Sammy the Philosopher

Yesterday our sheepdog, Sammy, aged 11 years and 6 months, was put to sleep. In his honour I'm reposting a piece I wrote about him when he was in the full vigour of his youth.

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Sammy the Philosopher

Sammy is a red and white, longhaired sheepdog. Surprisingly for a dog, he is also a hero, a philosopher and a teacher.

He is ostensibly a purebred Border Collie, though he can’t claim all the lengths of a pedigree. I know  (though he doesn’t) that he only exists as an accident, due to a half day hiatus between his mother Molly arriving at the Collie Rescue Centre farm and his father Bob being taken to the vet’s for neutering. The moment Molly arrived on the farm, they got together and a litter of five was the result.

Both Molly and Bob were non-workers, which was why they were at Collie Rescue in the first place. They had been sent to find new homes where no sheep demanded responsible attention. Both found, happily, in due course and Bob is now doing agility tests and taking owners for walks, while Molly is generally being a rural but non-farming angel.

We intended Sammy to be the farm’s guard dog. Shep our previous sheepdog had died, after a long and effective existence. 

I am not sure that I really picked Sammy out of the litter. In the goat pens where his family lived at the time, there were two red girls and himself, and I am fairly certain it was one of the girls who came forward and introduced herself to me. But we’d had girls for twelve years along with all that “taking to the vet” stuff when they were molested by the local Romeos. We wanted a boy again, so Sammy it had to be.

He loved the car ride home, sitting on my husband’s knee and behaving with perfect decorum while I drove. Periodically he licked Graham’s face and ears with great enthusiasm. For weeks before he arrived the various animals of the farm had been admonished by my husband that they would have to behave “when my puppy dog comes.” He is still emphatically Graham’s dog, except when he misbehaves, when he becomes mine.

Back home on our yard Sammy attached himself to our ankles and waddled anxiously after us wherever we went. Unfortunately, because his destined role as guard dog meant he would have to spend his nights outside the house, he had to become accustomed to sleeping on his own; so we made up a bed, with straw and boxes, in the stable normally occupied by Mr T the Fell pony. We gave him water, and a meal mixed with ewe’s-milk-replacer powder just like at Collie Rescue; and we went about our business. Sammy howled and cried. And then stopped. Suddenly there he was, out on the yard again, investigating the midden and delightedly waddling after us once more. We blocked the gap in the door with a straw bale.

When we went indoors for the evening and left him in the stable, Sammy howled and cried again. We felt like child-murderers, even though he was a big well grown pup of ten weeks old and we were pretty certain he wasn’t going to fade away overnight. It was still a relief to go in early the next morning and find him bouncing with delight at seeing us again.

His first coat was rich brown with the classic sheepdog white collar, chest, muzzle, tail tip and socks. The short dense puppy coat turned into a long dense adult coat, fine and silky and remarkable for keeping itself clean in the dirtiest of weather; his long feathery socks are hardly ever anything other than pure white.

He wasn’t quite brave enough at first to clamber down the steps to the back door, so we have a lot of early photographs of him sitting wistfully on the top step, gazing down into the kitchen. We also pounced on him in passing and carried him indoors quite a lot. This was supposed to be so he could socialise with us and learn our commands. In reality it was just such fun having a pup around the place that we were quite unable to resist the temptation to play with him.

He learned very quickly that “Fetch” was a good game, and within a week of his arrival he was reliably bringing back all the toys that the family offered to throw for him. Lacking any hens to practise herding, and sternly told off for being too keen on sheep, he took to herding the family. He still does. He knows, now, that when people go out they will come back again, but nevertheless he sighs deeply when presented with the jingle of car keys, accepts very reluctantly that his group is divided, and goes to lie down somewhere and wait for our return to make the pack complete once more. This is all very well, but when we come home his insistence on trouser-browsing to find out the news from abroad can get a little wearing, especially on a wet winter day when he’d be better off snuggled down in the cart shed with the blackbirds and we’d be better off indoors with a hot coffee.

In his second summer, the brown shades in his coat bleached to foxy reds and blond highlights. In winter its density enables him to sleep out in the open, which he evidently prefers to sleeping in a building or a dog bed, though he retreats there to shelter from the rain. Whether due to the influence of ewe’s-milk-replacer powder, or just being a naturally vigorous young creature, Sammy has outgrown both his Mum and Dad and become what our farming friends call “a strong dog” with seemingly boundless energy.

