Macro Monday: Moving Day

Rosie thought she had it tough three weeks ago -- six whole puppies to move into the living room, and with only one human to step 'n' fetchit for her.

At the PARSEC picnic this Saturday, someone spotted these lovely golden ants on the march. We quickly ascertained that they were moving house, from under a hydrangea in a landscape island to beneath a sidewalk slab about 12 feet away.

I got this with my iPhone. There is some quality loss from the YouTube conversion -- not sure why. The original is much sharper.



Notice how the larvae and pupae only go in one direction. The ants moving left to right are returning to the old nest for more kids or stuff to shift.

I think The Vandals really capture the energy of ant moving day.

This Weekend

So shoot me, I am not a food stylist. Have you bought your raffle tickets for a customized basket of Brandywine Farm humanely pasture-raised and home-grown yummies? The prize will have much more stuff than shown here -- this was all I could fit in the basket. Go to the chipin link above or to the right.

We're getting kind of excited about our first-ever English shepherd Gathering at Brandywine Farm. We are expecting somewhere north of fifty people, and a slightly larger number of dogs, with some special guests who have surprised even the hosts. Could be many more, as more RSVPs are coming in as the date approaches. We have participants coming from all corners of the country.

Here's some of what's going to happen. Full schedule and deets are here.

On Saturday, in addition to our barbeque (pasture-raised Brandywine broilers) and the potluck (ES folks can get competitive with their potluck contributions, so come armed and hungry) and all the general socializing and dog-walking and strawberry-picking, and movie night-ing, we will have a canine freestyle class taught by trainer Mary Waugh Swindell, who is coming all the way from Texas for the Gathering with her two ES, toddler, husband, Doberman(s), and there was the threat of a lizard or pair of lizards, I believe. Which have nothing to do with the potluck. I hope.

Mary is a long-time top competitor in freestyle and agility, with her magnificent Dobermans. I first met her about thirteen or fourteen years ago, when she lived in Pittsburgh. I went with my friend Barb to meet her rescue ES, Gwen, because we were interested in this little-known breed. At that point I started to plot to steal Devon, her Doberman. Devon is of sainted memory now, but it's possible that his son may just up and disappear this weekend.

Mary's current freestyle up-and-comer is her NESR puppy, Shiner Bock. You may remember Shiner under a previous identity.

Here's the skinny on the Freestyle clinic, which will start at 3 pm on Saturday:

Freestyle is a terrific way to have fun with your dog and build new skills that will help you in obedience, rally, agility, Therapy dog visits--or simply to dance better in your living room! This sport is appropriate for dogs of all ages and abilities, as long as they are ready to have fun and have a handler ready to have a good time. Depending on the skill level of the dogs and handlers attending we will work on the following skills:

Walking backwards
Dog Weaving through your legs while you walk
Teaching your dog to jump through your arms
Teaching your dog to back through your legs
Teaching dogs to sidestep (both in heel position and in front)
Spin, Twist, and jumping through hoops!

No prerequisites needed to attend; but bring treats or toys to guide and reward your dogs. If your dog is trained to go to a mat or target, bring that along. Have a hula hoop? Bring it on!

This is a great way to help build body awareness, and develop more communication between handlers and dogs.

Some of our freestyle students go to to work on group demos for public events, or to add skills for therapy visits and PR events, but most do it just to have a good time, and to teach some new skills.

You can see us doing Freestyle on Animal Planet's Breed All About it with our Doberman Devon, and you can watch a clip of an awesome routine by Carolyn Scott here.

We'll be having a great time, and Shiner will be showing you how to make this look easy!

We'll have a few slots available for local students who aren't here for the ES Gathering. You must contact me at houlahanATzoominternetDOTnet. to secure a place. We just ask for a donation -- what you can afford -- via raffle tickets.

Just before the Freestyle clinic, at 2, we will have a brief canine search and rescue demonstration by the dogs of Allegheny Mountain Rescue Group, many of whom are English shepherds.

