On the Trail

Over the past few months I can't claim to have been blogging frequently enough to qualify even as intermittently. I'm hopeful that my current circumstances may contribute to more regularity, given that I've set a few (very few) goals for myself for the next six weeks, and one of those is a daily commitment to writing. Then again, since the other goals involve hiking and backpacking, my access to things in the wired-world are minimal at best...which obviously makes blog entries tricky.

Thunderstorms drove me to a hotel so I'm surrounded by the trappings of civilization for the first time in a week, which is how I happen to have the luxury of internet access...and a bed, and running water, and soap and electricity.... That's in contrast to a one-man tent occupied by myself and a German Shepherd, surrounded only by the sounds of crickets and owls.

Let me back up. For the past week I've been hiking in the Monongahela wilderness in West Virginia. This is just a starting point, but I plan to be on the road for six to eight weeks...I'm calling it a sabbatical, or a pilgrimage; it doesn't really qualify as vacation, but hopefully it'll be restorative, or transformative. The idea is to log as many miles as I can in other national forests and various backroads and byways and small towns, and to write...and write, and write. Maybe with a little luck a book will take shape.

The car is so full of gear that there's only room for one dog, so after much angst I chose Ella as my traveling buddy. She's eight years old and hasn't had the physical conditioning she should have for a trip like this, but I picked her specifically because she's my peer or perhaps a tad older, chronologically speaking (that's in dog years)and I wanted to demonstrate to myself how gracefully a dog of my years can handle herself under the stresses of the road and trail. Not to mention she's my most reliable personal protection dog, and when a woman travels alone it's always reassuring to know your partner will provide not just companionship but protection if it's called for.

So far we've averaged a ten mile hike a day on foot (quite a bit more by car), but I want to increase that steadily. We did a fifteen-miler one day and Ella was a tad cranky by the end, lifting her lip at an overly-friendly Lab mix we met on the trail and clicking her teeth at an English setter whose only offense was a gentle sweep of her feathery tail (the setter in question had originated from DeCoverly, just up the road from Hollow Hills!).

In spite of the fully-loaded car, it appears that I left home without the cable that allows me to upload photos from my camera to my laptop, so you'll have to use your imagination to "see" the photos that I meant to accompany this post--they show Ella in eye-popping mountain scenery...more precisely you can imagine pictures of Ella's tail-end as she leads me up yet another trail, onward to scenes and experiences that I hope will renew us both.

Perhaps we're past our prime, but by the time we're through we'll be stronger than ever.

Plans

It's a bit late for honoring Independence Day, but since I missed Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, and every other day in between my last post and this, I'm hoping I'll be forgiven for being a few days late with this lovely photo of Geni. Geni has practically become the poster-girl for Instinctive Impressions, and I found this portrait particularly stunning...a GSD in her full, radiant maturity. So we'll let her represent Summer in all its glory.

"Hey, love your blog." "When are you posting a new blog?" "We've got to get you blogging again." I've heard these and dozens of similar comments these past few months. Finally, here's an evening when I intend to break the grip of inertia.

Intentions...funny things, those. Some days' events force me to wonder why I bother planning or scheduling at all. One thing goes awry and the domino effect crashes every other intended activity for the day. All that careful choreography goes right out the window. Sometimes the forces blowing you off-course have been in effect for a long time, years perhaps, all the while you somehow avoid seeing that your ship has been careening towards the rocky shoreline all along. I'm still regaining consciousness from just such a crash-landing. Bruised, battered, bewildered, but on my feet again.

But on this particular Friday I had occasion to ponder the illusion of control that we like to believe our personal decisions make in our own lives. I'd made a simple plan, merely intending (see how insidious it is?) to drive to New Bloomfield to visit Ieuan and Uma, who are in training for their schutzhund titles with friends of mine at Muddy River K-9. I miss them both but Ieuan desperately, he having been my hiking buddy for the past nearly three years since he was past puppyhood. So, with arrangements made for care of the rest of the crew, I was set to make the 5.5 hour round trip, planning (there's that word again) to take Ieaun hiking at Little Buffalo State Park and generally spend time renewing our bond.

