Through Wheat and Wilderness

The air is still tempered by the coolness of night, though there is a blunt edge of heat against my back forecasting a warm afternoon that will serve as a prelude to the burgeoning months of summer swelter.  I am reminded that soon I will need to begin making an earlier start on my morning walk to avoid the West Texas sun that blisters soil and flesh even in the morning.  Not to walk is not an option; my soul longs for this daily journey as much as Spur’s instinct demands it.  It’s a journey that isn’t about a destination or goals or expectations, although it started that way years ago.  Over time, the original sense of obligation and drive toward end results was eroded and replaced by the quiet ritual that now moves my body down this familiar road.

Somehow, this simple, repetitive migration brings balance to my life.  The clumsy rhythm of my body seems to keep time with the pulse of the world around me, and I remember with humility my place in nature.  The constructed division between my humanity and everything else falls away from me like scales from the blind man’s eyes.  Spur, trotting along steadily at my side, seems to relish the experience as much as I do.  I feel her body relax as she, too, finds serenity on this road that divides wilderness and wheat.  She has left behind the hunter, the herder, the bullier of other dogs, and merely exists, as I do, in the simplicity of this ritual.  She is more than just my companion; I am dependent upon her to find meaning in my own movement through this place.  And I think, maybe, she is dependent on me too.

Our usual route takes us past houses and pavement onto a country road.  To the north is an expansive fallow pasture.  I look out at it and wonder what communities of what creatures live undisturbed under cover of tall prairie grasses, wildflowers, and other vegetation.  To the south, a large field swells with the rippling, waving, gold of whiskery wheat.  Months ago, when the rest of the land was still barren and brown under the cold shroud of winter, this wheat crop sprang up, splashing vibrant, laughing green across the landscape.  Now, it is nearly ripe for harvest, a venerably-bearded crop.  It no longer laughs but whispers soothingly to me as the wind rustles the stiffening stalks, which bend less readily than they used to.

The land out here has character.  I think that’s something that many people who live their whole lives within the carefully cultivated and largely paved borders of cities don’t know.  Many people who live out here and are content to simply drive by it don’t know either.  But traveling through the land by foot or on horseback, a person gets a feeling for a place’s character.  I have traveled this stretch of road often–a mile and a half down to Bumper Gate Road, a mile and a half back home again, day after day.  I have learned the land by heart.  When I think of Texas, I think of this place first, of wheat and wilderness and vastness under endless blue sky.  And when I come back to visit and walk this road, I will feel as if I am with an old friend.

For now, though, I enjoy being out here traveling through the beauty and simplicity of this place with Spur.  That blunt-edged heat has begun to intensify and overcome the coolness, which I now feel only in the playful breeze that brushes lightly across my skin now and then.  I’m on the homeward leg of this journey now, watching birds fluttering around the trees to the north through air that is lightly perfumed by the wildflowers growing abundantly in the field and the road ditches.  I listen to the steady sound of Spur panting at my side, my own rhythmic breath, and the sound of my feet crunching over the gravel on the road.

I stitch myself into this landscape with every step I take.

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The Gospel, According to a Dog Whisperer

Because I’ve been thinking about getting a puppy, and because I’m an unreserved fan of Cesar Millan, I’ve been reading his latest book, How to Raise the Perfect Dog.  I know, not a very catchy title, but it’s not a book one reads for literary merit.  It’s clear, concise, and practical, and it’s filled with truth, as all of Cesar’s books, to my mind, are.

According to Cesar, the reason that so many Americans find themselves with seemingly insurmountable dog problems and, therefore, why so many dogs end up in shelters and/or euthanized here is because we lack a fundamental understanding of how to fulfill our dogs.  We tend to project our own complex psyche onto our canine friends, thinking of them as furry humans who experience the world and emotions in the same way we do.  This does not respect the animal, Cesar says:

One of my cardinal rules in life is that we must respect animals as the beings they are, rather than as the near-human companions we might wish them to be.  To me, having a true bond with an animal means celebrating and honoring its animal nature first, before we start to co-opt it into being our friend, soul mate, or child. (3)

I’ve adopted Cesar’s rule as one of my own; I don’t want my dogs or horses or any other animals to be my empire, beings that I attempt to assimilate into my humanness.  Instead, I want to treat my animals with love and respect for the beings that they are and relish their dogness and horseness and animalness.  It’s a more harmonious way to live in the world, and, I think, more biblical.