On Sunday, we will host a Canine Good Citizen test, starting at 11 am. The cost for this will be nominal. Many thanks to Tammi Potts for agreeing to be our CGC tester for the day. This test will be open to the public, but you must contact me at houlahan AT zoominternet DOT net beforehand to secure a slot.

Throughout the weekend, we'll be raising money to cover the cost of the Gathering and to raise funds for both National English Shepherd Rescue and the English Shepherd Club's Health and Genetics Committee by raffling several items, including a customized Brandywine Farm Basket o' Noms which can be customized to your desires and shipped if necessary -- you do not need to be present to win.

The basket will reflect your preferences, and can include fresh pastured eggs, pastured humanely-raised chicken and/or guinea fowl (frozen), colony-raised rabbit (frozen), home-made raw-milk goat cheese (feta and/or chevre), home-made stock from pastured chickens, grape jam, home-grown and made marinara and salsa, dried currant tomatoes, home-made raw goat yogurt -- am I forgetting anything?

Again, use the chipin to the left if you would like to buy raffle tickets and will not be at the Gathering. I'm filling up a jar with pre-purchased tickets already. Make sure I have a way to contact you if I don't already have at least your email address.

Also being raffled will be a special Texas-sized gift basket donated by Mary and her students, in honor of her two NESR dogs. I can't wait to see what's in this one! I suspect it will have some fire to it. The same tickets apply to both baskets.

I'll keep the chipin open for raffle tickets until 7 am Sunday the 12th, and you can buy tickets at the Gathering right up to the drawing at 3 on Sunday. We will be tossing in a few other raffle items as well.

Photographer Martha Cristy-Couch has donated two complete sets of blank greeting cards in her extraordinary "River Reflections" series. The cards will be for sale in the community center all weekend, with information on posters and additional cards available.


Finally, for all English shepherd owners and former English shepherd owners -- we will be working on "Project Fill In the Blanks" for the English Shepherd Club Registry Database. We will be collecting photographs, measurements, and information (including pedigree info) about your current and former English shepherds for inclusion in their entries into the genetic database of the breed. Your dog does not have to be ESC registered to be recorded!

Health and longevity information on both living dogs and dogs who have left us is especially important for the conservation of the breed.

You can download a PDF form here and fill it out before the Gathering if you like. Bring photocopies (don't risk your originals if you can make a copy, but I can copy papers here if necessary) of registration, pedigree, and health screening certificates and results. We can take photos and measurements of the dogs who attend.

Throughout the weekend we will have a Rally obedience course set up for your "doodling" pleasure, and agility equipment for learning and practice, courtesy of Family Dog Obedience in Butler and Pittsburgh.

Photo Good Phriday: Eoster Greetings

This weekend we will search the farm for hidden nests of eggs, and the leporaria for more nests of new rabbits.

We will eat flesh and candy and drink wine.

There will be fire.

There will likely be some new additions to our herds and flocks.

The pear tree will burst into flower.

Nothing to see here. No Goddess arising. Move along, return to your churches, have a cracker, and feel sorry for all the sins you've done while all around you Nature is flowering, fucking, hatching, kindling, kidding and generally bursting forth without apologies, restraint, or any sense of decency. Remind yourself relentlessly that it's a Very Solemn Father and Son thing. No Girls Allowed.

I feel compassion around now for browbeaten "Christians" who work so hard to avoid being Pagan that they forbid themselves to be Human.

But She is there for you, anyway.

Oh Hell

My name is little Bongo*
I sing my little song-0 ...

________________

*No ears were eaten in the making of this post.
It appears that there never was but the one.
Apparently these things happen.

Rural Gods III: The Empire of Bubbahotep

The Emperor Bubba-Hotep

His historic empire* stretched from Maryland to Missouri. Some say it still does.

He and his sons and brothers and nephew-sons and cousin-daughters took to their legions of gravesites and sacred groves an assortment and volume of grave goods and offerings seen nowhere else.

