THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Lassie went home today.

I am thinking of the famous story about Hemingway, in which he challenged his writer friends to write the shortest story possible. All agreed that he won. Here’s what he wrote:

For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

Since then, summarizing one’s life in six words has become something of a parlor game. I have done so for Lassie, summarizing what she means to me in six words, and I think it would bring pleasure and comfort to everyone who reads this blog if you were inspired to do the same for your own special dog, and to share them, if you would, for us all to read.

Here’s for my Lassie:

French Vanilla. Ice Cream. Summer Day.

Off you go dear Lassie, my god how I loved you.

Clients often tell me that their rescue dog must have been “beaten by a man” when the dog was younger, because the dog is afraid of men and not woman. However, people in the training and behavior field know that almost all shy dogs are more afraid of men than women, even if men have been nothing but kind to them their entire lives. We’ve always speculated that it had something to do with the way men walked (more assertively?) or their bigger chests, larger jaws, and/or deeper voices. But we’ve never really known for sure what it was–perhaps it is related to scent: obviously men smell different than woman, and it could be that just ‘maleness’ is more intimidating.

A recent study reported in Scientific American Mind might have shed some light on this topic. (Actually, I read it and jumped up exclaiming OH WOW and then had to tell Willie that everything was alright.) Research published in Current Biology asked volunteers to guess the direction of motion of figures that were represented only by points of light placed at critical joints. (Similar to the motion capture process used to make movies like Avatar in which a real person moves around with points of light attached to hips, elbows, shoulders, knees etc, and a computer records the movement of the lights.)

When watching the points of light that represented a moving figure, the volunteers said that the figures made by men were approaching, while the figures made by woman were retreating. I haven’t read the study yet, and am a bit confused by the report in Sci Amer that “neutral and masculine gaits” were perceived as coming closer, while “feminine walks” were perceived as moving away. What is a “neutral” walk? Did they not use men and woman walking normally, but asked them to exaggerate how they “thought” men and woman walk?

All this can be answered when we get the study, but assuming the methods were sound, what an interesting piece of information for us. If the critical points of men are seen as coming closer at higher rates or stronger intensity than women, no wonder dogs are more afraid of males than females. Fearful dogs are ALWAYS more afraid of something coming at them than they are at approaching something themselves.

Interesting, hey?

Meanwhile, back on the farm: It’s all about Lassie now. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kind and supportive comments. I’ll keep anyone who wants to know about her progress updated in the comments section of the Lassie post. I don’t want to burden this blog with my private soap opera, but I also know that many of you have seen and read so much about Lassie that you feel connected.

Here’s a photo I took a few days ago, of what it looks like when it gets warmer and the snow starts sliding off the roofs. I love the designs it makes:

I haven’t written much about Lassie lately, because I didn’t want the blog to turn into a soap opera, but things have changed so much that it feels only right give you an update.

She hasn’t been doing well. After her ALT values were slightly elevated about a month ago, we did an ultrasound and her liver looked clear. We did a bile acid assay, which was slightly elevated, but not enough to make a biopsy seem worth the intrusion for a 16 year old dog. She’s gone up and down since then (some vomiting, urinating in the house, but only erratically), and was scheduled for more tests today. But on Thursday she went into free fall. Vomiting, no appetite, looked truly miserable. Tests showed her ALT (a sign of cell death in the liver) to be off the charts. Subsequent tests with an internal medicine specialist showed her to be in a late stage of liver failure.

I don’t need to tell you what’s happening now. Most of you have been there: hours on the internet (could it be dental disease? hypothyroidism beside the other obvious things?), a gazillion meds (antibiotics, prednisone, anti-inflammatories, chinese herbs, SamE, Milk thistle, pepcid), twice daily SubQ fluids at home .

It’s been 48 hours and there’s no external sign of improvement. She’ll only eat food she’s hasn’t eaten since she’s felt nauseous, and we are starting to run out of novel foods, and she won’t eat much of that either. She is clearly miserable, barely moves and lies in places in the house where she’s never spent time before. (FYI, this is an amazingly reliable indicator of a very sick dog… all my dogs have followed this pattern since Misty first alerted me to something being wrong when she lay in the middle of the dining room floor for the first time in 12 years. Turns out she had hemangiosarcoma, and died 4 days later.)

