Dog People

Last weekend I was away judging in Finland.

I don’t go away very often.  It is hard for me to be separated from my dogs, and especially Habibi, and it is also not easy to find someone to stay and take care of them when I am away, even though it is only a few days at most.  No one is ever the same as me, of course.  My babies need to be with me, no one else can understand them or take care of them as well, that is obvious…

But once in a while, I am tempted by an interesting judging assignment and agree to leave home for a few days.

Here we come to what makes us dog people different from the rest of the human race. 

Going away is supposed to be a holiday, for rest and refreshment, for seeing different things and having new experiences.

For a dog show judge, especially for one who lives as far away from everything as I do, it means two long and exasperating days of travelling, one day in each direction, often with one or two changes of flight en route.  And usually, two days at the destination, which are occupied from morning until evening with judging dogs.

I really don’t enjoy flying,  We have no choice these days, but being confined in an airborne sardine tin, with hundreds of other people, only a few toilets, and no place to put my feet (and I am short!) is not my idea of fun.  From the time of takeoff, I keep checking my watch to see if landing will be soon.  And once we are down, I want to get off as fast as possible – which is, of course, impossible, as all the hundreds of people are standing in the narrow aisle wanting to do exactly the same thing.

At times it means also spending hours waiting in airports between flights.  Sometimes it is very hard to remember which airport I am waiting in, they all look so much alike, with the same décor, the same shops, and the same endless corridors that you have to walk down to get to your flight. Sometimes I have the feeling that I am walking to my destination…

And once the flight is over, often it is necessary to take a train, or to be picked up by someone from the show committee and spend another few hours travelling to the show venue.  In Israel, we are accustomed to long distances being an hour’s drive away.  In Europe, the US or Australia, a normal drive to a dog show can be three or four hours each way, or more.  We do get to see a lot of countryside, though.  This time, In Finland, there was forest, and forest, and forest, and forest….

The fact is, that we dog show people are really usually not interested in doing much else but seeing dogs.  I don’t really care that much about sight seeing – once in a while, if due to the plane schedule I end up with a few extra hours, I may indeed go to visit some of the points of interest in the vicinity, and it is pleasant – but if I have a choice…This trip, I had a free morning before my return flight, and I was thrilled when I was taken to visit one of the long time well known breeders, and happily sat there for several hours seeing her dogs and her photo albums of fifty years of breeding.

Please note – real dog people carry around photos of their dogs.  They don’t pull out photos of children or grandchildren when meeting friends or acquaintances, they pull out photos of the dogs they are currently campaigning.  We find this perfectly normal.  I now have a little tiny laptop which fits into my handbag, so I can easily take it everywhere with me – and then I have LOTS of photos of my dogs that I can show to people!  There are a few photos of my grandchildren, it is true, but I am not always sure just where they have been filed…

Those of us who show our dogs know how tiring a show can be, and how much running around the ring can be involved.  I pride myself on having dogs with great movement, but then that means I have to be able to run with them in the ring and keep pace.  If I am showing a number of dogs, or if the judge is keen on seeing movement, it can be quite exhausting.

But judging is not any less stressful physically, even though it doesn’t involve running around.  It means standing all day, and walking back and forth in the ring to see the dogs from various vantage points.  Judging a hundred or so dogs is a lot of standing!  Not only does it involve standing, but since I have to dictate a report on each dog, and the secretary is sitting at a table in the corner of the ring, I have to sit down and dictate to her, and then get up and go over to judge the next dog.  This means sitting and getting up about a hundred times – no one can argue that there is not plenty of exercise in that.  I am not sure how that would be rated as far as fitness programs go, but it sure does work those muscles!

This long day of judging can be in any conditions from hot blazing sun – which to my surprise I have found to be the case the last two times I judged in Finland (silly me, to think that Finland is a cold Scandinavian country), to freezing cold and rain.  I have found myself at some shows feeling so cold that I dressed in about five layers of clothes and looked like a stuffed teddy bear – with the same difficulties in moving around.  When it is hot, I do fine, and find it amusing to watch the European judges around me slowly turning a bright shade of red…

One would think that after a long day of judging and looking at and handling many dogs, we would have had enough. Never!  In the evening, all the judges get together for dinner, and of course the major and pretty much sole topic of conversation is dogs and everything to do with them.  True that once in a while there is a bit of gossip – but that also usually has to do with dogs.  And we are not at all bored!  It is hard to imagine that anything else would be as interesting.  And we may well start pulling out photos – not of children and grandchildren, but of great dogs we have owned or wanted to own, and upcoming promising puppies.