Any attempt to sink a fence post, trench an asparagus bed, bury an ex-sheep, cut firewood, clear brush or delve an ancient manure pile becomes an archaeological investigation nearly guaranteed to be stopped dead by Bubba-Hotep's barely-submerged treasures. Every ravine of Appalachia is replete with his sacred tithes, the mystical middens into which sacrifices were tipped in the conviction that they'd "go away" if dumped "down the crick."

His artifacts are glass shards, bedsprings, steel roofing, mysterious and shapeless chunks of corroded sheet metal, ominous and rusted steel drums, bricks, shingles, angle-iron and machine parts, whole implements, rotting timbers, blasted fragments of clay pigeons, cat skeletons, tractor tires, broken cinder blocks, the occasional near-complete vehicle, and wire.

Fence wire -- smooth, barbed, woven, welded -- was the signature medium of his court craftsmen. Embedded in tree trunks, sagging from tree to post to ground, stretched at tripwire height through the woods, heaped and tangled amid the brambles and vines at the edge of pastures waiting to ensnare any mower deck or horse's hoof that dares profane the sacred site.

Our farm woodlot is privileged to host an especially hallowed monument, the Convertible of Bubba-Hotep's Favorite Nephew.

Teams make new discoveries every day; most recently, a wire hoard that rivals the Sutton Hoo treasure.

Being the third in a series of revelations concerning the powerful deities who govern rural life. Iconography by the inimitable Kelly Bahmer-Brouse.

___________

* Many thanks to Friend o' the Blog Linda Kaim for introducing us to the Empire of Bubba-Hotep and its artifacts.

Photo Phriday: Runway

Takes about thirty yards for one of these to get airborne.

Rural Gods II: The Sex-Change Fairy

The Sex-Change Fairy and her peeps Y-Gor and The Mighty ZedWu

Y-Gor and his sister The Mighty ZedWu determine the biological sex, and sometimes socially-constructed gender, of livestock, governing mammals and poultry, respectively.

If the farmer is raising Thanksgiving turkeys for a customer pool who mostly want giant celebratory tom birds to wow the inlaws, ZedWu will arrange for 80% of the "straight-run" poults she bought to be dainty little hens. Y-Gor will will do the same for the beef producer hoping for steer calves from his cows.

But if the farmer is working to build a dairy herd of goats or cattle, or a productive laying flock of chickens, these gender daemons will bless her with a neverending bounty of male offspring.


The farmer who has pinned his herd improvement hopes on a fine and expensive purebred ram or bull or buck may find that he's gone and bought a gay stud. Y-Gor is nothing if not playful.

ZedWu and Y-Gor always aim for balance. If they have blessed your henhouse with an entire hatch of leghorn roosters, you can be sure that your next litter of production pigs will all be gilts. They are nothing if not fair.

If their efforts fail to to impose this balance, the Sex-Change Fairy will step in. Her powers are mostly limited to rabbits (as well as pet rodents) and all poultry.

Save the four does from a litter of meat rabbits, make hassenpfeffer of the bucks, and one month later you are sure to find three of the "does" fighting amongst themselves, trying to bite one another in the ... testicles? Where the hell did those come from? The fourth bunny will be underaged-pregnant by one or all of her new brothers.

Noticing that your hens are looking bedraggled and put-upon, you eat or sell most of your date-raping roosters, drakes, and toms.

Look into the poultry yard a week later. When did that hen turkey start strutti ... is that a beard? Goddammit. Did that pullet just crow? What the ...


When the Sex-Change Fairy does not work her enchantment on the gonads (and combs, hackle-feathers, beards, spurs and attitudes) of your flock, she enlists the help of her corporeal minions, mobilizing the raccoons, owls, and Jack Russell terriers of the world to slaughter only female poultry, preferably those that are sitting on nests.

Being the second in a series of revelations concerning the powerful deities who govern rural life. Iconography by the inimitable Kelly Bahmer-Brouse.

New Year

Some years ago, I basked in a holiday-time compliment from a fellow trainer, who lauded my "ability to make dogs wear antlers without them looking beaten."

Seems that that mojo has worn off this year, alas.

