Ode To a Violet

(In which I attempt to channel some old dead poet or another.)
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Oh, tiny flower amidst the winter's grime,
thy tender petals
fierce and jaunty bloom
though storm clouds crouch, glow'ring,
on the peaks and ice
clutches fast the stones just feet away.
Let the tempests rage and whip the boughs
of thy tall brethren,
naked yet with cold,
for thou art the bane of all
things chill and cruel,
and in thy fleeting sweetness lies
hope
for new life waking just
beneath the frost.

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Happy birthday, Jesse-dog!

I am such a bad dog mom!!! :( While everyone was eating chocolates and posting pink hearts, my good old dog, Jesse, was having his 14th birthday.

Yup, Jesse turned 14 on February 14, which was Valentine's Day this year. (Somehow I was thinking his birthday was the 17th.)

My, how the years have flown. From the handsome 2-year-old who lived tied to a tree at Reds Meadow Pack Station, until we took him on, to the rather neurotic young fellow who PEED on everything and who, under any perception of pressure while training, would quit the field and run to find the nearest human friend, to the steady good boy who could handle anything from lambs to recalcitrant ewes to silly heifers ... he has been my dog.

If I knew then what I know now, I don't know if he would have made an Open dog. Pro-Novice, sure, but he wasn't about the big outruns and flashy moves. He just wanted to work. Give him a job, show him a task and he soon made it his own. He was a darned good farm dog, a pretty decent cow dog and, over time, he and I got pretty handy at local arena and farm trials. In fact, eventually we started winning them. It wasn't due to my minimal skills: it was Jesse, who knew what I wanted better than I did - even if he didn't always believe that Stop meant Stop. ;)

He's old, now, about 97% deaf and going out in the hind end, and little things distress and upset him. He's happy sleeping around the house all day, but when the sun starts to go down, Jesse wants his family indoors and within his sight, or he barks his protest at full volume. Actually, being deaf, his bark only *has* one volume, now. But that's okay. It also tells us when he's happy, when he's out frolicking with the young dogs and falling on his butt and getting back up again to frolic some more in his tangle-legged, arthritic, bark-barking way.

Jesse is a happy old dog. He has what he always wanted, a place to belong and a family to call his own. He's the last of our old string, the last of the cow dogs, the trail dogs, the dogs who savvied the mountain trials and knew the high country camps. The sands in his glass are starting to run low, but his days are gentle and warm and well-fed. It's going to hurt when he leaves us, but he's raised our puppies and taught ME more than I can ever say.

I do love you, Jesse, you funny old man. Happy belated birthday.

  

HELP! My Puppy Just Stole the Space Shuttle! (Or, some thoughts for first-time Border Collie owners)

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Alrighty, then. I've had a request to share some points from a discussion with a very nice lady on Facebook. This very  nice lady is a first-time owner of a well-bred (working bred) border collie puppy. She's had Aussies and understands how they tick, but this little bundle of energy, instinct and intellect has been tying her in knots. I know the feeling.

I'm no expert or a professional trainer, and I don't pretend to be. I'm just a gal with working border collies who has way too much time to think, in particular, about my relationship with my dogs. How does what I'm doing, or not doing, affect the way my dog responds to me or the requests I put on him and the tasks I ask him to do?

So, what I'm going to expound on, here, is the Care and Handling of Baby Border Collies: How Not To Do It. Now, bear in mind that there are as many schools of thought about raising puppies, including border collies, as there are minds to conceive them. But when it comes to border collie puppies, my personal theory that less is more. The mistake I sometimes see first-time border collie owners make is that they fall into the trap of thinking they must constantly train, constantly engage, constantly interact with their puppy.

To you, dear frazzled BC puppy owners, I say: relax. Don't TRY so hard. That busy furball you just brought home is only a baby. He is the babiest of babies, his attention span is about 30 seconds, and he has the WHOLE WORLD to try and conquer in 60 seconds. Having a busy, bright, super active Border Collie puppy does NOT mean you have to constantly feed his brain. In fact, I think that is more apt to backfire and instead create a dog that requires (or demands) constant stimulation. 

