Two old dogs out doing chores. One on two legs, one on four. Side by side, they water and feed. Caring for others daily need.
Two old dogs make their rounds Well worn paths on familiar ground. To greet the day or say goodnight Side by side, their friendship tight.
Two old dogs with dish and pail. Singing songs and wagging tail. Slower now, than in the past But that just makes the good time last.
Two old dogs, both muzzles grey. Aging joints sometimes curb play. Companionship a simple joy. His old dad; Dad’s old boy.
Two old dogs, and then one day One old dog has gone away. The other left to carry on Two legs to barn and field and pond.
One old dog, eyes full of tears Can still feel his old friend walking near A reminder in the morning dew. Just one path, instead of two.
When one old dog has no more chores And walks through heaven’s golden doors He’ll see that face he can’t forget. A kindred spirit, not just a pet.
So many old dogs, made whole; anew Reunion of a loyal crew. Never again to be apart. Many souls. But just one heart. ~Jeff Pillars “Two Old Dogs”
I knew this day was coming. Samwise Gamgee, approaching age 14, had been hinting that he was getting ready to leave for the past couple weeks. He was much slower following me for chores, his appetite wasn’t quite as robust as usual, and his hearing was fading.
Life had become an effort when it had been a lark for 13+ years.
But yesterday morning, he perked up enough to do his usual rounds on the farm, poke around the stalls in the barn, check the cat dishes for morsels, and bark when a strange car drove in the driveway. Then last night he ignored his supper, laid down and closed his eyes, having used up all his reserves.
This morning, he was gone, leaving only a furry shell with big ears behind.
He had joined us on the farm as company for our aged Cardigan Corgi Dylan Thomas, who died two years after Samwise arrived. Then Sam himself needed company, so another Cardigan corgi, Homer, arrived. They became a happy Corgi team on the farm.
Sam had a great dog life, with the exception of getting lost once and one overnight visit to the emergency vet hospital for treatment from poisoning from ivermectin, the horse worming medicine he somehow managed to lap up quickly off the barn floor when a horse dripped the paste from her mouth. After that he promised to never need a vet again.
His peaceful passing is a reminder of our temporary stay on his soil. He’s smelling the flowers and watching the sunrises and sunsets from the other side now.
I honor Samwise’s long life with the photos I have compiled over the years.
Till we meet again, old friend.
photo by Nate Gibson
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You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing you are worth profound care, even when you are dirty and rattled. Who knew? ~Anne Lamott from Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace
As a farmer, I spend at least a part of every day muddy and up to my knees and elbows in muck, especially now that the fall rains have arrived, turning beast and barnyard to mush.
I call my barn life “the real stuff” as the rest of the hours of the day are spent dealing with “virtual stuff ” which nonetheless leaves me dirty and rattled. Frankly, I prefer the real over virtual muck even though it smells worse, leaves my fingernails hopelessly grimy and is obvious to everyone where I’ve been.
The stains of the rest of my day are largely invisible to all but me and far harder to scrub away. But even virtual grime can become overwhelming.
It is so much easier for me to deal with what is produced in the barnyard over the mess of political lack of integrity and moral standing. What soils me can be washed off and I’m restored for another day of wallowing in my muck boots. There is true grace in drawing up clean warm water, soaping with the suds that truly cleanse by sinking down into a deep tub of renewal.
God knows how badly we all could use a good scrubbing right now.
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Remember that meadow up above the ridge where the dog ran around in circles and we were tired from the climb up and everything was tilted sideways including the running in circles of the ecstatic dog his bright tongue lapping at the air and we were leaning into the heart of the field where no battle ever took place where no farmer ever bothered to turn the soil yet everything seemed to have happened there everything seemed to be happening at once enough so we’ve never forgotten how full the field was and how we were there too and full ~Tim Nolan “The Field” from The Field.
The hill on our farm is for running, for sunning, for lolling, for rolling, for lapping, for napping, for pondering, for wandering.
Walking the field with two dogs so willing, life is full, and always fulfilling.
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Yours a dog’s life, do you moan? Courage, brother! cease to groan. Many men, as on they jog, Live much worse than any dog.
Yours a dog’s life? Then, my boy, It’s a life crammed full of joy!— Merry breezes, meadows fair, Birds and brooks and sunny air.
