Greenstorm's Journal

Might as well update about the animal situation.

Solly and Thea are working great as a team all night. I put them in the front at night (the grain is all there) and Avallu in the back with the geese, Thea I put in the back during the day with Avallu so she can go in and eat and I can keep Solly mostly on her puppy food.

Avallu is getting more ok with Solly, but after two incidents where he was pretty sure she belonged only on the porch we need a little more than current levels of ok. In the evenings we often do cheese o clock, where they all see each other through the fence and get lots of cheese. I think they may have got too much cheese, so I may need a lower-fat alternative for some of these evenings. Avallu is doing well listening to commands even when Solly is in close proximity, but he's also very respectful of the fence. Solly is very wary of Avallu after the last couple incidents but has a seemingly limitless well of optimism and is coming around with enough cheese again.

I've definitely made some mistakes during this intro but I suspect everyone can be convinced to forgive me.

The geese are sleeping right up close to Avallu many nights and spending more time than usual up by the house. I can tell when there are no bears around because they go into the orchard. They've taken care of this spring's goslings well and those are now fully feathered. The orchard is pretty well mown at this point and the geese are starting to gorge on grain to fatten up for fall, they've gone from roughly a quarter bucket of grain per day for the 31 of them to closer to a whole bucket.

I have an ancona drake swap lined up for later this year, so he can cover this last two year's ducklings.

Incubator full of chicks should hatch while I'm gone. Things will be set up for mom to just plunk them into the quail shed under lights. These are mostly chanteclers but with a half dozen silkies. If I'm going to do silkies I might as well do seramas, which are the sweetest chickens on earth, but there are none to be had up here. Also Clyde the new rooster (his previous family got him as Bonnie and when he started to crow had to part with him) is doing well. He's a brahma, so he should get very big, but right now he's young and pigeon-sized with ENORMOUS FLUFFY feet. He's also smart, social, and I like him a great deal. I have not yet evicted the previous rooster from the bottom coop and put him in yet, I'm planning to do that when the chicks are a bit older, so right now he's sleeping under the truck canopy at night and hanging with the muscovies during the day. His crow is growing in adorably; I guess I have a thing for adolescent rooster crows.

The three boars have been shedding, I can scratch them with a rake and all the curly wool comes off and leaves growing-in guard hairs. I think they should move to the back to guard that entrance, though really Baby and Hooligan are the better defenders against bears. Did I mention Hooligan kinda bit me when I was stealing her babies? She didn't break skin or even bruise me, but she put her teeth on me in warning after I'd ignored her barking and other warnings. She is 100% a perfect temperament in this regard: she lets me play with her newborn babies if I'm not harassing them, catching them, and making them scream and she loves being scratched behind the ears but she can gauge situations in which it's appropriate to defend and does so with careful escalation. I'm just very impressed with Ossabaws in general, but also her in particular.

We do have at least two bears back there, one big and one small, that appear unrelated. The big one doesn't mind bear bangers, air horns, dogs, or yelling so I'm worried about what will happen come fall. Two bears in that territory is already a lot and it's only August. When bears go into their super calorie-seeking mode before winter they're less cautious and maybe it's not safe to have the pigs back there then? On the other hand the whole herd of pigs may actually be better defenders than the dogs, at least until the whole pack gels and maybe even after that.

The poor cats are withering away from lack of love and attention since I've been into the office several days the last few weeks. Also Demon is not a fan of a New Person in the house to farmsit and complains loudly when she's not around. I expect he'll come around. They continue to break down all doors into my bedroom to sleep on the bed, to my detriment.

Ducks are ducks. The anconas are in the covered area, and I want to make more covered areas for bear/lynx/raven/fox/coyote protection for the littles in future years. One broody ancona made a nest just inside the chicken house so I can barely squeak the door open and squeeze in and she will not be shifted. Everyone likes lamb's quarters weedings from the garden.

It's good? At least until the bears finish eating my neighbour's chickens and turn more attention on me.