Do Not Over-Stimulate the Border Collie. What puppies need is to learn how to relax. How to be. How to hang out. How to spend time with you but not have it always be About Something.

Now, is the little terror driving you up a wall, to the point you're continually stuffing him in his crate so you can have a little peace? Don't do that. A 9 or 10 week old border collie should not spend hours a day in a crate. They need to run. They need to explore. They need to play with other dogs. They need room and time to learn their own bodies. They need to hang out with you. And they need to learn how to just chillax near you with a good chew bone or chewie toy.

And yes, in this modern age, where not all collies can grow up on the farm, I personally believe in giving puppies toys. Not everyone does and that's fine, but I do. I don't mean toys that you have to engage with. I mean toys that they can use to entertain themselves. Kongs. Nylabones. Those chewie bones that smell like bacon or cheese or whatever. Things that work those puppy teeth.

(By the way, any time my puppy starts gnawing a chair or the carpet, he gets a little "NO" and I immediately stuff an acceptable, correct chewie in his mouth. Chewing is okay. Chewing the furniture is not.)

But my dog's toys are for their use, not mine. I don't play tug, I don't play Frisbee and I only toss the ball a few feet. I don't want to risk them tweaking their backs or damaging their legs leaping in the air after toys.

And again I will say, I don't believe border collie puppies need scads of training and tons of classes and constant Things To Do. Yes, of course they need to get out and see new things. But border collies have been around for over 200 years, and they evolved without anything magical or special done - other than nurturing the working instinct.

Personally, I won't take a puppy out in public until he's had the first 2 sets of shots. I have never done puppy classes. I haven't seen the need. I simply take my puppy out to visit friends who have other dogs, or let those dogs come visit them. I let them have freedom to play, freedom to be. And yes, I do let them play with my older dogs. How else is a puppy to learn how to be a dog? Think of all the things dogs hand down to each other, even things we may not realize: the rules of the house, how not to pester the cat, how to avoid and respect old grumpy dogs, how to read the scents on a fence post - important things for a dog.

Of course I make sure my puppy bonds with me, as I don't want him so attached to the other dogs that I don't exist. So, my puppy and I do lots of hanging out together. That's the main thing I do with a puppy. We don't train all the time, we hang. We eat/share treats together. We sit together. We go out in the yard and take walks together. We do belly rubs and I'll hold one end of a chewy while he gnaws the other. I'll watch while he beats up all his toys or chases leaves and ignores me completely. It's what puppies do. It's how they grow.

But besides the fact that I don't accept the risk of parvo, (all someone has to do is walk in with shoes they wore somewhere parvo was present) I feel that that taking them out in the Big World too soon is fraught with risk. Border collies are sensitive to noise and motion and being overwhelmed, so why would I want to risk frying his puppy brain? Why take my little guy out somewhere, only to find out he's in a fear period and now I've made him forever terrified of yellow coats or people in blue hats? Let them learn from older dogs, yours and those of your friends. Let your friends come to meet them, or take them to safe homes for play dates.

But you don't need a lot of frantic dashing about to puppy classes or obedience school or whatever. We're raising dogs, here, not Chinese musical prodigies who are destined to be groomed from birth. The smartest dog on earth does not need to be bombarded with things to make his brain more active.

I feel my pups get way more out of one-on-one time with me, than they ever would with a class full of distractions. Obedience training from me means that every day, several times a day, we take 60 seconds and practice one thing. Do two or three sits. Call him to me by name. Work on baby stays. But just one thing. And then we're done. A couple hours later, we may do it or another thing again. But I never ask for more than 2 or 3 repetitions of ANYthing. Just a few seconds and class is over.

Now, if a pup is overly independent and the recall is a continued problem, I become a walking treat dispenser. I keep a pouch with chopped hot dogs or cubes of cheese with me all the time. The puppy is free to do what he wants, until I want him, and then I bribe his little puppy butt with food. Sometimes I may have him drag a long line, about 20 feet of light clothesline with a knot on the end, if I want to be sure I can catch him. Also, a wise friend recommends that sometimes hide from the puppy, just vanish from sight and peek to see when they notice and start to worry if they're all alone. Then we pop out and voila, we're the savior.