The fact is, that whenever we dog people/judges meet anywhere in the world, we always have a lot to talk about, even if we don’t speak the same language.

I arrived home stiff and exhausted from my “vacation”.  Habibi was glad to see me, but was not happy about all the very many smells of strange dogs on me and all my belongings.  “Aren’t I enough for you?” he conveyed.  “Of course you are, every time I go away, I come back even more sure of that!”



The view from my hotel room in Finland

 A note to everyone who has been enjoying the Habibi Diaries - my book Tails of Shaar Hagai is presently available at a special price for a limited time.  Take a look on Amazon.com.  If you enjoy the Habibi stories, you will enjoy it also.

Over and Under

There are a few things in particular at which Canaans are extraordinarily talented.

The ancient Chinese believed that the Chow Chow was part bear.  I believe that the Canaan dogs are part monkey.

I have never known another breed where a six week old puppy could climb up a wire fence to get to the top of the dog house.  Not only do the puppies climb up effortlessly, they also get down – usually with a kamikaze leap.

The last few months I seem to have been spending most of my time trying to fix up fences that will keep the Canaan puppies where they are supposed to be.  Pens that hold adult collies without any problem are a joke for the Canaans.  When I brought Tutti, the little red girl, home (she was not born here, but up in the Galilee), at seven weeks of age, after a long drive of several hours, I thought I would put her in the pen for the night, so that she could settle in and not have to meet the other puppies yet.  That was a laugh – ten minutes after I put her in, she had figured out that she could climb up the fence in the corner and jump over the top.  She spent her first night in the house – which no doubt was her plan from the start.

My Canaans stay inside our fences because they don’t really want to go anywhere else, not because they can’t.  When there is a serious reason for it, they have no problem at all getting over – fortunately for me, that is rare.  There have been a few, though – Zik used to climb up and walk around on the kennel roof, until I managed to fix him a kennel that is closed in on all sides and top.  Now that he can’t get out the top, he runs up the walls and somersaults off the roof – very hard to describe, you have to see it to understand it.  

Another bitch we had, Salima, would climb up the kennel fence, walk along the roof, jump down into the yard, climb over that fence, and then run around outside taunting everyone – “Look where I am!!! You can’t catch me!!!”   She never went anywhere, she just liked to feel free.  She could get out of a mousehole, I spent enormous amounts of time and energy trying to block all the holes that she made and managed to get out of.  When I finally did manage to close off the top of her kennel, she would stand on the wire at the top of the two meter high fence, with her body curved into the corner and head touching the roof, front legs on one side and hind legs on the other, and watch life go by from this nice high vantage point.

Having had two litters of puppies here at the same time, with a month’s difference in age, I fixed up a pen so that the younger ones could be separated from their bigger friends when I was not supervising play time.  The small ones did not at all approve, and started climbing up the fence and over the top. Thinking myself clever, I took another fence panel and attached it flat across the top of the fence, so that is was covering the corner they climbed up. Certainly they couldn’t climb over and around that!

Next time I came out, the little ones were fast asleep curled on top of the new fence panel.

Up, up and away....

Then of course, if you can’t go over something, then you might well be able to go under.  If the Canaans are half monkey, then the other half is mole.

All Canaans love to dig.  Soft earth is the best, especially if it has already been prepared for them by being part of the garden.  And if you get to it by digging under fences, that just makes the challenge more exciting. In our hot climate, of course a nice muddy hole provides a lovely cool spot to relax in.

Of course, there are definite rules involved.  Digging, for a Canaan, is not scratching around a bit and kicking up some dust.  Digging means a proper excavation; the ideal is a tunnel big enough to crawl into, turn around in, and lie down with your body well protected and your head facing out so you can see what else is going on while relaxing in your new cool den.  If the excavator happens to be a female, she might also be considering that this den has to be big enough so that if, at some time in future she has puppies, the whole family can enjoy it.  It should be dug deep and well in under plants, trees, rocks, or whatever is available, to make it almost impossible to get in to the digger to pull him out, and also almost impossible to fill in again.