We’re going day by day. My vets tell me it can take a long time for livers to recover from whatever assaulted them. (Hepatitis? Toxins? Lepto?). Of course, she could have liver cancer… we couldn’t know that for sure without a biopsy. We’ll continue what we’re doing through the weekend and re assess on Monday. Her acupuncturist is out of the country, so I am looking for another to fill in. We have a lot of decisions to make about how much we are going to put Lassie through, balancing quality of life with information that might, or might not, allow us to save her. Of all the dogs I’ve owned, Lassie is the most fearful of pain and discomfort, and I am clear in my commitment to not take drastic steps to try to save her. Remember the infamous quote from Viet Nam: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it”? Not going to happen to my Lassie.

All that was written by my frontal cortex, the analytical part of my brain that is on high power every second now trying to make the best choices that I can. Could I save her if I just learned one more fact? Is there a treatment I’m missing because I logged off of the internet too soon, or because my wonderful vets were tired the day we talked? You know the drill.

But, then, there’s the other part of me. I intellectually know that Lassie is 16, and that every day with her in the last couple of years has been a gift. But, oh, I’m not ready. (Picture me SCREAMING that at the top of my lungs, followed by lots of obscenities.) I simply can’t imagine life without my Lassie girl. Her father, Luke, was my soul mate dog, a “one-in-a-million” dog about whom I wrote “I imagine his death to be as if someone took all the oxygen out of the air and expected me to live without it.” He saved my life in more ways than one, and I think that both he and I thought of him as my protector, my home boy who adored me as much as I adored him. Pippy was my faithful Aunt Martha, the sweet, loving relative you could always count on to take care of others and not worry about herself. Tulip was my clown, my muse and my trickster. God I loved her so much.

And Lassie? Oh Lassie. She is the one who needed me, the white-sugar-sweet-soft-wonder dog who barely needed training and melted into my life like a vanilla ice cream cone on a hot day. I’ve written 13 books, and I don’t have the words to tell you how much I love her.

Her she is, about an hour before I wrote this:

We’ve been in a conversation about helping others (and ourselves) if and when we get frustrated by our dogs. It’s been a great one, thanks for all your comments. I thought of something important that I haven’t mentioned yet, and I thought it deserved it’s own forum.

It seems to me that an important part of whether a dog frustrates someone is based on whether their personalities match. Look at all the comments on earlier posts that said “…. and then I got THIS dog…”.

Lassie and Willie are wonderful dogs for me. I’m a bit of a Border Collie myself: I like the cold, I hate hot, humid weather, love working sheep, love working, and am so sound sensitive that I’d rather starve than eat in a noisy restaurant. Granted, I wish that every once in a while I could yell “naughty words” without them looking concerned, (Liz F commented that her grand mother actually said the words “naughty words” when she was upset, in place of saying real naughty words. I’m going to take that it on, just thinking about it makes me laugh.) but they are responsive, and fun-loving and social and smart and I love their fresh, perky faces and commitment to connecting with me.

I took care of a dog once for about five months who was an absolute star at pushing my buttons. I think it’s the only dog I’ve ever had that really got to me. I figure I’ve had at least 15 dogs here for at least five or six months, and she was the only one who I literally had to stop, take a breath and count before I responded to her. She just plain and simply made me mad, I think because she was such a “player” and seemed to have so little interest in any real social interaction. She was stubborn, and wily and downright mean to my other dogs. She’d hold a grudge and wait until she could get back at them for any imagined slight. And so, what I’ve been thinking about is the importance of matching the right dog to the right owner. So many of my clients over the years were good people who simply had the wrong dog. Or a special dog who deserved special people, and was stuck in an impossible situation.

That’s why I loved hearing about a new project outside of Philadelphia called Main Line Mutt Match. Meg Boscov and partner Liz Maslow recently had an article written in the Philadelphia Inquirer about their match making services, and I wish there were more places in the country who offered the same service. So much of what makes a dog a good match isn’t obvious to the general public. Many of us know how commonly it is believed that any wagging tail is a sign of friendliness, even when the rest of the dog’s body is stiff as a board. One of my clients refused to take any dog at a shelter who wouldn’t return his gaze and stare back directly into his eyes for a prolonged period of time–and the guy had five kids under the age of eight.

We need to do all we can do to use our knowledge to help people get the right dog. I know that there are other ‘matching making’ services around the country: I think it would be a great service to add to the repertoire of a dog training business. Meg and Liz work with a large number of rescue and shelters, and the organizations love the help. What a great thing to do.

