by Brian Brett
THE BIRTH OF THE pups was almost as stressful. Sam practically had a nervous breakdown as they began arriving. I’d been watching her all morning, but every time I left her she’d start to panic. She shredded her bed in minutes. I moved her to the attached greenhouse and went to get a coffee. By the time I returned she’d almost eaten her way through the exterior door. I phoned Sharon for help, but she was too busy with other traumas at the emergency ward where she was working that day.
Eventually, I had to lie down with Sam and console her. Once the puppies started popping out, she tried to run away, so I restrained her until she naturally shifted into mothering mode and licked the blood and caul off them, warming and drying them, before suddenly trying to escape as each new one appeared. After an hour of this I was a basket case. Fortunately, Sharon arrived home and took over. Once the birthing was done, Sam became a magnificent mother.
Jen’s first batch of pups arrived several years later, and both Sharon and I were lucky enough to be home. We’d built her a covered hay nest in the barn, and she seemed to think it adequate, but we still kept a close eye on her. We were in the library watching a movie about raising camels, which included a birth scene that Jen watched wide-eyed. Border collies are smarter than some people I know, and I’m convinced she understood exactly what was going on. It’s only human stupidity that causes our failure to recognize animal intelligence. Whether it’s the cats and dogs or Tuco the parrot, watching videos with our gang can be a riotous experience. Tuco always growls at bears and furry critters and cheers the reptiles and the birds in the movies, and he adores rampaging dinosaurs, scantily clad women, and noisy science-fiction wars.
Being so near to term, Jen had a weak bladder and needed to relieve herself. Sharon unthinkingly let her out and started making some popcorn. By the time she opened the door again Jen was long gone.
We searched for an hour and then just as I returned out of the rainy night I heard a squeak like a newborn puppy might make. Only it was under my feet. Jen had slithered into the crawl space beneath the mud room. The entrance at the other side of the house was so tight I was forced to dig it out so I could crawl inside. Wearing my headlamp, I had to exhale deeply in order to slide under each joist. Talk about claustrophobia!
Worse, it appeared that the cool, dampish earth of the crawl space under the rear addition was also a graveyard, containing the fossilized skeleton of a cat, probably killed by a raccoon long before we bought the farm, a dead sparrow, and a dead mouse. It was ghoulish, and now there was more squeaking, multiple squeaking. I turned the corner beneath the laundry room. It was still too black ahead, even with the headlamp. I kept crawling as the squeaking grew louder. Finally, I saw her huddled in the corner. Four pups. Obviously more to come. She was in a panic. I crawled up to her and took the first four pups, one at a time, and placed them behind me. Then I grabbed Jen by her chain-collar and started gently dragging her on her back. I couldn’t leave her there, in case she developed problems.
So I lifted the pups a foot ahead, dragged myself, then dragged her. I couldn’t let go now because she’d crawl straight back to her damp hidey-hole. Cursing and sweating in the dark, I retreated a foot at a time until we rounded the corner and I saw Sharon’s flashlight at the entrance. She called out to Jen, and the dog broke away and ran into her arms, while I slowly wormed forward with the pups. Once outside we leashed Jen and carried the pups to her fancy, hay-lined, blanket-adorned birthing lair, where she finished the job, locked in. I returned to the house and showered off a half pound of mud, dirt, and dead things.
WE RASHLY KEPT THE patch-eyed pup and named her Bella.
She’s a classic working dog, schizoid and brilliant. During dinner preparation she’s permanently parked under the breadboard, so we now call her Bella Breadboard. She also quickly figured out the dishwasher and licks all the dirty dishes as soon as our backs are turned while we’re cleaning up after dinner—including the knives, which gives me the hair-tingles when I catch her doing it. So we also call her Pre-wash.
Living on a farm, you soon learn not to be squeamish. We often put down our dirty, burnt pots and dishes to let the dogs scrape them clean before we wash them. That raises eyebrows, but I’ve always felt the need to live in a slightly contaminated world, and besides, I figure anything that survives the soap and our extra-hot water is going to get us anyway. The growing cultural fetish with sterility might be our death. I have eaten more than my share of dirt, that’s for sure, and I ain’t going to get all rankled if I accidentally receive a big tongue slurp in the mouth from an over-happy puppy, or worry about the dogs licking the dishes clean before I wash them.