That was before I looked at the weather map. An entire week of sheer summertime perfection behind us, with a lovely weekend predicted...but the one day I planned (sigh) to spend with my beloved Ieaun, and Mother Nature had other plans...severe thunderstorms coinciding exactly with the time frame set aside for the trip. Since the intention (!) was to be outdoors, suddenly the plan (I give up) needed revision.

Revision in this case meant bagging it, with hopes to reschedule again soon before my dogs forget me entirely. With an entire day suddenly opened up before me, and the predicted storm not yet descended upon Northeastern PA, I leashed Ieuan's half-sis Ember, threw on walking shoes and headed for the hills with no particular deadline and no particular destination, only a vague goal of keeping my face to the sun until it was obscured behind the encroaching storm clouds.

Today's ruined plans, like the shattered shell of an egg, had released the golden possibilities within. Back in May my daughter and I and a friend walked the West Highland Way in Scotland...after conditioning to walk fifteen to twenty miles a day, it's been hard since then to find satisfaction in the abbreviated walks that time typically allows...six to eight miles may not sound short, but for bodies conditioned for more, it's frustrating. So a few miles along our usual route I guided Ember up a side road, on the impulse that the sun would hit me more squarely in that direction. A mile or so later a path lead off to the left, following a pipeline right-of-way steeply uphill....the broad brambly way finally reached a saddle at the base of a larger mountain, from which I could see the infinite slash of the right-of-way cutting an unbending line through forests and over hills beyond. But to the left a narrower logging trail beckoned upwards again, into the forest. I couldn't resist, and Ember was handling the heat well, so we left the sunshine for the woods.

The track was made by motorized vehicles, with nary a bend or switch-back, and given the steepness of the grade I found myself grabbing a sapling for balance whenever I stopped to catch my breath. As we climbed, the track became a foot path which deteriorated to a barely-discernible deer trail, and still we climbed. By now vague memories were flashing across my mind of a climb done fifteen years or so ago with the kids...so more with instinct than conscious thought, I chose lefts and rights as the paths branched, ultimately emerging onto a rocky plateau known locally as Bald Mountain.

About then the trainer texted, saying I'd made a wise choice since they were anticipating 4" of rain. Another friend texted to say it was pouring in NJ. There I was, drying my sweaty self on a sun-warmed boulder atop a peak that gave me a 360 degree vista of the most gorgeous landscape imaginable, with no where to be but here, no requirements but to enjoy the moment, with a happy dog licking water from pockets in the rocks and grinning her appreciation of the outing. Plans? Who needs plans when simply being is everything?

We make our plans, we may even take the appropriate actions to see those plans through, and we expect things to turn out as we imagined...the fairy-tale fueled imaginings of our childhoods. But one thing, one unforeseen or misinterpreted happenstance, can deconstruct our world. The trick, then, is to recognize the value in the bits and pieces revealed in the deconstruction process, the raw elements of potential joy.

A friend sent me this tonight from an album titled (I think) Plans, and though not exactly derived from the same thought process, I thought I'd include it:

"What Sarah Said"
-- Death Cab for Cutie

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak of the LCD took you a little farther away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines in a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said that "Love is watching someone die"

So who's going to watch you die?..


In explaining the theme of the album, Ben Gibbard said the following:
I don't think there's necessarily a story, but there's definitely a theme here. One of my favorite kind of dark jokes is, 'How do you make God laugh? You make a plan.' Nobody ever makes a plan that they're gonna go out and get hit by a car. A plan almost always has a happy ending. Essentially, every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time. I really like the idea of a plan not being seen as having definite outcomes, but more like little wishes.

Frosty Pumpkins

Genni's owners are so adept at depicting the changing seasons that I'm seriously considering letting her be the model for each blog entry. Not a taxing job, considering I've deteriorated to less-than-monthly postings of late! October came and went with nary a mention, consumed as it was with preparations for the North American Sieger Show, harvest, raising Ella's pups, and the goings-on around Hollow Hills. What goings-on? Well, now that you ask...

I've come to realize that when folks ask "what have you been up to?" there really is no way to answer the question. When I answer literally, replying with what I feel is a succinct summary, the facial expression of the listener often spurs my inclination to add "you shouldn't ask if you're going to let your eyes glaze over like that." Granted, detailed descriptions of poopy puppy papers or repetitious tales of exercising the dogs, digging potatoes, or gathering eggs, regardless of the subtle joy of simple work well done, doesn't mean much to those not familiar with such activities. But if I accept the inquiry as social custom generally intends it and say simply, "oh, not much" I always feel I've copped out by condoning meaningless, hypocritical, superficiality. Does the question ever really imply a sincere desire to know what's going on in another person's life? Couldn't we better translate it as "do you have anything juicy to tell me?" or even more narcissistically "hurry up and ask me what's going on in my life."

