This is the first in a series of ponderings on a variety of training/handling/relationship issues that were sparked by a recent seminar I attended. This is the background to the subsequent meanderings of my mind. Sometimes we learn the most from our mistakes. Both Joe and I hope that is the case.

There’s a dirty little secret at Far Fetch Farm. While Joe has an admiring public, is handsome and charming, ours is a relationship fraught with conflict. I have to halter him up and take him to pasture every day and it has gotten increasingly difficult over time. Let us just say that I have experienced llama spit more times than I care to admit. Once haltered Joe is a lovely creature but the process to that point increasingly feels more like dental work than partnership.

I will be the first to admit that I didn’t really understand camelid behavior. They seem to be a cross between a cat and a horse. Last time I rode a horse I was in my teens. Joe has things in common with sheep (ie being prey animals rather than predators) but things are different and I am also asking him to do things quite different than I ask of my sheep. Camelids and dogs, who I actually understand better than people sometimes, don’t have as much in common as I would wish.

Our decline began the day that the vet came and trimmed his toes and manhandled him. I was disturbed at the time but I honestly didn’t know how to intervene. That afternoon when I went to move Joe, the projectile spit was quite impressive. I was totally unprepared for it, coming from my happy-go-lucky llama. And Jura, the herding dog, wisely took off for points unknown.

Joe was trained to be a guard llama by an excellent handler. He is quiet, calm, patient with his animals but is a little more “alpha” oriented than me and I guess some handling things got lost in translation. Or I just wasn’t convinced that I had to think about dominance in a relationship. As I look back, knowing what I have learned in the last few days, I realize that his advice was better than I thought but my lack of experience and different way of thinking made it less useful to me than it could have been.

THE STORY

When we started on this journey in New Hampshire, Jura the herding dog was a started dog but young, inexperienced as I was. He is a compulsive gatherer –  given confusion about what to do, he will always bring sheep to my feet. That  is a problem for a llama who is “tied” to me by a 6 foot lead. Llamas hate to have things messing with their feet. 30 sheep pushed up against them is probably like waterboard torture.

My sheep were also unused to being worked by a dog and they quickly found Joe to be a safe haven. So Joe and Liz combined must have seemed like an island in the South Pacific while being herded by a shark (a sweet, gentle shark but they didn’t know that yet).

In this scenario, Joe was the most experienced of the four species and everything was just wrong from his perspective. Those sheep are supposed to walk ahead or fall behind.  Dog is nervous because the llama is a bit unnerving now. Sheep are nervous because green dog is pushing them too hard. Llama is nervous because the sheep are about to take out his knees. And human is nervous because while it isn’t a goat rodeo, it just isn’t a pleasant experience for anyone involved.

So, the human at least had the presence of mind to take the llama out of the equation and walk him separately.  Too many species for my brain to handle at once.

Patience has never been my long suit. I like to say that working in a animal shelter as a dog walker with some mighty stressed out dogs taught me patience that I never had before. I like to move quickly and hopefully efficiently (though like the rabbit and the hare – fast doesn’t always win the race), but for many other beings on the planet that is often too quick. And I tend to be a lumper (too many steps at once) rather than a splitter (incremental improvements).

Not walking Joe with the sheep when I already walk a quarter mile one way out to pasture is a PITA and a time sink. So patience can get a bit thin. My reaction to all my reactionary animals was “geez, will you all grow up and act like you are supposed to?”, as if I had nothing to do with it.

And so, I would try to catch him for haltering at a pace that was uncomfortable to him. I had a couple incidents where I probably made him feel forced. And the downward spiral began. He withdrew, I pursued. I cornered him. He objected. I tried a bunch of different things and I just couldn’t figure out what the salient reinforcers were for him. But the sight of me with a halter caused him to move away and flatten his ears. I knew this was on me. The prevailing advice out there is to make the llama “submit”. If I didn’t believe that was the right thing for dogs, why would I think it was the right thing for llamas? I tried food as a reinforcer but he has food issues since the sheep will gladly steal food from him, given the opportunity. It seemed to distress him more to have the food around.