Persistence being another well known Canaan trait, hard or rocky ground, protruding boulders, or thick tree roots, are no deterrent.   It just means that the digger gets to keep working and having fun for longer – but in the end, success!

When we were filming the Animal Planet program here, the photographer wanted to know if I could get the Canaan puppies to dig – he thought that would be a fun scene.  Well, that was no problem – a few pieces of sausage buried in the dirt at the edge of the garden was quite sufficient to set off a digging frenzy. The problem, of course, was not to get them to dig – it was to get them to stop.  Since that rewarding experience, every time the puppies are out in that part of the yard, they head straight for the grass and start digging away, looking for more hidden treasures.

 The Canaans also are very frugal by nature, and like to keep their possessions safe.  It is very effective, of course, to bury them.  So I often find old bones, toys, or other objects neatly buried for future use. I have even found entire food dishes with some food in them – the portion was more than the dog wanted to eat at the moment, but certainly it is a good idea to save it for the future.

If there is no readily available dirt, this does not discourage the attempts to dig. Habibi, as a puppy, had a very strong instinct to hide his favorite toys and bones, but had a hard time finding a suitable place in the house,  He would carry them around from place to place, “digging” in the book case and shoving them in between the books, and carefully trying to cover them with his nose, though there was no dirt to cover them with, or digging in the sofa pillows and hiding them well down in the sofa. 

Nowadays, he has realized that this doesn’t really work.  But he still runs out and daily digs vigorously at the floor of the dog house outside, apparently in the hope that, overnight, it has become soft enough to start tunneling through.



Here we go - a good spot!




This rock will not defeat me!!!!



And a little help from a friend...

Sheep and Goats

Last week, we had another few days of herding practice, and then a fun day for interested dogs and owners.

I took Chance, who is always thrilled to have an excuse to run after and bark at anything, and Kate, one of my smooth girls.  Kate was sent over to me from the US when she was about three years of age, after having already gained a herding title there, and having produced one litter of puppies, most of whom achieved herding titles by the time they were a year or so old.

Kate is a gentle soul, and it took her quite a while to really adjust to being in a new home.  She wasn’t sure where she fit into this new pack, and why her life was so different.  She was sent over pregnant, and had little time to adjust before having a litter of nine lovely puppies.  She was an excellent mother, but the demands of a family didn’t give her a lot of opportunity to think about her new surroundings.

So it has been at least three years or more since Kate worked with sheep, and I thought I would take her along and see what she thought about going back to work.  And, of course, I had to see if she and I could understand one another and work together.

When we first got to the farm, she was confused and suspicious – why had we come to this new place?  Then she spotted the sheep, and immediately perked up.  This was something that was familiar!  Although she and I were not too well attuned as to how she was supposed to respond to my commands, she was definitely interested, despite her doubts about the new place, in moving those sheep.

There are quite a lot of different breeds of sheep in the world, and the ones we have here are what the professional herders would call “heavy” sheep.  They are a breed called Awasi, are quite large with a lot of rather long and very thick wool, and a very big, fat, heavy tail.  They are very passive sheep; it takes a lot to get them to move.  In the conditions of this country, there are no large lush green fields for them to graze in.  Rather, there are rocky trails with scarce vegetation here and there, and they just keep walking and eating.  One doesn’t run much around here – it uses too much energy, and using energy means that you need more food, it uses too much water, and water here is certainly not plentiful, and it can be dangerous on some of those steep and slippery tracks.  So these sheep walk, and sometimes may break into a rather heavy and clumsy jog.  When it is hot and sunny, as in midday, they all stand in a tight group with their heads down, sheltered in the shade cast by their big bodies.  If something really annoys them, they are likely to turn around and butt with their heads – and they do have tough skulls.

Kate did try her best to get these sheep to move to where I wanted them.  But despite her barking, running at them, staring them in the face, and other actions, they just stood there with their heads in the shade, totally uninterested. And Kate is a gentle and polite dog – no way was she going to grab them or do anything rough.

