met Maria, or had dogs and animals, or written about them. Nostalgia and regret are both traps, I will not speak poorly of my life or regret any of it.
I see that one can learn at any age. Sometimes I feel like a refugee from another world, staring in wonder at the world that is now around me.
It perhaps will sound like a foolish and very small thing, this two-paned window in Maria’s studio barn. But I came back into the house today beaming, feeling like I just got admitted to Harvard, or won a genius award from the MacArthur Foundation. Wow, I said aloud to Red, you will never believe it. Often, it is the small things that make a life.
I suggested planing the window. I took it to the hardware store. I picked it up myself. I figured out that I didn’t need an electric planer. I saved a lot of money. I found a hand planer, I helped plane the window and helped to install it.
I remembered something Gandhi said about learning that stuck in my mind, but I couldn’t recall it. So I decided to get back online and learn what it was I found it in seconds, Google and I have become close: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.”
Minnie has a better life on three legs than many cats do on four. I wasn’t sure about having her injured leg amputated, and I’m not still not certain it was appropriate to inflict so much pain and suffering on her, but I do concede she has gotten her life back as a barn cat. I love barn cats, they are independent, resourceful, intelligent. I see them hunting mice out in the meadow, hanging out with the chickens, soaking up the sun, funding places to hang out.
We put out a wooden box to hold kindling for the wood stoves, Minnie has adopted it. She sits on the top – we put a pad out for her – and as the sun shifts, she curls up in the bottom. She sun hits the crate, it also offers shelter from the wind and rain, and she loves to be near the house, she talks to us all the time as we go in and out. It is also a good place to collect scraps and treats, which every animal of Maria’s (mine too, I admit) enjoy.