Right now it's my job to love all my animals super hard, and super carefully, and super thoughtfully. It's to make sure I spend lots of time with all of them letting them know they're good, and occasionally if they are not good figuring out what's going on and offering them an alternative. For the first several decades of my life I did this sort of thing without thinking, but since I've only recently recovered my ability to love this feels like jumping in to a very deep pool without taking a breath.

It leads to lots of lovely times, snuggling and watching, but also sometimes to just not knowing what to do and reminding myself to have patience.

Avallu is 7 today. I hate that I likely have fewer years with him in the future than I have had. So many tornjak owners have groups of 3-6, they're good in packs where they have traditionally protected sheep and generally done their intricate social structures. While Solly will keep my hands full for a couple years, I don't know that I ever want to be without a tornjak. Even with that, though, Avallu is unique. It's with him that I first really understood how much an LGD is a relationship partner rather than a being who takes commands. I've come to value his perspective deeply, and he trusts mine for the most part.

Thea has been doing magnificently with Solly and Avallu. She keeps them separated, and when Solly gets too energetic at chickens, Thea and I will glance at each other to see who will intervene. She also does magnificently with, for instance, the little black bear outside the back fence the other day. I appreciate more than ever how calm she is with the livestock.

Solly is learning fast, which means she's doing lots of experimentation. Aside from recall she doesn't have a clear trajectory, one day will be better and the next will be worse. Her recall is excellent because she adores my attention, and I am careful to call her back and snuggle her and tell her I love her often, so she doesn't associate it only with bad things or with being put in. She's maybe somewhat calmer with the geese, learning to walk by them slowly, but the chickens are so flappy and interesting I need to really figure out how not to have chasing them reinforced for her. I may have to build them a new coop. I am not entirely sure what her mouthy/grabbiness is supposed to achieve, I know she's trying to get me to do something, and she's doing it a little less. It's obviously not an ok behaviour to maintain since she's a huge dog, will be bigger, and can do real damage that way. At first I would give her a stick to chew on instead, and she would take those and chew on them eagerly but that led to her mouthing my arm more often. Now I just turn away. Need to think about this more.

I put 1300 square feet of potatoes in the ground yesterday, or rather, under straw. I have a couple rows left. It's difficult, whatever is going on with me, I had to sleep and rest for nearly two days to be able to do that, and then I woke up this morning with my arms and legs tingling and buzzing. I need to get myself in order for the doctor's visit this week and push for, I guess more tests, but I don't know which ones. At any rate I'll have potatoes. The straw is a great weed suppressant, and I'll put down chips in the rows between, and that'll give me an easier summer of management.

Forecast for the summer is steadily higher-than-average temperatures. The grain crops are not doing well, it's too dry, and farmers pulled off an early hay crop but it was small. Fires are staying away from my town for now but the situation is pretty worrisome.

I think less about that, though, and more the practice of love which my animals need from me right now. It's been a long time since I've had humans so absent from that part of my landscape. I feel like my 12-year-old self, growing gardens and snuggling with my dogs and rabbits and nearly completely divorced from the doings of humans.

Tomorrow I will have to get back to work after my week off sick and see if I can stay upright and awake. Send good thoughts please.

Solstice/solly nee keesa arrived today. I picked her up a two-hour drive away, she'd already been in a truck an hour and a half to get to me. Her people were very nice, and very grateful I think that they found her a good home. She was carsick but put on a good face.

Thea accepted her somewhat nervously, perhaps because it was Way Too Hot and she didn't want to move much. Thea is such a good girl. Avallu DID NOT accept her on first meeting, unsurprisingly, so now I'm doing some rotation/separation so they can get used to each other's scents and stuff.

She's going to be a big girl, she's a little taller than Thea right now but in the super skinny adolescent stage. She's probably as long as Avallu already. When I'm sitting on the ground she's taller than me.

