Brian, Meg & Myles have just done wonders with Willow (né Jill). Jill was outwardly shy and introverted. There was something inside a protective shell that just couldn’t get out. Brian, with a long history of rescues, had some ideas.
With every update, I see who Willow is becoming and was meant to be, brought forth by what Brian calls ‘love’ and ‘consistency’. Brian is a-ma-zing with dogs.
Today, Brian sent me a couple videos of Willow pulling what looks like him on a skateboard with Willow focused on what looks like son Myles ahead on a skateboard along the Cape Cod Rail Trail, near where they live. I could never have imagined Willow doing that. The transformative power of love and security.
Willow showing her sheep dog power …and clearly enjoying it!
BRAVO BRIAN AND MEG !!!
With Myles, Sleeping with ‘brother’ Henry, In Meg’s Arms
Jett is the son of Gail and Jimmy (an unplanned mating), brother to: Faye, Willow, Annie, Rob and Nico.
Andrea from the Albany, NY area wrote today with an update on her (Fly By) Jett:
Hello Charles! Attached please find some pics of Jett at our weekly Agility class. He is truly a budding superstar, learning very quickly and teaching me how to be a more efficient handler. I am also thrilled to share with you he has successfully completed Puppy Too training and moved onto Life Skills classes. Thank you again for this absolutely amazing border collie! ~ Andrea
I would love to give Gail credit for young Jett, since he looks so much like her, but Andrea and Jett are a team. Without Andrea and her dedication and skill as a handler/trainer, Jett would not be the ‘budding agility superstar’ he is. I remember that snowy day in November when Andrea was here in Vermont: Jett chose Andrea! He would run off with the others for a bit and then come right back to Andrea. Dogs have a sense about these things, about humans and situations. When a pup clearly chooses a human, and the human feels it too, it augurs a happy new beginning .
Llangwm Ffansi (which means ‘fancy’ in Welsh) turns 14. She is the last of my first generation of dogs from Aled Owen, in Wales. She has arthritis and double cruciate ligament disease, but she is out walking around for most of the day, every day. Unfortunately, those lines are known for osteoarthritis, and I didn’t find out until later. Ffansi has always had a kind of gutsy determination to press on, never one to be left out. She wants to be doing what everyone else is doing. Even at 14, she won’t back down from the challenge of #2 female, 3 year old Nel. Ffansi has her dignity to defend.
Ffansi adored my favorite dog of all time, Seren, 2 years older than her. Ffansi was content to be 2nd female. Never a cross word between them. They were beautiful together.
Seren and Ffansi
Photos of Ffansi in years 1 and 2: a strikingly beautiful young tricolor female with a big smile.
Even with her limited mobility, Ffansi insisted on taking her turn on sheep last summer and showing the youngsters she still has it in her.
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. ” —Robert M. Hutchins
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” —John F. Kennedy
Lucy wrote today to say little Nico was kicked out of his obedience class. He was fine with the other dogs …until there was a group of them, at which point he felt duty-bound to herd them. The trainers said they “didn’t want him back.” Like his sister Faye, Nico is compelled to work and has no idea he is smaller than all the rest. As far as Nico and Faye are concerned, “Size doesn’t matter!”
Nico keeping an eye on the Herb Hill goats
Despite being kicked out of obedience class, Lucy & Jim are not sending young Nico back to Thundering Paws. Lucy writes: “He is still our most adorable wonderful tremendous everything we could ever ask for in a puppy.”
Nico is enrolled in Julie Hill’s online working sheep dog course, where over the next year he is learning her ‘Natural Way’. He is using the Herb Hill goats as proxies for sheep. Round ’em up Nico! You’ll have an easier time with goats than the dogs at obedience class.
The fuzziness is not the focus, it is snow blowing in the wind gusts. Calendar spring, the spring equinox, is 2 weeks away, but this is Vermont hill country, known for its plentiful snow, wind and cold, even in the shoulder seasons
8 mo. old Jules grew into the most amazing young working collie. She was a slow developer, but when she turned 8 mo., things changed. Seriousness, purpose, focus and style. Jules is a strong, gutsy and pushy pup with muscular style, always in motion, and a sweet temperament. Compliant and dutiful, and not afraid of my growls and barks, she just keeps coming on, taking my correction in stride. Jules looks SO MUCH like her grandmother, James McCloskey’s Becca, a contender for my favorite sheep dog of all time.