May 2011 see many sparkly things, and very few beatings, for you and yours.

News from English Shepherd Land

English Shepherd Club

The 2011 English Shepherd calendar is available from the English Shepherd Club for $14 (ESC members) or $17 (non-members). Order here. Volume discounts available.

This gorgeous calendar features ES from around the world, including many of our beloved rescue ES. It is a major fundraiser for the ESC, a 501(c)3 non-profit incorporated for the conservation of the English shepherd dog as a heritage agricultural resource.

While you're there, now is the time to renew your membership for 2011, or apply for membership if you are not already one. (Join now and get the member price on your calendars.)

NESR

The National English Shepherd Rescue 2010 cookbook is also on sale. Shepherds in the Kitchen: 483 Recipes to the Rescue is available for $20 here.



Yep, almost five hundred recipes for $20 -- about four cents a recipe. Hell, it costs me that much to print one out. And it's the only way you are going to get my chili recipe, or my famous marinara.

While you are on the order page, check out the other items that benefit NESR's work rescuing and rehoming English shepherds in need -- jewelry, decals, and the great martingale collars with side-release clips (hard-to-find item!) made by the vendor who supplied them for the ONB dogs. And visit the NESR Cafe Press shop.

Mark Your New ESC 2011 Calendar

Please come!

June 11-12, 2011 will be the first Brandywine Farm English Shepherd Gathering in Harmony, PA (16037).

What's a Gathering?

Two days of education, fun, food, networking, socializing, and celebration of (and with) the dogs we love.

I've been to Gatherings in Ohio, North Carolina, Ontario, Montana and California. Each one was different, each had activities tailored to the venue. The larger gatherings attracted ES and their humans from all over North America.

At Brandywine Farm, we are fortunate to be able to rent the township park and community center that abuts our hayfield -- giving us the entire farm, plus the community center's historic schoolhouse (with kitchen and bathrooms), picnic pavilion, baseball field, playground, and parking.

Activities planned include CGC testing, a SAR demonstration, agility, a silent auction to benefit NESR, lectures on breed history and conservation, obedience fun drills, and, if we have the fencing and stock squared away by then, a stockwork clinic. (I've already ordered new ducks for the occasion; we're working on the sheep.)

There will be two days of potluck picnicking, and a barbeque of Brandywine Farm pastured Freedom Ranger chicken. As those who are wise enough to order the NESR cookbook will soon discern, English shepherd people take their cooking seriously. I generally waddle away from Gathering potlucks with a smile on my face.

You can come for one or both days.

There are a variety of camping and dog-friendly motel accommodations nearby.

You do not need to own an English shepherd to come. The ES community is a friendly crowd, and we welcome friends of the breed, the curious, and all who have an interest in conserving heritage breeds. No one will check your dog's pedigree at the door, and all well-behaved dogs are welcomed.

If you have a Facebook account, you can RSVP or keep up on developments at the Brandywine Farm Gathering's FB page. I'll be adding a page to this blog with schedule and particulars as they develop.

Happy Halloween!

What? Too soon?

From

Photo Phriday: Steam

James seemed to need to blow off some steam after the sheepdog trials last weekend, and Cole was game.

I was concerned about the intensity of the two boys; it's uncommon for this kind of dog to do full contact well with dogs they have just met. But it did not get out of hand. There was a lot of the game I call whodaman?, but it was all in good fun. (Whodabitch? is never, ever, in good fun.)

James' owner told me that he never gets into scraps, and also that he is a border collie. He qualified for the nationals, so, okay.

Although it looks like she is functioning as Fun Police in this photo, Pip actually joined in and wrestled with James. Pip! You think you know someone ...

Angels and Daemons

Rosie is Evil.

It's not the only thing that defines her, but it's a strong thread in the warp of Rosiness.

We knew she was evil by the time she was about five weeks old. Pip knew she was evil; Rosie was the single pup elected for 90% of the Momma-delivered
ass-kickingsloving discipline out of a field of eight worthy candidates. The two people in the universe to whom I was willing to sell her -- exactly because they were able to recognize that she is evil -- chose non-evil brothers. Who can blame them?