We had our ups and downs but more and more downs. And I honestly didn’t understand why some days he would practically halter himself and other days it was a dragged out battle. I parked him with the rams where I didn’t have to deal with it but the primary reason for having him on the farm is to guard sheep. At this point, I was ready to rehome Joe into a situation where he didn’t need to halter up.  But that doesn’t solve my needs for a guardian animal. And I know that this is my problem not his so if I got another llama, it is likely that I would create the same problem again. I created this monster, it is mine to fix.

The first step to change is admitting you have a problem and that you need help. All the “advice” I was getting was not helpful. I knew there had to be a way of thinking about this differently. I needed to understand the salient reinforcers and aversives for llamas because clearly I wasn’t getting it. In searching for advice, things ranged from “you need to dominate the animal so that he doesn’t take control of the situation” (ah yes, I can sit on a 300 lb llama until he stops spitting) to “if a llama spits he has been abused” (well that’s helpful. Maybe I have abused my llama but I didn’t mean to – so what should I do about it?). By dumb luck I stumbled on this site called “Camelidynamics”. Described on the website as “It is a collection of methods that represent the most positive least intrusive techniques for training and managing camelids.” I thought “Wow, almost LIMA (least invasive, minimally aversive the mantra of IAABC) – maybe there is hope. Not only that,  she does clicker training with camelids… okay this is worth exploring.”

And then by astonishingly dumb luck there was a seminar  held in Connecticut in July. I was nervous though because I am always worried when people have catchy names for their methods. But I took the plunge.

I knew I had landed in friendly waters where I would learn to swim with the llamas when, at the start, Marty introduced herself and explained that she stood on the shoulders of BF Skinner, Susan Friedman and Karen Pryor, as well as several other notables with whom  anyone who has been studying animal behavior would be happy to share a meal. My sigh of relief was probably audible. Even if I didn’t understand camelid behavior well, the learning theory, the approach was immediately going to make more sense than all the seeming conflicting advice I had.

I was not disappointed. By the end of the first morning I had a huge insight into how my behavior was influencing Joe’s and how one single change of mine might change the whole dynamic. For a prey animal, escape is the single most important resource. Duh. How many times have I said to dog owners that they need to give their fearful dog an avenue of escape from scary things? Really, how many? Geez, I am so adamant that people provide and teach (if the dog doesn’t understand it)  dogs a way to flee and move away from scary things that I have probably scared the humans away  with my intensity. When you give an animal flight as an option, they can often begin to deal with the thing at hand, because they always have the option to move away. Being able to move away, makes an animal feel safer.

As I looked back, I realized that the times that were easy to halter Joe had two characteristics: 1) I was calm and patient and applying little pressure and 2) he had an escape route. Instead of him being in a corner and forced to accept the halter, he was at my side. Too many times we were doing a dance where I wasn’t just leading but pushing from behind.  I was forcing my hand and at the same time blocking his escape. One of Marty’s more salient points about the escape route is that you need to control it and make it clear to the animal that you are offering it up. But it needs to be real too.

I am not new to learning theory, training, antecedent arrangements, flight or fight so aside from the actual mechanical skills, how to set up things for success with llamas in particular and better understanding llama reinforcers/aversives, most of the weekend I spent hitting myself over the head with an imaginary newspaper. It didn’t hurt by the way – except the time I slapped myself on the head in an enthusiastic explanation of how utterly obvious what Marty was saying seemed to me. There are so many reasons I gotta stop talking with my hands – self injury is only one of them. DOH, DOH, DOH.

There are four interrelated concepts that I am churning about in my head. In the next couple of weeks I hope to churn on them a bit more and write something about them since writing often cements things in my head and occasionally provides insights to others.

