Sarah's Blog

 

Say What?  June 25, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a summation of a conversation I had this week. I was up tending Nicky and Stoney who are on summer holiday at a friend’s place. There they have acres upon acres of tall grass just waiting to be grazed.

Anyway, I am tending them and a nice woman, who had already met them, walks up.

“Your horses aren’t head shy.”

“Nope… thanks for noticing.”

“They are the friendliest horses I’ve ever met.”

“Thanks, we have a good time.”

“What do you do if they bite you.”

“Pardon me?”

“What do you do if they bite you.”

“Why would they bite me?”

She looked at me a bit puzzled. I looked back a bit puzzled and then I waded in…

“Biting is – generally – a sign of a relationship problem between the human and the horse. I work relationship with them every time I handle them. I may be calm and quiet, but I also get exactly what I want from my horses when I want it or… if I don’t… I have them work until I do. It’s not dramatic but it is constant.

Biting would be way down the road of disrespect from where we are, I think I’d see it coming a long way off and hopefully would be able to deal with it before it ever arrived.”

I stopped with a hopeful pause.

“But they aren’t head shy…” her voice trailed off a bit.

Ah, it dawned on me, right – okay, now I get it. In her world she could not imagine how I could have both two nonbiting horses and two horses who were so trusting and calm around people. In her world, people smack horses – that’s how you teach them not to bite and if you don’t smack them, then it follows that they must bite. She was stymied – we were on two different planets.

In mine, daily interaction defines the horse’s behavior toward me. Keep that straightened out and the horse doesn’t (generally) think about biting. So to me, biting is a symptom of a larger problem. Prevent that problem, and you don’t get the symptom.

In hers, the daily interaction is basically meaningless. If a horse comes into your space, drags you around, head butts you that’s just a momentary thing, connected to nothing. Biting is the problem and the way you deal with biting is by smacking the horse in the face. This is an extremely commonly held belief.

The fact that my horses neither bite nor get smacked is completely confusing.

We parted company – she curious but not entirely clear about what I was talking about – and me starkly aware of what an Ivory Tower I live in animal-wise. I scratched Stoney’s neck and he stuck his head foward, lifting his lip in complete enjoyment of the sensation. I am happy where we are. I have a lot to learn –always will- but at least we’re not stuck in that logic loop anymore. There was a time I was, years ago. I’m glad such thoughts are behind me now and hope that I might be a catalyst on this nice woman’s journey.

Hope so.

 

Things Bacchus has Taught Me   June 23 2008

Bacchus (aka Squirt) appears to be our fifth dog. Not that we wanted a fifth dog. Not that we wanted another German Shepherd Dog (great breed, just liking smaller dogs these days). Not that we wanted a complete and utter goofball.

But we got him anyway.

Initially a pup picked for someone else, he had different ideas. He voted with his bladder, which shows a bit of creativity. At our house he is mostly dry and always happy. At any other place, he is mostly wet but always happy. He excitement pees and he did so as a pup at the drop of the hat, though it ain’t any drop in the bucket when he does it.

We've seen steady improvement but we're still not there - which is unexpected but there you are. Not all dogs have read the literature (some of which we’ve written) about how transient and relatively easy this is to fix. (I’ll take my humble pie with a dollop of Cool Whip, please.)

The behavior even surprises him – I’ve watched him start, stand still, peer backward at the urine flow with what can only be termed surprise and if it surprises him, it astonishes everyone else.

This is not usually submission; it is generally brought on by excitement. Keep him structured and organized and he is fine. Have him sit for a few moments before greeting someone and he is fine. Allow him to greet someone off lead and the sprinkler goes off as he races around with sheer glee.

The only time he has issues here these days is with Wyatt, whom he worships like a girl might worship a teen idol. If Wyatt ever gave a concert, Bacchus would be in the front row, swooning and throwing his panties on the stage. Wyatt, the poor guy, stands there with a long suffering look on his face as Bacchus licks and spins, racing back and forth in front of Wyatt leaving figure 8’s of urine in his wake. That is submission and excitement.

