Posts from — May 2008

Last night I was watching the series So You Think You Can Dance  and was very much enjoying the abilities of some of the contestants.  I love watching dance, I love watching good movement of any kind.  I wish I could move like a dancer, but unfortunately, I’m destined to remain relatively clumsy.  I love watching my dogs move.  They are very cat-like in their movement.  Maybe that’s why I ended up with Border Collies, they are cat-like.

Gosh, Fern is hot right now.  Talk about beautiful movement.  She is intense on stock.  Must get her going.  I may be able to get some goats this weekend.

The best laid plans sometimes do not work.  I had intended to get on the bike last night, but my Landlords were having a party down by the pond and they called me down there and we talked for longer than I intended.  Oh well, today is another day.  It’s not going to be too terribly hot today.

There’s been a recent discussion on the Sheepdog-L list about the role of fat in a canine’s diet.  The discussion began here.  One of the posts that caught my attention was this one  wherein the poster said that her Aussie was on potassium bromide and developed pancreatitis.  How typical of conventional medicine, potassium bromide “controls” the seizures, yet it may lead to pancreatitis. Other side effects of bromide therapy are sedation, ataxia (hind end weakness and loss of coordination), increased urination and rare skin disorders. Hmmmm, sounds to me that may be the reason why the dog is coming up wobbly after 10-15 minutes of exercise.

This post came up yesterday and I replied to it, although I expect it will fall on deaf ears.  Why would any one want to seek out poultry fat to feed to their dogs?  The Omega 6 levels contained in poultry fat are going to be through the roof.  Excessive Omega 6 fatty acids in the diet lead to many types of disorders such as cancer, heart disease, arthritis, asthma and many other inflammatory conditions.  Most of the people on that list have access to sheep and other stock, why not raise a few extra, cull those who are old and not producing and feed that meat to their dogs?  As is almost always the case, they are looking for a quick fix.

In general, commercial dog food is crap.  I don’t know how people can live with animals who are fed kibble on a regular basis.  They stink and their stool stinks.  The kittens I’m fostering are finally starting to stink less now that they’ve been on raw for a few days.  I found homes for the two adult cats that I was fostering and I was very glad to see them go.  They were extremely reluctant to eat meat and they were already thin so I didn’t want to fast them too long so I broke down and fed them kibble.  My litter box room reeked!  That has since resolved.  I frequently put my nose into my dogs’ and cats’ coats just to smell them because they smell so clean and fresh and they don’t get baths on a regular basis, hardly at all actually.

Most people think suffering is a bad thing, I do too, but sometimes there is good in suffering, especially if it is done with your eyes wide open and you learn from it.

I’ve been reading a lot lately, more so than I’ve done in a long time.  All of these changes in me in just a short month.  Thank you homeopathy.  This weekend I picked up The Couch and the Tree: Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism edited by Anthony Molino. In a chapter written by Polly Young-Eisendrath, entitled “What Suffering Teaches” several things caught my attention.

“The elite ranks of medicine, psychiatry, biology, and sometimes even psychology show an almost uniform lack of interest in the value of suffering. The focus instead is on avoiding or eliminating it.”

I had this sentence highlighted from when I used the book in a class I took many, many years ago. I know I highlighted it because of its significance in conventional medicine (removal of all suffering [symptoms]) compared to homeopathy wherein you do not necessarily want to remove the suffering, at least not symptom by symptom as conventional medicine does, but to look at things in their totality.  Conventional medicine rarely truly removes symptoms, they just cover them up or manage them.

What I’ve experienced this past month thanks to homeopathy has, in part, been suffering; but a lot of it has been good suffering. It’s opened my eyes up to what I am and what I can be.

Polly Young-Eisendrath writes further:

“As a practicing Buddhist and psychoanalyst, I see it differently. Hardships are the major catalysts for change and development in our lives; they wake us to how we create suffering through our own attitudes and intentions, our actions and relationships.”

This section wasn’t highlighted from before, but it is now. If a person pays attention to hardships (and suffering) it can wake you up to change. It has for me.

“Zen Master Dogen has pointed out that anxiety, when accepted, is the driving force to enlightenment in that it lays bare the human dilemma at the same time that it ignites our desire to break out of it.”

