THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

I promised a post on “how much training/attention” should we be giving our dogs, and it’ll come, I promise. However, I’m a tad under the weather today, and since I wrote this part up yesterday I’ll post it now, and pick up the training topic soon. Fact is, things are pretty crazy here right now. Besides speeches (thanks SAVMA for having me!), finishing grading 150 7-page exams, new lectures, and the usual daily work load, I agreed to be a grant reviewer for NIH (Nat’l Institute of Health). They are due this Friday, then I fly to DC for panel reviews (and an appearance on Diane’s Rehm’s radio show… I just love her, so that’s a great perk.) If I’d known how much work these reviews would be, well… not so sure I’d have said yes. But it’s interesting, very interesting. But more on the training schedule issue soon, because I think it’s something that’s important to many of us.

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Shearing went off without a hitch Saturday morning; what a treat to see the sheep’s bodies without their coats of wool or hair. Turns out they weren’t as chubby as I thought, and given that they are due as early as two weeks from now, they’ll be getting more food for breakfast and dinner. High time, I’m sure they’d say. They are on extremely nutritious hay, glorious stuff rich with lots of alfalfa leaves, but the more the better from their perspective I’m sure. The day of shearing was cloudy, windy and damp, so I kept them inside the barn. Today it’s breezy but sunny and toasty (50’s!), and I’d bet that they are thrilled to be outside, in the sun and gnawing on tiny new shoots of grass. (New shoots! Bulbs poking green leaves above ground! Be still my heart; I’m almost afraid to believe that spring is really coming… of course, there will be lots more cold days, probably lots more snow, but still, the progression is inevitable and oh so welcome.)

I couldn’t resist experimenting with an old farmer’s trick passed on through a comment on the blog (thanks!) about anointing the sheep with Mennen’s After Shave before turning them loose after shearing as way of decreasing aggression. Given that last year Truffles and Dorothy looked like they were auditioning for a segment on “When Animals Attack” (see photos March 16^th, 2009) , I thought I’d try it. I didn’t have any Mennen’s, but hey, I did have Evelyn & Crabtree Body Mist (Nantucket Briar, ummm, just love the smell), and I figured that any strong scent would do. So immediately after they were shorn I backed them into a corner and sprayed them all. At first they scattered from left to right, but after a few sprays they stood still and let me spray them all over their heads and necks. Did they like it? I swear I think they did. Sheep are very quick to run away from anything they don’t like, and either they were going into tonic immobility (which is highly doubtful), or they honestly liked the smell. And, amazingly, I saw almost no aggression between them. There was a brief moment of head-on-head pushing, but that was it.

The shearer wasn’t surprised; he is convinced that it’s not a visual difference that causes the problem, but that the sheep smell different after they are shorn. Once you take off their wool, which is full of lanolin and a unique slurry of individual scents, they smell very different than they did before. (Sort of like cats when they come back from the vet clinic?) Our experiment certainly supported that hypothesis. (And oh wow did the barn smell good.). Thanks for the tip!

Here’s Redford in “ready to shear” position. Sheep in this position look relaxed, but this probably IS case of tonic immobility… their cortisol readings are elevated when they are in this position, but they do get quiet and passive, which makes shearing much more pleasant for everyone. (The legs belong to Jerry Ace, who is the best shearer I’ve ever had; he is calm and gentle, even when the sheep are not, and there wasn’t one nick or scratch on my sheep. So lucky to have him.)

The next photo is of Dorothy, my oldest ewe, with her beautiful fleece almost off. The brown wool in the middle is the top of her fleece (which gets bleached by the sun), the darker wool on the sides is the inside, skin-side, of her fleece. She and Barbie have gorgeous wool, which will go to hand spinners for cleaning, spinning and knitting.

And here’s most of the flock after shearer was completed. That’s Brittany Spears looking at you (the white one with dark legs), who is indeed a bit of a pudge. She’s the one who crawls into the feeder to get more food–a woman after my own heart.

Here’s a question for you, based on a column I’m writing for The Bark magazine. The editors asked if I’d write a column about “training old dogs.” (The column on training male versus female dogs will be in the next issue… stay tuned!). The question: how does your training vary (or does it?) once your dog becomes geriatric? I’ve started the column already: “Lassie doesn’t sit anymore, at least, not when asked.” I’m basing this introduction on the fact that about six months ago, my 15 year old Lassie looked at me blankly when I asked her to sit.

She’s going deaf, so I thought perhaps she didn’t hear me. I gave her our usual visual signal. Nothing. Then I lured her down with a piece of food. She looked up at my eyes and stared at me. And rather than trying any longer, I thought: “Oh, I get it. Either it hurts her to sit (she’s named Lassie for a reason after all, and basically did everything and anything anyone asked for 14 years) or she’s just simply done performing now that she’s the equivalent of a 90 year old woman. Sort of the canine equivalent of “When I am old I will wear purple.”

Here’s the thing. I treated it completely differently than if it had been Willie. Basically, although I’m still teaching Lassie some new things, which I think is good for her, I’m giving her a lot of ‘old dog’ passes. She is almost deaf, losing her sight, playful but frail and I suspect that her mind feels a little fuzzy sometimes. What do you think? Do you give your old dogs ‘passes’ too?

On the home front, it was 10 below this morning and windy. I’m going to keep this short because Lassie was so cold outside I’m not sure she even peed last time I took her out. I’m going to run home to let her out again. Thank heavens I got in and out of Washington DC between storms. It is absurd here… 10 inches Friday (totally snowed out of my office, couldn’t even think about leaving the farm), more the day after and now they’re predicting a total of another 13″ in the next two days. Geeeez. Being on the Diane Rehm show as without question the highlight of the month. I unabashedly adore her, although I realize such praise is terrifically uncool (“don’t gush” a producer said to me once). She is the best interviewer I’ve ever worked with, and the fact that she was such a supporter of my radio show is a great compliment indeed. Here’s a photo of her and her Maxie, who amused us all by playing with the toy I’d brought while we did the show.

And here’s Will, who unlike me and Lassie, seems oblivious to the cold. Ah youth!