Dogs need the right buddies too. This is a photo of Willie’s girlfriend, Mishka. Although Will is always more nervous around dogs larger than he is, he fell for Mishka pretty hard. She’s perfect for him, playful and able to stand up for herself (when Will tries to play “Let’s herd the Dobbie by nipping at her chest”). And she’s mellow and non-reactive and able to keep Will on his best behavior. Will got a bit nervous when she was in the house last, when she ran up and over him, and as his mouth began to pucker (and as I said “Will Will” to re-direct him to me), she pulled away and let him be. What a girl. Mishka’s house mate, a male Doberman, is exactly like Willie: playful but nervous, controlling but fearful, and there’s no question they’d be a terrible match. His owner and I laugh that if we ever get them together it’d be an Anderson Cooper moment (host on CNN, a station famous for loving drama). Not gonna happen. Look at Willie’s eyes carefully–the image is a little dark, but you can still see that he has his eye on the prize: the beautiful Mishka.

Our discussion about how people handle being frustrated by their dogs brought out so many interesting points, and it got me to thinking:

First off, the more we know about dogs, the less frustrated we get. Frustration comes from an inability to affect the world around us, and once we understand who dogs are and how they learn, our ability to influence them increases significantly. As I think about it, the comparison of my frustration levels now and 25 years ago is like night and day.

Right now, there are really only two things that Will or Lassie do that have pushed my buttons in the last six months–Will’s relentless stalking of Sushi, and Lassie’s tendency to get under foot when I’m moving around the kitchen. My frustration with Will was a classic case of an inability to influence the world around me, because so much of what I had been trying wasn’t working, and the behavior was constant and potentially dangerous. When I finally sat down and wrote myself out a treatment plan (plan # 3, fyi), my frustration went away. (Things aren’t perfect by the way, but they are 95 % better, and if I start to feel a twinge of irritation I put him in his crate. Breath huge sigh of relief.) Lassie has an “old lady pass” and no matter what she does I pretty much just take a deep breath and let it go. Granted, poop all over the house at dark-thirty in the morning after 4 hours of sleep is still going to elicit something loud and nasty from my mouth on a bad day, but it wasn’t directed toward any of the dogs. (It was Lassie by the way, she had diarrhea that day too, but she’s fine now. Happy Dance.)

But twenty five, thirty years ago, I remember desperately trying to get my Saint Bernard to do something (or not to do something) with no success, and no good ideas about how to accomplish what I wanted. I know that’s a common situation for many dog lovers. They love their dog, but they can’t get successfully influence their dog to do what they’d like. They get frustrated, then angry, and many of them feel guilty about it. But dog training books and dog training classes don’t often address the reality of dog ownership. No matter how hard you try, and how much you learn, things are not going to go according to plan. If you’re an average person (and even if you’re right out of the radio show Prairie Home Companion and are above average), there are times you’re going to get steamed. Surely we need to give people some coping devices. Here are some ideas, I’d love to hear yours:

1. Do all we can to help people have realistic expectations. The only reason I am lucky enough to have Lassie is because the man who adopted her from a shelter (long story) took her home and brought her back the next day. Seems he’d shut her into his bedroom for her first day home alone at his house, and he came home to find she’d pee’d on the rug and chewed through the belt he left lying on the ground. “Chewed it in HALF!” he kept repeating to me, as if somehow that was a sign of an especially incorrigible dog. I got her the next day, and named her Lassie because she turned in mid-air and came running to me when I called her name, even out of a dead run, while chasing after all my other dogs. That was NOT expected, but a year-old dog chewing on leather while being left home alone all day, her first day in a new house after being in a shelter, is hardly a significant behavioral problem. I’m so lucky her owner-of-one-day didn’t know that, but surely we need to help people know more about what to expect (ie, you WILL lose a pair of good shoes if you get a puppy).

2. Do all we can, obviously I suppose, to help people learn how to influence the behavior of their dog in ways that are effective as well as humane. Just about everything else I’ve ever written is in some way about this, so I’ll leave it at that!

3. Directly address the fact that dogs can be frustrating, and give people coping skills to deal with it. We should add this into Puppy and Beginning Dog Training classes, don’t you think? We can suggest:

>>> Saying one thing and meaning another (I love that so many of you do that too. If you haven’t yet read the comment about the oven, I highly recommend it!) Yes, indeed, not a good strategy around children or those who wouldn’t understand that you truly don’t mean what you are saying, but it can be ever so useful in some circumstances, especially with an adolescent (dog!).

>>> The beauty of a deep breath. Or three. Or ten.

