In the Flow and Thankful

When we lived in the cold north, we maintained a suburban organic farmette. For us, Thanksgiving Day had traditional significance. It was tied to harvest and larder and thanks were given for those. It also marked the beginning of a significant change. Dropping temperatures had moved the season’s crops underground or to the compost pile, wood had been split and brought to the house. And by Thanksgiving, our lives would be doing the big flip-flop. Rather than being outdoors most hours of the day, we’d be indoors – inert and unstimulated in the still and never-changing monotony of the house. This was always a very difficult adjustment. It was a contracture of the living experience - in daylight hours, in activity and in spontaneity and wonderment. The dogs had a hard time of it too. Each season, we'd have another opportunity to learn to accept and allow this inevitability.

We were fortunate enough to live among all manner of wildlife. White-tail deer traversed our property often, stopping sometimes to pick pears and apples off our trees. Brand new fawns on wobbly legs and with undeveloped sight would sometimes walk right toward us, mistaking us for conspecifics. Big foxes came out of the woods during the day to sun themselves in the field next door, scratching and yawning, and perennial gardens and woodpiles were abuzz with the movements of rabbits, chipmunks, mice and snakes. Every moment was rich and new and this was thrilling to the core; it helped me to recognize the ceaseless flow and to perceive the very essence of a thing. I’d go out at last light and catch a few bees to put under row covers, petting the fat bumbles’ fuzzy backs as they clung to lavender stalks. Thirstily drinking in all that remained of the day, the dogs would follow me, checking every place and sniffing hard and loud for the critters who were stirring there. They knew the land like I did – in a natural, organic way that comes from within and from countless generations of forebears who considered themselves to be not of it or in it, but as it.

This year, nearby farmers grow what I eat and I’m thankful for them and the way they honor the soil that nurtures my food. And I’m thankful for you! As a reader of this blog you are also a farmer of sorts – you honor the soul and nurture the whole of the dog at your side. Through your willingness to release your concepts, biases and propositions of fact, you cultivate and harvest bountiful animalistic possibility. And you place yourself in harmony with the genuine canine being and the ceaseless flow of rich and riotous expression that is life – natural and organic.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Get Back Out There!

My shoes left my feet in two quick steps. They stopped moving and I didn’t and now the mud that held them firmly in place was pushing up between my toes. I immediately considered the experience to be most unpleasant. I swiveled around to survey the quickest way out and there beside my empty shoes was the dog. He had followed me right in. Up to our hocks in mud, we stood for a moment looking at each other. He appeared to be smiling. In fact, it was easy to see that he was pretty happy. It wasn’t because he was standing in mud, of that fact he seemed oblivious. He was happy because he was outside, free to run, to follow and free to stand wherever he pleased.

My own happy connections to the natural world came flashing to mind. As a child, I swam in rivers, played barefoot in the forest, raised tadpoles and orphaned baby birds, captured bugs (all scientifically classified as “jar flies”) and held respectful funeral services for dearly departed foundlings. I would be called into the house at last light, never wanting to surrender. I thought of the free-roaming dogs I knew back then. They were always ready for adventure, completely present and alive with possibility. I had grown older and somehow, nature had begun to shrink away from me. Or maybe it was the other way around.


Our natural heritage

We are an interconnected part of a natural reality that extends from the soil below our feet, around the globe, and out into the cosmos. We are in tune with its energetic modulations, its cycles, balance and perfection. We would not have evolved into the beings we are today without the hyper-keen awareness and full engagement of the senses that result from living in a natural world. In constantly changing environments we developed perceptual acuity and the ability to react swiftly to stress. Inattentiveness would have left us vulnerable to predation and caused us to miss opportunities to feed and shelter ourselves. Our direct involvement with the world and its elements expanded our view of self and reality outward, rooting us and connecting us to all that was known.

Dogs are also creatures of the great natural systems and their sense of identity is drawn through a deep and abiding connection to them. Their ancient role within those systems is part of their genetic material. No matter how we have morphed them—shrinking, stylizing and stretching them—their utter lack of access to natural environments deprives them fundamentally as it deprives us.