1. Antecedent arrangements(setting up for success). I know this. I know this. I know this. When you are training a dog, you set up the situation so that the “right choice” is pretty obvious and the wrong choices are eliminated or constrained to the best of your ability. In the case of training a dog to herd you start out with calm sheep in a small pen. It reduces the infinite number of things that could go wrong to an even dozen or so (probably more like 100 but we can hope), and increases the chances that the dog will do the right thing. When working with a fearful dog, you set up the scary thing far enough away that the dog can manage it so that it can choose to do the right thing. When first catching a llama you do so in a small space, with other comforting animals around it if possible, but one where it can move away from you if it needs to escape.
2. Balance. This is the concept I most need to think about and unpack. Marty emphasized the importance of an animal feeling balanced in order to feel safe. When an animal feels safe we can often approach it and do things to it that it might otherwise struggle against. We don’t feel in control when someone takes our feet out from under us. Why should an animal? In early herding training the most effective time to teach a dog to stop on the sheep is by catching the moment when there the sheep are balanced between dog and human. The dog doesn’t feel the pressure of the sheep’s desire to escape. The sheep feel less pressure from the dog. We humans tend to take away balance in order to control an animal. We jerk on a dog’s  leash. We flip a sheep to trim its toes. We tie up a horse. We take away other human’s literal or figurative balance by taking away basic rights and privileges. We strongly believe that taking away physical choices exerts our control. I have been thinking about how making an animal feel safe and balanced may actually increase our control.  Because camelids are such funny creatures with their long necks, the effect of balance is extremely obvious. Which leads to:
3. Control/Choices. I have never been much for forcing a dog to do something. I have seen powerful effects when you lead an animal to making a choice. Whether human or otherwise, when we actively choose to do something, we are more motivated and willing participants.
4. And finally, pressure. When working with a fearful animal I have found the most effective way of moving them closer is the opposite of what we think. If we back off the pressure, we bring them in, if we go after them, they move out. We often apply way too much social pressure to animals when we mean to bring them closer. Our impatience takes away their choice.  Desensitization, counter conditioning, pressure and release are all a part of a dance. Forward and back, a cha cha if you will.

I have lots more to say about these four things but I will save them for another day.
For now, Joe and I are starting a new journey. He doesn’t know it yet, but I do. I have the road map now. He may decide how fast we go and where we take some unexpected side roads. But we are on our way. This morning I went in to desensitize Joe to a catch wand, a tool  which may help give him some of the space he needs to feel better about me. I moved it about him but didn’t try to catch him. That he accepted it was enough for today. And when I was done and walked away, he followed me. It won’t be one foot in front of the other. It is going to be a cha-cha now.

It is hard not to smile at Rose. She is a beautiful dog and people, even sick, grouchy, stressed people, can sense that if you smile, she will smile back and wiggle her way to you. And force you to smile some more.

Today we went to the hospital for our weekly therapy dog visit. We hadn’t been the previous two weeks so Rose and all the staff that welcome her arrival each Monday were primed for a happy reunion. The danger we always face, as we walk through the main lobby to get to the elevators to start our patient rounds, is that she will suck in so many people waiting for their lab tests that it takes forever to greet them. Today, it seemed we couldn’t get two feet before she had smiled at someone else and drawn them into her web. And then they touch her. If there was ever a dog designed to be a therapy dog, her silken hair would be high on the list of necessary attributes. And so, we get bogged down. I listen to the stories of people’s pets while Rose patiently accepts all the affection she can gather.

Rose isn’t the sort of dog who climbs into bed and rests with a weary patient. And she can’t sit still while a child reads to her if there is someone else to greet as well. Indeed, her mission in any setting isn’t complete  until every person who is willing has been greeted. She is the perfect cocktail party hostesss – always on the lookout for the newcomer but unusually sensitive to not approaching those who don’t wish to be approached.

When we finally arrived on the rehab floor, one of the staff asked a patient in the hallway – “would you like to visit with a therapy dog?” The patient demurred stating that she was a cat  person, not a dog person. And so we moved down the hallway, stopping here and there, getting pets from staff and patients and hearing the oft repeated “oh she is so beautiful.” When we arrived in the therapy room we made our usual rounds. By the end of our visit the cat lady had entered the room with a staff person who is a particular Rose fan. As Rose approached to say hello to the staff, the cat lady suddenly reached out to pet Rose, who quietly offered her back for a scritch. Rose did it again – sucked in someone who was initially resistant to her charms.