A farmer I know, Harry Warner, an expatriate Irishman, tells a great story of hosting a crowd of Korean students for a weekend during a cultural exchange. They were city kids and had never met a live chicken, so Harry gave them the royal tour. After they finished dinner that night, he put all the plates on the floor and let the dog lick them clean. Then he picked them up, stacked them, and put them straight back in the cupboard to the wide-eyed horror of the Korean tourists. He tells me it took close to an hour of explaining it was just a joke before they settled down.
TARA, A BLACK LABRADOR, was the first dog to die at the farm, and the second to be buried under the willow trees because I’d brought the ashes of my first dog, Tlell, with us. Tara had been having small strokes, and one day, after we’d been given a bottle of fine Ontario maple syrup, I cooked up a stack of waffles and drowned them in syrup. Naturally, I’d overdone it, and there were a couple of little puddles left, so I gave Tara the treat of the year and put the plate down on the floor for her. She took a lick and you could see the delight in her eyes. What a sugar junkie!
I know giving even a small amount of syrup to a dog is bordering on maltreatment, but she was old and had been having those mini-strokes. Her time was near, so I wasn’t worried about obesity. I hadn’t taken into account an overdose of ecstasy. Tara’s head suddenly snapped up, and she turned to me with a look of absolute fear and ran toward where I was sitting. She collapsed and skidded on the floor up to my feet. I fell to my knees beside her, trying to hold her head, the fear still in her eyes, and then she went into convulsions and was dead, her bowels loosening.
Now she’s out there under the willow, beside Tlell, and Sam, who soon followed her. Olive will not be far behind. Farming inevitably builds up a history of lost animals like Tara—whom I probably killed with my stupidity—all of them loving life until it ends.
Among Sam’s gifts was her ability to smile. You could say, “Give us a smile,” and she would break into a beaming grin. Olive soon noticed that this behaviour got Sam a reward and decided to try her luck. One day, as I was encouraging Sam, Olive broke into a huge grin. However, what is cute on a border collie is a little different on an enormous tank-headed Lab-Rottweiler cross. When she exposes her fangs it’s a real sight, which I delight in showing to our friends. It does not always enchant visitors, however, to encounter a pack of dogs at the gate, Olive flashing her fiendish grin. They usually stay in their vehicles until I come out and hush the dogs and let my guests know they are safe.
Since then, Bella, in her puppy glory, has taken to dancing about us and yodelling in the morning. Naturally, this brings her much affection and praise, so Olive is now attempting to talk to us, which can make it spectacularly noisy when we let everyone in at dawn.
Witnessing that interaction, I sometimes think of how it must have been at the community fire thousands of years ago, sleeping under the stars, the dogs restless and alert, extending human awareness beyond our sensory range, ready to die defending their two-legged companions and the life they have made together, maybe one dog standing, attentive. A sound? A smell? The dog padding around the campfire and whiffing the air, then smiling.
8
TAKING STOCK
SOMEHOW WE DODGED owning a goat at Trauma Farm, though there were a couple of close calls— gifts that we missed or deals that fell apart as we worked
our way through the general history of domesticated livestock. While it might be rash not to discuss goats much in a history of rural life, every farm exists in a different universe, and there’s no possibility of exploring all those intermingling universes even in this nearly two-decade-long day at Trauma Farm. Besides, what’s missing in a farm is as important as what’s there.
Likely the next animal to be domesticated after the dog, the goat is a clever creature. I love its wise eyes and mischief. Goats will also escape almost any fence you can build. A friend was so annoyed with his goats standing up and chewing his fruit tree branches that he erected a rail fence around every tree. The goats were momentarily checked by these fences, before they climbed up onto the top rails and continued browsing the trees, higher than before.
Goats were a natural for domestication—multiple-use, self-sustaining creatures providing goatskin water or wine holders, leather coats and gloves, meat, milk, and cheese. Their hair made the finest wool: cashmere (pashmina) and angora. Handy livestock for a rudimentary civilization on the move, they’ve also proved merciless grazers. Innumerable landscapes have become near-deserts because of goats. Feral goats are particularly intrusive.