We interrupt this routine and it is fading  - spritz by spritz - but it is persistent and seems to come over him in a rush sometimes. At over a year now, he acts more like your average six-month-old pup. Throw in some persistent pano and you have a dog who is, to put it mildly, hard to place. So he’s here, by default, and we are enjoying him – for the complete goober he currently is. I maintain a mother’s optimism about his future potential.

Here are a few of Bacchus’ rules for life:

 

• Water is fun – in every sense and at every moment.

 

• Water is best drunk with your front foot in the dish.

 

• If you do it just right, you can hold more than half a cup of water in your mouth when you walk away from the water dish though it is hard to keep in there after that.

 

• All toys deserve to be baptized.  Frequently.

 

• It is entertaining (for all in vicinity) to blow bubbles in a water dish with your nose.

 

• Just go ahead and put your whole head underwater to get something, why not?

 

• If you bump the outside faucet you can turn it on and flood the back patio – then if you race back and forth through it Sarah will laugh while she puts on her waterproof shoes to wade through and turn off the faucet.

 

• Belly rubs are heaven, made even better if you can rest your head on Sarah’s lap and chew a hard nylabone at the same time.

 

• The cat doesn’t like it when I stand on his tail, I don’t know why.

 

What I can tell you for sure?

The best way to “cure” unusual excitement urination problems is to buy four pricey “P-pocket” belly bands (very good design and apparently with magical powers) that improves things almost instantly. ;)

He’s part of the gang now so stay tuned for Bacchus/Squirt updates….

 

The Bowl   June 11 2008

There is a steep sided, flat-bottomed section of our property that Brian and I named “The Bowl” soon after we moved in. It was, for at least a few years, a sand pit where a past property owner dug out the deep, pure sand of this area and sold it by the truckload. Our neighbors to our right, who have seen a few owners come and go, report that it was quite a deep pit for a while.

When that owner was done, he threw old stumps and fill in, backfilled with more pure sand, flattened the top and called it good. When we arrived, it was little more than compacted sand with some sweet fern, blackberries, low bush blueberries and birch moving in.

We fenced the whole thing so we would have a larger running area for the dogs. My vision of it is as a casual wildlife area, planted to support and encourage local fauna.

Visions can take a while.

Last year, I got in about 100 seedlings from serviceberry to switch grass, salvia to mountain ash with some elderberry and crabapples thrown in. They took some tending, mostly in the form of watering – a lot – through the dry months of July and August, but everything made it into this new year. Everything except the Russian Sage but that’s okay. I believe in Darwinian gardening. I plant it. I baby it for one season, I will keep it mulched, after that – sink or swim.

Between planting and tending, I threw a few hundred pounds of lime onto a small field like area along with wheelbarrows full of organic matter. Both of these projects will be ongoing as life slowly comes to the sand.

After learning how to live and work with the nutrient rich but “you could throw a pot from it” clay of Gardiner, NY for 14 years, the sterile sand of our new land is a jolt. My dream is that one day, I will sink a shovel into soft, brown sandy earth and find several worms curling their dismay in the pile. Not now. Never seen a worm in the bowl. Won’t for years. But when I do, and I will, I will know I have shifted things and I hope that I will have shifted them for the better.

But nonetheless, the bowl is full of above ground life. Smooth Green snakes, painted turtles, toads, walking sticks and praying mantis all make their peace here. The birdhouses are full and frogs breed in our run off bog every spring. By most suburban standards, where “tidy” is one of the biggest compliment to be given, this area looks a wreck – it is not the least bit “organized” yet, there are tangles and patches, “weeds” blooming (I’m just as happy for a wild Yarrow to bloom as an imported hybrid), punctuated by a dozen or so white push in fence posts which remind the dogs to cut around some seedling as they stampede by.