Both his ears, at first, flopped over. In time, one stood up like a huntaway’s, but the other never managed to match it. This clownish lopsided appearance has set the character of most of Sammy’s escapades. When he began to grow his adult teeth, the chewing started. Sammy has adopted many strange toys in his life so far and one of his favourites is a worn-out rubber horse feed skip that had endured some fifteen or twenty years of being snuffled, chewed, picked up and stamped on by various ponies. Having eventually developed a split down one side, it was replaced, whereupon Sammy took it over as his chewing toy. Unfortunately this also developed in him a firm conviction that rubber was a good thing to chew. It led to us losing “the electrics” once from the car towbar, twice from the horsebox towbar, once from the tipper wagon, and twice from the trailer lighting board; from the horsebox brake lines, only once, thank God, after which I think he must have reasoned that brake fluid tasted really nasty and perhaps rubber was not such a good thing after all. Still, by persistence he has gradually removed both handles and all the sloping sides from the feed skip, and it is now a twelve-inch pancake that he will fetch, and throw at you, and demand that you throw, for him to fetch endlessly and throw at you again.

However, it was and is Sammy’s deeply held belief that the world is a sad place. Winter is the worst time; it preys on his philosophical mind. If nothing is happening outside, he sits sighing in the rain at the top of the kitchen steps. Stopping occasionally to shiver and whine, he observes us all dimly through the frosted glass of the kitchen door and is thrown into transports of delight when we reach for our boots and bend to put them on. Occasionally, when he thinks we have all gone out, I have heard him wind up from a whine to a howl, as he used to when a puppy. Solitude is his bane; attention his only goal. He cannot believe that he and you exist in the same dimension unless he has a minimum of one foot on you, or around your leg, and to ask him to exercise self control in this is equivalent to asking him not to breathe. Yet, if you advance on him for the ultimate in attention, a good grooming, he turns into a hedgehog, rolling on his back and paddling his long white-socked paws at you to keep you at a distance. Brushing with the pin-brush (the only implement that can get through his six-inch pelt) is an activity that, he tells us, was invented by the Devil. In Spring, the fine fawn-coloured piles that I rake out of his moulting winter coat could fill several cushions.

He is a most handsome animal now, silkily feathered and in the prime of his strength; a vital young dog, sleek of muscle, deep through the heart, with tremendous speed and agility. He has a jaunty bounce to his stride as he trots round the yard flashing his white socks. Yet despite his vigour and power he is still deeply worried that his pack will vanish if he does not keep it under tense surveillance, and Graham’s frequent remarks to him that he is “a hero” have a distinctly ironic flavour. True, if he were arrogant and haughty, the term would fit his appearance well, but his tendency to stick out the tip of his tongue and cock those lopsided ears would give him away. In fact, he is determined to put a brave face on his knowledge of the infinite sadness of the world. He is convinced that no human being can have, or has ever had, enough Fun, and inevitably that turns our Philosopher into Chief Clown. Because he is (of course) the only dog who knows the sad facts of life, it is his Heroic Mission to add Fun to everybody’s existence who comes within sniffing distance.

For example: most people who have dogs, throw balls or sticks for them. It must be a rare family that has, as we have, a dog who throws balls or sticks for us. When you go to feed in a morning, Sammy is there with a toy of some sort; he cares nothing for his breakfast and will allow the blackbirds to steal most of it while he attends to giving you the first of the day’s doses of Fun. He stands up against the feed chest, plonking his big white-feathered feet on the lid until you give him a morning cuddle; then when you lift the lid and reach in for food he will be there, dropping the toy inside, licking your face with his huge tongue, then looking keenly into the depths among the sacks and scoops, waiting for you to retrieve the toy for him. Take it out and tell him to go away? it just doesn’t work – he’ll  be right there dropping that toy in again. When on occasion you just don’t have time to retrieve such a slimy item, his disappointment is palpable. Put down the lid and walk away leaving the toy within, and he’ll sit down and stare at the chest in disbelief, as though a law of Nature had been suspended. Come in from work and cross the yard from the car, bearing a box full of groceries, and Sammy will be at, around or in front of your feet, uttering muffled greetings through his Santa Claus playball; and as you start down the kitchen steps he will throw the ball merrily to coincide with your descent. He can’t believe your curses are not friendly, and he doesn’t accept your refusal to throw it back; he will sit there looking intelligently down the steps at it until you give in and throw it back up to him. You see, he KNOWS you need to do it. He only has to wait till your Fun level drops to the point at which it needs a top-up. The game ends when you throw the ball far enough that by the time he’s retrieved it, you have mastered your hysterics and shut yourself indoors.