But I do not require all his focus on me. That's not what a border collie is bred for. They are SUPPOSED to be independent. That's how they learn to think and adapt to our training, when on sheep. I teach him to look to me, but not at me. I don't want him to fixate on me to the exclusion of other dogs or other things. 

A border collie is a partner. You are the leader, but he's beside you, not behind you. Let him have the freedom to be. Don't keep him crated. Don't keep him isolated. Don't over-train him. Don't bombard him with things to stimulate and entertain him. He doesn't need more. He just needs time to be a puppy and grow up. Make sure he has enough freedom to just "be." Well-behaved older dogs are the best tutor he'll have in how to behave in the bigger world. After all, we don't speak dog. We're just the bumbling human who's trying to shape what the border collie already is.

And that, to quote Forrest Gump, is all I'm gonna say about that. :)

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God Isn't In My Home Room Class

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Okay, I try to stay out of politics and religion because that's just not a nice topic between friends. Especially on the internet, where our associations and friendships are apt to cross every category of belief known to man. But there's one thing floating around the internet right now that frankly troubles me.

I'm speaking of those copy/paste/re-post things that go on about "Q: God, why weren't you at that school? A: Because I'm not allowed in school."

Now I know a lot of people who share that - and I am NOT looking at anyone in particular; hell, I don't even remember who DID post - don't mean any ill by it. Most likely they see it, read it, and think, "Yes, I believe this country is really suffering from a loss of morals and just plain Christian kindness."  And that's fine. I have my doubts about our society these days, myself.

But God in schools ... what ARE they talking about? I'm a Methodist preacher's daughter. When I was in grade school 40 years ago, there was no GOD in schools. Sure, we recited the Pledge of Allegiance and the school had a dress code, and we weren't supposed to fight at recess. But God in schools? Seriously? Where?

My school didn't have the Ten Commandments on the wall. We didn't say grace before lunch. In fact, I don't remember one single thing about God in school. And that's the way it should be. Faith and spirituality are private choices, and parents alone should have the right to guide their children's' spiritual growth. If I had kids, I wouldn't want their school to stick so much as a pinky-toe into their religious upbringing!  So, I really don't get this moaning and hand-wringing about "God in schools."

But most of all, what I really, REALLY dislike, is the inference behind that meme. It's saying that God wasn't at that school when the killer opened fire, because the school didn't allow Him inside.

Bullshit. Bull. Shit. That is so much crap I can barely articulate it. GOD had nothing to do with that massacre of the innocents, one way or another - a deranged human being did. God has never in the history of the world stepped in to stop humans from performing brutality upon each other. And as I see it, that's not His job. We are here to look after each other and to guide our children's moral paths. All He is required to do is catch lost souls into His care and bear them away from pain.

How are we supposed to put God in schools, anyhow, when the children of this country now represent every faith in the modern world, or even a lack thereof? We can't impose a Christian ideal upon a purely secular institution. That's not what our taxpayer dollars are for. If people want God in schools, then they should sign their kids up for a nice parochial school. But the public schools should not touch religion. Where I grew up, they never did.

Bottom line is, human beings have free will. We do what we want, for good or evil. God is not going to change that, now. And honestly, I think passing around some vague outrage about God being banished from schools is disingenuous. It does nothing. It *means* nothing.

And it sure as hell does not address a tragedy on the scale of the massacre in Connecticut. God isn't waiting at the schoolhouse door. If you believe in Him, he is waiting at yours.

Think about that. And stop looking for a place to lay blame. If people don't see enough of God in the world, then they should step up and do more of His work.

Okay, that's me, over and out. I offer my regrets to anyone whom I may have offended by this post.

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Thoughts By the Side of A Road - Election Day 2012

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Today I took my time driving home, stopping often to enjoy the fall colors and look for photo opportunities. I'm stopped to snap some shots of a particularly beautiful stand of golden cottonwood trees when I notice a little old man in a cowboy hat trudging down the road towards me. There's a house a few hundred yards beyond him, so I think maybe it's the owner coming out to growl at me for taking pictures of "his property."