Dogs? why, dogs are never sad! See them capering like mad! See them frisk their jolly way Through the livelong laughing day!
Dog’s life? Then you’ll never rust. Dog’s life? Then you’ll hope and trust; Then you’ll say in jaunty glee, “Bones have been, and bones will be.”
Cheery, active, trusting, true,— There’s a canine goal for you! Live a dog’s life, if you can: You will be the better man! ~Anonymous
photo by Nate Gibson
I had a dog who loved flowers. Briskly she went through the fields,
yet paused for the honeysuckle or the rose, her dark head
and her wet nose touching the face of every one
with its petals of silk, with its fragrance rising
into the air where the bees, their bodies heavy with pollen,
hovered— and easily she adored every blossom,
not in the serious, careful way that we choose this blossom or that blossom—
the way we praise or don’t praise— the way we love or don’t love— but the way
we long to be— that happy in the heaven of earth— that wild, that loving. ~Mary Oliver “Luke”from Dog Songs
More than once I’ve seen a dog waiting for its owner outside a café practically implode with worry. “Oh, God, what if she doesn’t come back this time? What will I do? Who will take care of me? I loved her so much and now she’s gone and I’m tied to a post surrounded by people who don’t look or smell or sound like her at all.” And when she does come, what a flurry of commotion, what a chorus of yelping and cooing and leaps straight up into the air! It’s almost unbearable, this sudden fullness after such total loss, to see the world made whole again by a hand on the shoulder and a voice like no other. ~John Brehm from “If Feeling Isn’t In It”
photo by Brandon Dieleman
We all need to know a love like this: so binding, so complete, so profoundly filling: its loss so empties our world of all meaning, our flowing tears run dry.
So abandoned, we woeful wait, longing for the return of the gentle voice, the familiar smile, the tender touch and encompassing embrace.
With unexpected restoration when we’ve done nothing whatsoever to deserve it- we leap and shout with unsurpassed joy, this world without form and void is made whole again.
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Wet things smell stronger, and I suppose his main regret is that he can sniff just one at a time. In a frenzy of delight he runs way up the sandy road— scored by freshets after five days of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.
When I whistle he halts abruptly and steps in a circle, swings his extravagant tail. Then he rolls and rubs his muzzle in a particular place, while the drizzle falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace and Goldenrod bend low.
The top of the logging road stands open and light. Another day, before hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes, leaving word first at home. The footing is ambiguous.
Soaked and muddy, the dog drops, panting, and looks up with what amounts to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him, nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.
A sound commences in my left ear like the sound of the sea in a shell; a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it. Time to head home. I wait until we’re nearly out to the main road to put him back on the leash, and he —the designated optimist— imagines to the end that he is free. ~Jane Kenyon “After an Illness, Walking the Dog”
A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. ~Mary Oliver, Dog Songs
As I’ve written elsewhere, I spend over an hour a day dealing with the excrement of my farm critters. This is therapeutic time for me as I have deep respect for the necessity to clean up and compost what is smelly/stinky/yucky and biblically objectionable. (Deuteronomy 23:12-14) None of us, including God, want to take a walk having to pick our way around poop.
As I’m busy picking up manure, I watch our dogs seek out the smelliest, most vile things they can find in the barn or field (preferably dead) and roll themselves around in it one after another until they are just as stinky as the stuff they found. They are clearly joyous about it, especially when they do it together. It is curious throw-back behavior that I’ve assumed, wearing my animal behaviorist hat, was about a wild predator covering up their scent in order to stalk and capture prey more effectively without being detected – except they are really truly so smelly that any prey could sense them coming from a mile away and would learn quickly that a moving creature that smells like poop or a dead carcass is bad news and to be avoided.
This is the main reason our farm dogs live full time outdoors. We prefer to avoid stinky dirty creatures too. So I’ve tried to understand this behavior for what adaptive purpose it may have.
What makes the most sense to me is the “pack mentality” that suggests that once one dog/wolf rolls in something objectionable, that the rest of the pack does too. This is a unifying theme for anxious individuals – they aren’t really on their own if they smell and blend in with the rest of the pack. So they spread the “wealth”, so to speak. Stink up one, stink up all. Like team spirit, it seems to improve morale – until it doesn’t anymore.
