I love being outside at sunrise, when the farm comes to life. The chickens are wandering around, the barn cats are stirring, the sheep and donkeys are at the gate, the apple and birch trees are casting their long shadows of the day. When the sun comes up, the sky comes alive, and I am reminded of the power of color and light and of my duty to seek it out and share it. The world can be a gloomy place some days, there is always beauty to find.
My experience listening to Red this week has reminded me of why I wrote Talking to Animals: How We Can Understand Them And They Can Understand Us. The book, being published next May in hardcover by Simon & Schuster, is an exploration of the things I have learned about communicating with animals over the past 15 years, when animals have become a central focus of my creative life and work and personal life.
Because I listened to Red, he taught me how to walk with angina, something I feared would be lost to me. He sensed things I could not sense.
We can learn so much from animals if we can only find a new and wiser way of understanding them. We can’t simply emotionalize and rescue them, we have to be able to understand them if we can keep them in our world.
I think I’m on the right track. If we want to keep animals in this world, we don’t have too much time. We have to get busy.
If you pre-order this book through Battenkill Books, my independent local bookstore, I will sign and personalize it. You will also receive a Tote-bag supporting independent book stores and have a chance to win a potholder or Tote-Bag made by Maria. They ship anywhere in the world, and they are courteous and knowledgeable to deal with.
Battenkill takes Paypal and credit cards. They can also be phoned at 518 677 2515. Battenkill reminds me and many others why independent bookstores are so important and must survive. I could say the same about writers. If people don’t buy their books, we will vanish as well. I don’t intend to vanish.
You can support me, my work with animals, my blog and independent bookstores by pre-ordering Talking To Animals. Thanks so much for considering it. It is, in a number of ways, one of my most important books, a culmination of many years of work and experience. I am happy to share what I have learned with you, I believe this work is a step towards the wiser and more mystical understanding of animals that is so desperately needed right now.
I’m into the third or fourth day of this remarkable experience with Red, a therapy dog and now my therapy dog, one of those delicious and ironic twists of life. I was diagnosed with stable angina a couple of weeks ago, a disease of the coronary artery system. When the heart is strained, my heart muscles constrict and the heart does not get enough blood.
I have to be careful, and carry nitro pills, otherwise my life continues as normal.
The most frightening part for me was wondering if I could still walk the three or four miles I walk every day. Angina can be painful and debilitating if you don’t watch it.
Walking is critical to me. It is a spiritual, creative and physical exercise, necessary for my mind as well as my newly sensitive heart. Most of my walking is done up hill – this is not the land of flat ground, and I love walking in the forest with Maria the most. There are fairly steep inclines and paths in and around those roads and woods, and I walk them all the time.
Once or twice a day, I walk on a road near the house, it is a long, continuously uphill walk, it was becoming difficult for me.
This became, for me, one of those quality of health issues. They could keep me alive, but how and in what form? I had trouble imagining a life where I couldn’t walk where and when I wished.
Red always walks with me on this road, we usually walk alone together. This week, and for the first time, he radically changed the way he walks with me. Every few minutes, he suddenly turned and stopped and waited for me. As I got closer, he began to sit down.
He did not get up, as he always does when I drew near, or just continue walking, as he usually does. Red always walks ahead of me and to the left, he waits only when he gets to too far ahead.
Red actively explores the side of the road, sniffing for scents, walking up ahead of me. Not since the angina. Now he seems to sense – before I do – when I need to stop and let my heart catch up with my feet. He stays close to me, up and head on my left, and then suddenly turns (above) and just stops.
I have no idea how he does this. He may listen to my breath, watch my facial expressions – I imagine pain shows itself clearly – or observe my body language and smells. Before Red intervened, I was walking as hard and fast as I could, perhaps in the male way of denying reality or trying to overcome it with will. Many men give their lives up to this idea when it comes to heart disease, I am told by many nurses and doctors.
When I think about this, it makes sense. Of course Red can hear my heartbeats, he can sense my mood, he can hear the rhythms of my breathing change, he can see me stiffen or change my strike. Dogs instincts are so vastly superior to ours that we often fail to even imagine them. They don’t need our emotions, they have their instincts.
I sensed after a few missteps that Red was trying to tell me something. And I listened, as I have learned to do – mostly.
When Red stopped, I caught up with him, and stopped. Usually I was feeling the beginnings of pain and tightness. I waited – first for a few seconds, and then, since Red wouldn’t move unless I waited for a longer time. Perhaps he was hearing my heartbeat, researchers have said dogs can hear the heartbeats of their humans.
I found that if I stood still for three or four minutes, the discomfort disappeared, I felt no pain or discomfort or pressure or shortness of breath.
When I resumed the walk, I found that my heart was stronger, the walking easier. And Red got right up and waked on ahead.
The challenge, as Red seemed to be trying to tell me, was patience. If I waited a few minutes, then I could resume the walk uphill and go a long way without stopping, at my own pace. It felt as walks should feel, nourishing and good.
So that was it, I realized.
Somehow, Red was sensing I needed to stop and telling me to stop. I just had to trust him and listen. Neither of us had ever walked this way before. When I stood still – I could meditate, plan my writing, take photos, check messages, call Maria – it calmed me down, loosened me up, grounded me.
I could walk as often and as long as I wished – I just have to be conscious of my heart and breath. My heart is fully in agreement with this new understanding, she is giving me no trouble. I imagine she and Red converse regularly.I walked up and over the hill, stopping the two or three times Red stopped. I stopped before I felt any discomfort, and walked as far as I wished and back with no pain. This morning, Maria and I tried this walk in the woods, and I stopped two or three times, and otherwise walked normally. The trick is to stop – as Red suggess – before the angina comes on, not after. That, I believe, is what he was telling me.
I feared I might be losing my walks, but thanks to Red, I have given rebirth to them, they are actually better. More peaceful, more thoughtful, and somehow, I sense, even healthier. He has taught me how to walk with angina.
Our lives are frantic and stressful, walks are a way of slowing things down, taking us outside of ourselves, living in the solitude of our heads and souls. I am never more at ease than when I am walking.
I am grateful that I am learning to listen to animals, I am in awe of the things they can teach us. We must work hard, I believe, to keep them among us, and not to send them away, out of sight and reach and headed for extinction.
The Gang Of Four and I have a new ritual together. Every morning, while Maria is taking care of her pony, I rake out the excess hay in the barn – I hate a sloppy barn. The Gang Of Four – the regal Romneys – come running over to pore through it and gobble it up, today, just as the sun burst over the horizon. I am fond of the Gang Of Four, they have added some richness and character to the farm.
It was good to see the sun return to the farm, after an absence of several gloomy, rainy days.
We met Christie again at the Mansion Wednesday, I was drawn by her smile, by the lightness and kindness in her eyes. She always seems to have a smile on her face, she was happy to be photographed. If you wish to send a message to Christie, you can do so by writing her or the other residents c/o The Mansion, 11 S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Portraits are helping to see the character in people.