This cardinal rule of Cesar’s that requires him to respect dogs for their dogness has led him to his theories about dog handling, one of which (a frequently-repeated mantra) is that dogs need rules, boundaries, and limitations.  Dogs absolutely crave a life that is structured, he says, because it is hard-wired into their being to follow the rules of the pack.  That means that we should discipline our dogs not just because it makes them behave better, but because it fulfills a deep, instinctual need that they have for structure in their lives.  Cesar writes,

Unfortunately, some of the most popular puppy-training books on the market . . . [claim] that you “owe” your new puppy her “freedom.”  Freedom, in my experience, means something quite different to a puppy than it does to us, or even to and older dog. . . . If freedom equals peace of mind, then, as it turns out, structure actually makes up the foundation of a dog’s freedom. (107)

As I read this, I smiled because most of us have “freedom” totally wrong anyway.  We think that freedom means being able to go wherever we want, whenever we want and do whatever we want.  But, when I see people who have embraced that lifestyle, I don’t see people who are free; I see people who are burdened, sometimes even imprisoned by depression, addiction, greed, undirected desire.  And I am reminded of some of the things that the Bible has to say about freedom.

Psalms 119:45 says, “I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts.”  The Psalmist here relates “freedom” with following God’s Law.  For him, and this is a common theme in Psalms, there is great joy in living by the rules that the Lord gave to His people.  It seems contradictory to say that rules equal freedom, but that’s because people have been deceived about the meaning of freedom.

The New Testament focuses more on what freedom means.  Paul, whose central message is that Christ has freed us all from sin and the Law of the Old Testament through grace, recognizes that “freedom” has it’s limits.  In 1 Corinthians 6:12, he writes, “‘Everything is permissible for me’–but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible for me’–but I will not be mastered by anything.”  He’s saying that freedom is not simply being able to do whatever one wants, particularly in saying that he will not be mastered by anything.  He recognizes the addictive tendencies of humanity and the danger and self-oppression that lies in refusing to set rules, boundaries, and limitations for oneself.

Again in Galations 5:13, Paul discusses freedom: “You, my brothers, were called to be free.  But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.”  Here, Paul encourages his audience to embrace freedom by turning away from sin and serving and loving each other instead.  In other words, he tells us to use our freedom to stick to a moral code (rules, boundaries, limitations).  Just a few paragraphs before this, Paul urges his friends to remember, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery” (5:1).  Paul’s main objective in this book is to reassert to the Galatians that they are saved by grace alone through faith alone, not by sticking to the Law of the Old Testament.  So he tells them that they are free from the Law, but then clarifies that their freedom does not mean giving over to every desire and thought.  Freedom, he seems to say, is found within certain boundaries.

So, when I read Cesar’s ideas of what freedom means for a young dog and consider that his theories are about tapping into dogs’ instinctive, natural way of being, I can’t help but feel that he has really tapped into something much, much deeper.  It’s not just dogs that need structure in the form of rules, boundaries, and limitations; humans do, too.  And that is part of why the Law was created in the first place.  But sin and righteousness existed before God gave the Law to Moses–generations of people lived without the Law before God chose Abraham to be the father of the Hebrews, and generations of Hebrews lived before God gave the Law to them at Mt. Sinai.  Yet, there was structure, boundaries that the righteous respected.  God taught them the rules by speaking to them, and He teaches us the rules now though the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; Paul encourages, “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Galations 5:16).  In other words, the Spirit of God living in us helps us to do what is right and avoid doing what is wrong.