So we kept her. All in all, it has been a pretty good match.

We understand that Rosie's agenda is all about Rosie -- what Rosie likes to do, what Rosie wants to get, Rosie's opinion about any given situation, generally what's in it for Rosie today.

Rosie understands that if she steps too far over the line, there will be consequences for over-indulging her evil nature.

Fortunately, Rosie's genetics and upbringing predispose her to want certain useful-to-us things. She wants to work, and to work in partnership with a person. That's programmed in, not much subject to choice. She wants to crack kneecaps and suppress chaos, in conformity with her farmdog/enforcer genes, and we have stroppy livestock that needs that done. She wants to drive off intruders, and on the farm, there are plenty of four-legged (and aerial) trespassers that need to be escorted to the boundaries or else killed and eaten. She wants to find people and tell me about her achievement, and is willing to work damned hard to succeed at the job she was literally born to. She wants to snuggle and be fussed over, and we like snuggly dogs. She wants to meet new people and bend them to her will, and strangers mistake that for sweetness and oblige her by fussing over and petting her and complimenting us on her "friendliness." Rosie's first SAR assignment came when she was about 12 weeks old; she went with two teammates as they interviewed the runaway kids' friends at boot camp, and suckered them into talking by deploying her puppy innocent shtick. (She elicits what I call the My Little Pony response in little girls, who cannot keep their hands off of her; if I do not supervise closely, her tail will be in braids and she will be dyed purple and covered in glitter.)

So, since Rosie is evil, and intelligent, and useful, and since we see her for what she is, we get along great. We love Rosie -- adore her, really. And very likely, deep in her black little conniving heart, she loves us in her fashion.

The trouble comes in two ways.

First, Rosie's interests are not always our interests, but her commitment to pursuing them is nearly full-time and quite energetic and ingenious.

She decided, for her own reasons, that one of our foster dogs needed to be gone last winter, and waited for an opportunity to Make That Happen.

It was bad enough that I took Jasmine to another foster home. Rosie got her way, which was Not A Good Thing; but it was more important that Jasmine could finish her behavioral rehab in a place where another bitch did not have a hit out on her. We will be working more with Rosie on the topic of You Don't Get a Vote on Foster Dogs. Nor does she get to snark at innocuous strange dogs at social and professional gatherings -- an experiment she commenced when she was ten weeks old and to which she keeps returning.

Also, tantrums because Rosie has to wait to work at SAR training while other dogs get their turn -- consequences for those. Pushing visitors around. Making young Cole her bitch, even if he does have a smile on his face. Guarding people from their own dogs. These are things we have to stay on top of.

Second, other people get upset when we matter-of-factly share the reality of Rosie's Evil Nature.

At a professional conference last year, another trainer complained to my friend that she didn't see why I had the dog at all, since I never expressed any love or affection for her -- apparently hanging her upside down while crooning about what a Vile Little Bitch she is didn't qualify as "affection," though Rosie sees it differently. Lately, people who barely know Rosie -- but on whom she has employed the Jedi Mind Trick* -- have argued vehemently that "She's just a misunderstood Sweetie-Pie."

Gag. Can you people not see that a sweet, "innocent" face is the perfect camouflage?

Had you considered that by denying the possibility of puppy evilocity, you trivialize all genuine canine virtue?

And can you not see that True Love comes only from knowledge of True Nature? All else is fantasy.

So we have Rosie, who is Evil, and her mother Pip, who is only a little bit Evil when it amuses her, and her brother Moe, who can seem Evil when he is hurting, but is not. Before them there was Mel, who strove harder to be Good than anyone I ever met, and who skipped right past Good into Heroic Greatness, and Lilly, born saintly and smug and judgmental -- the glare from her frikken' halo could get to be A Bit Much at times.

In addition to each dog's inborn or acquired place on the Good - Evil spectrum, they are and were each unique individuals, souls who will never be duplicated, complex beings with unique genetics interacting with unique experience, agents with free will. Themselves, not simple archetypes.