– Philip Kapleau, 1969

It is not that conventional medicine doesn’t pay attention to suffering, it does, but remove them at all costs, without any regard for why the suffering is there and what is going to happen to the organism when it takes those drugs that are going to cover up the symptoms.  There was a time when manufacturers were not allowed to run commercials on conventional drugs.  You take this drug and you will feel like your self again, or this one and you’ll sleep like a baby, or this one and you can eat crap without suffering from heartburn, or this one and eat all you want and not get fat.  Unfortunately, all of these drugs have side effects, some of them very severe.  I listen to the side effects and think to myself: how desperate can someone be to get rid of this or get that in order to risk the side effects?

Quite frankly, conventional doctors and the medicine that they prescribe scares the crap out of me.

Mark Morford wrote quite eloquently on this topic, I need say no more here.

When I injured my finger, I went to an urgent care facility and they wouldn’t treat me, said I had to go to an orthopedic specialist.  I didn’t go the specialist and instead called my homeopath.  My finger is perfectly fine now, I’m on the road to being perfectly fine all over thanks to that injury.   Know what it cost me?  $150 to my homeopath, which has included all follow-ups plus maybe $50 in remedies I didn’t have on hand which includes shipping.  A vial of a homeopathic remedy costs a whooping $10.  Do these remedies miraculously remove all my symptoms and suffering?  Sometimes they have, but other times, it takes time and new symptoms develop.  That’s just another layer my particular “dis-ease” exposing itself.  Eventually we’ll get to what is my “constitutional” remedy and it will be that remedy that I’ll use for just about any symptom that may arise.  I wish more people would look at the power of alternative medicine and stop taking all those little purple pills with all their side effects.

If I had gone to the orthopedic specialist, I expect the finger would be better now too, but it would have cost my insurance company likely thousands of dollars and me likely more than $150 in deductibles.  The finger would be better, but the rest of my body would be exactly the same.  My homeopath told me there are no true acutes (acute diseases) and now I believe her.  That finger injury opened up a whole new world for me.

Gel’s healing process has taken a similar route.  He was being treated by my homeopath when I, without consulting her, gave him the remedy Rhus Tox (poison ivy) because he was lame in the front end.  That’s when she told me there were no true acutes.  As it turned out, Gel has done very, very well on Rhus Tox.  I redosed him maybe a month ago and he’s been great.  He even looks different, more substantial somehow, more “there” than he ever has.  We gave Fern one dose of Lycopodium because of several car trips she had become sick. One dose and she hasn’t been sick since.

 Coincidence?  Maybe, but I don’t think so.

I just did my now maybe-once-a-week perusal of the “other” Border Collie Blogs.  Yuck, or should I say “muck?”  God, it seems like every day a new person puts up a Blog.  Then everyone else adds the new Blog to their “Blog Roll.”  I am not your general run-of-the-mill person: I’m quite different and individual in my feelings, what I write about and what I do.  As of today, we are no longer going to be called a “Blog”; instead, this is a “Journal.”  My cat journal is referred to as Natural Rearing Notes, it was never called a Blog.

On one Blog I noted the writer accused certain people of “spying” on her.  Ah, duh, it’s a public “Blog;” no one is “spying” on it because you are making it available for anyone to read (or not read) it.  Shaking head in disgust.

Okay, now that I got my obligatory evilness out for the day I can go on with the good stuff.

When I got home last night it was still raining.  It had rained most of the day, a slow, steady rain, just what we needed.  I was a weeny and didn’t want to get wet so I threw a ball for my dogs and called it a day for them.  Came back in the house and started to clean and process rabbits.  I took in two very young kittens to foster on Tuesday and they trashed their cage and it stunk to high heaven.  I cleaned their cage, cleaned them up and let them run around the kitchen while I cleaned up after rabbit processing.  Fern is absolutely fascinated by the kittens.  I’m not sure what she thinks they are.  She tries to herd them, poor Fern, Josey corrupted you.  You cannot herd cats, even little tiny ones.  Fern really needs to work and I really need to get my butt in gear and start working her.  Tonight would be a good night to start, but tonight is bike night.  I mapped out a new route this morning.  The previous one was a bit too travelled for me to feel comfortable riding.  We’ll see how the new route is.  It is a bit hillier so it will be a challenge.  While I suppose training my dogs should be top priority, my health is very important to me, so ride the bike I will.