I was definitely contractually obligated to snuggle everyone -- Thea to reassure her she was being so good, Solly because she was in a new scary space and also is a go-out-and-return-to-snuggle snugglebug, Avallu to help him regulate, Whiskey because he got too close to Solly when she was eating and got snarled at, Hazard because everyone else was getting attention...

All in all, not a bad start. Will need to spend lots of time with Avallu and Solly's intros though.

Two moments from the last few days that require some observation:

One of the willow volunteers does a ton of physical outdoorsy sportsy stuff in his free time: climbing, snowshoeing, hiking, etc. It's been suggested to me that he handles his emotions by doing a ton of physical stuff (like my mom) though this is the first time I met him. He also has a lot of charisma, and it's funny because his charisma was 100% similar to mine in the way it operated: that sort of warm attentive twinkle, the sense of focus, the type of question, the type of approval offered. I know a couple people who operate like that and it's always odd to be on the other side. He was also trying to make eye contact and I was doing the ultra-autistic zero eye contact. I make eye contact to ramp up intimacy, and he was already doing attentive intimacy so it would have felt super odd to meet his eyes in that situation. This is not someone I'm interested in going there with.

This morning I heard someone shouting so I ambled outside. I have a neighbour two down who has a pair of absolutely magnificent guardian-breed dogs (I don't know what breed specifically, maybe pyrenees, but the size, coat, colouring, and carriage are unmistakable). He's had them for maybe a year, or almost a year, and they're always immaculately groomed and he's constantly walking them and working on either boundary training or invisible fence training with them, they seem incredibly well taken care of. I was therefore surprised when one of the dogs was, in true guardian fashion, standing at the edge of his property looking down the road and the owner was repeatedly yelling at him to come back, sounding upset/angry. The other dog was, also in true guardian fashion, ambling back towards his owner.

I did a lot of research on guardian breeds and a lot of research on training when I got my pups. It was all just words until we spent some time together, at which point it became so ingrained into me that I don't think about it anymore.

Guardian breeds have a job. They know their job, and they have moral certainty that they should do it and do it well. They're smart, determined, problem-solving, and driven. They're also generally very confident, to different levels based somewhat on breed (independent vs partnered-with-humans workers) and somewhat on personality. Trying to make them not-guard when they think there's a problem is setting everyone involved up for trouble and conflict both external and internal. LGDs can often be convinced (by a trusted person) that something is safe and doesn't need to be guarded against, but they can't be convinced to respond without thinking in the same way that so many other dogs can. They're always evaluating the best way to do their job. Thea has come to get me when there was a wolf she couldn't handle. Avallu has slowly learned I'd prefer he get me if there are humans at the gate, instead of feeling like he has to deal with it himself (Tornjaks are one of the more people-oriented LGD breeds).

Plus, dog training isn't separate from life. Every thing I do is feedback for my dogs, and likewise everything they do is feedback for me. Training isn't about forcing them to do something, disciplining them if they don't, or imposing my will on them. It's just figuring out the most effective interspecies communication, and making sure that my behaviour consistently aligns their interests with mine.

So to come back to the neighbour and a bit of foreboding I had: my dogs really like to mark right outside my gate, so when I open my gate to drive the truck in they go out. At first they would run down the road, I'd call them (Avallu is moderately deaf, so I'd sign to him, but he's also more headstrong) they would keep running down the road to clear and mark the area (because disincentivizing things they're guarding against is best done further away, it's safer from their POV), I'd go get them, bring them in, and ignore them because they'd done the bad thing of running too far. This was not working for anyone. I'd read that every recall is a training session, and that dogs won't come to someone who primarily yells at them, but at some point it clicked. Instead of ignoring them when I got them back in, I had a little hug-and-pet party with them. Now as soon as the motor turns off on the truck they run back and find me for hugs, after having done close-by marking as I pull in. I'd changed from a disciplinary mindset to a teamwork mindset and it made a huge quality-of-life difference to everyone.