Jules is will join Tom on his sheep farm in Lyman, NH on Friday. Probably the best young working dog I have ever sold. It was a high bar to get me to part with such a fine youngster, but Tom, his farm and family checked all the boxes.
An unplanned mating produced outstanding young Jules Choosing life over pregnancy termination resulted in 3 happy endings
A very pretty face
Off to her new life with Tom & family today in New Hampshire! Tomorrow, she will assist Tom in shearing sheep. Training starts on Monday!
A little nervous at first……but fine inside the crate
Washington’s Birthday {Feb 22] is when we ‘break the back of winter’ here in Vermont and northern New England. Skies are bright, the sun blazes off of the winter’s snow and warms our spirits. The darkest and coldest 4 months of the year are over!
A group photo before 2 more disappear in a few days time.
To those who voted for the man and his party and those who could not be bothered to vote in the last election, you have condemned all of us to reckless, vengeful, dishonest, factional, inept and dangerous government. You knew what you were doing. There are no excuses. You are responsible.
My generation of Baby Boomers grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s believing in government as a force for good in our lives, and in the main, it delivered. Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the federal government assumed new and powerful roles in the nation’s economy and in the health, welfare, and well-being of its citizens. It became the champion of the average American, from food safety to employment safety to full employment.
“I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.” – FDR, 1932.
That new deal for the American people was sustained and expanded through 4 presidents who shared a view that government is a force for good in the lives of every day Americans: Truman’s ‘Fair Deal’; Eisenhower’s ‘Middle Way’, Kennedy’s ‘New Frontier’, Johnson’s ‘Great Society’.
Each those presidents believed that government exists to protect the natural rights of all, regardless of party or creed or color or belief. They believed in government as a force for good in our lives, and each of them helped achieve that end.
I never thought as a society that we would come to doubt the value of government in our lives. Growing up, it was such a ‘given’.
I was an operations and strategy consultant in my career, brought in to improve operations. Sometimes, I worked along unsentimental private equity firms. Even the worst of them (in their quest for return on investment) didn’t come close to doing the mindless, mean-spirited, and shameful things being done in this administration …because in the end, even cold-hearted investors need to have a business that runs (and performs at market standards).
What is being done to our government is demented and brainless. It is criminal. And the victim is the United States citizenry.
Polls show that about half of the president’s supporters favor a strong executive branch not beholden to Congress. In other words, they don’t support our constitutional democracy. They don’t think they need government; it doesn’t work for them. They tell pollsters that they want to ‘burn it all down‘, Constitution be damned. ‘We won. Just do it.’ And that is truly frightening.
This today from WBUR about the mass layoffs:
A local meteorologist has reportedly been caught up in the Trump administration’s latest wave of layoffs. The Boston Herald reports Francis Tarasiewicz, who recently started tracking weather at NWS Boston’s Norton office, was included in yesterday’s layoffs of probationary employees at the NOAA . “This wouldn’t be half as hard to bear if I hadn’t fought my whole life through foster care and impossible odds to serve this great nation,” Tarasiewicz posted on X. “This past month of serving my community has been the honor of a lifetime.”
We were well served by Francis Tarasiewicz. Indiscriminatingly trashing government, ‘burning it all down’, is what vandals, hoodlums, thugs and terrorists do…
Government descends to just a sick performance for a ‘burn it down’ base that revels in the spectacle (of owning the libs) …until they realize they too are on the receiving end of it. Ask the people of Los Angeles: fires don’t discriminate. And zwhen the fires are burning, people are damn glad there are firefighters –a.k.a. government– there to help put out the blaze.
The White House ambush of President Volodymyr Zelensky was one of the most shameful episodes in recent American history …and there have been many. Bullying from a position of power is the stock and trade of Trump, Vance and the despicable mob that has seized the US government …with the explicit or tacit support of the American public.
Tomorrow the working dogs and I are off to a visibility protest here in Vermont, near Sugarbush, where the hideous Vice President will be skiing.
Comment back on my protest dog photo from Tony, a retired history teacher and coach (and fellow traveler) in Maine, who took my Fluff:
My (working and protesting) dogs at the 2017 Climate March in Washington, DC