And so we continued on our rounds. It seemed that many of the staff were a little more stressed than usual. Perhaps it is the holiday time. I live on a farm in the woods with only distant family so I am not feeling the holiday rush and crush but I imagine in a hospital of sick people who wish they were at home, it can get to be quite wearing. Suddenly Rose was surrounded by no less than 5 of the nursing staff, all looking for a dog hug. And Rose, like few other dogs I have ever met, just patiently turned from staff to  staff, accepting hugs, giving quick illicit kisses, and offering her butt for scritches. And ever smiling. Really and truly smiling. Tightly surrounded by people in a situation that most dogs would find oppressive, she looked at me and smiled.

I don’t carry a purse.
I never have.
Wallet and keys.
Never wore make-up.
Don’t like to look in the mirror.
Bite my nails.
What’s the point?
Pockets are for stuff.
Purses are just something to put down and forget.

Sure, my truck can be like Mary Poppin’s carpet bag.
Leashes, dog treats, towels.
Bungee cords, rope.
Pens, bandaids, business cards.
Peanuts for the hungry.
It even has that mirror (or 3)
that I don’t carry in my non-existent purse.
What ya lookin’ for? I might have it.

These days in my pocket is a cell phone.
For safety it goes everywhere.
But around the farm
No keys or wallet.
They are things
To lose in the tall grass or the deep manure.
Sheep don’t take credit cards (or paypal either)
Jura does the driving, without a license, or keys.

And yet my pockets
Are full of things now.
In the summer, my jeans creep down
Towards my knees with their weight.
When it cools my hoodie
Looks like chipmunk cheeks.
Laundry day brings surprises.
And reminders of recent projects.

So I ask,
What would be in my purse
If I had a purse?

Instead of a nail file,
There would be a utility knife.
No lipstick
But a livestock marking crayon.
No hair scrunchie
But always a bungee
A voltmeter, vise grips.
No pen but maybe a headlamp.

I hear tell all purses
Have trash in them.
Instead of gum wrappers,
I’d have baling twine,
A broken ear tag
Not a singleton earring,
A few stray nails (not of the human kind)
Perhaps a rusted screw

Some stray piece of weathered duct tape
Found drifting across a field
Little bits of shredded hay and straw…
Snips of wire from a fence repair
And of course, the discarded syringe
From Joe’s recent dewormer shot.
And one glove
Because I dropped the other – somewhere in the back field.
It is a good thing that I don’t go through airport security.

The merry go round of social issues.

When you were a kid, did you ever ride on one of those playground merry go rounds? The faster you go the more force pulls you to the edges. If you are in control, the ride can be pretty fun, even exhilarating. If you are working with someone else and moving in the same direction it can be a joy. But if someone else is pushing very hard and fast the ride can be more and more uncomfortable, especially if you are in the middle and that person just isn’t listening when you ask them to slow down. You can identify the playground bully just by watching children scatter from the merry-go-round when the individual approaches. Who wants to be caught on the ride when what could be fun or interesting is about to turn into torture? Even worse is when two competing bullies get on opposite sides of the merry-go-round and try to out control the other. And sometimes the innocents literally fly off the equipment. That seems to be happening a lot these days in a wide variety of venues.

I have been thinking a lot about centrifugal force recently – the force that throws you to the edges (or off) of that spinning merry go round. I used to think that social issues were sort of linear and you could imagine a tug of war. That really is how we frame most social issues and conflicts. One group is on one end, another on another and they apply force to try to bring more people to their side of the mud bath. But social issues are rarely that cut and dried. There are many factors that influence a person’s perspective – their own life experience, their friends and cohorts, where they live. If you think of a straight line from one point of view to another the vast majority of people actually don’t fall on that line on a particular issue. What they bring to the table places them somewhere else on a plane – on the platform of the merry-go-round. Probably, they are really in a three dimensional sphere but I honestly don’t understand enough about physics to go there with the analogy so I will stick to 2 dimensions.

