7 week old Sigi (Meg x Max) is showing first class, top-of-her-litter working instinct, resilience and drive. She will stay on the farm for a bit.

When we cease to invest in ourselves –in quality education, in social improvement, in the future (of all)– this is what we get. America has an increasing ‘Third World’ feel to it: a world class top layer …and then everyone else.

Coal is clearly enjoying his new life, 3:30 AM training runs overlooking Manhattan with things that remind him of his Vermont roots.

Puppies just nurse and sleep their first 3 weeks. At 4 weeks, they are running about playing with each other. At 5 weeks, they begin exploring their world.

At 7 weeks, they start to get feisty …even with their human. They start to get ‘nice’ again around 14 weeks.

The three weeks 4 – 6 are when puppies are at their cutest, whether playing or sleeping. This is the 4-1/2 week old Jazz x Pete litter [2M/2F] crashed on the dog sofa after a morning of activity (and being picked on by older pups) while I prepare their breakfast. They sleep lying down AND upright when they are that tired.

20-July-2025

Kathy sends me daily updates on how Lass is doing. Is it only a week since Lass left for the joy of Kathy’s home (which includes 2 year-old female collie Kea and husband, Ken)?? Seems like longer because Lass has made so much progress.

Kathy has taken rescues and worked with shelter animals all her life. Kea (from me) was her first puppy. Kathy has a deep understanding of dogs and a softness that dogs are attracted to. Lass knew this from the first. She knows it more with every passing day.

Kathy writes is morning:

One week! Progress is slow, but steady. They just played in the yard for 1/2 an hour without me encouraging it, and when done, Lassie followed Kea right in the door, layed down on the floor OUTsIde her crate. She has come up to me once or twice and nudged my hand (on her own). I brushed her for a long time today and she looks beautiful. She’s still shy and spends a lot of time in her crate with the door wide open, but she also comes out and plays from time to time too. I’m letting her process this all on her own terms as much as possible. Occasionally I have to pick her up or leash her to get her in, but less and less. Twice she has gotten frightened while out in the yard, but her reaction is to run INTO the house, so that is a great sign. Rather than run away, she is running in. Kea and I went for a hike today and she tried to climb a ladder… got 3 rungs up before I made her get down.

The bubble analogy is excellent. I think about it often. Her bubble right now is her crate and the living room and the yard. We have taken a couple short walks in the neighborhood- they are scary and tire her out, but eventually we’ll be able to expand her bubble a little more.

It’s starting to get fun to watch her. She’s really trying to be brave. She follows me around the yard, and sometimes gets close enough to ALMOST touch my hand.
We have a TV in a different room, and last night I sat down in there. She’s never chosen to leave the main room, but she cautiously followed Kea in and was very interested in watching until there was a loud noise which sent her scurrying back to her safety.
She cried a little when Kea and I went upstairs to bed, but I took that as a positive also…. she wanted to go too, but she hasn’t tried going upstairs yet so that wouldn’t work anyway. She and Kea are playing more, which is also good.
This is her new relaxing spot. The bubble got a tiny bit larger.

Today, at 6 weeks, the Meg x Max litter of five (3M / 2F) born on 1-July, had their first vaccinations: Nobivac^® Canine 1-DAPPvL2+Cv 8. The first vax was an absolute breeze with this litter, not even a flinch. In 2 weeks they get their microchips …a little more pinch to those. Happily, the Secretary of HHS is not depriving dogs of their right to vaccinations …only people.

At 5 weeks puppies really start to become fun. The pups in this litter have super temperaments. Herding ability will typically start to show on or after week 10, sometimes even earlier. At 6 weeks, I can see that fiery little Sigi has got the herding stuff: temperament and instinct. She’s a pistol!

15-Jul-2025

Just before turning in last night (or really this morning), reading the news of the day and the various analyses thereof, esp. news of the Supreme Court, a depressing realization came over me… the struggle is lost.

That is hard to say, but I believe it to be true. It won’t stop me speaking out a taking action, but 50 years of malfeasance by a determined retrograde minority and neglect by the major parties let rot set in from with the once great 250 year-old tree of Democracy. The scheme to overthrow the heritage of the New Deal worked …the tree was ripe for felling because the inside of the tree had been eaten away by insects and disease.

Trump has seized government. The popular will to resist Trump and his minions is insufficient. Former Trump consigliere and fixer, Michael Cohen, has called it a ‘complacency’ the New American Crisis. I would add ‘fear’ to that. Trump is triumphing over his would-be resisters by instilling fear of retribution …by grey men with masks, by his Rudolf Hess-like attorney general, by any arm of government or a shadowy S.A.-style MAGA militia.

I drove through nearby Dartmouth College on a fine summer afternoon yesterday and thought to myself, if this had been the 1960’s when I grew up, the place would have been alive with protest. No one protests anymore. Complacency and fear. Students worry about the personal consequences of protest. They are looking after their careers and track to the good life.

A weakened, complacent body politic and debased society is unable to meet the challenge to our constitution and democracy. People are not resisting in large numbers. As much as half the population is still enthralled with a ‘charismatic’ (sic.) leader –I don’t see the appeal, but like any cult leader, one has to be ‘in’ the cult to see it. For the rest, fear of the bully and has apparatus is too great.

Democracy is an abstraction. A growing detachment from ‘democracy’ has been documented for decades, esp. among the younger generations. Rights are not worth fighting for. Better to live quietly and make some compromises, look the other way, rationalize, pretend or tell ourselves fibs, rather than risk losing all one’s comfort. ‘How bad can it be, right?’ ‘It’ll be okay’ ‘These things go in cycles.’

Trump said last week, “I control the levers.” He was right, he does, because he knew the American electorate better than the democrats/Democrats. He knew even before the Iowa caucuses in 2016 that Americans were inert when he said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

And so, here we are, the last vestiges of old New Deal order collapsing day by day, week by week in the face of token opposition. For the most part, we segue into our every day lives and live as we always have. Stock market is good. Crypto is booming. The bad stuff is happening to ‘them‘, not us.

I am reminded of the William Butler Yeats poem from 1919 about the shell-shocked transition from the old order to an unfolding post-WW I world. Trump is a sort of ‘second coming’ …a ‘rough beast’ of dissolution and destruction stepping into a divided and broken nation.

The Second Coming

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

12-July-2025

Beautiful Lass, who came from Wales in early June, could not make the adjustment to the farm. She never felt ‘safe’ here. Some things simply cannot be reasoned or known. So, we have to deal with things as they are. Lass need to feel ‘safe’. She needed a new home, a new start.

Kathy, who has just-turning-2-year-old-Kea (Meg x Jack) from me, stepped up and said she would like to take 12-month-old Lass. Kathy has a long experience with rescues. The chemistry was instant: Lass warmed to a woman’s voice, presence and touch. In Kathy & Kea’s company, Lass’s fear melted away. She immediately felt ‘safe’ in a way she never did (or would) with me here on the farm. She smiled. And relaxed. And played.

I had great hopes for Lass, however… what matters most is a dog’s happiness.  

I will never know what it was here that caused such intense fear in Lass. I will have to find my satisfaction (consolation) in knowing that I made Lass happy …even if it is not with me.

Rehoming with Kathy is provisional. I am always here for Lass if things don’t work out with Kathy & Kea.

---

DAY 2 WITH KATHY

Lass is enjoying a delayed puppyhood with toys.