You may think that this comedy is all due to us being a load of softies: that the whole family is daft to humour a fool of a dog, and spoil him rotten. Not so. Let a stranger appear on the yard and Sammy will be there, proving his worth in his originally intended role of guard dog. There is not a shred of aggression in this. He is genuinely interested in the unusual and will take considerable pains to investigate it, and therein lies the uncertainty for newcomers. I have seen three big delivery-men sit doubtfully in their wagon cab, staring out at the red-blond dog who waved his tail at them and stared right back. His perfect white teeth were bared in a cheerful grin and his sheepdog-keen amber eyes gleamed with what I knew to be a desire to share Fun. They just didn’t dare to put it to the test.

He is in charge of the yard. He’s probably the only dog in the world who does it by teaching the poor sad humans how to play. Bringing with him the immensely long rope on which he is tethered while we’re away, he will bounce and sniff and dance around the stranger. Uttering muffled wuffs through a mouthful of whatever toy he finds within reach, he almost always trips up the intruder in the friendliest fashion. The Jehovah’s Witnesses call him and his rope “The Reaper”. If I’m indoors, it isn’t Sammy’s bark that warns me of visitors; no, they announce themselves, with cries of, “Gerroff, dog! Giddoot, man!”

Sammy has no need to bark at strangers. He trains them instead to do what he requires. He is an excellent teacher, too; roofers, plumbers, children and postmen are usually trained in less than half a day to throw whatever toy he presents to them. Electricians and builders, so far, have been slower to respond. Busier? Or less intelligent?

Sammy’s out there now, panting in the summer sunshine, watching Graham move building materials around the yard; two red haired, fit animals filling the place with an atmosphere of health and vigour. Let him into the kitchen and he immediately occupies Graham’s bentwood chair, sitting up very straight and quivering with pride at being allowed to fill the Pack Leader’s place. Take him round the fields and he is a streak of lithe muscle, golden-red against the green grass, his white socks flying; he can gallop and leap and turn with dizzying speed and yet drop into statuesque stillness when told “Down” in the face of sheep. Give him company, let him be in on the act, and he is happy.

His one remaining ambition is to master the third dimension: the air. The red dog’s deepest wish is to be a Red Arrow, to rival the swooping swallows. April to September is spent in total concentration, attempting to match the grace and speed of the birds who dive-bomb him in defence of their family’s air space. It doesn’t matter that in this he singularly fails, and makes a complete fool of himself, because during those summer months our loveable philosopher, teacher and clown is honestly too busy to remember that the Life of Man is Sorrow.

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Sue Millard's books almost all have a rural or equestrian background and can be found on her web site, http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk

Her poetry pamphlet "Ash Tree" was published in August 2013 by Prole Books. 

Fell ponies on the Fells

The farm trailer clangs and rattles behind the quad bike as it growls up the fellside, and we ride its movement with our knees bent, like skiers.

The late Chris Thompson’s hill farm, Drybarrows, is farmed by his son David and daughter in law Gail. Drybarrows is a typical Cumbrian holding, with a long winding track up through the fields to the house and buildings. Whereas on a lowland farm it would be very odd to have the house at one side of the fenced land, up here it’s right where it needs to be, looking down over the ‘in-bye’ from a position tight against the fell wall. The farmstead lies central to all the work because once you’ve gone beyond the buildings and through the fell gate you’re out onto the open common with the sheep and the ponies.