Chance was a different story.  Chance is a tough girl and very determined, and the more they tried to ignore her, the more pushy she got.  She had no qualms about shoving them hard with her nose, or grabbing a mouthful of wool and jerking them around.  Her techniques were quite effective, she did get those woolies to move.

But then the fun day came around.  And on the fun day, we didn’t have sheep to work with, we had goats.

These were young goats of a native breed, rather small, and were very accustomed to dogs, the guy who keeps them also breeds border collies.  There were a number of dogs that were in turn to have a try at taking these goats around a simple herding course.  The goats were not easy to work with; they were much more prepared to split up with each one going in another direction, and to come up and stand pressed against the legs of the shepherd and start to eat his shirt.  (One of them managed to eat the wire of the microphone of the announcer…)

Then it was Kate’s turn and we came into the field. She took a look at these animals moving actively around and her eyes lit up!  With my first command, she took off after them in total joy!  They were moving!  They were running!  They were splitting up!  She dashed after the strays and happily brought them back and expertly herded them after me across the field.  This was how sheep should behave – even if they did look and smell a bit strange…

Kate was very reluctant to end her turn.

Now it was time for Chance to show what she could do. I have to admit that I was a bit worried – Chance had no qualms about grabbing sheep, and if she grabbed these goats, that didn’t have the protection of that thick long fleece, she could hurt them.

Chance came in and looked at the goats, and calmly started running around them, at a much bigger distance than she kept from sheep.  She approached them quietly and gently, hardly barking at all, and herded them without touching them or even, most of the time, getting very close to them.  She had immediately understood that these needed to be handled in a different way than the sheep – for goats, she needed to be gentle.  I was so proud of her!

I am consistently amazed at the ability of our dogs to understand new situations…!

Kate and Chance are impatiently waiting for the next time we can go to work with stock.

Manners

I was brought up by a mother who insisted that we grow up to be pleasant and cultured people (remember when things like that were important?) – and on the top of her list for that was manners.

Dogs naturally have good manners.  Puppies know that they have to be polite to adults, to say “please” in doggy language when asking for something, to very, very clearly say “I’m sorry” if they have done something to offend, and certainly to give a “thank you” tail wag.  Youngsters know that the adults have right of way and first choice of anything that is important, and woe to the puppy that ignores the rules.  Adults get respect, and that means no pushing or shoving in front of them, no grabbing things or demanding access or attention – definitely a breach of manners and totally unacceptable. 

Dogs respect one another’s personal space, and follow a well defined pattern of behavior when meeting each other.  There is no rushing up and taking unwelcome liberties, unless you are prepared to take the consequences.  And a dog never ignores another dog – if someone else is there, he has the right to be acknowledged.

 A dog in the hunting field will respect his partner in the hunt, standing behind him at the point,  and never rushing ahead to frighten off his birds.  A sheepdog will honor his work partner’s right to run forward first, if that is what the shepherd requires, and will never interfere. 

Our dogs start their lives with us with a very good basic knowledge of manners, which they have learned from their mothers and litter mates.  And then they come to live with us…

We push our way into line when it is not our turn.  We drive our cars on the highway as if there is no one else there, weaving back and forth through the lanes with the assurance that no one else has the right of way but us.  We honk our horns at the slightest provocation or non-provocation.  We shout when we don’t get our own way – immediately!  Our children are positive that nothing counts but their own opinion, and that they must be served first.   We talk on our cell phones, ignoring the fact that there are real people there who need attention.  And…

We wonder why our dogs don’t have manners. 

One can ask – who is really the animal…?



"Hey kids, behave!!!"




"Daddy, please come and play!"



Navigation

There are a lot of famous stories about dogs that have found their way home, or even to less familiar locations, over great distances and overcoming tremendous difficulties on the way.  Not all dogs have such a well developed sense of orientation and the ability to navigate so well from place to place, but all of them have it to a certain extent – certainly much better than mine…!

Just over the last few years, I know of a few Canaans that have proven their abilities.  One dog (who happens to be Habibi’s grand-uncle) was given to a new home when he was about two.  He had spent his entire life, until then, in one place, and had never even been for a car ride, and suddenly he was loaded into the car and transported about 50 kilometers to a totally unfamiliar area with new and unknown people.  He was tied out on a cable and his beloved owners left him.