But since it's a gorgeous day and the old fellow has taken the trouble to walk this far, I figure I'll wait for him. He's an odd, wee old guy, shorter than I am under that grey Stetson, and he's also wearing a black, fringed leather "cowboy" coat to go with it.

As he draws near my truck, I come around the back of it to say hello. He gives me a somewhat distracted "hi" and stops, blinking vaguely around him. Okay, so no growling or ass-chewing.

Abruptly finding focus, he looks up at me with a lopsided grin, touches the brim of his Stetson and says, "You like my hat?"

The penny drops. He is a 6-year-old in a 60-year-old's body. I tell him it's a great hat and that he looks very handsome. He grins with mismatched teeth. We're suddenly old friends.

"Did you hear about my brother?" he asks.

For a second I just look at him. I've never seen this little guy before in my life. But in the next beat, I remember that a quarter mile ahead of me is the house of a man who'd been killed, along with his girlfriend, in a head-on collision with a drunk driver a month or two ago. An accident only a couple miles from my house. Somehow we never heard the sirens.

"Yes," I reply. "It was a terrible thing."

My little cowboy-man then proceeds to ramble companionably about this and that. He tells about his brother's funeral and his brother's girlfriend - "I think they were gonna get married" - and how even their little dog was killed. But people made up a book with pictures and things, about his brother, and he was pleased with that. The girlfriend's family even had his brother's picture at her funeral.

"I came here with 4 people," he says. I don't know if this was recently or 40 years ago. "Now I'm the only one left."

I can't read him well enough to tell if he feels grief as I would know it. Then he looks up at me again.

"Did you know I had a seizure in the driveway?"

Oh, crap. I need to be heading home. But we're standing by the side of the road amidst a few hundred acres of alfalfa, and I do not want to leave a seizure-prone little old boy wandering alone out here.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine."

I then ask if I can give him a ride anywhere, and he thinks for a moment and replies, "Yeah, I'll have a ride."

When I ask where he wants to go, he points off down the road - towards the home of his dead brother.

"My friend is living with me," he says.

So, I move stuff off the passenger seat and he hauls his small self in and aboard. His keys are on a lanyard around his neck, and he points out what gate I should drop him by. He's thankful in the careless way of small children and closes the truck door with a hearty bang. He goes towards the house, the house of his dead brother, where a friend is living with him and keeping him fed and clean.

When he's gone, I notice a penny lying on the seat where he'd been.

Does this story have a point? Probably not. I stop by the side of the road to take pictures of trees, and meet a simple little man whose brother died in an horrific accident not two miles from my house.

Or maybe there is a point. Maybe it's to point out how connected we all really are.

But all that won't matter, when we wake up tomorrow morning, because the "wrong" political party (no matter which one it is) will hold power, and half the country will crying out in dismay. We're connected, damn it. By the finest, most delicate threads. A chance meeting on a rural road can help someone, or leave them dead in a puddle of smoking gasoline.

But it won't matter, tomorrow. In the morning, no matter how the elections go, we'll be a country at war with itself. I hope people will forgive me if I just stick to looking at the world's beauty, at humanity's beauty, and maybe sometimes see if I can reach out to someone alone on the side of the road.

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Breeding Shelter Dogs - and Other Myths

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A couple of my Facebook friends shared this, and I think it bears reading. So go ahead - read it.

Then come back and read the rest of my thoughts on the subject.

ARTICLE:
Who Killed These Dogs? - Dogstar Daily

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Okay, so. Did you read?

The point here is that responsible and INFORMED dog ownership is the key to ending homeless and unwanted shelter dogs. I've seen so many absurd, misinformed and simply wrong things repeated by otherwise intelligent people that it frightens me how uneducated much of the dog-owning public really is.

Placing the blame for unwanted pets on breeders - ALL breeders - as a blanket accusation is not only erroneous, it's untrue.

