It's never enough time…
I have a number of things to write about, since a lot has happened in the two weeks I’ve been off line, but nothing more important that this – we have lost Ellie, our special girl, and the light of Sean’s life.
Ellie was a special dog from the very beginning. An illness during the final stage of Sailor’s pregnancy left Ellie somewhat addled at birth. She was small, and had a hard time thriving. Barb hung in there, though, and Ellie made it through well enough for us to go and pick her up. Sean was ambivalent – he’d never had a dog of his own before, and Tessa was the first one he’d ever lived with. He was a cat person, and wasn’t sure what to make of the indifferent little brindle mite who refused to even come over and sniff his hand.
During the seven hour drive home, Ellie huddled in the back of her crate glaring at us, and Sean asked me mildly “Is she ever going to come near us?”. I explained that some dogs need more patience than others, and shortly after we arrived home, he made it his goal to get Ellie to love him.
Unlike other French Bulldogs, Ellie was indifferent towards affection. She loved Tessa, staying close to her and sleeping curled into her side. People were a different story. She barely tolerated Sean and I, and would skitter away from us if we tried to pet her. We felt like negligent pet owners, and laughed it off when she ran wide circles around anyone who approached her at the dog park. “She’s just not that in to people” we’d explain. Ellie had a fine sense of dignity, and never once willingly let a stranger pat her on the head. She insisted on her own personal space, and we learned to let her sit her own limits on interaction.
Eventually, Ellie learned to love us, by which time we, of course, were head over heels about her. She’s sidle up to you and butt your hand with her head, which meant “Scratch my ears”. She’d perch on your lap, tentatively, never settling down enough to really get comfortable. Still, she loved us, in her own way.
We knew she wasn’t going to be with us for forever. We even knew she wasn’t going to be with us for long. What we didn’t realize is that even the knowing of that doesn’t prepare you for the loss you feel when they go. Logic can tell you that time is short, but our hearts don’t rely on logic, and there just wasn’t enough time with Ellie.
There’s never enough time.
Bullmarket Absolut Elliemental
June 21st, 2004 – April 11th, 2008
Huge Amounts of Computer Suckage
I’m an unhappy computer geek at the moment.
First, my beloved (and almost brand new) Mac’s hard drive melts down. Then, the back up Windoze machine I’m using gets a bizarre, non traceable virus – every time I open Firefox, tens of thousands of consecutive windows open, faster than they can be closed. The simple solution would be to use another browser, but I carefully and painstakingly uninstalled Explorer last year, and never got around to installing Opera on that machine. Tant pis, until I can ftp myself a new copy of Firefox, or find something to scrub out the virus (traditional virus scans aren’t finding anything).
So, I’m reduced to using the slow, clunky, 700 pound behemoth of a laptop I picked up yesterday. Ugh. And I thought just using Windows XP was bad – try using 2000.
Blogging on this thing is painful, so I’m going to be doing so very intermittently over the next week or so. Plus, I need to travel for work, so when those two things are combined, my spare time becomes even more scarce.
Oh, and Paris definately is NOT preggers, but Journey definately is. I think. We’re doing her xray on the 16th, since the vet wanted to wait until as close to her due date as possible.
Spring is Sprung – with Sheep
If you’ve seen my recent blog post on the God-awful weather we’re suffering through here in mid Western Ontario, you’ll understand why this photo made me smile when it arrived in my inbox –
Look closely – those shapes are sheeps.
Yup, a hillside full of sheep, all put into place thanks to farmer (and author) David Kennard, of Devon England. He managed with a little help from three of his sheep dogs. Little, of course, being an understatement.
The full story comes to us from the Daily Mail –
Sheepdogs are trained to obey their master’s every word. So when farmer David Kennard decided one of those words would be “Spring”, his dogs did not hesitate.
They rounded up the flock on the hills of Mr Kennard’s north Devon farm and, with a little help from their master, created a picture that reminds us that, whatever the weather, this is officially the first weekend of Spring.
The scene did call for a careful scattering of feed to make the sheep form themselves in the shapes of the six letters.
Now, I don’t know a lot (read: anything) about sheep herding, but I know a small amount about livestock, and I know that all of the feed in the world can’t make sheep ( which are some of God’s stupidest creatures, in my limited experience with them) do anything as complex as stay in one place, let alone a place as proscribed as this.
I sort of think the emphasis on the feed takes away from the simply awe inspiring task that these dogs accomplished.
However, it was down to the team of Collies – who everyone knows border on the brilliant – to have the last word. They circled the 200-strong flock and kept them from wandering off-message.
‘Border on brilliant’? What’s with the modifier? Are we still operating on that fear of anthropomorphism that’s tinged so much of modern reporting? If a sheepdog can’t be safely classified as ‘brilliant’, I’d like to know what can be.
I spent 20 minutes yesterday mentally high five-ing myself because Delilah finally figured out what ‘stay’ means. Then I tripped over a chair. I think I can be safely classified as ‘bordering on sentient’.
Three of David’s five working dogs – Mist, Fern and Jake – were employed to help create the perfect lettering, which took three hours to achieve.
Said David yesterday: “I’m proud of my dogs. They couldn’t have done it without my spreading the feed across the hillside, of course – but I couldn’t have done it without them, either.”
But then David’s Border Collies are very much of the performing breed. They have appeared on DVDs and on TV in films made by the 41-year-old farmer.
He originally started making videos of his hard-working hands ten years ago to supplement earnings at his 400-acre farm near Woolacombe. He then wrote a top-ten best-selling book, A Shepherd’s Watch.
Woolacombe. Heh.
And also, oh look! A book about sheepherding, by someone who is… an actual sheepherder! Someone send a note to Jon Katz about this.
“It all started when I noticed people leaning over the walls of my fields to watch my sheepdogs at work,” David said. “I realised my dogs were my greatest asset and that if One Man and His Dog was so popular, I ought to give it a go.”
David placed his first video on local farmers’ market stalls – but it ended up selling 80,000 copies worldwide. His TV series, Mist: Sheepdog Tales, returns with a new series on Five next month (April 12), along with a newly-released DVD (April 14) of the entire first series.
As well as going above the call of duty to earn their keep, David’s dogs are very much part of the family, sharing kitchen space with his wife Debbie and their three children.
But when it came to getting sheep to put a spring in their step, they proved they could conjure up a bright spell, whatever the Easter weather.
Read the rest here, and browse some of David Kennard’s books and videos over on Amazon.
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