For example, in the dog world I both support rescue (and the spaying and neutering of pets) and responsible breeding. I have 3 rescues and one bred dog who is a working dog. To me they don’t seem to be in conflict but many pose the issue as if it were some sort of either/or on a linear scale. If you aren’t with me you are on the other side of the mud bath and the hell with you. If you looked at what gets reported,  you would think it was the “Don’t breed or buy while shelter dogs die” versus the “Don’t buy a dog from a shelter. They are damaged goods” . These two groups seem to be on opposite sides of the merry-go-round. And the louder and more force they apply, the more those of us with a more nuanced view get flung about on a ride we don’t even want to be on. They really aren’t tugging at each other and gaining us in the middle as much as they are sending us on this uncomfortable and dizzying circular ride. What is interesting is, that as the speed of the merry-go-round increases, our own particular experience and perspectives may drive us to a more extreme position on the edge. But it may NOT be the edge or the position that those who are applying the centrifugal force were hoping for. Depending on where we started, we might end up diametrically opposed or in some other funky place on the extreme edge. Or holding on by our fingernails to some place in the middle. Those of us who want to stay near the middle and look at all the factors are hard pressed to do much because we spend some of our time saying “Would you just slow down and not apply so much force? There are more factors to consider than us versus them.” The faster they go, the more oppositional I get – to both sides because neither has a monopoly on the truth.

Unfortunately, I feel like our media -social and otherwise -and our human tendencies towards tribalism (face it we all have tribes of various sorts) keep adding centrifugal force to our social issues. Indeed, our media thrives on making the merry-go-round go faster. It wouldn’t be exciting to report on “The kids had fun today riding the merry-go-round”. It is much more interesting to lead with “several children were thrown from the merry-go-round”. And so we go round and round and round with greater and greater speed. Nobody is enjoying the ride anymore except those who are thrill seekers and secretly (or not so secretly) enjoy the control and the bullying.

Those of us who provide the centripetal force seem to have less and less of a voice. Centripetal force is that which keeps things moving in a circle around the center rather than just scattering to the edges of the universe. Perhaps we speak too softly or perhaps it is that we want to slow things down a little and consider not just the edges but all the points on the circular plane in the middle. Our line which is keeping things in check seems to be frayed and stretched. Although I am rarely really in the “middle” of any issue I find myself more and more drawn to the middle (despite the centrifugal forces operating on me) because the extremes just don’t work. Maybe like any reasonable dog, I don’t like it when you start swinging me around your head on a leash without letting me think for myself. Stop it. Please. It is a form of abuse. As long as I can breath, I am going to resent you more and more! Maybe you can break my spirit. Maybe you can draw people to your point on the circle but you are also flinging other people away. And in the mean time, you are just a bully.

All that said, centrifugal force can be good. It helps us separate out the elements of blood for analysis, a very useful and life saving thing. We can look at each piece individually and analyze it. So thank you for highlighting the elements of that which makes up the entire social issue. But ultimately we need whole blood re-mixed in order to live and prosper. When you slow down the merry-go-round we can integrate it all.

Regardless of how strongly you feel about a particular stance on a social issue , I am going to ask you to stop being the playground bully by ever increasing the force you are applying. You really aren’t drawing people to your cause. You are making them reluctant participants in your unpleasant playground bullying. It is pretty clear that a lot of folks have gotten off the merry-go-round because they can’t find a place for an enjoyable ride. I can respect your opinion and the place where you stand on the vast plane of social issues. I know your life and your experiences, dare I say your temperament, have influenced where you stand. I also know a lot of other people, who have had different experiences, have different temperaments and whose points are JUST AS VALID. Ever increasing the force on the spin on the merry-go-round isn’t going to make me forget those people but it sure is going to make me avoid YOU. When we are passionate about something, sometimes it is hard to see that we are also bullying and not respecting the other person. Slow down. You might not fling as many people AND you might have more people join your ride.

And for those of us – who are somewhere in that vast and murky middle that really looks more like a circle with lots of dots all over than a line – we really do need to find a way to apply our centripetal force. I hate when bullies, intentional or not,  win. We don’t have to let them win. Let’s get our gravity together and slow them down. We need the people on the forefront of social issues – they keep the merry-go-round moving but they don’t have to take us on their joy ride and spin us into outer space

And so, wouldn’t it be better if our spinning around actually produced something? In Africa, they have developed a merry-go-round that pumps water in addition to providing exercise and fun for the kids.