That's why I feel a little uneasy when I hear my neighbour yelling at his pups for recall. This is the first time I've heard that, but: they're coming up on the big shift that happens around 2, when their guardian instincts kick in and they become more independent. They are never going to be a dog like a herding dog which lives to instantly obey: they will always think it through first. There are two of them and they probably almost outweigh him individually: these aren't dogs that can be physically controlled or disciplined (not that any dog should be physically disciplined, eep). They can also be very dangerous dogs. So I hope he sorts out a good way to communicate with them, and also that they don't, for instance decide to guard his home from other humans. I am wishing him the best of luck, they are glorious dogs.

I've been dreaming hard the last couple weeks. These are the long, complex, deeply social dreams I used to have when I was younger; days or months or a lifetime passes and I have enmeshment and intimacy with people. Some of those people exist in real life. Sometimes upon waking I find that they never did and that's pretty devastating because my feelings of care and connection remain.

I also haven't been writing much about non-garden things. Whatever is going on with me has made it difficult. To describe it I will conceptualize writing as having four components: having an idea to write about, being able to form concepts into words, actually doing the push to start (executive function?), and the physical labour of viewing a screen and navigating a keyboard and web interface. Right now I can do the first two but not the two. Bits of things to say float around in my head but I can't sit down and dig into them.

Normally writing feels companionable, clarifying, and positively connecting. I'm putting myself out into the world as myself (this is a practice for me that requires constant, er, practice, which is why this journal is public). Anticipating that connective feeling usually drives me to write in the same way that anticipation of a conversation with a friend might drive you to use your phone. There's usually not a barrier to me for starting. Lately I'm unable to anticipate or conceptualize that feeling in advance so I'm not able to start easily.

Furthermore my body is tired all the time, my elbow had been hurting, and there is still something weird with my vision. I quite often sit or lie there thinking of exactly what to say but the physical experience of writing feels overwhelmingly uncomfortable to me. I have an optometrist appointment this week so we'll see if there's an obvious cause for the vision; if not I'll follow up with my doctor because it has been awhile with this blurry spot in my left eye, with difficulty focusing, and with a patchy/bleeding overlay on light surfaces. Luckily basketweaving seems to have fixed my elbow. I probably just needed to work the unused accessory muscles hard.

Having said that it would be good to find a good speech to text device.

On the opposite end of that I've been doing an evolution deep dive and every once in awhile there's a Stephen Hawking quote. I cannot tell you how soothing it is to hear an AAC (augmentive/alternative communication) device being used. Part of my autism learning has been exposure to folks with situational mutism, that is, folks who sometimes lose the ability to speak but other times are fine with speaking. I get those periods, and I get periods where I can force myself to speak but it's really really uncomfortable. Having just one person in my awareness who uses AAC sets me at ease on an unexplainably deep level, like maybe someday I can do that too when I need it.

I've been pretty busy lately. I'm still very very tired a lot but I've been able to spend a couple hours at a time outdoors somedays. I took two day-long basketweaving workshops and learned to make willow baskets (!!) which felt really joyous and fun. The first one was on Friday, my Friday off, and was a small class full of delightful people including the person who runs my local food bank. It was a nice chat-and-work day. The second class was on Sunday, it had more people and was a lot quieter but I still found so much joy in making the basket. Not quiet pleasure, but actual joy, like a leaping of the heart.

I seem to be able to connect to the things in front of me right now. I may not be connecting well to the internet but every time I see my baby apple trees and tomatoes I'm happy. Those baskets and my pottery feel good. A seed exchange with the food bank person was lovely and I like her generally. It remains such a relief to experience joy and connection again after a winter without.

Some things are more complicated. The pottery studio in town seems to be turning from a "show up sometimes to volunteer" to "carefully navigate people to find out information and push a little but maybe ultimately be a structural/organizing force myself". I'll do that if need be but I'm a little bemused. I've been able to dodge the garden club and landrace gardening organization; I've been good at organizing long enough to know that the second I take anything on I'll be running the whole thing. It may be that if I want the studio to stay open I need to step in, though.