Well, this definitely was not a situation that he was willing to accept.  Like any good Canaan, it didn’t take him long to figure out how to get free of his collar, and he disappeared.  The new owners called to tell his former owner that the dog was gone, they drove around looking for him, but there were no signs of Pashosh anywhere.

Two weeks later, a very thin and sore-footed Pashosh was found sitting on his first owner’s doorstep.  It had taken him time – it was a long way, and there were several major highways in the way that he would have had to cross – but he got there.  Pashosh, after demonstrating his devotion and navigation skills, was welcomed home and no further attempts were made to rehome him.

The second case was Indi, a four year old female who was placed in a new home after her elderly owner passed away.  She adjusted well and was very happy – until on one of the national holidays, fireworks were set off in the vicinity.  Many dogs every year go into a panic from fireworks, and this is what happened to Indi.  She took off and disappeared.  Her owner, who was very attached to her, even though she had only been with him for a few months, did everything possible to try and find her, with no luck.  No one had seen her, she had not been reported to the veterinary services, she was just gone.

When I thought about it, what occurred to me was that she would try to go home to her old home.  It was only about thirty kilometers away.  I suggested this, and her owner went to look, but didn’t find her.

After three and a half weeks, a tired and dirty Indi came home to her new home.  Subsequently, with some bits of information that we obtained, what seemed to have happened was that she did indeed go back to her old home – but there she found strangers living in the house, and not her beloved owner.  Seeing that this was no longer the home she had loved, she turned around and found her way back to her new home, where she had been quite happy. 

Habibi certainly shows a great sense of orientation and the ability to navigate when we are working in the field.  He always knows which way to go to get back to the road we came in on, or to get back to the car, even if we have been walking for hours and he has been doing nose work to find hidden people for his SAR practices.  He always knows where he is.

I am not so good at this, especially if it is a matter of getting around in town, in all sorts of crowded and unfamiliar streets, with traffic and one way streets that somehow seem to change from day to day.  I try to avoid going into town as much as possible, but sometimes it can’t be avoided.

So now I have a GPS.  I always thought that Israel, being such a small place, would be no problem to navigate in, and that a GPS here was silly.  But my daughter got a new one and gave me her older model.  Well, if you get something for free…!

I rarely use it.  But once in a while, when I have to find some obscure address in town, or some tiny little unobtrusive turnoff somewhere in the country, I turn it on.

My GPS is female, and she behaves like a real bitch. I can’t help it if I am navigationally challenged.  I know she has told me to turn in 23 and a half meters, but I don’t see a place to turn.  And then she starts to shout at me, “Turn now! Turn now!”  Well, it is too late, I have missed it, and then in a totally scornful and disgusted tone, she tells me, “Calculating a new route…”  Like, how stupid can you be, and now you are putting me to extra work!

I have finally managed to figure out what the various symbols on the screen mean – but I am really supposed to be watching the road, not these little arrows moving around.  And they seem often to be moving in the opposite direction from the way I am driving.  I know they are moving according to compass directions – but I am not driving according to compass directions!

One day, I was trying to get to a place in the country, where I had never been before, and I really didn’t know the way.  I was counting on GPS (no, I haven’t given her a name, if I did, it would be a very impolite one) to show me.  As we got to the general area, she went silent and the screen just showed a blank empty field.  Well, it seems that the road to my destination was a new one, which she didn’t even know existed – so no directions.  After driving around in circles for some time, I finally found my goal, but with no help from the bitch.

I really think that Habibi should learn to drive – he would do much better than me at navigation.

Media Stars

We have recently been overrun with interest in the Canaans by the media.  In the last few weeks, we had a film crew from Animal Planet doing a show about the dogs, and a photographer and writer from a very classy German dog magazine to do a feature story about them.  Very nice indeed to get so much attention, but it has certainly been exhausting.

The first to arrive was the Animal Planet crew, made up of Joe, the guy in charge who arrived from the US just for this project, and the cameraman, sound man, and driver, who were local.  Major interest, of course, was to show the Canaans in as natural an environment as possible, ideally to be able to show free living dogs or Canaans with the Bedouin.  Then, in addition, the plan was to film puppies at my place, and dogs that are family pets with others.  And all of this in two and a half days.