Case in point. A woman I know bred a litter a couple years ago. She breeds only seldom and she screened each prospective owner to the very best of her ability, turning aside people whom she felt would not be a good fit for her dogs. One of her pups went to a young family with a nice home, a big yard, an active lifestyle - it seemed perfect.

And for two years, this breeder assumed all was well. Until one day someone called to tell her that this dog had been posted to Craigslist. These people didn't bother to call her, the breeder, per their agreement when she sold the pup. They didn't tell anyone at all. They just ... advertised on Craigslist. The next step undoubtedly would have been the local pound.

Fortunately, the breeder was able to persuade the people to return the dog to her, and so it escaped becoming another set of shelter statistics. But let's look at this.

IF the breeder had never learned of the dog's situation, it probably would have gone to some random home, where it would have overwhelmed its new owners with its complete lack of social skills or understanding of rules, or perhaps its snappishness around small children, and it would have wound up in the local pound or on the streets, to be snagged by animal control.

Nice Rescue Person then goes to the animal shelter and sees this beautiful dog, and they are horrified: how could ANYone abandon a beautiful young dog like this? What horrible, irresponsible person put this poor dog out there in the world where it could end up abandoned in a shelter, in the first place? All this dog needed was a little love and understanding!

But seriously ... how is this the breeder's fault? She did everything she could, short of having the FBI check out their record of pet ownership. She had no way of knowing the new owners would be unable to manage the dog's energy or intelligence and would end up shutting it up in the back yard.

But just suppose she never bred that litter. Just suppose that pup never was born and never wound up on Craig's List.

What would stop that SAME couple from adopting a shelter dog ... and doing the exact same thing? What would stop them from taking a shelter dog home, full of good intentions, and still being overwhelmed by the dog, finally shutting it up in the back yard until they decide to get rid of it, after all?

Just because someone adopts a dog from a shelter, that does NOT create them into a better, more informed, more responsible pet owner!

And just because someone breeds a litter of dogs, that does not mean their pups are either going to end up in a shelter, or take a home that could have gone to a shelter dog. An ignorant or irresponsible pet owner *remains* an irresponsible pet owner, regardless of where their dog(s) came from.

It is a fallacy to think that only by stopping breeding will homeless dogs cease to exist. Only when the American public becomes vastly more educated than it is now will abandoned, neglected and homeless dogs cease to be a problem in this country.

And that's all I've got to say about that.

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And Then There Were Four ...

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A few years ago, hubby and I lived just down the road in this little rural redneck trailer park. It was a decent enough place for a couple cowboy/mule packer types, and our space had a green lawn, a beautiful big shade tree and room for all our dogs.

Anyhow, the winter of 1998/99, about this same time of year, hubby and I came back from town and as we drove towards our house, we saw this little dog frolicking in the snow, next to one of the other mobile homes. It was the cutest thing, about 3 or 4 months old and it looked like a border collie on a corgi chassis! Short legs, pointy ears, adorable fox-face, but it had a long black coat, white on the chest and a big plumy tail.

We soon found out the pup was named Scruffy, and it belonged to a single mom with 2 small children and a live-in boyfriend. They weren't real good about keeping track of him and he sometimes went strolling around the trailer park, but it was a quiet place with very little traffic. Of course he soon discovered our house with its collection of dogs, and somehow he struck up a friendship with my border collie, Rose.

So, we started letting him into our yard. Just for a little bit, mind, but he and Rose would romp and play and have a great old time! This was kind of amazing, really, because Rose was a grown lady and did not allow such familiarity with any other dog. No, sir. But she would play with Scruffy, and when they had enough, we'd let Scruffy out and he'd trundle off up the street towards home.

Well, at some point during the winter, the neighbor's boyfriend disappeared, probably kicked out, and the little dog was seen roaming the trailer park more and more. Some residents began getting annoyed at the rascal, because he got in their trash and ate the cat food on their porches. The trailer park manager didn't like him at all, and once I saw the old fart *kick* Scruffy off someone's front porch!