I thought that would segue into the contrasting experience with dogs and how very different that relationship is. They do seem genuinely more attentive than the average human listener. But my thoughts snagged on countless images of being pawed, pushed, herded, manipulated and generally bamboozled into doing precisely what my furry buddies want. Frankly, dogs are just about as self-centered as people. In fact, when training, that's the very principle that I utilize to get them to comply with my own wishes. I have what they want, be it food or toys, and I convey to them through body language that I'm willing to trade that desired-object for certain behaviors on their part. I'm catering to their obsessive self-interest, if you want to look at it that way, in a sort of reverse-psychology trade-off. Their perspective flips it around, though; from their vantage, they've figured out how to manipulate me into giving them what they want!

With dogs, at least, there are occasions when their focus on me seems to extend beyond self-interest, at least I like to believe the gaze directed at me is, sometimes, one of affection, devoid of ulterior motives. Can the same be said of people? The clarity and unguarded directness of my dogs' eyes convey a depth and wisdom that seems largely absent from most human encounters. We all know the story of Hachi, the Akita who returned to look for his deceased master every day for the rest of his life. Yet when a person is "crazy about" another person, how very rarely does that devotion continue when the object of that devotion no longer stokes the fire?

I'm convinced that humans give only to get. And maybe that's not such a terrible thing - maybe it's not as gratuitous as it sounds. Sure, I'm a soon-to-be-divorcee, a daughter and granddaughter of divorced couples, so admittedly my thoughts on the matter may be a tad cynical. I ask myself, as I've asked myself innumerable previous times, whether this dog/animal-centric life I've orchestrated for myself is the cop-out; have I chickened out of the more difficult, complex, heart-breaking but potentially enriching prospect of meaningful relationships with my own kind? And when a friendship fades or a romance withers, I ask myself whether I will ever know if my relationships with animals are, for me, the path of least resistance, or guides to a deeper, truer connection? Am I waiting for someone to be as open-hearted, as honest as my dogs? As unfailingly direct as my horse? As charming as my cat? Is the bar too high?

another cycle

The summer came and went, as summers always seem to, in a blur of perfect days. My walking partner and I comment on what a perfect day it is for a walk...every day. Rain. Shine. Wind. Heat. In summer, of course it's perfect. But now the golden rod is coming into its glory and the doves, what few of them there seem to be left, are gathering on the phone wires to converse about their upcoming trip. The faintest blush is creeping into the hilltops, foretelling the changes to come. In some respects I welcome it...being relieved from garden duty will return many daily hours back to the hopper for redistribution to other activities.

Just in time, since the turning of the season brings an onslaught of fall dog activities. Looking at the calendar this morning I realized there is only one weekend left between now and the end of October that doesn't have a commitment to a dog show or trial. I'm tired just thinking about it. It's not only the shows themselves, although running for hours around a ring can be exhausting. It's what it takes to turn a well-bred dog into a winner, a true show dog. Show potential is what a promising pup is born with; actual show dogs are made, not born.

People who see and appreciate the quality of my dogs can't truly grasp what goes into those radiant, glowingly healthy animals...the hours spent "road-working" the dog (which can mean biking him, running her over hill and dale, putting the dog on a treadmill, or literally plodding miles on the road) to develop the muscling and endurance required for a true canine athlete. The hours grinding and preparing meat, or for that matter raising that meat, to give the dogs the nutrition and energy needed to perform at that peak level, not to mention providing them with a brilliant coat, flashy white smile, and the "look of eagles" described in the standard. The hours driving to trainers, stud dogs, seminars, airports, training fields, tracking fields, socialization opportunities, vet visits. And that's every day of the year...so when show season hits and the competition is fierce, the effort gets ramped up several notches. The dogs owners have to become top athletes, as well, so I find myself running hills and doing wind sprints just to have any hope of keeping up with my dogs.