That's always how they getcha. This might be a record timetable for being sucked in though.

Also complicated is stuff with Tucker. With the exception of that one evening (which is scarring from years of society and probably relationships using "your partner feels hurt in this situation" and "you shouldn't be poly because it's bad" and which I totally understand) he's been really present and loving and available. Realizing that I have no obligation to interact with him, I am wondering if I'd like to explore how our interactions could be if 1) he's not in a job where he's super burnt out and 2) I have my mind and sense of enjoyment back. Both those things are true now and they might not have been true for a very long time. I guess we'll see how things go and I'll self-monitor.

Meanwhile counseling today will involve a deep dive into my symptoms that might be medication side-effects (this counselor has lots of experience with autistic folks on various medications, we tend to react differently), some way to track symptoms and make decisions about trade-offs, and hopefully a strategy to approach my doctors and an approach to deciding what do to next. I'm feeling woozy a lot but happy, and I think I need to clear up the woozy before I'm driving 4 hours a day dodging logging trucks on resource roads. If I were in the city it would be fine, but with this much driving it is not.

More random things: donated a bunch of seeds to the burgeoning local garden club for them to give away as prizes, that may count as having given 120 or so packets of seed away locally. Big win.

Food bank can take both eggs and inspected frozen pork. Come to think of it, I wonder if the local teaching kitchen would mind hosting a bacon workshop? That might let me get out from under some pork belly. Contributing to the food bank is a win-win-win; I get to support the part of my community I most want to support, I don't have to run a perishable food retail business (though maybe I can tax write-off a sufficiently big donation?), and folks get food.

Cats are eating 1/2 can a day of wet food mixed with 1/2 can of water each. Their energy levels and coat quality have noticeably increased.

I guess volunteering with the pottery studio is volunteering? I've been looking for something to volunteer with for years here but it's mostly only during working hours. For instance the health and wellness fair that has all the clubs and volunteer folks put out a booth and people from town can go look is Tuesday afternoon, with just a touch of after work time.

I ordered a new, bigger collar for Avallu. He'll let me brush his right feather but not his left so I'm glad I'm working on it a little at a time. He's really enjoying this routine brushing, as am I. He's getting extra snuggly. Now if only I could maintain a routine.

Did I mention I have like 275 apple seedlings growing? Extraordinary. I feel so lucky.

I've been listening to a podcast called "Evolution Talk" lately. I was initially skeptical about 10-15 minute episodes written in an easy-to-digest style since I normally like very fact-based deep dives. The guy comes from a radio play background too, and has voice actors for folks like Charles Darwin. I've found over time though that it's a delight: short enough episodes that I can usually keep my attention through one without having to turn it off and rest, and he's a very clear but comprehensive thinker. He also does a bunch of series on a topic and he really digs into subjects like popularly-unknown folks who worked on pieces of the idea of evolution, multiple theories and how they're supported, etc. He also has his sources on his website which is becoming a requirement for me to take something onboard.

It's been raining and snowing and raining and sleeting. My towels are out on the line and have been for a couple days. On the other hand it's supposed to be 25C next weekend? This is a very springy spring.

Anyhow, very long update but I'm still in here. I'm just less physically and emotionally able to internet than before.

I was sewing until the machine started skipping stitches. I fiddled with it a bit, got it better but not all the way, and eventually drifted away before frustration showed, when it was just the lightest breath of disinclination to continue.

Some time later I find myself on the ground, lying with the heat of the woodstove on one side and the dog on the other. The floor is filthy and I'm belly down, face turned one way to watch the glow of the stove for awhile and then the other way to watch Avallu dreaming. My hand is on his shoulder; his paw is on my shoulder. I know I need to shower and sleep so I can work the next day but the knowledge is distant. It doesn't effect me.