My neighbor is fascinated with wild cats. He is convinced that there is a local mountain lion among us in SW New Hampshire although the evidence for it is almost as sketchy as that of Sasquatch. It is possible but unlikely. So far, New Hampshire Fish and Game has not received credible evidence despite many sightings. Given the way other predators -fisher and coyote – have reclaimed/migrated into New England I wouldn’t be totally surprised if we do someday hear of a credible sighting. But for now, it seems unlikely that the woods are swarming with the big cats. Truth be told, I am as invested in there NOT being a big cat on my property (woe to my sheep) as my neighbor is invested in the myth that there is. Joe is a good guard llama but I am not sure what he would do if faced with a big cat.

Yesterday as we were talking over the fence, he told me a story. A couple days before, a large fawn had ended up hiding in the brush on his property. It came running like a bat out of hell from the woods minus his mother and stayed there for most of the day on high alert. No mother in sight for the rest of the day. Given that they have been frequent visitors together, it seemed odd. He may even have been the fawn I extracted from their fence a couple months ago.  The next day, there was a murder of crows raising holy hell near where the fawn had come out of the woods. My neighbor was pretty convinced, and not unreasonably so, that there was a deer carcass in the woods. I had noticed the the ruckus myself. Of course, he theorized that the take down was done by our big foot mountain lion. Evidence – no coyote howls and yips have been heard in days.

He then proceeded to comment that he heard my dog barking like a maniac – only furthering his theory that there had been a take down by a predator. “You know dogs can smell the kill and it drives them crazy.” I laughed out loud. Indeed, Rose was barking like a maniac. She has two things that send her into a barking frenzy – the sound of crows/blue jays and when she sees Jura herding sheep. Well, that day I moved some sheep without tucking her away from the windows AND there were murderous crows driving her batty. These events were concurrent. I remember thinking that I couldn’t decide who was louder – the crows or Rose. As I explained that Rose was just having a hissy fit because Jura was moving sheep, you could see his face falling. He reluctantly let go of this piece of “evidence” but he was still quite sure that a mountain lion was at work.

There is probably a deer carcass in the woods. A fawn without its mom is not a good sign. She might have broken a leg, succumbed to parasites, been ill and taken down by the coyotes (there is plenty of visual and auditory and scatological evidence of a large number of coyotes on my land). Given there are acres and acres of swampy tree filled land where the crows were making a fuss, I am not going to bother trying to find the evidence. I have seen deer skeletons before.

But my neighbor’s story reminds me how easy it is, as we try to make sense of the world, to weave “evidence” in that isn’t really evidence but rather coincidental. Our species seems to be driven by the desire to create a narrative  and gather evidence for our pet theory – even when there is none. And our biases can overwhelm our common sense or even considerable evidence to the contrary.

Recently there have been two videos circulating on the internet – one of a bear “saving” a crow out of water and one of a dog splashing water at a fish “saving it”. Despite the explanations of animal ethologists who see predatory behavior in both videos, some people continue to spin a different narrative. I see a bear pull a squirming thing from the water to eat it and then leave it  for other nearby food when the feathery, boney meal pecks him on the nose. I see a dog that is exhibiting a hoarding/burying behavior that many pet owners see every day. Others see noble creatures acting selflessly to the benefit of what would normally be their dinner. There are stories of predators that befriend species that are normally their prey. These two videos don’t seem to be in that class.

My neighbor wants a mountain lion. I suspect if we go and find a deer carcass, there will be a story we can reconstruct. It probably won’t include a mountain lion or a dog driven to frenzied barking by the “kill”. It probably does include an orphan fawn, a big fat meal for the coyotes and crows (regardless of how the doe ended up dead) and a dog who hates the sounds of crows. In a weird way, Rose’s barking is likely related to the death of a doe – just not as directly as my neighbor would have it.

My cousin tells me I am livin’ the dream…

Why, then, do the goats insist
On pooping in the water bucket?
Not the half empty one.
The freshly washed and filled one.

If I seem to stoop these days
Perhaps it is because
I have done a daily pasture stroll
Looking for suspect fecal matter.