As they develop, dogs will find outlets for their inherent expressions in rich and changing environments. Engaging the flow of time with attentive awareness, they continuously orient themselves to their surroundings and this enables them to structure responses, anticipate consequences and adjust activities accordingly. Rich and variable living environments are constantly in motion, always changing and subtlety unique. In them, dogs express and inhabit the integrity of their being, demonstrating confident stability, inquisitive exploration, playful interaction and exploratory manipulation. They deliberately create opportunities to try out new things and have novel experiences. Their activities demonstrate purpose, enjoyment and an apprehension of life’s meaningfulness. These choices and alternatives for creative engagement fill them with a sense of belonging. Sadly, this is rarely available to a developing canine today.


A Connection Lost

Increasingly, our view of the natural world is artificial and abstract. We have marched out of nature and into the confines of built structures. We have filled our heads with facts and information and the world has become small in our knowing. The rich and riotous, spontaneous and surprising natural world has been replaced by the flat reality of computer and television screens. The living animals we do see are confined in zoo enclosures. We enjoy landscapes as they pass by the windows of our cars. We take walks on manufactured surfaces. Many of us spend as much as 95 percent of our lives indoors. Our homes are swept, kept, monotonous and routine. What we consider to be the “outdoors” is most often an overmanaged green space that is lifeless and sterile. We are the only beings who move within these environments; all other creatures have been banished. And into this predictable, empty reality, we have brought the dog.

A loss of primary experience—seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting and touching for ourselves—diminishes and tunnels the senses. Inventiveness, creativity, imagination, intellectual development and physical and psychological well-being are suppressed and dulled. Our immune systems become impaired. This is a deprivation syndrome, often referred to as “natural-system dysfunction.” It results in a loss of our innate protective and supportive senses and rhythms. When interactions with the world of living forms are severely restricted, a natural animal’s true essence fades and contracts. Loss of experiential diversity leads to understimulation, then loneliness, boredom, depression and feelings of alienation, vulnerability, isolation and hostility. As experience diminishes, life can lose its meaning. Out of sync and out of touch with something profoundly vital, we try to compensate by engaging in mind-numbing activities or physically rewarding sensations. We attempt to satisfy ourselves with artificial substitutions ranging from shopping to thrill-seeking.

Losing the ability to recognize plants, animals and insects, we can no longer imagine the creature who scratches through the brush in the evening or the ones calling out from moist and shady places. And dogs, once knowing every small mammal that tunnels, nests, burrows and climbs, and learning their movement patterns, scavenging behaviors and fleetness, now know only our habits. Once able to identify the sounds made by all manner of life in their proximity, today’s dogs know the sounds made by televisions, doorbells and kitchen appliances. Dogs can actually associate scent particles to the animals who leave them, follow a scent trail great distances and scan the breeze to identify the animals nearby. Living inside our homes, their olfactory receptors are overwhelmed by artificial fragrances and chemical aromas.

We have lost a sense of kinship with nature, detached ourselves from other humans and depersonalized our experience of life. This might explain our growing obsession with dogs who actually represent a vital link to an ancient intimacy with the natural world. Maybe deep inside, we are hoping that they can show us the way back.


Bust Out

Take that dog in your life and release yourselves from the synthetic energy of asphalt and concrete to take up a wilderness trail, climb a hill or dip your toes in a gurgling stream. As you reestablish a connection with your electromagnetic and biological source, balance is restored and the rejuvenating effects can be felt. Natural senses will enliven and sensitivity increase. You’ll gain a sense of belonging to the greater whole and the weight of individual worries and concerns will fall away.

Bust out into the astonishing eruption of nature that can be found in the sunshine beyond your doors. Seek outlets for expression of the characteristics and abilities that makes a dog uniquely a dog and your living experience will be enriched in the process. Start small and work your way outward. Start safe and become more fearless. Begin on a modest schedule and make a plan to increase it gradually. Look under rocks. Walk on a cushiony pine-forest floor. Let the dog poke her muzzle into bushes, chew a stick, dig a hole and gather scents into her fur. Don’t be afraid to stand in some mud as you explore nature together. In the soul of her being, the dog does know the way back.