Sure, I just got back from the wilderness in Colorado, struggling along under the weight of a backpack at 13,000 feet, so "walking the doggies" (which conjures a WHOLE other image for most people, versus what I actually do with mine!) and running around a show ring ought to be a cakewalk, right? In response I'd say backpacking up the Continental Divide is a good start, but had I just finished up a show season before the backpacking trip, I'd have been buff enough to have skipped up those mountains!

Neglect of, well... everything

So what's become of my summer? And whither the energy for blogging? Plenty of ideas, plenty of inspiration, just zero, absolutely NIL, in the time department. I used to (only semi-jokingly) refer to the dogs as the hobby that stole my life. Now I've added chickens, rabbits, horses, and a garden that resembles the jungles we saw in Costa Rica. Maybe a tad *too* much horse manure this spring???? The squash plants are almost scary-big! And the produce...one single squash is large enough to feed me for a week, so what am I supposed to do with the rest? I so enjoyed them last year that I planted about twice as much this year. And about four times as much corn and at least four times more beans...which means now, only about halfway through harvest, I've filled all my freezers and don't know how to can, so what to do with Nature's largess? Does *anyone* out there need fresh, organic produce?

Other than weeding, picking, processing, freezing, eating, picking...summer has been a blur of puppies. The rat terriers proliferated in my absence last spring so I had a wondrous array of little tuxedo and piebald cuties to contend with, followed by Ember's litter of eight and Godiva's singleton. Some will head to new homes this week prior to my departure for Colorado (!). Now Elatha's litter is three weeks old and starting to eat solid food, so the fun will continue well into the fall. I haven't yet been able to determine whether Vixen conceived three weeks ago (a repeat of the lovely "V" litter of earlier this year) and then there's the possibility of the Champion-to-Champion breeding of Beemer to Giddy. With so many dog shows & trials this fall and a houseful of visitors in October, all these puppies will make for some challenging logistics.

The Edgar Sawtelle discussion is still uppermost in my mind, and as I walk dogs or play with puppies there are countless observations that relate to various ideas in the book. Or, from my perspective the book gives me reference points for discussion of concepts I've been mulling from my observations.

Those observations together with other research I've come across catalyzed some theories I've been pondering. Dogs and people have co-evolved for many tens of thousands of years. In so doing we've synchronized our evolution in ways that almost imply a conjoined species...dogs have lost their ability to live independently of us, and we've lost much of the strength of our physical senses that we had earlier in our development. We count on their superior scenting ability and they depend on our superior technological ability...dogs eat better than their comrades in the wild, at least dogs whose owners are savvy to the crap marketed as "dog food." So it makes sense that dogs recognize, correctly interpret, and respond to our facial expressions, gestures, and other body cues better than our primate relatives or their own wild canid brethren. They need to understand their packmates in order to have efficient function within the pack, and we are that pack whether we know it or not.

One interesting factoid I came across recently referenced a study that demonstrated dogs' mimicking human behavior. For example, if a person used their hand to reach under furniture to retrieve a lost item, the dog would take its paw to reach. If the human used their nose to open a door then the dog used its nose(this was a controlled experiment...not that people would normally open doors with their noses!). At first glance this may not seem all that profound, because living with dogs provides so many daily examples that we take it for granted. But to me this suggests that dogs have mirror-neurons, as we do, that enable them to empathize and make inferences of our internal states and intentions based on the "lighting up" of comparable regions of their own brains when they watch us do something. One could infer that any strongly social animal has mirror neurons. I also read about a study proving that people's minds really do "meld" (a la the Vulcan mind-meld, minus Spock's hand-to-forehead grip) when they're involved in a mutually gratifying conversation...research subjects referred to the feeling of "clicking" at times when their brain waves had synchronized.

So now I'm wondering how much our minds might "meld" with our canine companions...is this really what's happening when we "train"...I, like David Wroblewski (the author of Edgar Sawtelle) think that training is really just a means by which the dog and the trainer can come to agree upon a vocabulary to convey ideas. We can use whatever words we want and eventually, if our body language and voice tone are consistent, the dog will catch on to our meaning. If it's a cooperative dog, it'll agree with us about the meaning. If we are observant trainers, we'll catch on to signals (non-verbal "words") that he dog offers to us, and then we have the chance for instructive two-way communication. Hunters, search & rescue personnel, police k-9 handlers, drug-detection handlers and anyone who has walked a dog alone at night down a dark, scary street knows that dogs communicate a legion of information...it's usually our own inattentiveness that leaves us clueless. I, for one, want to learn to live with better, preferably constant, openness to the information our co-evolutionary partners have to offer.