Trauma Farm was originally a goat ranch and supported a large herd before it collapsed and we arrived. The trees show the damage. I find myself, this morning, standing in front of a giant cedar that’s shredded, its bark embedded with chicken wire that had been nailed to it in a useless attempt to protect the tree.
Maybe that’s why goats made us nervous. It’s a myth that goats will eat everything, but they might try. Goats will sample and experiment, unlike sheep, who have a fussier sense of smell. That’s why outlandish objects have been discovered in the stomachs of goats. I’ve met a few goats with a predilection for trying to eat the pants off me. This can be a big surprise if you are not paying attention. And whatever you do, don’t bend over. With a few goats, for some reason, that makes you a target.
While we avoided the goat, we did end up with a few horses. Our first was the aptly named Tie Me Down. A neighbour informed me he had just the horse for us. A beauty. A brown gelding with a white blaze on his chest and forehead. Small, but in his glory—a quarter horse who didn’t quite make the track. Our neighbour was selling this wonderful horse for a song, and was so sure we’d love him, he asked us to try him out for a couple of months. It’s been said you should never look a gift horse in the mouth, but I soon learned why this horse was called Tie Me Down. For a start, he didn’t have much affection for the saddle. As I cinched it he tried to bite my hand. Then he did a half somersault and a sort of triple roll in my direction, and as I skittered sideways he kept rolling past me, trying to shake the saddle.
Mean-minded horses will bloat their stomachs to avoid a tight saddle. If you aren’t aware of this trait you could find yourself hanging upside down from the horse’s belly. Tie Me Down could bloat like a pufferfish. I hadn’t fully cinched the saddle before he went into puffer mode, so after about his fifth roll he managed to slide the saddle back and kick it at me like a jet projectile. I ducked as it flew past my head.
This performance brought out the stubborn streak in me. I’ve been around horses, off and on, since I was a child. They are beautiful, wilful, sometimes sly animals that can develop deeply emotional relationships with their companions. These relationships can be loving, workmanlike, or occasionally toxic. I’m the first to admit I’m no expert horseman, but I had enough brains to recognize this horse was going to need some work. I maybe exaggerate. Tie Me Down was as docile as a lamb—as long as you didn’t enter his field. I saddled him up again, this time cinching the saddle tight before he started rolling around. After about fifteen minutes of trying to eject the saddle, he settled, exhausted. I climbed aboard. He was quiet and gentle, and we looked lovely together. Such a pretty horse. Sharon took a photograph to prove it. Since I was smoking then, I lit up a defiant cigarette.
We trotted around the field for several minutes. Everything was terrific. Then we set off at a gallop. When I pulled him up I thought, “This horse is not so bad.” On a farm, one never should think things like that. We turned and I steered him toward the gate at a slow trot while lighting another cigarette. Talk about overconfidence. Halfway across, Tie Me Down suddenly braked, bucked, and fell to his front knees, flipping me in a full somersault over his head. I landed on my ass in a cloud of dust, choking on my cigarette butt, the horse standing behind me, waiting for another go.
After I spit out the butt and ashes and regained my calm, along with the feeling in my legs, I climbed on again.
This time I was ready for him and we went down together. Somehow I hung on, which really annoyed him, so he started rolling with me atop him. Every time he rolled I climbed off, between his flailing hooves, and climbed back on when he stood to his feet. By the third roll he gave up and just stood there trembling. I urged him back to the gate. That was enough for today. In fact, that was enough for good. I could tell by the look in his eye that he would take me out as soon as I was off guard, and there was no way Sharon was ever going to ride this horse. We gave him back a few days later. Eventually he found his way to a horse whisperer, a woman who brought out the best in him.
From the behaviour of Tie Me Down you would never know that the horse has been domesticated for six thousand years. At least that’s what the experts claim, based on some worn molars on a skeleton in Eurasia. As with the donkey, the horse’s first known uses were to pull chariots, domestic and war, although there’s a good argument that they were ridden first because the date of domestication barely approaches the era of the invention of the wheel. Maybe once the horse arrived, a pretty little cart became compulsory. Our knowledge of the wild horse goes back to thirty-thousand-year-old cave art. Most of the feral horses were hunted out, and it’s assumed the only survivors were those that had been domesticated. There were no survivors at all in the Americas, and the horse didn’t return here until the era of the conquistadors. The last known member of the wild species, the Tarpan, perished in the nineteenth century.