Head down, eyes scanning the ground,
Watching butts of suspect sheep
Summer’s hot, wet and swampy weather
Gave the parasites a field day and my sheep the runs.

I did not ever think
I would ask a friend
To help me wash and trim a sheep’s butt…
But parasites make you do crazy things.

Fortunately, I have crazy friends.
We’ve beat the worms,
At least for this year.
They’ve been frozen out for now.

Fox scat

The stoop might come from the inspection of scat,
Left by fox and coyote and bear.
Jura, the sheep dog, and the fox are pissing and defecating
For dibs on the farm road.

As winter approaches

My constant companions

And I tuck the sheep in shelter at night
I am back to cleaning sheds.
My manure fork and I, we spend a lot of time together.

At the moment, it is cleaning times three.
Once for the goats and the ewe lambs.
Once for ram number one and his girls.
Once for ram number two and his posse.

My boots, never a paragon of cleanliness
Barely show their tread.
The dogs in my classes
Find me an irresistible sniff.

There are days when it seems
Like all I do is shovel sh*&t,
Or move it to the compost pile,
Or spread it on the fields.

Who would think
That my favorite farm machine
Would be a manure spreader?
In a couple of passes, it makes all that sh*&t disappear.

And then there is the dog, Rose,
Who by any other name,
Would still smell like manure
If she gets an opportunity to roll in some putrid stuff.

Joe is such a neatnik

I have to admire Joe.
Llamas are the fastidious creatures of the farm.
He picks a spot and makes a pile.
Tidy guy, he would never poop in his water bucket.

I wonder if he would have a discussion
With the goats if he could.
“Really, please, look at yourselves.
No need to make a mess.”

Goats’ idea of neatness

And now that winter comes, I turn my attention
To the long neglected wool from spring.
I can not escape the dung.
Soon to washing but first to picking out that dried crud…

Of course, all that dung, shit, manure, dingleberries, scat, crap
Or whatever you call it
Will make the pastures green next spring.
And we will start the cycle over.

There’s a farmer
That claims that good livestock farming
Is really grass farming.
Maybe, it is just the art of spreading sh*&t around.

Livin’ the dream? maybe…

On another note at the farm.
The new barn cats, still confined to the barn,
are adjusting well and soon will be allowed out.
Which reminds me, I need to clean the litter box.

When I say that I have miscellaneous sheep, I mean it. My tiny 12 sheep flock represents 5 breeds – Cheviot, Romney, Finn, Katahdin and Polypas in various mixtures. If I were to follow the recent trend in dog shelter identification we could call my flock “All American” sheep. Since I started my sheep owning adventure purely with the idea of herding practice with my dog Rose, the collection was not about breeding. And by luck I ended up with a lovely  Finn ram. This year, I had six pregnant ewes.

The excitement began on April Fool’s day when the ewe I have had the longest looked at me while heartily consuming hay as if to say “nothing here to see” shortly before I left for a dog training class. Just two hours later, I returned to find a dried off happy healthy ram lamb. Thank you Aster. The next day, Bethany produced a ram lamb… The following week, Sue watched me as I left for a quick trip to Belmont to return the goats to their summer grazing. I knew in that instant I closed the gate behind me that she was going to give birth while I was gone. Yep, a ram lamb…

3 ram lambs and counting…

For those of you who don’t know much about livestock farming, when you are first starting out trying to build numbers in your flock, you want female offspring. Think about it, you can get away with one ram or bull or buck, as long as you have a few ewes or cows or does.  A bunch of males and one female just can’t get you too far in a single year.

So, I am feeling a little discouraged. But I shouldn’t have. In retrospect, things look great when you have had three problem free births and the biggest disappointment is that you have ram lambs.