We are fortunate in that Israel is a very small country, and what is considered a long distance drive here is a picnic to an American.  So driving an hour or two south to get to suitable areas was not at all daunting for Joe.

Finding free living Canaans is just about impossible, unless you have a few weeks or months to learn the area, discover their habits and daily schedule and have the time to sit and wait for them to possibly show up.  So the Bedouin were our best bet.  The Canaans are working dogs for the Bedouin, notifying all and sundry if anyone or anything gets within a kilometer or so of the camp, and going out with the herds of sheep to protect them from anything that might be threatening. 

However, making an appointment with a Bedouin is another story.  Luckily, in our modern times, the Bedouin have cell phones.  So we did have the possibility of getting in touch with our friend Salame, who is the head man of one of settlements, and has helped us in the past in finding and catching Canaans.  Salame is a very intelligent guy, and quite up to date on what is happening in the world, and has no objections at all to being seen on television.  So he was quite willing for the film crew come out to film his dogs.

The Bedouin concept of time and its importance is a bit different from that of a film crew.  The Animal Planet people had a definite date for the filming, and wanted assurances that Salame would be available, that there would be dogs to film, and a number of other demands that I immediately told them to forget about – such as filming me riding on a camel.  Salame was very casual about it all – yes, he thought that their date was okay… More reassurances than that were impossible to get, since he often didn’t answer his phone (which is a very new and advanced model iphone) for several days at a time.  But I trusted that it would work out, since he had always been quite reliable in the past.

So the crew, equipped with a big van – I had warned them that they needed a vehicle that could go off road in rough and rocky territory – picked me up, and we headed to the “desert”. 

The picture that the uninitiated have of a desert is something out of Laurence of Arabia, sand everywhere, dunes and trackless wilderness with no signs of any sort of life, whether animal or vegetable.  Here, it is not like that. In Hebrew, it is actually called  “wilderness”, which is what it is – very rocky and mountainous, with deep ravines and wadis, and with sparse, tough vegetation growing among the stones.  This time of year, in the spring after the winter rains, there is quite a lot of green, and some areas are very lush and full of flowers.  It is a harsh landscape, but very beautiful, I have always loved it.

We rumbled up up to Salame’s camp over the rocky and potholed dirt track – which again, is certainly not something out of the movies.  Nowadays, few Bedouin have tents anymore, they have all built houses.  In a prosperous village like Salame’s, the houses are well built of concrete, but in the poorer settlements, they are just made of huge pieces of tin sheeting – I would not care to be inside of one of those in the heat of summer.  There is the area that used to be a tent outside of the house, with a roof and canvas around the sides for protection from sun and wind, and there guests are welcomed, with the traditional mattresses and cushions on the floor and the fire pit for making tea and coffee.

All of this is spotless.  However, anything outside the borders of the house itself is pretty much a junk heap.  The Bedouin are very frugal and save and collect everything that might someday be of use, and all of this is piled around, seasoned with old plastic soft drink bottles, plastic bags, and other stuff that is no longer of use.  There is no interest in the esthetics of the camp. When the film crew suggested to Salame that some old bottles and such be removed from an area that they wanted to film, he called a few kids over and had them move them – they picked them up and threw them further down the hill.

We arrived at the time that had been set with Salame – but, of course, he wasn’t there.  When would he get back? Well, soon…maybe an hour or two…he was coming….Meanwhile, we were settled in the coffee tent with a few of his brothers and children.  All of the camp children that had nothing else to do hung around also – this was a great break in their routine. 

I am accustomed to this sort of thing, but Joe and crew were a bit worried about the waste of time, and started to ask about dogs.  Dogs?  The men looked blank (there were, of course, only men and male children to greet us, women have more important things to do, like taking care of everything else in daily life) and the kids thought it really funny that anyone should be interested in dogs.

Finally, Salame arrived.  By now it was about noon, and it was very hot.  A lot of the time planned for filming had passed non productively.  And now it turned out that there was a wedding being held that afternoon in the camp, with relatives and friends coming from far and wide to participate, and they would start arriving in a few hours.  Dogs?  Oh yes, dogs…But first we needed to drink coffee and tea, and taste some of the food which was ready for the wedding…It was absolutely delicious, by the way!