What Does The Dog Want?

Have you ever asked the dog in your life this question? Seriously! Have you made an earnest inquiry of him to learn what drives him, what thrills him, what he likes and dislikes and what he desires? The truth is that few us have ever thought to ask a dog such questions. We generally believe them incapable of answering and we think that we know everything about them anyway. But this information can’t come from us. It can’t come from a book or from anyone else who lives with a dog. We must go to the source to learn what more a dog wants than a cookie. I can get you started with some questions to ask by sharing what Jack has told me.

The dog in my life wants to smell, investigate, taste, roll in, look at, chase, catch and sometimes kill and in all ways experience the things he finds in nature. He tells me that he feels most alive when he is a critically aware participant in the astonishing eruption of life that spontaneously explodes around him and through him when he is free in the world of living forms. This is not a toxic patch of yard or an over-managed green space he’s talking about. This is scrub and bramble, log and moss; this is where the wild things live and access to it is worth far more than a cookie to Jack.

Jack wants his life to be inspiring, full, fun and rich and if it can’t be lived in nature’s playground, he wants me to fill in the blanks. He wants to do stuff! He wants to find hidden treasures, play action, intelligence and suspense games; he wants to toss, catch and tug. He wants to smell, eat and see new things. He wants to go places where stuff happens. He wants to meet other canines and find out where they’ve been. He wants to engage in social interactions with them – participating in the traditions and communications that have been millions of years in the making. He wants to surf the far ends of polarity, arousing and diffusing in rich play-games with conspecifics. For Jack, these things are worth far more than a cookie.

The dog at my side wants to think independently. He wants to choose actions that serve his canineness, his inclinations and his desires. He wants to express his animal nature and to self-actualize as the being that he is. He can think, decide, choose and make associations, and he gets causality. He wants to react to stimuli as a dog would. He wants the opportunity to answer my petitions for activity, interaction and behavior without being prompted, pushed, handled or managed into an expected response. All of this is worth much more than a cookie to Jack.

Jack wants my conscious awareness when I interact with him. He wants me to have enough attentiveness to really see him. He says that his thoughts and feelings are so transparent that nothing is hidden if I would only look at him in this way. He wants me to be acutely aware of his expressions so I can be an effective guardian of his emotional wellbeing. He wants me to be present when I’ve asked something of him and when we were doing things together so that I can participate with him fully – alive, spontaneous and creatively joyful. He wants to choose whether or not strangers get to put their big mits onto his body and he wants to decide which dogs he'd like to greet while out on walks. He wants all this much more than he wants a cookie.

He wants to be dealt with fairly and kindly. He says that this is easily accomplished if I would always remember that he thinks and he feels and that everything I do, say, feel and don’t do, he perceives; he is not a piece of furniture. If I plan to end our play, he wants a little conclusion ceremony. It’s a real bummer when I suddenly turn my back and walk away. If I plan to turn right while we are walking along tied to each other, he wants me to let him know so that he doesn’t have to get dragged about by the neck. If I must leave him behind, he’d like a little discussion about when I’ll be back because the sounds of certainty and assurance in my gibberish make him feel better about me leaving. If there is something I want him to know that he hasn’t yet learned, he wants me to teach him with patience, giving him lesson plans that are easily accomplished. He wants this type of regard much more than he wants a cookie.

Jack also wants to feel safe and secure when he is inside the cage that I call our home. He wants me to refrain from getting angry in there and from shouting at the other two-legger or at the television. He wants me to modulate my feelings (for both our sakes) and behave evenly so he knows what to expect. He wants our cage to be free of unpredictable, drunk and upset visitors. He wants to know that he’ll have water and food and he wants to eat things that don’t come out of a bag. He wants this more than he wants a cookie.

And, Jack does want cookies. He wants to enjoy them as a being fulfilled. He does not want cookies that are offered as a gesture of apology or as surrogates for all the other things he wants and is not given.