I’ve been feeling covered with stink myself. There are so many divisive opinions right now about a variety of current issues; vile nonsense has been flying right and left on social media as well as face to face. The theory is if all of us stink the same from rolling in piles of misinformation, we are then no longer alone.
Yet our destiny does not have to include believing, sharing and “flinging” the stuff that stinks to see who it will stick to.
Time for a bath. Time for soap and cleansing and some serious self-examination. Time to stop joyously rolling around in it. Time to bury the excrement so we’re not picking our way around the piles and can actually hold our heads up to see where we’re heading.
That’s true freedom.
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She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen into her, so that, like an audience, she can look them over, menacing and sullen, and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours; and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs suspended, like a prehistoric fly. ~Ranier Maria Rilke from “Black Cat”
Pangur Bán and I at work, Adepts, equals, cat and clerk: His whole instinct is to hunt, Mine to free the meaning pent.
All the while, his round bright eye Fixes on the wall, while I Focus my less piercing gaze On the challenge of the page.
With his unsheathed, perfect nails Pangur springs, exults and kills. When the longed-for, difficult Answers come, I too exult.
So it goes. To each his own. No vying. No vexation. Taking pleasure, taking pains, Kindred spirits, veterans.
Day and night, soft purr, soft pad, Pangur Bán has learned his trade. Day and night, my own hard work Solves the cruxes, makes a mark. ~Anonymous Irish monk from “Pangur Bán”, translated by Seamus Heaney
Cally, our first adopted calico cat, was quite elderly and fading fast. Winter is always a tough time for barn cats, even with snug shelter, plentiful food and water. We had lost our 16+ year old tuxedo kitty just a couple months previously, and now Cally, not much younger, was not going to last much longer. She still got up to eat and potty, and still licked her front paws clean, but couldn’t manage much else. Her frame was thin and frail, her coat dull and matted in places, she had been deaf for some time and her eyes were rheumy. She spent her days and nights in a nest of hay on the floor of our horse barn, watching the comings and goings of horse hooves and people rolling by with wheelbarrows full of manure. One evening she allowed me to bring her a little rug to give her a bit more cushion and protection from drafts, as I wouldn’t be surprised to find her permanently curled up there the next morning. Her time was soon to come.
Cally was one of a litter raised in the mid-90’s by good friends, the VanderHaaks, on their acreage a few miles from here. When they had to make a move to a city on the east coast, their Cally and an orange colored kitty were in need of a new home. On arrival, the orange cat immediately ran into the woods, only rarely to be spotted at a distance for a few months and then completely disappeared, possibly a victim of the local coyote pack. Cally strolled onto our farm and decreed it satisfactory. She moved right in, immediately at home with the cows, horses, chickens, our aging dog Tango (who loved cats) and our other cats. In no time, she became the undisputed leader, with great nobility and elegance. There was no one who would dare to question her authority.
We knew Cally was unusual from the start. Tango initially approached her somewhat warily, given the reaction Tango elicited from our other cats (typically a hair raising hiss, scratch and spit). Instead, Cally marched right up, rubbed noses with Tango, and they became fast friends, cuddling together on our front porch whenever it was time to take a nap. They were best pals. Tango surely loved anyone who would snuggle up to her belly and keep her warm and Cally was the perfect belly warmer (as Garrison Keillor says, “a heater cat”).
Our free range rooster seriously questioned this dog/cat relationship. He was a bit indignant about a front porch communal naptime and would strut up the sidewalk, walk up and down the porch and perch on the railing, muttering to himself about how improper it was, and at times getting quite loud and insistent about it. They completely ignored him, which obviously bugged him, proud and haughty bird that he was.
One fall morning, as I opened the front door to go down the driveway to get the newspaper in the pre-dawn mist, I was astonished to see not just a cat and dog snuggled together on the porch mat, but the rooster as well, tucked up next to Tango’s tail. As usual, Tango and Cally didn’t move a muscle when I appeared, as was their habit–I always had to step over them to get to where I needed to go. The rooster, however, was very startled to see me, almost embarrassed. He stood up quickly, flapped his wings a few times, and swaggered off crowing, just to prove he hadn’t compromised his cock-sure raison d’etre.
