Conscience

Having been raised by a woman of great integrity and unbendable moral values, I have often found myself suffering from pangs of conscience.  I still feel guilty about the day when I was eight years old and cut school and lied to my mother about it.  I find myself obsessing about stupid things I have forgotten to do, or not done correctly, about things I have said that may have been misinterpreted…Why a mistake I made countless years ago continues to haunt me is unclear, but I find these things popping up in my head, or floating to the surface during a restless night.

There are these frequent niggling thoughts running through my mind, even in relation to the simplest everyday things  – Am I doing this right?  Should I be doing it at all?  What will so and so think?  What do I think?

Dogs don’t suffer from conscience;  they live in the now.  What brings an immediate and positive result is what is they do, and what brings a negative result doesn’t get repeated.  There is no sitting and recriminating on what they did and what they could have done differently or what they might do differently in the future, there is only what they are doing right now.  “Live in the moment” is a dog’s motto.

We humans are really good at misinterpreting our dogs’ reactions.  You come home and find that your dog, bored out of his mind at sitting there alone for hours on end with nothing interesting happening – and you haven’t even left the TV on for him! – has demolished a few of the decorative cushions from the sofa and the whole house is flooded with tiny bits of foam rubber.  Doggy takes a look at your face and disappears under the bed.  “You see!” you exclaim, “He is feeling guilty!  He knows he did something bad!”

Well, think again.  Doggy had a great, fun time destroying household property and has no guilt feelings whatsoever. However, being a dog, he is great at reading body language, and understands immediately from yours that you are really angry and that he had better get out of range. 

He has no pangs of conscience about having stolen a cookie off the counter top when you are not looking, or sleeping on the sofa when no one is home.  “But he knows he shouldn’t do things like that!” you exclaim.  “Doesn’t he have a conscience?” 

Well – no!  His guilty look is only an expression of, “Oh,oh, you caught me and you are angry!”  Discretion is definitely the best part of valor…

Life would be so much easier if I could just live in the present like Habibi, never obsessing about the things that happened in the past, and that in any case I can’t do anything about, and never stressed about what might or might not happen in the future, which is not really under my control either.  Wouldn’t it be great to just enjoy the now…Wow!

No worries...

Connectivity

I can’t deny it, I am addicted to my computer, with all of it’s wonderful attributes.  I can’t imagine going back to writing on a typewriter and having to correct mistakes with eraser fluid or redo the whole document.  I can’t imagine getting along without Power Point and all of it’s possibilities.  I love the internet and the ease of finding information on, really, any subject in the world, and the speed of e-mail, and the ease of having friends everywhere, even if they are people that only exist in the computer for all I know.  How in any other way would I have been able to make contact with so many people from so many places?  I can’t remember the last time I have written a letter (and I used to write a lot!) – if you don’t have e-mail, you don’t exist.

I feel really significant and important – if you “google” me, you will get a lot of results!  I exist because I can be found on Google!!!! I remember showing this to my brother, who is not found on Google – he was very impressed!  One of the few things about me that has impressed him in a long time, I think….

But I have a problem with the idea that this machine is smarter than me and can mess up my life so easily. 

I can be working very happily, and suddenly, everything freezes.  The computer refuses to continue, and notifies me that the program has stopped working.

Fatal Error!!!!  One of the most blood chilling phrases that I know of!!!  Have I really killed it?  Will it be able to recover or has everything been lost????  Help!

Things that get sent back because of server errors, or all sorts of other incomprehensible (to me) excuses…I feel very stressed…And why does my email program agree to send some things and not others??? Or to receive some things and not others??? Why can I sometimes upload things to the internet and other times no tricks will help, there is just refusal time after time!

Then there was the wonderful program that I downloaded, for editing photos.  I was so pleased with the results I was getting.  And then, suddenly, one day it announced – “Your trial period is over, and the program has shut down.”  No advance warning, nothing – just gone.  The only thing left was the useless icon showing that once the program did exist on my computer.  And of course, in closing down, it took my photos with it into the black hole of cyberspace.

I still find the idea of viruses and all of these various diseases that infect poor vulnerable computers very hard to understand.  It is not so easy to understand viruses in living things – how can there be viruses that infect a machine?  How can there be people that spend their time developing these diseases?  Do they do it so that then there can be people who spend their time developing cures???

And then there is connectivity, a word that I never heard of before.  Suddenly, that little red light appears on the little black box (modem??router??whatever!) and there is no internet, no mail – I am isolated! I am alone! I am not in contact anymore!!!!

Habibi usually lies next to my chair when I am working on the computer, and finds it very amusing to hear me scream, “No!  Don’t close down on me!  I haven’t saved that yet!!!! Stop it, stop it, stop it!”  He knows I won’t get an answer.  Sometimes he gets up and shoves his nose under my arm to stop me from typing, and looks at me in pity – really, there are much better ways to spend time…after all, he is always here to connect with me…

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.