Edgar Sawtelle

A discussion with a client revealed that I'd somehow missed one of the Books of the Year a couple of years back. Not just any book, but *the* dog novel. How can that be, don't you know *I* am writing the Great American Dog Novel? my ego raged, even while I smiled and nodded and voiced wonder and interest. So, the client being a generous sort, a copy of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski, arrived in the mail. I read it with a great deal of interest, for not only does it serve up a feast of sumptuous prose, raise intriguing questions about cognition and communication, delve into motive and intent vis-a-vis instinct and consciousness, it is the only book I've ever read that was so obviously written by someone who himself lived the life I lead, or one very near to it.

All of those topics are primary foci of this blog. Certainly the life I've lead is in large measure an experience of total immersion in a world of dogs and various critters both domestic and wild. Without doubt it's my work with non-verbal animals, far more than my human interactions, that forced me to dig deeper into layers of communication than most people require or even want. In that regard I'm reminded of eighth grade Latin class, when I learned far more about grammar and the English language than I had understood from all those previous years of exposure to my native tongue; the contrast helps delineate what's going on, what's really being conveyed.

Animals reveal and reflect truth. Yes, they are capable of subterfuge, particularly among our primate cousins who have been shown to engage in some pretty impressive Machiavellian behavior. But I know of no non-human animals who will enter into a game of pretense with me...just imagine a dog trying to pretend they trust you when they don't. They can't; if you're looking, truly receptive to what they're saying, the message is clear. You have a problem that creates distrust in others; fix it if you want to be trustworthy, or at least be aware that while people may be willing to pretend you're a peach of a person, the dog's not capable of pretense. It may love you anyway, but the effect of distrust and fear will be loud and clear in body language. I am of the opinion that Zen can be taught by dogs, if the pupil is sensitive and receptive.

I didn't check any reviews prior to reading the book, other than a quick perusal of the dust jacket blurbs, but was disgruntled enough over various aspects of the writing that I was motivated to scan through some of the major media opinions. It has received almost universal accolades. Only on Amazon did I find a couple of reviewers who shared some of the feelings of consternation that arose in my own mind. I'll leave the specifics of the critiques, theirs and mine, for other venues because overall I do recommend it as a worthy read and one of the only ways to see inside a wholly doggy life. At least, until the publication of my own! So, I hope to generate a bit more discussion than usual in the next few entries because I'd love to address many of the threads that comprise the fabric of Edgar Sawtelle.

Minor victories

Anyone who has followed these postings back a few months knows that around here the concept of "natural birth" had attained a reputation much like the mythical unicorn; people said it was possible but I hadn't seen one. Well I must have slipped into fairytale country, because, wonder of wonders, Ember delivered her eight puppies the old-fashioned, non-surgical way! Of course, to keep the universe in balance, Godiva had her single puppy by the (now) tradition of Caesarian, but both mom and pup are well. I'm almost afraid to state that publicly for fear of jinxing the next delivery (Elatha's) but on the other hand it's a welcome bit of happy news.

On other happy news fronts, a few days ago I was contacted by officers of the National Rat Terrier Association (NRTA) and asked if I wouldn't like to have Animal Planet tape my dogs to be featured on "Dogs.101" Well....why not? So, Wednesday evening a very nice fellow followed the Rat Terriers around with a camera. Being somewhat clownish anyway and having a captive audience, they put on some particularly good shows for him. The pups pounced and leaped and cavorted and somersaulted for all they were worth, and the adults did stunts and chased frisbees and did their ever-lovin' best to charm the socks off anyone who sees that footage. Unfortunately, three hours of taping gets reduced to about six minutes of actual air time, so the majority of the dog's antics will end up on the cutting room floor. Watch for the rat terrier feature this fall; the cameraman figured sometime in October but couldn't be more specific.


So we head into a holiday weekend, feet tapping to Sousa marches, flags waving, sparklers illuminating kids' faces under starry skies, our sound-sensitive dogs tucked into bedrooms or crates. Have a Happy National Birthday!