Make Friends with The Stars

Walk into the night
Leave the hull of man’s home.
Make friends with the stars
and you’ll not be alone.

Bright or mere promise,
the moon waxes and wanes.
Make friends with the moon
and she’ll light the dark lanes.

The night sky engulfs,
commonplace yet unknown.
Make friends with the sky
and you’ll find you are home.

 

©Maria Amodei 2016

Exhausted

I like to get my young dogs out a few times on small courses.  The most important thing they learn at a trial where their sheep are easily visible is that the sheep from the last run are never theirs.  I wait right at the gate for the prior run to end and hurry onto the field to make sure my dog gets to watch the sheep being exhausted.  Then I go to the post and send my dog.  I walk to a position some 5 to 10 yards behind the post so that when I turn and walk to the post I’m walking directly towards the sheep.  I show the dog where the sheep are by my gaze, my forward shoulders, and the line I walk.  My dogs understand this because I do it in training, right from the beginning.  I square myself to the stock even for tiny gathers in the round pen.  I walk a few steps on that center line with the dog beside me before sending as I begin to lengthen their gather.  I do it every time I walk to the post at a trial even if the sheep are easily seen and my dog is already looking at them.

None of this is unique to me.  I was taught by other Open handlers to use my body to communicate the location of the stock to my dogs. 

Back to the exhaust sheep...odds are the exhaust pen is somewhere behind the post.  It is not in the direction I’m sending my dog.  My dog might swing back towards the exhaust pen the first time they’ve witnessed sheep traveling there moments before.  I don’t make an issue.  Those sheep are now gone.  I continue to watch our sheep, watching the dog in peripheral vision.  Once or twice I’ve had a young dog make a significant foray towards the exhaust.  If needed, the dog can be called back towards the sheep that are standing in plain sight waiting for them.  I’ve never had a young dog repeat the run towards the exhaust the second day.  I’ve never had to scold them.  Most of my young dogs have correctly understood when I turned my back on the exhaust sheep and headed towards the group on the field.  Throughout the dog’s trial career I walk out to the field before the prior sheep are exhausted.  Seeing the prior packet disappear off the field is as much a part of the background as the judge and scribe to them.  Those sheep are never theirs.  Their sheep are waiting in the direction I set them. 

I’m not alone in this either.  Many handlers treat the exhaust sheep as just another aspect of trialing and don’t put out effort hiding them from their dogs.  This weekend I asked a couple handlers who also walk on the field before the sheep are exhausted.  They shared my experience that it is quite easy to teach your dog to ignore the exhaust sheep and look for stock in the direction they are set. 

I’d rather know my dog expects and ignores sheep being exhausted and focuses up the field when I’m walking to the post at a big trial than hope and pray I’ve successfully hidden the regular parade of exhausted packets from their view.

Daylight is limited.  Depending on the field layout you may need to wait some time before you can even walk on the field, give your name to the scribe, then walk to the post if you can’t let your dog see the sheep being exhausted.  And your sheep may have been waiting at the top this whole time, starting to fidget.  And the delay in getting to the post can add 30 seconds per run easily.  That’s 30-40 minutes of waiting for people to come out of hiding on a 75 dog trial.

Baptism of Rain

Rain, blessed by the sky,
Washes away dry despair
Bringing new life, hope

©Maria Amodei

The Ramp

Dare’s knees started going bad around 10 years old. The orthopedic vet diagnosed partial ACL tears, but felt that management was the best course at Dare’s age. So I started NSAIDs and some moderate restrictions on Dare joining the more exuberant activities. I also put a ramp up to my bed. Dare liked to join me when I first went to bed to say goodnight, then hop off and stretch out on his favorite stretch of hard floor under a window. Each morning he’d be back up to wish me a good morning. At first I had to make him take the time to go around and use the ramp. As the years went by he began to choose the ramp himself. He also began to spend the entire night on the bed.

The ramp has its drawbacks. It took some time before I learned to navigate around it when I got up at night. Worse, it gives puppies access to the bed. Puppies who may not be fully housebroken and find the expanse of soft comforter a suitable substitute for soil. I can tell you that it takes forever to dry out an egg crate memory foam mattress topper, days. The good aspect of the incredible absorbent capacity of this mattress topper is that the mattress itself has always managed to stay dry. Small consolation when I want to go to sleep but instead find myself with loads of sheets and blankets to wash.