I’m still on the fence about whether I’m going to get some goat kids to work Fern on or not.  I started Gel on goats and in retrospect, I should have left him on goats longer than I did.  Yes, I made some mistakes with Gel, but all in all, he’s a good working dog, so I probably should do the same thing with Fern.  The lambs that I have at the house are really not appropriate to work a young dog on.  Of course, I can’t do much work until they mow the fields which isn’t going to happen for at least a few days given the rain we got yesterday.  I have had Fern on the calves and she’s doing very well on them, but she hasn’t been kicked yet and I’d rather she wasn’t kicked at this age.  Fern does heel which will be very helpful down the road.

Hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to go to Salisbury on Saturday for an agility lesson.  I expect the bike riding I’ve been doing is going to help my endurance on the agility field.  I am going to be embarassed at where Fern is with her agility training.

Must get butt in gear.

It was a very busy and productive weekend.  On Saturday I helped Wally worm, trim hooves and retag all the ewes with lambs.  It got a bit rough.  Some of the ewes wanted to fight.  The St. Croix behaved, but one of the blackheaded Dorper ewes decided she was not going into that barn and was going to run down anything that tried to bring her in (including me).  She gave Gel a bad time and he used his teeth on her, more than he’s ever done.  When we got her in and up on the stand we had to doctor a few bite wounds.  I don’t like my dogs to injure sheep, but when the ewe is running him down as she was, Gel was justified in using his teeth this time.

The rest of the weekend was spent preparing my garden, which included putting up a fence around it and then planting it.  It is extremely therapeutic digging in the dirt.  I also spent a good deal of time in the house organizing, throwing out things I haven’t used in years and beautifying my back porch.  It looks so nice now, it’s a lovely porch, that I hardly ever use, but that is going to change.  I hung chimes, planted some impatients in window boxes and cleaned out the crap that had accumulated back there.  Then I went down to my sitting area  and worked on cleaning out weeds and then hung my air chair  that I’ve had for over a year now and never hung.  I cooked, I scrubbed my kitchen floor and cabinets.  I went for long walks with the dogs.  It was a restful weekend.

It’s raining today which is a good thing.  We need it.  I took advantage of the forecast rain and planted some seeds this morning.  I’ve got two more sets to plant tonight.  Not only is my garden going to produce vegetables, but it’s going to be pretty to look at too.  I planted Morning Glories, Fox Glove, Lupine, Sweet Pea and several other varieties of perennials.  I also put in quite a few different flowering herbs.  The project this weekend is the plot behind my house where I had a cat run built which I’ve since taken down.  I plan to plant herbs and wildflowers there, if I can manage to work the soil up.  It’s pretty hard right now.

The dogs seem to be enjoying the down time.  I brought the sheep and cattle back to my property on Saturday.  I finished setting my ElectroNet for them yesterday.  They’ll be okay where they are for at least a week, if not more.  As soon as the back field is cut, I am going to start working the sheep hard with Gel (to tire them out) and then putting Fern on them in the fenced-in area.  She’s extremely keen to work and it’s time to start doing some training on her.  Not sure where we’ll go from here as far as competition goes.  I do want to focus more on agility for a while.  My agility field is mowed and the equipment has been set up (did that this weekend).  Did a bit of double box work with Gel.  He remembers.  It’s soon going to get too hot to do much training and I’m not going to push it in the heat.  The summer is time to relax and take it easy.  There’s plenty of time for training and trialing in the cooler months.  I was incredibly glad not to be in Lawndale trialing this weekend.

I left work a bit early yesterday.  I closed a $23,000,000 deal which I knew nothing about prior to last Friday so I was beat.  As I write this, we are closing a $150,000,000 loan, just waiting for a few more signatures and it’s closed.  Not a bad week’s worth of work.

It’s so nice coming home to dogs.  They are always so happy to see you.  Quickly I changed into shorts and a T-shirt and took the dogs for a run on the ATV.  When I got up to Red’s I saw that they were baling hay in the front field.  I sat and watched for quite a while.  The creation of those big round bales of hay is fascinating.  I’ve done “haying” before, but we only did the small square bales.  I hadn’t seen big round bales of hay until I moved to NC.  The hay looks so pretty.  A big improvement over last year when the fields were brown and ugly by this time.