The Last Free Dog

Lola died today. She was barely a year old. She ran across the street to greet some passing joggers and was hit by a car. It happened so quickly. Like most dogs living in the modern world, Lola didn’t know anything about cars. In a way, that’s a strange reality. Back when we had far fewer cars, dogs knew that they were dangerous and could skillfully avoid them. I’ve known these dogs. In fact, the last one I came to know—the last free dog—was the one who marked the standard for what the natural animal might become.

Chigger Road

There were no leash laws and the open range had been closed only three years prior to me finding myself in a small town in Oklahoma. The dogs I came to know there lived either on ranches and farms or in and around town. In either case, most were free to go where they wished and to do as they pleased. I spent time on working cattle ranches where dogs served in a variety of useful roles. Through their own natural inclinations they invented many of their jobs, like keeping opossums out of the barn and assisting in the herding of beef calves for vaccination and castration. They followed the ranch hands who rode out daily to check on stock and when they weren’t otherwise engaged, they would often explore the vast acreage together. The dogs who lived near me, closer to town, were also explorers. Most were in some way attached to a house or family but few were ever allowed inside. Some were lean and some looked as though they enjoyed some dinner scraps. Most were dirty and heavy with ticks each spring and fall. There were a variety of sizes and only a few resembled any particular breed. They roamed the environs in and around Chigger Road and made use of what they could find to satisfy their interests and stay alive. I offered incentives to encourage introductions, as I had done with the free-roaming suburban dogs of my youth. Word spread fast that I was giving attention and edibles to those who happened by and the shade of my front porch became a popular destination.

Among those who made use of my generosity was a black-and-white, freckled hound-of-a-dog. He was tall and lean, with flopped ears and a long, straight tail. I can’t say that he was handsome; he wasn’t. He would take food and sit next to me but would suffer no touching of any kind. I watched what I could of his activities and noticed him in a variety of places as I drove or rode my horse around the outskirts of town. He was independent and resourceful, wise and confident. No one I asked knew for sure, but a few thought that his name was Sando or Sandy.

The Canine-Created Life

Independent life presents its own pressures and one is the weather. Outdoor dogs often don’t survive the icy cold Oklahoma winters. Some of the Chigger Road dogs managed to stay warm by burrowing under a house or sneaking into a barn. I’d look for Sandy on the coldest nights and invite him inside for warmth and a meal. In the days that followed, he would bring things to my doorstep, well-selected items. Gifts perhaps, a way to thank me for my kindness? I would see him coming down the road with a plastic container, ribbon and other objects from trash tins and burn piles and then open my door to find it. While I was sure he was killing most of what he ate and needed to eat what he killed, he also gifted me with freshly dispatched squirrel and rabbit. Sometimes he would be there in the shade as I opened the door to find my surprise but most often he would be headed off on other business.

Having the ability to pass on his befreckeled, houndy appearance to offspring, Sandy often went journeying. The puppies he sired would surely have inherited his natural nature-intelligence, his cleverness and the ability to survive the extremes of hot and cold, lean and plenty, invitation and expulsion – qualities that helped a dog to be successful in a free life. He would return from his amorous adventures more thin then ever and spend long days in the company of the other canine visitors in the shade of my porch. When he was around, he would follow me often and seemed to know my habits, suddenly appearing in the places I regularly visited. He sat beside me in the failing light as I watched my horses in the pasture across the street. With confidence and grace, he became the patriarch of a family of a dozen or so “sooners”1 who found their way to food and affection at the first house on the left, Chigger Road.

I was constantly amazed at the ways in which Sandy imaginatively created and expressed the canine life. He was an explorer of the moment’s opportunities, intensely aware and incredibly involved in the spontaneous unfolding of life. He seemed to miss nothing in his wide world and by watching him I came to know when skunks were under the tack room floor and when the neighbor’s goat was up in the barn trying to pry the lids off the feed bins. He kept track of the movements of the nocturnal animals, following their scent trails in the dewy grass at dawn. If some had relocated into areas where he didn’t want them, he would expel them immediately.