No, I didn’t have my camera with me and I never found them all together ever again. The reader will have to just take it on faith.
After Tango died, Cally rebounded by taking on the training of our new corgi pup and making sure he understood her regal authority in all things, and demanding, in her silent way, his respect and servitude. He would happily chase other cats, but never Cally. They would touch noses, she would rub against his fur, and tickle his chin with her tail and all he could think to do was smile and wag at her.
So I figure a dog, a cat and a rooster sleeping together was our little farm’s version of the lion and lamb lying down together. We can learn something from the peaceable kingdom right outside our front door, a harbinger of what is possible for the rest of us. Despite claws, sharp teeth, and talons and too many inflexible opinions, it is possible to snuggle together in harmony and mutual need for warmth and comfort.
Our special Cally made it happen here on earth. Up in heaven, I suspect she has met up with Tango, and one rooster with attitude, for a nice nap on the other side.
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the goat; and the calf and the young lion and the yearling together; and a little child shall lead them. Isaiah 11:6
Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks, The Met
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My father taught me how to eat breakfast those mornings when it was my turn to help him milk the cows. I loved rising up from
the darkness and coming quietly down the stairs while the others were still sleeping. I’d take a bowl from the cupboard, a spoon
from the drawer, and slip into the pantry where he was already eating spoonfuls of cornflakes covered with mashed strawberries
from our own strawberry fields forever. Didn’t talk much—except to mention how good the strawberries tasted or the way
those clouds hung over the hay barn roof. Simple—that’s how we started up the day. ~Joyce Sutphen, “Breakfast” from First Words, Red Dragonfly.
By the time I was four years old, my family owned several Guernsey and Jersey dairy cows who my father milked by hand twice a day. My mother pasteurized the milk on our wood stove and we grew up drinking the best milk on earth, as well as enjoying home-made butter and ice cream.
One of my fondest memories is getting up early with my dad, before he needed to be at school teaching FFA agriculture students (Future Farmers of America). I would eat breakfast with him and then walk out into the foggy fall mornings with our dog to bring in the cows for milking. He would boost me up on top of a very bony-backed chestnut and white patchwork cow while he washed her udder and set to work milking.
I would sometimes sing songs from up there on my perch and my dad would whistle since he didn’t sing.
I can still hear the rhythmic sound of the milk squirting into the stainless steel bucket – the high-pitched metallic whoosh initially and then a more gurgling low wet sound as the bucket filled up. I can see my dad’s capped forehead resting against the flank of the cow as he leaned into the muscular work of squeezing the udder teats, each in turn. I can hear the cow’s chewing her breakfast of alfalfa and grain as I balanced on her prominent spine feeling her smooth hair over her ribs. The barn cats circulated around us, mewing, attracted by the warm milky fragrance in the air.
Those were preciously simple starts to the day for me and my father, whose thoughts he didn’t articulate nor I could ever quite discern. But I did know I wasn’t only his daughter on mornings like that – I was one of his future farmers of America he dedicated his life to teaching.
Dad, even without you saying much, those were mornings when my every sense was awakened. I’ve never forgotten that- the best start to the day.
A new shipment of this book is arriving soon – you can order here:
God… sat down for a moment when the dog was finished in order to watch it… and to know that it was good, that nothing was lacking, that it could not have been made better. ― Rainer Maria Rilke
photo of Dylan by Nate Gibson
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face. ~Bernard Williams
photo by Brandon Dieleman
photo by Terry Hourigan
Twelve dogs have left pawprints on my heart over my 67 years on earth. There was a thirteen year long dogless period while I went to college, medical school and residency, living in inhospitable urban environs, working unsuitable dog-keeping hours. Those were sad years indeed with no dog hair to vacuum or slobber to mop up.
The first dog in our married life, a Belgian Tervuren, rode home from Oregon on my pregnant lap in the passenger seat, all sixty five pounds of her. I think our first born has a permanent dog imprint on his side as a result, and it certainly resulted in his dog-loving brain. Six dogs and 37 years later, we are currently owned by two gentle hobbit-souled Cardigan Corgis who are endlessly bouncing off each other like rubber balls while play-wrestling for nightly entertainment.