But as weeks turned to months, Scruffy continued his visits to our house and maintained his friendship with Rose. We could give him at least that much. From time to time, when we took our dogs somewhere in the car, Scruffy would "accidentally" get in with them and go along. But we'd send him home, after the adventure was over.

Then ... sometime in April, we got a late, heavy storm. When we looked out our front window, there was Scruffy. Curled up in a ball, sound asleep under a big spruce tree, amidst about a foot of new snow.

"Get him in here," Tye said. Which we did and we closed the gate behind him. Scruffy came in the house, licked Tye to say, "Thank you," and that settled that. Nor did we open that gate ever again.

When we went back to the mountains to pack mules that summer, Scruffy went with us. His former owner never came asking about him, even once. Maybe she cared, though. Maybe she was just glad the pup went somewhere else, when she had two babes to raise, alone.

As the years went on, Scruffy accompanied his border collie pals, Rose and Jesse, to our sheepdog training lessons. He had no interest in sheep or any other livestock, the big silly things, but he loved being the "greeter" down at the ranch. Only when I had to retire Rose due to hip dysplasia did Scruffy stop coming down to lessons with me. But he soon found a new "job" as hubby Tye's private eye dog, riding along while Tye went about his work, sharing snacks when they stopped for coffee or lunch on the road.

Oh, Scruffy had his rescue-dog issues. He was a fear-biter, he would yowl when being bathed, he was terrified of being grabbed, and for a long time, he was fearful of men he didn't know. But with time and love, those issues faded into the background. To us, he was just a happy, bouncy, buoyant personality, who trotted around with his little chest out and his tail flagged proudly behind him.I had to do some scrambling to learn the stubborn corgi mindset, and I'm forever grateful to the mail list, Corgi-L. But he was kind to our cats, got along with almost all dogs, and above all things, he loved hanging out with Tye.

That bond meant everything, when Scruffy's girls finally began passing away. Shortly after we moved to this house, he lost Rose, and then he lost Dolly and Della, all within about 18 months' time. Some of his sparkle seemed lost with them. But he was still our Scruffy, the PI dog, and he bore the coming of the new pups, Nick and Gael and Ash, with admirable patience.

Time takes its toll on us all, though. Last fall he took sick and lost all appetite - unheard of, for a corgi! - and we got him in to the vet. A bazillion tests ($$$!) later, the vet found that his kidney values were a bit off, but mainly, Scruffy had a raging bladder infection! She prescribed a heavy dose of two strong antibiotics (can't recall what they were) and Scruffy rebounded with notable speed. Soon he was his old self, and life was good.

But ... last month he took another bad turn and this time, the antibiotics had no effect. This time, the vet said his kidneys were indeed failing. There wasn't a lot we could do, but we tried all we could. Scruffy was a fighter, and though his body weakened and grew more frail by the day, that stubborn light refused to go out. However, by this past Monday, we could see he was weary and tired and done. He had stopped eating days ago, and now he could no longer seem to drink water. Today we made the appointment to say goodbye.

I had to work, so Tye had to handle it alone. I felt horrible for him. Yet it seemed to go as well as these things can. Tye took Scruffy for one last ride in the car, one last stop at Starbucks, one last offered bite of scone (or some other sweet,) even if Scruffy would not take it. When they got to the vet, Tye just sat in the car with his little partner and talked and petted. The vet came out to the car to administer the sedative, and Tye stayed with him until Scruffy passed beyond knowing. We'll get him back as we did Della and Dolly, a box of ashes which we'll one day scatter in the mountains.

Tonight, the dogs seem to know something is changed. Tye said that when he got home, Nick, Gael, Ash and Jesse all clung close around him. Now that I'm home from work, they are just ... quiet. Very quiet. And although Scruffy removed himself from interaction with them days if not weeks ago, I think they feel the silence of that missing heartbeat.

I know I do. Tye and I both do.

But Scruffy is past sickness or weakness or pain, now. I want to believe he is once again that sprightly little dog of years past, and that he gambols once again with his dear sister, Rose, racing through the green grass as fast as ever his funny short legs can go.

Run fast, run free, little Scruffy No-Legs. We will be along in a while.
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