Although quickly recruited for battle, they blended in seamlessly on farms, both for carriage and for labour. The Amish have clung to the working horse, and local-farming enthusiasts are determined to bring the old breeds back. Occasionally you see the fancy ones at farm fairs, and they’re stunning to watch. A show pair of working horses can wear $25,000 worth of livery at the drop of a horseshoe. This year at the Saanich farm fair I witnessed a pair of Percherons pulling a sumptuous hack. It was so beautiful it was kind of sad, like watching a reality television show about leather-and-silver fetishists who happened to enjoy horses.
A riding horse is a lovely creature, but owning one is similar to owning a boat; only instead of being a hole in the water into which you pour money, the horse is like a constantly demanding teenager into which you pour money. Hobby horse farms, unfortunately, are buying up the land from working farms. On Salt Spring, once the home of the most famous lamb in North America, the pastures of gambolling spring lambs are now becoming occupied by horses. Recently, the owner of our feed supply store lamented to me that he was selling more horse feed than sheep feed. These hobby farms are another symptom of the sickness overwhelming our landscapes. The horses, usually ridden a few hours a week, dot the fields like expensive living lawn ornaments overlooking mowed fields and pseudo-forests too divided up to ever become contiguous natural forest. Ecologists regard these estates with the same jaundiced eye they cast upon single-species tree farms— they’re all green concrete, and they lead to unbalanced predator and prey populations.
“ SHE HAD AN EXPRESSION on her face,” Mike Byron said, “like a horse eating a thistle flower.” He was describing a pompous shopkeeper, and it cracked me up—especially since I’d seen my horses eat their share of thistle flowers. When we bought our farm it was riddled with thistles. Sheep don’t eat thistles, but horses do. In fact, they take a certain masochistic delight in gingerly deflowering the thistles with their rubbery li
ps. They eat only the flower, but this gradually eliminates the thistles from a field. Upon being offered our next horse after Tie Me Down, a twenty-year-old semi-retired show horse, we decided to do the charitable thing and give him a retirement home while reducing our thistle nightmare and supplementing our desperately needed manure.
Stonewall Jackson stood eighteen jet-black hands high. He was a beautiful, stubborn, and affectionate creature, with a tendency to mug any strollers on his land, thrusting his big nose into your pockets for sugar cubes—a good, easy horse to ride before we finally put him out to permanent pasture. Plus he could eat thistles as if they were caviar. By the time he died he’d cleared both our main fields. Unfortunately, he could also suck the lower leaves right off a plum tree, so I had to keep the orchard double-locked. Whenever he managed to pop a gate he’d seek the sweetest clover within a square mile, and his Houdini tricks soon taught me where the best pasture was in our neighbourhood. He was a terrible beggar and would always come up to the narrow front deck and practically stick his head into the house if the door was open. His favourite trick, when we were foolish enough to let him into the front yard, was to upend the bird feeders and vacuum up the seeds.
Sometimes on a sunny morning I’d bring out a few carrots to the deck, along with my breakfast, and we’d eat together, until the day I dropped a carrot and it rolled under the table. I put my dish down to fetch the carrot, and before I was back on my feet he had licked the eggs, bacon, toast, and hash browns off my plate with one big slurp. I guess he was going for the toast but decided to hoover it all up. It didn’t seem to bother him any, eating my bacon, though it sure irritated me.
During the years we rode him he could still perform his show-ring moves, and it was a delight to pretend I knew what I was doing. Sharon loved sitting on his back, letting him take her for relaxing tours through the tastiest grasses in the ditch beside the road, grazing his way home. Jackson kept his independent mind and private life until the end. Some nights I would see him out there galloping alone in the field, scaring the sheep and the ducks, prancing like a teenager. A friend, the poet Lorna Crozier, once told me the story of a white horse on the prairie, a show horse, that under the full moon, alone, would practise its fancy show-ring routines. Jackson wasn’t that glorious, but he had some good moves.