I brought the dogs back and suited up to ride my bike.  Of course, the dogs tried to follow me out the gate, but I told them they had to stay, that they couldn’t come when I rode this bike.  Riding the bike is my time alone.  Time to enjoy the feel of the bike under me, the road, the wind, and of course the pain, yes I am enjoying feeling the pain.  Eventually the pain will stop, but almost ten years of not riding the bike is going to be difficult to overcome.  I am amazed at my willingness to continue to ride the bike.  I could have thought of a million excuses why I shouldn’t ride the bike:  I was tired, I needed to clean and grind rabbits, I needed to clean my house, I needed to sit in front of the TV and drink wine, but I rode and I felt good when I got back.

Sound asleep this morning I rudely awoken by the sound of water running on the floor.  What the heck I thought to myself.  Did Fern have an accident?  Nope, well, not that kind of accident.  She chewed a hole in her canine cooler and it was emptying its contents all over the floor.  Great.  I got up and grabbed some towels to clean up the mess, put the dogs out for a few minutes, then went back to bed and slept soundly until 6.  I’ve had two very good night’s worth of sleep and it feels wonderful.

Today we could wear jeans to work and the ones I have on used to be tight on me.  They are now all but falling off.  Guess I need to get a belt.  I may be spending some money having my clothes altered.  This is all a very good thing!

Now that the front field has been hayed and the bales made, I will be able to work Gel again.  The hay bales will make perfect “panels” to work on driving.  That will be on tonight’s agenda.  I’m hoping to get out of the office early again today to get an early start on the long weekend.

I am going to look for a dairy goat to buy.  Raw milk has many health benefits and I can make yogurt and cheese with it!  I love goat cheese.  Gathered another eight eggs this morning.  Now if I can just get the garden in this weekend, I’ll be in good shape.

This weekend I’ll be going over to Wally’s so that we can worm the adult sheep, trim hooves as needed and tag the ewes and their babies with fresh tags.  Wally has a stand that we can use to hold the sheep as we work on them, but getting some of those big sheep up onto the stand is going to be a trick.  I have suggested that we set panels into an alleyway leading up to the stand and use Gel to push them through.  This will be good practice for Gel who doesn’t like to push from behind or heel.  I’m not looking forward to wrestling some of those sheep up on to that stand, and in fact, some probably won’t be able to go on the stand.  After we finish the worming, trimming and tagging we’ll put them across the street onto fresh pasture.

My ducks started laying again.  It took a farmer (Marcus) to bring it to my attention that I needed to give them some oyster shells.  Duh.  I should have know better.  Thank you Marcus, I’ve missed the eggs.

A local farmer is going to be cutting the back fields, including the one I rent.  My landlord asked my permission before letting him do the cutting.  I told him fine as long as I got at least one round bale from the cutting.  The land, which is not mine, but is rented, is starting to produce for me.  I believe two round bales will get me through the winter as long as we don’t suffer another drought.  The grass is growing well.  Hair sheep are able to survive on much less than wool sheep so as long as there’s some grass for them to eat over the winter, we’ll be all set.

I hate feeding grain to my livestock as it is not a natural food for them, especially given the quality of food stuff produced in the United States today.

When I last spoke to Marcus we talked about raising up chickens and butchering them.  I need to get there.  I really need to get past not eating what I’ve raised and butchered and stop buying meat from the grocery store.

Next year I will raise some calves up for slaughter, that’s a definite.  I got into keeping livestock for the dogs, but that is now changing.  I now feel like I’m raising these animals to sustain us (cats, dogs and me) rather than as a recreational activity for the dogs.  See where trialing gets you, or doesn’t get you for that matter? 

On Blogs, I read Blogs that are written by people I know and it has become a source of irritation for me.  I wish people had pass a basic literacy test and know how to use spell check before they could start a Blog.  Blogger (and others) has added more clutter to the rubbish heap that the Internet can be.  I have been “blogging” before “blogging” became a term with Natural Rearing Notes  which has been in existence since 1997.  I didn’t use “blogger” tools like Blogger back then, they were not available.  I used basic HTML for navigation.  I’m slowly pulling my old entries into Word Press format.  I love Word Press.  It makes the process a lot easier to manage.  Anyway, today I found two Blogs, The Mindful Word  and Slowly She Turned  that I really like and have book-marked them and will spend my free time reading these and like Blogs and forget the rubbish. 