In all of my observations of him, I would never see Sandy reach any type of physical, mental or emotional extreme. He was a portrait of stability and consistency. His range of actions and reactions arose from the confidence one might expect of a being who knows exactly how he fits into the scheme of reality – giving and taking by divine privilege and in divine service. He was a model of harmony and adaptability. His life seemed sure and suspended in some blessed state of neutrality where all was allowed and all forgiven, where each new moment was free of the weight of the one just past. I would never forget these observations. They would influence my journey through life and affect the living reality of the dogs with whom I would come to share it.

The long and unbroken line of resilient survivors that produced Sandy is gone now. In most places, dogs like him were methodically ushered off the streets; done away with or sterilized. Today’s dogs, like Lola, come from generations of forebears who have lived inside of homes where the most significant danger is an angry human. They have been created to meet little more than standards of appearance. These dogs don’t have knowledge of the world that we have made. They are completely dependant upon us to make all their decisions for them.


1. The term “Sooner” was used to describe a settler who entered the unassigned land located in what is now the state of Oklahoma before it was officially proclaimed to be open. The name derived from the "sooner clause" of the Indian Appropriation Act of 1889 which stated that no one should be allowed to enter and occupy the land prior to its official opening time. It came to be used to describe a dog of uncertain lineage, as in “He might just as soon be this breed as that.”

Predators

The dog came upon a pair of Muscovy ducks resting in the shade. He crouched and slowly stalked toward them, taking careful steps, punctuated by pauses with one front leg raised. The large male was closest to the dog, the female a few yards beyond. As the dog crept closer, the big drake rose and began to move. He slowly took a few steps to the right. The dog responded by moving to the right and a little forward. The Muscovy turned and moved to the left; the dog matched his movement and crept closer. The big drake changed direction again. Staring intently and slowly stalking, the dog seemed to be engaging his quarry in a synchronized waltz – back and forth and back again.

Suddenly, he broke into a course. The big drake lifted into flight in ample time, but the dog seemed not even to notice. Just beyond, still nestled in the tall grass, was the duck. She hadn’t seen the dog’s rapid advance; it began at the precise moment when the big male’s body blocked the view. By moving the drake into position, not only was the dog able to surprise her, his course was a perfectly arranged straight line from one target to the next. The duck lifted off just as the dog leapt forward to take her. If he had managed to grab her, the struggle would have been interesting. The tiny dog weighed about the same as the duck.

I am partnered with Jack, the little greyhound in this story, and I watched this scene play out. Jack was not taught to execute such a clever hunting strategy; it is simply part of his canine programming. Domestic dogs are descended from free-roaming canids who practiced predation for hundreds of thousands of years. No matter how we have morphed and styled them, stretched and shrunk them, today’s dogs have the tools and often the inherent inclinations to execute some or all of the sequence of predatory behaviors seen in their wild forebears.

Through selective breeding, great emphasis has been placed on a portion of the sequence, resulting in specialization. Tracking dogs search, herding dogs stalk and rush, retrievers rush and grab, sighthounds seek and course, and terriers grab and kill. All dogs possess the ability to finish the sequence with prey of the right size that they are able to catch, but not all actually will.

We often resist and even punish the things dogs do that they are naturally inclined to do and predatory behaviors seem to upset us the most. A dog up the lane killed one of my chickens once. He didn’t eat her. I went to his house with the chicken’s body, intending to ask his people if the dog might be kept from wandering down to my barn. I no sooner got “your dog killed my chicken” out when the man grabbed its lifeless body and began to beat the dog with it.

We seem to forget that dogs are animals or that they are a different species. We have a model of a dog in our mind and he or she is often a huge departure from the actual dog in our life. Jack caught an enormous grasshopper one day. I watched as he ate every bit of it. That turned my stomach but I didn’t try to stop him. He once caught a bird but just held it awhile. I believe that he would kill a squirrel if he got hold of one and maybe a duck. He has dispatched a few sweet anole lizards, abandoning them when they are dearly departed. When I come outside, he will take me to them and show me their little grey bodies. He will give them one more bite. Then, with great excitement, he will move through the foliage, poking with his long muzzle and scratching with both paws, looking for more.