There were some dogs in the camp, according to Salame, that stayed at home to guard, and there were others that went out every day with the sheep.  Where were the sheep?  Salame squinted at the horizon and pointed at some vague dots high up the side of a mountain about two or three kilometers across the valley – “There they are!”  No road access, of course. But they would be coming back later…

Meanwhile, we started walking around the camp looking for dogs.  The dogs, not being as foolish as us, were lying in various patches of shade, watching us but quite indifferent, since we were obviously insignificant.  When we got too near, they got up, barked, and moved away to a new patch of shade, usually somewhere off on the other side of the hill, where they would be left in peace.  They were indeed Canaans, but not really beautiful ones.

Since one of my major interests in this whole project was to possibly find some new stock with potential for bringing new bloodlines into our breeding, I was feeling quite frustrated.  And then, another dog came out from behind a pile of junk and started to bark at us.

This one was beautiful!  A perfectly typical Canaan, and obviously, from his behavior, a top dog in the camp, he kept his distance, but warned us that we were definitely trespassing and he did not approve!  This was a dog I would love to have!

However, with a wedding about to take place, and guests starting to arrive, this was not a time to talk to Salame about catching dogs – it was enough that he had spared the time for us.  So we and the film crew photographed, and decided to move on. 

The children were quite disappointed that we were going.  We had attracted quite an entourage as we walked around the village – I was beginning to feel like the Pied Piper.  This tribe are very good looking people, and the children were all dressed up for the wedding, and followed us around giggling as we tried to get close to the dogs.  How strange these city people were.

The sheep would be coming home soon, as we got towards evening, and we decided to drive around the area, looking for the herds, and going through some of the other villages to see if there were dogs there.  The villages were almost completely empty, as everyone had gone to the wedding, and we saw a few dogs around but not many.  We found some of the herds, who were now down in the valley on their way home, accompanied by the teenage boys who herded them.  Often the women go out with the herds, but not today – they were busy with the wedding.  The boys thought it was very funny for us to ask about dogs.  Yes, there were dogs around…Where? Well, somewhere, they will come out when they want to…

The sun was going down and it was time to head back north.  And then two Canaans came trotting across the fields towards the sheep.  They had been, sensibly, spending the heat of the day in the shade, and now they made a large circle around the flock, checking that everything was okay so that they could accompany them home.

The next day of filming was much easier.  We went to Tel Lachish, a beautiful archaeological site which was especially lovely at this time of year, and my friends who have three Canaans let them run free on the hill so that they could be photographed in nature.  They looked wonderful running through the tall grass (you can see some of my photos of that on Facebook).  It was still quite hot, and the crew were rather disappointed when the dogs weren’t willing, after running around for an hour or two, to go back and run around some more.  Dogs don’t really care much about the concept of multiple takes…But they did get some good shots. 

Then the puppies were filmed at my place, running around and destroying the garden and playing with my grandson – both the puppies and my grandson have plenty of energy, so there were no problems there.

So all of this will result in maybe ten minutes that will be broadcast eventually…But I am hoping that it will be worth the effort! 

A few days after this, a very professional photographer arrived from Germany to photograph Canaans for an article in a very high toned German dog magazine.  She spent a few days in the south with a friend of mine, photographing his dogs in the scenery of the desert, also went to Tel Lachish, and photographed the dogs here.  And to complete her article, she decided that she had to photograph me with Habibi, with the landscape of the desolate beauty of the area around the Dead Sea as the background.  So off we drove to the Dead Sea.

It is not far, only about an hour’s drive or so.  This was the first time Habibi was ever in the desert.  We stopped at a location that suited the photographer and got out of the car.  Habibi’s nose was in the air, testing all of these strange scents and examining everything in this new place. 

It took a few hours – this photographer is very professional and very, very thorough and took thousands of photos.  The wind rises in the desert as it gets towards evening, and it was getting chilly.  Habibi had already inspected everything, including the camels at a distance, horses and riders going past, jeeps raising clouds of dust, a few Bedouin women walking by, and was really getting bored with it all.

Finally we were finished and went back to the car. Habibi gave a sigh of relief.  Desert dog?  No way!  He has no interest in spending any more time in the land of his ancestors.  My bed in the Jerusalem hills is where he wants to be.