Lately a big part of my life has been removing the rubbish.  It’s a good thing.

Last night I stopped at the Mexican market on my way home to get some chicken for the cats.  The meat there is fresher than that you can purchase in a grocery store and I like supporting the small markets.  I miss the Italian markets that I had access to in Boston.  When I got home I quickly ground up the chicken, then took the dogs for a run.  When I got back, I started the lawn mower and mowed my agility field until it got dark.  I swallowed close to a pound of hay seed while out with the dogs and that coupled with what the lawnmower was kicking up made my asthma act up.  Lovely.  Got back in the house and chopped up the chicken breasts I had poached before I went out with the dogs and started potatoes boiling to make potato salad.  I’m looking forward to the long weekend and plan to do some grilling.

I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.  I’m glad my Open Ranch noncompete run got pulled from the trial that is scheduled for this weekend in Lawndale.  Otherwise, I’d be there this weekend instead of home enjoying my animals, the people I choose to surround myself with and of course the beautiful place where I live.  The more and more I think about it, the more I think I may cut way back on the number of trials, in any venue, that I do in the future.  Given gas is not going to get any cheaper, it’s best to avoid unnecessary traveling.

I just re-read the article  that I mentioned yesterday and wow, it’s a great article.  Here are a few things that I highlighted in my copy:

“Allopathic medicine is not “traditional” in that roots of homeopathic medicine reach further than allopathic, but it is “conventional” in that it is based solely upon current social agreement or convention. Since about the sixteenth century and the religious reformation and the following acceptance of the mechanical vision of the world, convention has turned to observe and manipulate surface phenomena. In its aim to simply eliminate the observable “disease”, forgetting that healing is not getting rid of disease but coming to a greater level of health, “conventional medicine” has eliminated the soul of man and the sanctity of life.”

Julian Winston’s summary of the 9th Paragraph of the Organon:  “The physician wants to make people healthy so they can use their bodies to get on with the higher purposes of their existence.”

“[I]t is not just “the right remedy” that cures the case. Believing that a remedy possesses the power to cure is like turning back to the physical-chemical understanding of man and thinking that a thing, a remedy, can cure. … It is the conventional allopathic view that believes that chemical substances are the way to cure an essentially material body.”

Finally: “Disease is understood to be not a misbehaving chemistry, not a changed tissue, not a malfunctioning organ, not even a deviated behavior. Disease is understood to be a discord in perception.”

This is truly a wonderful article.  I’m glad I found it.

On my ride home last night, there were thunderstorms all around me.  I was planning on riding my bike that night and was afraid the storms would prevent me from doing so.  They did not.  I did the same loop that I did on Sunday.  I felt better on the bike this time, but it hurt more.  I’m glad I went out though because it felt good when I was through.

When I got back from the ride, I puttered around the house, did some cooking, then sat down to watch the grand finale of American Idol.  Then my friend Helene called and we had a wonderful time discussing how men are still very close to their cavemen roots.  Thanks for making me laugh so hard Helene!  Then my “caveman” called and we had a nice conversation that went on way too late.  I sort of got read the riot act for not planting my garden yet.  Why buy food when you can grow it yourself?  So, I am appropriately chastised and will stop on my way home tonight and pick up some vegetable plants and go and dig in the dirt.  I’m sure Fern will love to help me with that project.  I do have to get some mowing done so I can re-set my agility field.  I get the feeling I may see Marcus tonight which will be a wonderful thing.

It’s good to be busy and it’s good to feel good.

I may have mentioned that I have rediscovered my love of music.  I bought an iPod a few weeks ago and now don’t know how I ever lived without one.  I have also discovered that my tuner/receiver at home isn’t working properly.  It seems that only the jacks to the TV/SAT are working.  Last night while at Wal-Mart I bought a connector so I can connect my iPod to the receiver and run it through the big speakers.  I dragged out my old Polk speakers and plan to connect them up tonight so I’ll have four speakers going.  I really don’t need to connect everything up to the receiver.  I can leave the connectors connected to each individual piece of equipment and then when needed, run them through the jacks that are working.  Receivers are expensive and I don’t want to spend the money on a new one right now.  Maybe with my economic stimulus check, whenever that may come.