It’s a fine morning in early August, with wisps of cloud and a breeze thinning the sunshine on the tops. There is grass and sedge underfoot with sheep trods winding across black turfy soil and granite boulders poking up where they were left by the last Ice Age. A silver-grey tarn lying in a hollow reflects a darting dragonfly. Pinpricks of purple show where the heather is just coming into bloom. On the lower ground a neighbour is mowing-off encroaching bracken, and up here, when our wheels crush the fronds overhanging our path, we’re assailed by the same sour green smell.

Hills and valleys unfold steeply, grey, fawn and green, and the higher we climb the more stupendous the views appear, fading paler and paler into distance, from sage and blue to an ethereal lavender. From the steep slopes above Haweswater we can see Cross Fell, the Pennines, and Wild Boar Fell above Mallerstang. If we were to climb still higher we could spot Blackpool Tower, the sands of the Solway and the hills of southern Scotland.

“On a good day,” says David, “it’s the finest office in the world. On a bad day, the worst!”

We are up here looking for Fell ponies. We’ve found and photographed most of them lower down the fell, but there are another six who have gone off as a separate band. David isn’t worried, however. The ponies travel widely, finding their own shelter in bad weather, seeking fresh grass.

“They move about a lot,” says Gail. “You’ll see them in one place one day and the next they’ve moved on. They seem to have half a dozen favourite areas to graze and as the grass freshens up they visit them all in turn.”

We don’t see anything remotely like a pony, however, only a variety of bracken, sedge, grass, rock and heather, and one or two sheep.

Instead we go back down to the farm and sit chatting over tea and biscuits.

Chris Thompson had come over to my house for an interview while I was preparing “Hoofprints in Eden” in 2004. Here he is, explaining how his family began keeping Fell ponies:

“My father had them all his life; and his father before him. I think they started, there was a farm sale at Town End at Helton, Mr Hunter, and that would be very early on before the First World War. Before the Society was founded. He bought 3 ponies there and he farmed at Scales where Dougie Braithwaite is now, you see. And he just left them on their own ground where they’d been taken from and that’s where they originated from.

“My father gave me one when I left Askhamgate and went to Drybarrows. I only had the one from home and I bought one or two from Sarge [Noble], which were local ponies round about Drybarrows; and I bought a one off Alan Kirkpatrick. His ponies were in the Society but it was his daughter who had them. He had them at Hullock Howe. And I also bought a one – the breed would originate from Sarge – off Anthony Barker at Patterdale; he was huntsman, once over.

“There’s quite a range of Fell ponies and I always think there are two types; there’s a Fell pony, and a field pony! Fell pony will ‘do’ on the fell, whereas if I bought one that had never been on the fell – they haven’t the same instinct when they get to the fell, haven’t the field ponies. I know I sold  a Fell pony mare and she was in foal and I took the yearling back off her; the man said would I take the foal and I said, “Yes I will do,” and it wasn’t turned out until it was a yearling. And about Easter Sunday, some people who’d been walking on the fell came and said there was this pony;  and there just was the head there when we got there. It had gone to where there was some nice green grass round the bog and it had gone too far and couldn’t get out. We were lucky; it could have been buried and we’d have known nowt about it.

“They’re really knowledgeable. They wouldn’t take you into a soft place if you were riding a one. I have been out on the fell on a pony and the mist’s come in, and I haven’t had a clue which way I wanted to be. So I give it its head and it’s landed up at home. (But I’ve never had t’experience of riding another horse at fell to find it out whether it could take us home! Not when there’s been any mist!) I think I more or less gave it its head and let it find its own way. We might have gone quite a long way round by but I just couldn’t say that; it was mist down to home. I thought well, it’s a better knowledge of the fell than I have!

“They were quite good weather merchants. They knew when it was going to change and they came to the lower ground. I won’t say they come right home but you would see them heading down the fell and probably the next morning we’d three or four inches of snow. It’s instinct again isn’t it; but your older ponies quite often came and you’d probably got to go and look for the younger ones. Maybe if they’d missed the older ones coming away, they were to bring down.”

“I think you’ll go a long way before you’ll find anything that’s as hard and as tough and versatile as a Fell pony.”

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Interview extract (c) Sue Millard 2004 and published in 2005 as part of "Hoofprints in Eden" by Hayloft Publishing £17.00 plus P&P.