When we are telling or writing the story of a dog -- reducing him to narrative -- he cannot interrupt and correct us. No, it never happened that way, and I'm not really like that. Like the dead, the dog has no voice. Unlike most dead humans, he often has few independent witnesses to contradict an owner's choice of adjectives.

So there's a special responsibility to try to minimize projection -- to avoid making the dog a stand-in for some part of ourselves, or something we need, or some quality we idealize or loathe. To control the pathological urge to subsume the animal's identity into our own.

It's especially lazy to reduce the dog to a thoughtless cliche that doesn't even apply to him.

The golden retriever who would literally go with anyone and never look back -- please don't tell me how "loyal" your dog is. You didn't give that adjective one second's earnest consideration.

If your Chihuadoodle is hiding behind your legs and yapping, please stop characterizing him as "protective."

Just because your Dane has a huge head and a weak heart that makes him phlegmatic and unreactive does not mean he is "noble."

If you fail to train, manage, and provide appropriate medical care for a fearful and reactive dog, then convenience-kill him when the inevitable keeps happening, is it too much to refrain from (lucratively) proclaiming that he's your soul-mate?

And if your dog is hyperactive, untrained, ill-led, and obviously poorly-matched with you, this does not make him an amusingly "bad" dog, though it speaks volumes about you.

Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

This came home to my gut recently when a friend sent a link to a cringe-inducing memorial blog about a dead dog.

Reading the posts by the dog's owner, I came away with virtually no intentionally-communicated useful information about the dog.

Here's some dog descriptors from a truly painful series of posts:

Brilliant
Hero
Inspiration
Sunshine
Salvation
Love
Rescuer
Fuzzy body pillow
Noble
Loyal
Honest
Best friend
My inspiration
My hope
Gift

Where's the dog?

There's not a single story there that reveals anything about his character, what sort of dog was this, for all the owner's claims that his life was transformative. I cannot discern a single thing the dog accomplished.

"He learned his name while I fed him McNuggets" does not count. Nor does inadvertently flinging a drool gobbet into the vet's open mouth.

Tons of abstract verbiage. But dogs are concrete creatures. What did the dog choose to do? What actions made him an individual?

I am actually hearing a cricket chirping in the corner.**

The Number One hyperbole that this person applies over and over to the dog, without supporting anecdote or evidence, is ...

Angel.

And you can be sure, not any flaming-sword cherubim playing bouncer at the door to the Tree of Life. Not Metatron appearing as a column of fire. Not this kind of angel:



But, in the owner's mind, and only there, this kind:


You see my problem. I'm trying to hold down food here.

So what's an angel, really?

It's an anglicization of the Greek word angelos, meaning "messenger." Which in turn, was used when translating the Hebrew mal'akh, also "messenger." Yahweh's errand-boy -- a being that presents divine pronouncements to mortals. An intermediary creature between heaven and earth, but transmitting one-way.

But the Greeks had another word for what at first appears to be a very similar sort of creature in their own theology.

Daemon.

Now here's a word with some nuance. So much so that its definitions are legion. Think about explaining all that the English word spirit denotes, and you start to grasp the breadth and difficulty.

The thing about a daemon is, whether you personify it as a semi-divine being, identify a person or animal as having daemonic qualities, or abstract it to a immanent quality latent within a person's psyche -- the daemon is not just divinity's shiny white herald. The daemon travels the space between the mundane and the transcendent, and its function is to escort one closer to the divine, without necessarily renouncing the world. You can bring it with you.

The daemon is crepuscular.

It occupies doorways, porches, vestibules, limbos and such spaces that are neither clearly in nor clearly out.

It not only has knowledge of and the ability to sense realities which a human cannot -- it shares those hidden worlds with us and brings us to them.

Socrates dropped a lot of broad hints about daemonic nature, his own, Diotima's, who else might possess one or be possessed, not least by swearing an oath that was unique to him. By the dog! No other Greek employed this oath. But no other Greek was as occupied with elevating and transcending, seeing the unseen and knowing the unknown.