So much has come alive in me over the past month.  It’s wonderful, but scary at the same time. 

One song that keeps running through my mind is “If You Could Only See” by Tonic.  The chorus goes like this:

“If you could only see the way she loves me
Then maybe you would understand
Why I feel this way about our love
And what I must do
If you could only see how blue her eyes can be when she says
When she says she loves me”

What has prompted this post?  If you could only see, the “seeing.”

When using homeopathy as a healing modality, you need to be able to “see” so much more than you do when using conventional medicine.  It isn’t about the tests or the numbers or the medicine.  It is about the power of observation and then the choices you make based on what you see.  This  is a beautiful article on the true beauty of homeopathy.  I cannot expect everyone to understand or to “see” the principles involved in homeopathic healing.  It’s a difficult concept for most people to grasp.  You have to look at the World with a completely different prospective.

These two sentences from this article really hit home for me:  “Many steps follow that are part of homeopathic art and craft, yet the healing movement as a change in consciousness, in “perception”, has already taken place. Sometimes this process is repeated many times with a patient. Sometimes one such experience provides a complete healing.”

I have experienced a complete change in consciousness.  Things that would normally trouble me or have me flying off in a rage or tangent just don’t do it any more.  It’s all just rolling off me like water off a duck.  I’m operating in a completely different realm of consciousness and it’s a truly beautiful thing. 

They killed me at work yesterday.  It’s hard to go from sitting around and twirling my fingers (not really, but you get the idea) to outright slammed and getting pulled in three or four different directions.  I suppose I should get used to it given the economy.  Our work schedule is likely going to be erratic for some time now.  At least the day went by quickly.

I stopped by Wal-Mart on my way home and picked up a couple of things.  When I got home, I let the dogs out, off-loaded my car and decided tonight was Michelle’s night off.  I am late on an article due to Animal Wellness  magazine so I worked on that for a while.  I brought the dogs in around 8:15 and let them do their thing.  They are both very good in the house and settle down after a few minutes.  I half watched the season finale of Bones and then about 20 minutes of House before I got the dogs together and went out and put up the ducks.  This is now Fern’s job.  Gel doesn’t particularly care for working ducks.  I use him if Fern gets into trouble, but for the most part, she understands her job.

I thought about riding my bike this morning, but decided it might be better for me to wait until tonight.  You never know what you are going to run into out on the road.  The loop I am currently doing takes about 30 minutes, but should I get a flat tire or heaven forbid, crash, that would make me late for work.  So I fired up the ATV, took the dogs for a run and checked on the sheep and cattle.  They are happy as pigs in shit up there.  Lots to eat.  I checked with my neighbor to be sure they are not being difficult when she fed the pig and she said no, the pig snarls at them if they come near their food, so all’s good up there.  I’ll leave them there until the weekend.

I hope that they start haying the field around me because the grass is too tall to work stock.  Gel is desperate to work, but until the fields get cut, it’s too hard moving livestock around.  It isn’t going to hurt him to take a break.  We will not be trialing on stock for some time now. 

After I got back in the house I puttered around a bit and then decided to scrub at least part of my kitchen floor.  Not sure where all this desire for cleaning is coming from, but it is a good thing.  My house is looking very, very good.  My car is even very clean right now.  Clean is good.  I’m cleaning bad energy out of my life.

I’m outright slammed at work, which is a good thing, but it leaves me little extra time during the day to write.

So, this is a quick update to share photos that I took on Saturday of the ewes and lambs and some of Gel having a go-round with the St. Croix ewe.  The red ewe who is in the last two pictures gave Gel a hard time last year, but she decided Gel would win this time around so she didn’t even try.  The St. Croix will have to learn as well.  Gel is really patient with the ewes.  He gives them every opportunity to move off him.  He’ll show his teeth before gripping.  With the St. Croix, however, she charged him so he had no choice but to grip. 

Can I tell you how nice it is to be down to two dogs?  It’s very nice.  With two such promising and talented dogs, who needs more?

More later …