Dogs could not have been made better among God’s creations because they love unconditionally, forgive without holding a grudge and show unbounded joy umpteen times a day. It’s true–it would be nice if they would poop only in discrete off-the-path areas, use their teeth only for dog designated chew toys, and vocalize only briefly when greeting and warning, but hey, nobody is perfect.
So to Buttons, Sammy, Sandy, Sparky, Toby, Tango, Talley, Makai, Frodo, Dylan Thomas, and current canine family members Samwise Gamgee and Homer:
God was watching when He made you and saw that it was good.
You’ve been so good for me too.
photo by Nate Gibson
You may enjoy more Barnstorming photos with delightful poetry in this book, available for order here:
Like a piece of rotten meat which not only stinks right on its own surface but also surrounds itself with a stinking molecular cloud of stink, so, too, each island of the archipelago created and supported a zone of stink around itself. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
As I’ve written elsewhere, I spend over an hour a day dealing with the excrement of my farm critters. This is therapeutic time for me as I have deep respect for the necessity to clean up and compost what is smelly/stinky/yucky and biblically objectionable. (Deuteronomy 23:12-14) None of us, including God, want to take a walk having to pick our way around poop.
As I’m busy picking up manure, I watch our dogs seek out the smelliest, most vile things they can find in the barn or field (preferably dead) and roll themselves around in it one after another until they are just as stinky as the stuff they found. They are clearly joyous about it, especially when they do it together. It is curious throw-back behavior that I’ve assumed, wearing my animal behaviorist hat, was about a wild predator covering up their scent in order to stalk and capture prey more effectively without being detected – except they are really truly so smelly that any prey could sense them coming from a mile away and would learn quickly that a moving creature that smells like poop or a dead carcass is bad news and to be avoided.
This is the main reason our farm dogs live full time outdoors. We prefer to avoid stinky dirty creatures too. So I’ve tried to understand this behavior for what adaptive purpose it may have.
What makes the most sense to me is the “pack mentality” that suggests that once one dog/wolf rolls in something objectionable, that the rest of the pack does too. This is a unifying theme for anxious individuals – they aren’t really on their own if they smell and blend in with the rest of the pack. So they spread the “wealth”, so to speak. Stink up one, stink up all. Like team spirit, it seems to improve morale – until it doesn’t anymore.
I’ve been feeling covered with stink myself lately as I’ve searched for those sympathetic around me and found myself stuck between shit and syphilis. There are so many divisive opinions right now about a variety of current issues; vile nonsense has been flying right and left on social media as well as face to face. The theory is if all stink the same from rolling in piles of misinformation, we are then no longer alone.
Yet our destiny does not have to include believing, sharing and “flinging” the stuff that stinks to see who it will stick to. I no longer want to be a target.
Time for a bath. Time for soap and cleansing and some serious self-examination. Time to stop joyously rolling around in it. Time to bury the excrement so we’re not staring at the ground, picking our way around the piles and can actually hold our heads up to see where we’re heading.
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The way the dog trots out the front door every morning without a hat or an umbrella, without any money or the keys to her dog house never fails to fill the saucer of my heart with milky admiration.
Off she goes into the material world with nothing but her brown coat and her modest blue collar, following only her wet nose, the twin portals of her steady breathing, followed only by the plume of her tail.
If only she did not shove the cat aside every morning and eat all his food what a model of self-containment she would be, what a paragon of earthly detachment. If only she were not so eager for a rub behind the ears, so acrobatic in her welcomes, if only I were not her god. ~Billy Collins, from “Dharma” from Sailing Alone Around the Room
We all should know, at least once in our lives, the complete and total enthusiastic and worshipful devotion that comes without hesitation from a dog. No other living creature grants us this: not a spouse, certainly not our children, never a cat or a horse, but dogs worship the ground we walk on.
It doesn’t take long when living with one or two dogs, to realize they are only human too – with insatiable appetites for independent defiance as they follow their noses rather than respond promptly to a call and whistle.
I love them anyway, even though they are wholly misinformed about my apparent divinity on earth.
In my view, our farm dogs exist solely so I can rub behind their divinely designed corgi ears. Is that not reason enough?
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