Despite the drawbacks of the ramp, I can’t quite bring myself to take it down just yet. It has been there for 4 years. I can still hear Dare’s footsteps going up and down.

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Fear

“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself” Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

Fear is the most powerful of our feelings. It is a link to survival. Fear holds us back from excessive risk, makes us think hard about the possible outcomes, risks and rewards of our actions. Fear in good measure helps us make decisions. Fear in excess is panic. It keeps us from thinking rationally. We become too busy running or fighting to look closer at the threat to see if indeed it is the evil we imagine. Adrenalin powers reactions, not thought.

 

Marketers have known this for years. Watch the ads for bleach laden cleaners with worried mothers trotting around behind their children in spotless homes, wiping every surface with disinfectant. To sell disinfectant they sell fear of sickness in children. People react, buy disinfectant, and seldom take a moment to consider if this is really necessary.

 

Internet information "gurus" have known this for years. Dramatic language whips up fear of vaccines, food ingredients, etc. Once people are engaged with the fear they begin to react rather than consider. The fear mongers reap their benefits in advertisements and products.

 

Animal predators have known this for years. A pack of coyotes will worry stock behind a fence in a small paddock, building panic until the stock goes through the fence that had kept the coyotes out.

 

Preachers of all faiths have used fear to control their congregations. Salvation is offered by striking out at that which you are taught to fear.

 

Politicians have known this for years. A powerful speaker can tap into fear then invite the audience to join them in battle against whatever scapegoat has been chosen.  The speaker offers to save us.   The unified surge of adrenalin brings people to battle, not to thought. Who looks at the story and the faces of the enemy when the bugles are blowing?

 

Maybe we should.
 

Road Crossing

I need to start carrying the GoPro in the van because life gets interesting without any warning when you have livestock. 
 
I went out to move sheep to a new graze. Enroute I get a call and end up diverting to gather a couple loose lambs from a neighbor's front yard. I'd sold them to someone this past weekend and they'd escaped the fence and gone walkabout. Getting a pair of weanling lambs back through the thickets was not easy.

That done I head back to move my lambs. They... need to move across the road to a new field. The problem is the road is Route 113, very busy, fast, and the crossing is fairly blind. I need traffic stopped to take them across. On my way there I pass one of the Dunstable police officers. I ask if he can swing by and stop traffic when I'm ready. We set a time and I go prepare. We have a great police force. At 7 PM two cruisers show up and we make our plan. I'll move the last piece of fence and call to them when I'm ready. Then I'll wait till they have the cruisers in place. They'll hold traffic till all stock is across the road and down past the the little red one room schoolhouse that sits in the middle of the new field. I've already got the fencing ready. My only concern is that I must bring the sheep off a field and into a narrow band of woods and brush by the road that has a steep drop over a stone wall to the pavement. I'm not sure the stock will be comfortable traversing this. I did leave a few adult ewes in with the lambs knowing I would be making this trek. 
  

Fence moved I let the officers know. They parked the cruisers diagonally across both lanes on either side of my crossing. I sent a flank whistle over the knoll where Song and Levi were parked watching the sheep. They brought the flock with commitment. I was across already by this point, watching the sheep flow down over the wall into the road between the two cruisers with blue lights brilliant in the low light. What a picture it would have been!

All sheep were across with the older ewes kicking it into overdrive as they saw the familiar net fence and thick grass of the next graze. I was a bit worried as Fluffy the llama was just getting to the thicket on the other side. She was not thrilled but did pick her way through the brush, over the old wall and down the bank to the road. Then she put those long legs to use sailing across the grass to catch up.

The Strawberry Festival is held on these grounds late June each year. They like having the sheep there. I hope I've timed the grazing so we'll have cleaned out most of the field and be in the back corner where people can see the sheep on festival day. The officers checked in to make sure all was set and we chatted a bit. Did I mention the great police force we have? Boy I wish I'd been wearing my GoPro to get that photo of the sheep pouring down that bank onto the road between the two cruisers with the lights flashing.

Spring

I love the woods in spring.  The new growth is iridescent.  Looking through the trees the light is suffused with the glimmer of spring green.  It is the kingdom of fairies and unicorns.  Where summer provides an endless canopy of green, spring frames each bright new leaf against the backdrop of the forest floor.  Nature is delicate and intricate where it soon will be robust and abundant.  You easily see every detail, an unfurling fern, moss brightening a decaying stump, lichen on an old wall.