A daemon has some very doglike qualities, both in itself and in its relationship to a human seeker.

And a dog, especially a really good evil dog, can aspire to the daemonic.


------------------------------------------

*Like virtually all English shepherd bitches, Rosie is a Master of the Jedi Mind Trick. Except, you know, more Sith than Jedi.

So, background: Far too many owners of ES and other genius dogs are unaware of the Power that the Force has over Weak Minds.

My friend Douglas explains it thusly: One day, you will find yourself sitting on the floor watching Animal Planet while feeding popcorn over your shoulder to the dog who is relaxing on the sofa. And you will suddenly grasp the consciousness that you have no idea how you came to this -- you thought it was your idea, but no, this is not what you want to be doing. At that moment, you will feel a cold nose on your neck, reminding you that someone wants more popcorn. Oh.

** This is literally true; there's a cricket making a racket over by my closet door, and no dog wants to get up and eat him. Possibly the cricket is cover for a closet monster.

Photo courtesy of Rob McMillin. Evil Rosie is Evil.

Photo Phriday: Aerial Invader

Our neighbor swears that the first hundred feet of airspace is ours.

We are regularly invaded in the summer by this commercial endeavor



Scenic, sure, but it frightens the livestock, and the dogs hate it. They all leap to their feet, barking emphatically, when they hear the whuumph of the burner in the distance.



Rosie has developed a three-dimensional case of Mailman Syndrome.

She and Pip chase through the hayfield barking, snarling, and leaping into the air.

And the balloon runs away every single time. Success!



Next time, she will surely jump high enough to catch the trespasser.

Goat Day 2010

By popular demand, photos of Goat Day 2010



If you have trouble viewing the slideshow, you can check the Picasa album here

Sangria was consumed, mostly by the hostess, and a couple of last year's McNuggets returned from freezer camp for their charcoal debut. There was much pie.

Small goats provided entertainment.

And young Cole began his progression from poultry-herding hound to real stockdog.

He has so far hung back from the goats, because (unwitnessed, but easily surmised) encounters with their electric fence has convinced him that all goats come with a painful force-field.

So we put him in the x-pen with the kids, and when we let the kids out to romp some more, we put Rosie and Sophia in the house so they wouldn't bogart the goatiness.

Cole decided that since the goatboys had been in the x-pen for a while, they were supposed to stay there. So he started penning them -- with very appropriate gentleness.

We closed the pen, let the kids wander a little further, and he started (spontaneously) to gather them to me. Clearly was concerned about keeping them grouped, and stopped to think when they split. (Goats flock poorly; sheep are much better for training dogs. But goats is what I gots.)

I got two (self-directed) pens, two gathers, a snappy down when he got too excited, and a look-back when he lost one kid on the second gather. And then we stopped for the day. Asking for anything more would be unconscionably greedy, and court disaster.

Six More Weeks? The Deuce, You Say!

The Weather Service would not commit yesterday. You might get a foot of snow. Or maybe about four inches. Who can say?


You bastards.

So, turns out, it might have been a good idea to bestir ourselves after Perfesser Chaos' last fire call last night and plow out the driveway when we had only 11 inches.

Because Tractor-San is a game little thing, but we cannot even raise the blade high enough that it does not act as an anchor.

A man might come tomorrow to extract us. I'm not sure what it's going to cost us. We've actually jumped the queue on account of PK being a firefighter. Even though his substation is only about a quarter mile away, he can't get there fast enough on snowshoes to make the truck when the pager goes off. Depending on where I sink the yardstick, we've got between 18-22 inches, and are going nowhere.

Meanwhile, we still have power, there's oil in the tanks, wood in the shed, plenty of toilet paper, half a case of home brew, a whole case of Mexican Coca-Cola, two bottles of rum, 80 pounds of beef scrap for dogs, and a couple new Netflix on hand.

Four pairs of snowshoes, two pairs of skis, a case of toe warmers, and a gallon of gatorade.