Sue Millard's other books almost all have an equestrian background and can be found on her web site, http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk

Her poetry pamphlet "Ash Tree" is published this month by Prole Books.

Ash Tree

"Missing", one of the poems from my pamphlet "Ash Tree", is expected to feature as part of Eden Arts' "Lost Tree" project at Brough Castle, Cumbria in August/September 2013.

I plan to remember my grand-daughter by visiting this installation on the afternoon of 31st August, which would have been her 8th birthday. I will have copies of "Ash Tree" with me. I would be very happy to see you there - though I suspect there won't be many from this group who will be able to!

However, I am very grateful to fellow poet and novelist, Janni Howker, who read many of these poems with me for a poetry project last year (2012) and I thank her for giving me permission to use two of the audio files on my web site, http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk/ashtree.htm so you can at least hear a couple of them.

The pamphlet/paperback will be available from Prole Books, http://www.prolebooks.co.uk/ from the middle of next week (9 August 2013). It will cost £5 plus postage. (We may do a digital version later.)

Sue

Bit by bit

Horses, history and humour - well, I'm afraid if you're after humour this post probably isn't going to cut it. Horses, and a bit of implied history, yes.

MARKETING HYPE AND SHEER BLOODY IGNORANCE

Just seen these ridiculous descriptions on a couple of saddlery sites:

"Filet Bouche

£61.65"

"Filet Baucher
£45.00"

“The Filet Baucher uses pressure on the poll as the cheek piece has an extra ring above the snaffle ring where the bridle cheek pieces are attached to, this poll pressure encourages the horse to lower the head and come on to the bit especially useful for horses that have a high head carriage.”

“Stainless steel. With hollow jointed swivel mouthpiece and Increases poll flexion by adding leverage. Enables to keep horses from putting too much weight on their shoulders”.

Seriously? If I ever meet the person who wrote this rubbish I will hit him with a dictionary and then choke him with a gag snaffle.

WHAT A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS

The horse world must not only have a short memory, it must also be gullible and totally illiterate.

The Baucher snaffle is named after FRANCOIS BAUCHER, radical dressage exponent, (1796–1873). He was a French riding master who took great pride in his ability to produce a horse quickly. His insistence on training for straightness by “flexing”the forehand and hindquarters sideways, very early in training, sounds extremely forceful. (Disengaging, anybody?)

The Fillis snaffle is named after JAMES FILLIS, Victorian horse trainer (1834-1913) who was an English-born French riding master who trained with Baucher in France, and introduced his methods to England. He taught for 12 years as Ecuyer en chef of the St. Petersburg Cavalry Riding School. He trained horses in a German circus in 1892.

Alois Podhajsky and other dressage masters wrote of these men, but if you can’t get their books, both JAMES FILLIS and FRANCOIS BAUCHER are discussed by Wikipedia.

"Fillis Snaffle £67.60"

“This is an excellent bit for horses who have a dislike for bits in their mouths as the square link is severe--"

Really? Gotta love that logic.

"-- but the action from the cheeks on the poll is very gentle. The horse prefer the gentle poll action to the severity of the mouthpiece This bit offers a nutcracker action combined with pressure being exerted on the poll. The normal pattern has a small cheek, ideal for use with small ponies.”

I would never put anything across MY tongue that had studs projecting under its mouthpiece, let alone the Fillis snaffle they want you to shell out almost 70 quid for. And there is no poll action with a snaffle bit. Not even if you were to write grammatically.

IGNORANCE

Only cynical marketing hype would make claims that five minutes’ straightforward observation can refute. It’s plainly ignorant to combine the names of two controversial riding masters FILLIS and his mentor BAUCHER, produce the mangled cod-French name of FILET BOUCHE and slap it onto a simple and unpretentious bit.

The hanging cheek snaffle (to give it its accurate description) has NOTHING to do with a cut of beef. Except, perhaps, the expectation that if it bears a pseudo-French name you will spend a lot of money to purchase it.

Look for a simple hanging cheek snaffle, it will set you back £20 at most.

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You may have gathered that I've been studying bit design and action--not with a loriner (that's a bit maker) but with my own Fell pony's mouth. Ruby was very patient with her nosey owner and let me take a lot of photos. She only objected to me testing the most severe curb-rein effect of my Liverpool bit - so I only took a couple of pics and then let her off that one.