The beautiful Bedouin boy

One of the children, fascinated by the camera

Salame in his festive dress

Changing Lives

This is a good time of year, I think, to talk about some of the very good things about dogs…

Meet Meshi.  She is litter sister to Jenny, my very successful show puppy, but although she is only ten months old, she is already learning to take life seriously.  For the last few months she has been learning her life’s work of being friend, companion, and guardian to Amit, a 10 year old autistic boy.

Most of us know about the difficulties of special needs children from reading about them, and seeing documentaries or films.   As informative as all of this is, it can not give us any real understanding of the needs and feelings of these children and their families, that live and cope with this 24/7, and still do their best to live normal, happy and productive lives. 

I can not pretend to really comprehend what life is like with an autistic child.  But I can see, in my visits to see Meshi’s progress, how life for an autistic child and his family can change, just through the simple process of adding a dog – the right dog! – to the family.

Meshi somehow knows that she belongs to Amit, and that he is her first priority at all times, even when Amit’s older brother offers her a treat or a game.  This is not a result of training, it is the result of a bonding that occurred from Meshi’s first days in her new home.  Amit can be difficult – he can shout at her, pull her coat instead of petting her, tease, ignore her, try to run away – none of this matters to Meshi.  Not only does she belong to Amit, but he belongs to her, and even at her young age, she accepts the responsibility.

Since Meshi has been a part of the household, life has changed.  Amit’s father told me that before Meshi, he could never talk to his friends and acquaintances when he went for a walk with Amit in the park near their home.  His attention had to be constantly on his son, and he had to hold his hand all the time, as Amit otherwise could in an instant run off and not respond to calls, a potentially dangerous situation.  Now, Meshi is with Amit.  She blocks him from running off, attracts his attention and distracts him from inappropriate behaviors, and is his playmate and companion as well as guardian, always patient, always attentive, always loving.  Amit’s father can walk along talking with his friends, knowing that Meshi will not let Amit get too far away.  It has even become possible for Amit to go down to the park below the family apartment with Meshi and walk with her alone, while father or mother watch from the window.  Amit can start to build up independent behavior which will help him in future.

Amit’s parents are now able to get a good night’s sleep without him waking them;  Meshi sleeps with him, reassures him if he wakes up, and keeps him calm and secure so that he can return to sleep.

Meshi still has many more things to learn to make her an effective service dog, but she has already proven herself.

Meshi has two older sisters, Micki and Nikki, who are now two years old.  They are both working service dogs, and have been working for over a year.  They have a different specialization, both of them are working with epileptic teenagers.

Before the dogs joined their families, Tom and Ehud, both severely epileptic and often having up to several severe attacks a day, were very limited in their activities.  They had to wear a helmet at all times, to protect their heads from injury at the sudden onset of a fit, which could cause a blackout and fall.  But worse was the emotional effect;  they were ashamed and embarrassed  to spend time with other teenagers, as they never knew when an attack would occur.  They could never go out without someone accompanying them.  Even going to school was dreaded, as attacks often took place there as well.

Micki and Nikki do not cure the epilepsy.  But they do change the quality of life.  Both of the dogs, by making use of their intense connection to their boys and their keen senses and instincts, have learned to give warning in advance of epileptic episodes.  Even a few seconds of warning is enough for Tom or Ehud to sit down and prepare himself, and to alert help if necessary.  Sometimes the warning can be a few minutes or more in advance. 

But even more, having the dogs gives them confidence and the ability to participate in teenage social life.  The dogs are an icebreaker, a point of conversation, and something special and positive.  Ehud travels alone on the train with Nikki, to come to practice sessions with her. And I saw Tom recently, accompanied by Micki, at a “happening” in a local park, which was for the benefit of organizations that assist with a variety of health problems.  In the past, Tom would never have been willing to expose himself to a crowded public situation.  On this day, he was able to stand in front of the crowd and explain what Micki does for him, and afterwards to talk with a number of kids of his own age, including a pretty teenage girl who also has problems with epilepsy – Tom was proudly explaining to her the advantages of having a dog, and taking her phone number to stay in touch.

These wonderful dogs, that I am so proud of having bred, are representative of many – some dogs are changing people’s lives… 



Nikki




Meshi