Two feet of fresh powder sounds wonderful. What it really is is a shitload of work.

Sophia actually did some of the trail-breaking, but she is not particularly skilled at route-choosing, and tends to porpoise in aimless circles. Mostly it was up to Perfesser Chaos. The English shepherds were happy to hang back and let The Help perform this function.


Even where the trail was broken, the smaller ES had to porpoise to get through.


I only fell once. It's actually pretty hard to fall when the snow is over your knees, but the concealed tripwire brambles in the pasture finally had their say. Getting back up is not a straightforward exercise when one's skis are five-foot snow anchors. I got plenty of helpful advice on how to manage this task from the non-ski-wearing Peanut Gallery.

I think Cole might be carrying half his weight in snow dingles here. He also got to relive the testicle experience in gigantic ice form. It wasn't as good as he remembered.


Interesting that Barry White, who braved the same drifts, collected nothing. I think he repelled the dingles with force of will. He's never going to suffer that indignity again.

There were few game trails apparent, and only in protected lee areas. I'm hoping our trail-breaking will be a boon to the wildlife -- except for the tiny tunnelers and the hibernators, a snow dump like this one makes hard times for wild creatures. Our route coincidentally connects the deer bedding area in the pines on our north boundary with our neighbor's unharvested cornfield to the west. I figure that by February, that corn is forfeit to the local Bambis. I filled two feeders with safflower seeds and black oil sunflower, and hung out some more suet.

I opened the window for the turkeys to come out. Yeah, I was just messin' with 'em. They knew it, and did not take the bait.

Interesting that wild turkeys manage to survive even though their feet sometimes touch snow.

One hour of porpoising through snow higher than their backs has given us a houseful of very quiet dogs tonight.

Irregularly Scheduled Programming

Perfesser Chaos has hooked me with repeated contact buzzes on this highly-addictive British ... well, let's call it a "car" program.

Actually, what it is is bunch of entertaining man-boy idiots who are having way too good a time playing with toys that go vroom.

I particularly enjoyed their take this week on the question "Did communism ever produce a decent car?"



Check out the four-way race that is introduced at about the 4:05 mark.

If the show was filmed in the US (which it never could be, because American man-boy idiots do not know how to be entertaining -- they always just go for the dick joke) I'd say the second-place finisher was an English shepherd.

My guess is he's one of the dogs they call "working collies" in the UK, perhaps considered a border collie, perhaps not.

Photo Phriday: Snow Day

It just keeps coming.

Dogs = happy
Chickens = extremely PO'd

Cats have balls?

Is neutering your pet Metal?



I just received an email from a correspondent who had to admit defeat with one of my reflexive pop-culture references.

I must concede that a couple of forty-somethings who record the cartoons on Adult Swim so we can watch them the next night before our bedtime may be fairly characterized as displaying some degree of arrested development.

I have a justification for that!

It's my experience that the pendulum swing away from witless fad orthodoxy is led, and often defined, by satire.

And the most culturally influential -- or culturally indicative -- satire is this kind of hip, edgy, youth-oriented mockery.

We just found out that cats have balls too.

Could there be a more perfect distillation of the reflexive, brain-damaged, knowledge-free regurgitation of a passively received dogma than Nathan Explosion's single sincere-and-oblivious sentence?

It's way better than some old fart like me railing about the anorexic celebutard who poses naked for PeTA, then wears a pair of shoes made from the hide of an endangered lizard, which is okay 'cuz lizards aren't cuddly and it was already dead.

Along with countless other pop-culture mavens, the writers of Metalocalypse are finding the stupid and smugly milking it for entertainment.

Smug on, boys and girls.

Because the laughter evokes a question in the minds of the laughers. And that's all the truth -- nuanced, messy, data-dependent truth -- needs to get into those minds and fertilize a thought.

Anniversary

One year from the day that Cole, Jasmine, and Barry White were confiscated from the abusive hands of their former owner:

Eat it Cold

Another fantastic PSA from the Norwegian Association of the Blind:



I would so raise a guide dog puppy for these guys.