The next night I was up all night with the single pregnant goat. Something is wrong. It is not hard labor but it has gone on too long and then it stops. This is not good. And while I have been around several problem free births, I am not really keen on learning things at the expense of life itself. So, I call the vet in the morning, load the goat in the truck and have her examined. Vet says “if she doesn’t go by 3:30 pm, we will do a C-section”… Not good. There is definitely something wrong. A good friend of mine comes by. And as we are talking, the goat suddenly screams. Finally she is in labor (goats by the way are incredibly noisy in labor unlike sheep who have much less to say about it). First kid out is deformed and dead and has been the cause of a traffic jam that has threatened the lives of the others. I decide that pride cometh before the fall and call the vet. She comes out and gets there as I am pulling out dead kid #3. I think that we must be done but the vet sticks her hand in there and scoops out  the only live kid – Kid Kudzu. She is one spunky girl.

Money to the vet.

In the meantime, I am worrying over one of the other sheep, who is now nicknamed “Ms. Potential Prolapse”. She is overdue. But first there is a distraction from lambing. One of the not-pregnant sheep out in the field slashes her shoulder open. It is a large wound, a little bit beyond a bandaid (not that you can bandaid sheep) and antibiotic cream. So, I call the vet again… This time the other partner comes out with a visiting vet from Egypt. He isn’t so keen on entering the field with the llama. He is quite used to spitting camels. But Joe greets them nicely. The vet sews up the sheep and then suggests that Joe’s toes are a bit long. I have had trouble trimming them – so I let the vet show me his technique. Joe has freshly trimmed toes even though he isn’t a very happy camper. Later that evening, Joe was still in a “mood” and spit at me for the first time. I can’t say that it was entirely unjustified from his point of view. First strangers mess with one of his sheep (he was clearly distressed by it) and then they attack his feet!

More money…

And then on Monday early morning, Poppy delivers, you guessed it… A RAM lamb. Then she develops early mastitis. Another call to the vet, for advice and antibiotic.

4 ram lambs and counting.

More money…but at least no farm call

I am still watching Ms. Potential Prolapse who is now significantly overdue, looking more and more like a dairy barn every day (complete with built-in udder). And she prolapses Wednesday morning. There is a thing called a prolapse retainer that you can stick into the sheep’s vagina to hold everything in place until the birth. I feel pretty unsure at this point  and I am concerned that she is now beyond any reasonable range of her due date. So, I call the vet… If this were the old days when you didn’t store phone numbers in your phone I would have the vet’s number memorized by now.

In addition to help with the insertion of the prolapse retainer (wow, now I know I could have done that on my own!) the vet gives the ewe labor inducing drugs… Yeah, in less than 48 hours it will all be over… NOT. Friday morning comes and after two nights of checking regularly at 2-3 hour intervals, a C-section seems in order. I call a friend to help me get this house of a sheep into the truck to take to the vet. Fortunately, I have an amazing number of friends who will do crazy things when requested. I don’t know if my friends facilitate my insanity or keep me from going over the edge.

Of course, this is THE Friday morning when every law enforcement officer in Eastern Massachusetts has descended on Watertown, MA and my husband is trying to get to the airport after dropping the dog at a friend’s house.

So there I am, watching the C-section while concerned relatives are calling to make sure we are okay. I can’t exactly ignore their calls when there are terrorists running amok. So my phone conversations go something like this. “Hi, we are fine. Al’s at the airport in Boston, I am in New Hampshire and I am in the vet’s office with my sheep who is having a C-section. Gotta go wipe a lamb off”. I don’t think my step-mother quite caught anything except  “we are fine” . This time there is a happy ending: a happy healthy ewe lamb. And a happy healthy ram lamb. They are gorgeous twins who almost made it to being full grown without ever leaving the comfort of the womb.

More money…

The count: 5 ram lambs, 1 ewe lamb.

And finally this past Sunday, without fanfare or drama, Annie, my mixed up part hair/part wool sheep, gave birth to her little ewe lamb. And lambing season is done.

The final count: 5 rams, 2 ewe lambs and a silly doeling (girl kid).

Livestock vets get paid poorly for their services. Farmers just can’t afford big vet bills and still make money. They can hardly make money anyway even in a perfect season without problems. I wasn’t planning on making money this season but I didn’t expect that I would write so many checks to the vet that I would use up the check book.

At some point, I made the decision that it was important to use this odd collection of unrelated birthing incidents as learning experiences that would aid my independence in the future rather than trying to go it alone. Now I am wondering if I could get a student loan to pay the vet bill.