But I have faith. I have faith that nature will, to paraphrase from Jurassic Park, find a way. And as she does, I’ll trim and nudge, dig and move - participating in her ideas rather than enforcing my own. This land is for nature so I think I should heed her counsel carefully. It has been suggested that I import top soil and make it an instant “garden” but that would be, for me, one more insult to this land after a long battery of insults.

Healing takes time. I am in no rush. I figure in about 2016, we’ll really have something here. Until then, I plan to enjoy each new stage.

Yesterday, as I sat on the ground, June (our rescue pony) was grazing literally knee deep in bliss. The bumblebees hummed as she chomped the red clover (her obvious favorite), stomped the flies off her legs, and snorted the dust out of her nose. A swallowtail butterfly sparkled by, seemingly trying to pick the perfect bloom to land upon. And it was beautiful. Undeniably beautiful. We are on our way.

 

For a Moment ....   June 10, 2008

Bracken, my eldest dog and a lovely German Shepherd Dog bitch, is over 10 now. Ten isn’t old for smaller breeds but for some of the larger, when you reach double digits you’ve gotten somewhere. 

She still looks young and fit by most standards, but today, when I opened up the back of the van, and gave her the “okay” she leapt up – or tried to. Her rear didn’t leave the ground much and she stood – front in, rear on the ground – looking confused. Swiftly I lifted her in. Don’t think she minded, but my heart skipped a beat.

Probably just arthritis but, with her mother, Julia, passing from degenerative myelopathy, every moment of normal aging feels like it could be Bracken's death knell. 

I am prone to such worry. For years, every lump was cancer, every stumble was the end. Through it all, Bracken just trucked along, blissfully ignorant of my inner drama.

Her attitude has slowly helped to change mine. When my heart skips a beat, I remind myself not to borrow trouble – it’ll find me soon enough. I lean toward her, she wags, and for a moment, I am with her. There is no tomorrow, there is now and now we together beyond aging and loss and mortaility. For a moment.

 

 

Full Circle        June 8, 2008

Sitting on a low stonewall across from a train station in Wellesley, Mass, with Bacchus, a young German Shepherd Dog, at my feet - my life has come full circle.

This is the very wall that I sat on some 45 years ago, barely over three years old, having decided – on my own – to meet my father at the train. Apparently I knew enough not to cross the street to get to the station itself but not enough not to wander about a quarter of a mile away from home without telling anyone. Not anyone human anyway.

At my feet that day, back in 1963, lay our family dog Hannibal. And he was on duty, not letting a soul close to me as I patiently waited for the train. Finally, a family friend recognized me and raced down the street to alert my mother.

How much was already in play on that evening way back when – my independence, my patience when I am on some task, but mostly the company of a good dog. I do not know if I would have made that hike without Hannibal at my side. I do know that he had my best interests at heart that day and was doing what good dogs have done through the millennia: protected us like their own. Without question or doubt, including us in their world as no other species so consistently does.

It is an extraordainary cat or horse who takes such action, it is an ordinary dog who does.

Is Hannibal one of the reasons my life has taken the track it has? Or was I already in communion with dogs and he was just a reflection of that? I’ll never know, I do know that dogs have been important to me for longer than I can remember.

And now… another dog in a string of dogs is with me. Each dog has a spot in my heart. Each one extra special in my eyes but probably not more or less extra special than any other dog. Cherished because of time shared and unique personality traits – fun and not so fun – that have lead me, sometimes with a smile, sometimes kicking and screaming, down another path in what is, no doubt, my life long learning about dogs and about people and how we all live together.

What I am completely sure of is that my life would have been shatteringly less without dogs in it – without this career path, without the inner growth my companions (and yours) have forced in me and keep forcing in me.

And as I pause for a second to think, I reach my hand down and he lifts his head upward. I stroke his muzzle gently and he looks into my eyes soft and squinty, pressing against my hand. We are together. As we connect, I breathe more deeply, my eyes tear up a bit, we gaze.… I simply cannot imagine my life without dogs in it.

 

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