The Toxic Yard

Our yards have shrunk into small rectangles of grass from which all forms of life have been banished or have voluntarily vacated. To maintain a certain standard of appearance, we dispense bagged weed-and-feed products or pay a service to soak these areas with a cocktail of toxic herbicides and pesticides. Some of the over thirty chemicals routinely used on millions of American lawns have been found to cause lymphoma, cysts, leukemia, bladder cancer, neurological diseases, developmental disabilities and increased mortality in canines. In studies of the effects of chlorophenoxy herbicides, dogs were found to be more susceptible to their toxicity due to poor urinary clearance. It took them nearly 100 hours to clear amounts that rats could clear from their systems within about an hour. Curiously, some of the companies that make and dispense these chemicals use images of dogs on their products, marketing materials and vehicles.

The toxins we introduce to beautify our lawns and green spaces find their way inside the dog’s body through airborne particle drift or inhalation, direct skin/body contact or absorption and grooming activities or ingestion. Studies have shown higher levels of herbicides and pesticides in the carpets dogs lie on and in the house dust they inhale than in the soil of their treated yards. When the brains, immune systems and bodies of developing canines are exposed to these chemicals, the resulting damage can have life-long and life-threatening effects. We may not be spraying chemicals ourselves but there is a very good chance our neighbor or community is. Exposure to unhealthy environments can sicken and kill yet it is rarely ever considered to be the cause of the perplexing disease complexes veterinarians see in thousands of dogs annually.

If you don’t consider the beauty of your lawn to be more important than the health of the dog in your life, intend to find a better way. Feed the soil with leaf or bio-mass compost produced by your county or state. Spray weeds with distilled vinegar or just pull them out. Better yet, spread a compost made from your own yard and kitchen waste, leaves and clippings and learn to love your weeds.

The Dog in Nature

An Excerpt from The Conceptual Dog...

The dog is a creature of the great natural systems of the earth and his sense of identity is drawn through a deep and abiding connection to them. His ancient role within those systems is part of his genetic material. His utter lack of access to natural environments deprives him fundamentally as it deprives us. Stable ecosystems of field, forest and stream support a wide variety of natural life forms. In some parts of the world, the dog is still one of them. The biodiversity found within natural areas can not only sustain the physical life of a canine, it enhances the animal's entire conscious experience. As they develop, dogs master diverse and increasingly complex social and environmental challenges and they integrate their experiences into a coherent sense of self. The living natural world is rich and variable; it is constantly in motion, always changing and subtlety unique. Dogs will find outlets for their inherent expressions in such environments and the full potential of a canine can be actualized through this exposure. Animals in nature engage with the flow of time with attentive awareness. They continuously orient themselves to their environments and this enables them to structure responses, anticipate consequences and adjust activities accordingly. They demonstrate inquisitive exploration, playful interaction and exploratory manipulation of what is found. They deliberately create opportunities to try out new things and have novel experiences. Their activities demonstrate purpose, enjoyment and an apprehension of life’s meaningfulness.

Whose Walk is it Anyway?

For so many dogs, a tethered walk represents their only access to the great wide world and we turn it into an exercise in micromanagement, restriction and control. The walk seems to always be for us. It is done on our terms. Why can’t we allow the walk to belong to the dog? What is the real cost of allowing him to stop and investigate scents, leaving his urine on most things vertical? Isn’t this what dogs seem intrinsically interested in doing? If the dog walks out in front, if he swims from side to side or doubles back to check on something he just passed, why can’t we accommodate him? Many of us believe that this is a sign of insubordination that we can not allow. We provide no actual education on where we want the dog to be in relationship to our body, or how fast or slow we want him to walk. We believe that the dog should know all of this or that he should actually want to walk calmly at our side. We expect dogs to prefer our company and ignore all that stimulates and interests them.

Before you embark on a walk with the dog in your life, intend to determine the purpose and nature of the walk. If the walk is for the dog’s fun and exercise, then see if you can stay present enough to allow the dog to have fun while getting exercise. Declare the walk to be his walk. If the walk is for your fun and exercise and the dog is just coming along, consider the compromises you might be willing to make to ensure that his experience is not one of a constant denial of his interests. If, at places along your route, the dog must be attentive to you and not the environment, happily condition that type of attentive walking. Then free him to his own explorations when you can.