In a world with any meaning I would watch him sleep awhile, and then he would wake up and take the watching shift while I slept. Maybe a noise would happen and we'd hurl ourselves out the door, maybe grabbing boots and a jacket, to watch for the fox. When we came back in a few minutes later it would feel extra warm and one of us would sink back into a doze and the other into loving regard.

I'm typing so I can capture this tiny glimpse of how the world should be so I can go shower and leave that world, the world with any meaning, behind.

Oh, and there was a wolf outside the fence yesterday morning.

Thea was barking insistently in a weird spot, so I went outside and she was outside of the fence running back and forth the length of the house barking-- calling me. Once I was out we proceeded towards the back fence and behind the chicken coop (where I saw the lynx the first time, that spot is problematic in how it's fenced) was a...

...coyote? Right colouring, canine ears, but...

...it was big, head taller than the edge of the coop, was it a huge german shepherd, it was way bigger than any neighbourhood dogs...

...oh, those squinty eyes and cheek puffs are pretty distinctive, that's a wolf...

...which is outside the fence but not running away from me, thank goodness Thea is barking hard at it but keeping a little distance...

...oh, there it goes, and Thea taken off after it. Poor Avallu is crying and barking and really, really wants to go after it but he can't jump the fence like Thea did to follow.

Thea patrolled the back there for good half hour, she kept coming in and then jumping the fence back out again. I fixed the low spot in the fence eventually, they calmed down, I gave them breakfast, and the wolf was not back this morning. That's the first time I've seen one here, though I know they follow the river a kilometer away.

I was honestly expecting an early-riser bear come to get the brownies and margarine I still had from the power failure at the local store.

Very glad Thea got me instead of engaging first. She is a smart girl.

I wonder if all this wildlife is because of the fires a couple years ago, the rodent population would have spiked and might be on the decline now. It was a very, very mild winter too-- more pregnancies? More kits to be born, so more hungry mothers?

That was a disaster.

My neighbour was supposed to come over today and look at where I thought the waterline from my well might be. Avallu had been defensive towards him previously, possibly because he's been next door a lot with a big dog of his own, so I broke out the leash and hot dogs.

In the story that follows I'm second-guessing my actions a lot but I'll try and say it as straight as I can. I'm really struggling right now.

I gave the neighbour hot dogs and he was tossing hot dogs over the fence towards them, which is how I always start introductions. Then I had the neighbour come in the gate and toss hot dogs. Avallu seemed to be good, lying down on command, and I turned around to latch the gate with the leash still in my hand. At that point Avallu leapt at the neighbour and bit his arm.

I thought he'd just grabbed the neigbour's sleeve, and the neighbour said fairly calmly "he's got me" so I hauled Avallu into the house, locked him in, and came back. At this point the neighbour was on the outside of the gate, locking it behind him.

I don't remember this next part well, but I said something, and he said he had to go home and fix his arm and took his jacket off-- and Avallu had taken a chunk out of his arm. I said something like "he actually got you, got you" and I think screamed a tiny bit. The neighbour nodded, he was pretty calm, and there was a little back and forth. It went something like:

Him: nothing against you, but if that dog comes on my property he's dead
Me: I fully understand, I'm so so sorry.
(something here I don't remember)
Him: If a kid were to come by and put his hand on the fence it could go badly
Me: (something about how obviously it's not important right now, but he had let other people in and this hadn't happened before)
(something)

At some point, I think before I knew how bad the bite was, I'd said something like if he was willing to stand far from the fence and take treats to try to desensitize Avallu I'd appreciate it but understand if not, and he said something like he was afraid he wasn't interested in that.

He left, and I completely fell apart. I called the local kennel -- I'm worried about finding a good dog trainer in this area, but they'll be the ones who know who to talk to maybe. Then I called the emergency counseling line through work's plan and got myself less hysterical - she was a really good one-off counselor, I'll tell you that.

I'm equally terrified at the idea of Avallu hurting someone, Avallu hurting someone else now that I know he'll actually bite, Avallu being hurt/put down, and trying to repair the relationship with my neighbour.