I've looked at single-jointed snaffle bits and the two curb bits I use for driving. They are both LONG documents so you may prefer to read them separately rather than in this post.

 The single jointed snaffle article, and illustrations

 The Liverpool and Kimblewick article, and illustrations

 

Writer's block - or what?

I'm anticipating a busy weekend. The Orton Scribblers meet here on Monday evening; I have to attend a Fell Pony Society meeting on Tuesday; my daughter, grandson and I are going to Cheshire to visit my mother on Sunday, and tomorrow I shall be in Keswick talking to the Cumbrian Literary Guild about "Researching and Writing a Historical Novel".

I hope you appreciated the jumbled chronology there.

It's symptomatic of my writing approach at present. Although I have some fairly good ideas in my head, and one of them tapped me on the skull yesterday and suggested that it could rejuvenate an MS I have rewritten without satisfaction over the last few years, I seem to be putting off writing. I've even got to the stage of ratching out old blogs and articles to print off as my reading contribution for the Scribblers. And we only meet once a month.

This is serious inertia.

One excuse is that the car, which I need, to get me to two of the impending appointments (and to stock up on staples like bread, milk, and cream crackers), is currently at Tebay in the garage. It's having its electric boot lock "looked at" because it won't open; according to various web forums, the internals of Vauxhall boot design on this model are shite. Bits have been ordered for it, and they have arrived but they have also been pronounced Wrong. So Chris the garage man is returning the car to me "this afternoon" - which will probably mean 6-15 pm, but might be earlier... or not.

Another is the impending arrival of printed copies of my poetry pamphlet "Ash Tree", due out next month from Prole Books. It's highly personal stuff and the idea of doing readings from it is pushing me to find alternatives that are linked, but not so emotionally charged.

I've written a lot in the past week on horsey web-sites.

I've researched and produced an article about bits (The Single Jointed Snaffle).

I've updated my Fell Pony Museum web site with a bit more information about Galloways.

I've read more than I probably should have done about academic research into the DNA sequences of the horse and and how to read genetic diagrams. But I am still twiddling my thumbs today about whether to start doing anything worthwhile like Exercising the Mare or Doing Some Writing.

Maybe it's just the warm weather.

And maybe I am just making excuses.

I can't decide.

~~~~~

PS - the car has just been returned. Grocery shopping will now occur at great speed.

I suppose that answers the question. See you all later.

The Twisted Stair

Freebie week here!

The Twisted Stair is free to download for Kindle, until Friday this week.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00C8SCTJM
or https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C8SCTJM

Three uneasy tales.

The dark side of human emotions may not always lead to murder...

Getting My Eye Back In

I've spent the past week mostly writing specialised non fiction about horsey subjects. Single jointed snaffle bits, to be precise; not really on topic here, but if you are interested in an equestrian rant, try The Single Jointed Snaffle, and the effect of rein angles, auxiliary reins and nosebands. Yes, I did say it was specialised.

Between driving my Fell mare Ruby, and visiting the Old Git pony Mr T down at Millom, and attending the monthly harpers' workshop, and watching a game or two of Wimbledonnis, I've struggled to get any Proper Writing done. God, it's a hard life.

I've also been trying to get my eye back in for poetry, ready for Prole Books' launch of my poetry pamphlet, "Ash Tree", next month. I admit I'm being a bit lazy about this, so I've been teasing myself by writing little poems - probably the smallest there are, the Japanese Haiku. Haiku are primarily nature poems, and Cumbria is looking/sounding/smelling/feeling terrific just now. For now I'm simply lumping them under the title of Cumbrian Haiku, but if something better pops up I'll use it!

Here are a few haiku to be going on with.

black mares and foals drift

through a sun gold sea, eating

grass, not buttercups

smoothed by glaciers

boulders that crouch in the sedge

become moss gardens

rounded grey-lined stones

asleep on the ragged fellside

stand and graze as sheep

quick blue-black crescents
skim through the farmyard midges
swallowing beakfuls 

Arigatou gozaimasu.

I also have to polish my talk for next Saturday at Keswick, to the Cumbrian Literary Group: "Writing a Historical Novel." I hope it will go OK!