Our job as dog handlers, Cesar says over and over, is to act as our dogs’ pack leader.  They need a leader to provide structure for them, to give them rules, boundaries, and limitations, and it is the pack leader’s job to correct the dog when it does not abide by those rules.  This satisfies an instinctual psychological need in dogs.  Maybe the reason that Cesar’s theories appeal to me so greatly is because of the striking similarities between what my dog needs and what I need.  Cesar says that dogs can be our greatest teachers.  He believes that dogs can teach us about ourselves and help us to be better humans.  I know that “God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:20), and that, as part of that creation, dogs can reveal to us Truth about the Divine Nature, like helping us to understand more clearly what it means to have freedom in Christ.

And I think that, maybe, if David had lived closely with dogs rather than sheep, his Psalm 23 might have began, “The Lord is my pack leader, I shall not be unbalanced.  He gives me rules, boundaries, and limitations, He restores my soul . . .”

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A Girl’s Real Best Friend

Dogs are not complicated.  Sure, sometimes taking care of them is, and some dogs have psychological issues that do complicate things.  But when a dog’s physical and psychological needs are both being met, it is simplicity with fur.  Their motivations, their behaviors, their reactions–everything about them is comprehensible and, to some degree, predictable.  This is, of course, the total opposite of human beings, whose behavior is frequently an inexplicable mystery.  Sometimes I cannot even understand my own behavior.  Because of this, I have at times found myself preferring the company of dogs to people.

Dogs are good company, too, because they’re pretty much always happy to see you.  I’m not sure that there’s much that feels better than walking into the house after a hard day to a dog’s greeting–no expectations, no disappointment.  They’re just excited to see you and express it by wagging their tails, probably my very favorite expression of joy in all of God’s creation.  They look up at you filled with pure, concentrated love.  It doesn’t matter that you didn’t play with them that morning or that you scolded them last night because they don’t hold grudges.  They make you laugh when you need a good laugh and never judge you for being lazy or slobby or even smelly or clingy.

But beyond all their attributes, there are really two reasons that I can’t imagine my life without dogs.

The first reason is that living with dogs makes me feel grounded in the rhythms and simplicity of nature. It is as if I have somehow began to recover a more natural way of being and a side of human psychology that we so often seem determined to pave over.  It’s a side that functions best within the rhythm of daily rituals, exercising the body and mind, living actively and purposefully everyday.  And it’s unpretentious.  A dog is just a dog.  It doesn’t want to be a human.  This is not a matter of hierarchy–I’m pretty sure that dogs don’t think that humans are better than them.  It’s about understanding one’s place in the world and being comfortable in one’s own skin.  What a way to live that would be!  Peaceful.  If you’ve ever been around a stable, well-balanced dog, peaceful is the only word to describe it.  It’s calming.  And after a while, if you’re lucky, you begin to see the world from their perspective and see the beauty in a way of living in which time is measured by the sun rather than by clocks, playing is a part of every day, and life is really just about being.  It’s a natural way of life, one that most of us have somehow forgotten, lost in the wake of adulthood, obligations and ambitions.

The other reason I feel the need to have dogs in my life is that when you’re single and you have a dog, you never feel completely lonely.  Another living thing depends on you, is present in your life.  Sure, the conversation is a little slim, and dogs are certainly not a replacement for human companionship, but it makes a difference to have them around.  I’ve read somewhere (exactly where escapes me) that women need to nurture something and that some express this through a care of plants and/or animals if they don’t have a family to care for.  I don’t think that all women have this need, and I am certain that some men need to nurture as well.  I am not a woman whose heart’s desire has always centered on motherhood–as a child, I always assumed I would be a mother someday, and if I marry someday perhaps I will–but I do need to be nurturing.

Spur fulfills that part of me by letting me take care of her.  There’s a part of my soul that felt empty before she was part of my life, and would feel empty again if she was no longer here with me.  I don’t expect most folks to understand my relationship with Spur.  It’s not like a parent and child.  At least, I assume that’s true; I can only guess at that.  Either way, I don’t think of her as my child.  But she’s much more special and important to me than “just a dog.”  In a sense, I consider her an anam cara–a friend of my soul.

And that is more precious than diamonds.

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