>>> Asking yourself why what happened happened (while you’re deep breathing).

>>> Bursting out laughing. Someone once suggested to me that I try that with someone I was working with who was being so unreasonable as to be border-line abusive. They had a lot of power over me (professionally) and used it in ways that were, uh, crazy-making. I burst out laughing the next time I wanted to poke pencils in my eyes over something she said, and it had an amazing effect (on both of us). I wasn’t laughing at her, just laughing with pure delight at the absurdity of what she said. It wouldn’t have the same effect on a dog, but it sure does lighten things up.

>>> Quietly, and with no fuss, putting your dog in the crate or another room. Away. From you. I honestly think this is one of the skills that professionals have that they don’t hesitate to use… much more so than the general public. It’s okay to recognize that something is steaming you up, and that you can’t or shouldn’t act on that feeling at the moment.

Of course, there are lots of things to do later when you’re feeling differently, thinking through how to prevent the problem in the first place, but I’m talking about that moment when you first discover that the world is totally and truly not your oyster. I describe situations like that as “This is NOT the video tape I rented!”

Meanwhile, back on the farm: It’s spring. Honest. The Black-capped Chickadees started singing their spring, territorial song yesterday (“Wooooo Heeee”), and I’ve decided that spring comes when the Chickadees start singing. Besides, it’s over 32 degrees today, and it feels absolutely balmy. I actually don’t want it to get too warm, I want the snow still on the ground so that I can snow shoe and Willie can play fetch (the snow seems to insulate the impact of his landing or short stopping, so he and I have been in heaven lately). There’s still quite a bit left, as you can see from this photo I took on the way to my office:

Willie woke me up at 3 am this morning, as he did yesterday morning. I have no idea why-speculation is that he needed to potty, or he is waking up earlier and earlier to get the food in his morning Kong. I told him to “settle” and managed a restless doze until 5 am, when he pretty much threw himself at the bed, woke Lassie up from a log-like slumber, and careened me out of bed, still asleep and not at all pleased. I held my tongue, let the dogs out to potty, and then gave them their stuffed Kongs and went back upstairs.

When I came back downstairs, about an hour later, one of the dogs had defecated all over the house, and I mean all over. In the dining room, on the rug in the living room, on the floor in the living room, in the study, in the kitchen . . . Isn’t it amazing how much area one dog can cover? Of course, I ended up stepping in some while I was cleaning up another spot, and managed to distribute the poop even more liberally around the house than my dog had. I truly don’t know if it was Willie or Lassie (suspect Lassie, but just guessing, even though it was Will who woke me up so early), but I felt pretty much like what I was cleaning up, and said:

” What a WONDERFUL way to start my day! I just LOVE cleaning up s— so early in the morning! Thank you SO much, what would I do without you?” Truth be told, this was after exclaiming, and not in a happy voice, “Oh NO!” (or words to that effect) when I discovered that my slipper (still attached to my foot) was tracking the poop around faster than I was cleaning it up. Even though it wasn’t directed toward him, Willie responded to my louder-than-usual and clearly displeased voice by slinking out of the room as if I’d beaten him. One of the things I love about Will is that he IS so responsive. Even when he was young he listened better on sheep than any dog I’ve ever had. But the flip side is that he listens, and listens carefully, all the time. If raise my voice because I tripped over something and dropped a glass, Willie looks horrified. Like the young child of a divorcing couple, Willie seems to take everything personally, and just hates it when anyone raises their voice.

As soon as I saw his rounded eyes and lowered head this morning, I felt even worse–the last thing I wanted to do was to upset Willie. Ah, but one of the best benefits of human language saved me: the ability to say one thing and mean another. That’s when I switched to “Why thank you SO much. . .”, said in a liltingly happy voice. Any human within hearing distance would have known perfectly well that I meant the exact opposite of what I was saying, but I managed to express my frustration while sounding perfectly pleased to the dogs. (At least to Will, Lassie’s hearing is now bad enough that I suspect none of this had any effect on her.)

I’ve used this technique before, when I was truly irritated at a dog. I even advise it–it’s very helpful, when your dog has done something that just drove you crazy, to say something like “I hate every hair on your furry little body,” as long as you say it with the sweetest of expressions. (Highly recommended when your puppy finally comes when called, after a long delay!) I know there are people who say that they never EVER get even the slightest bit irritated at their dogs, and never, ever raise their voices their entire lives, and more power to them-I just can’t imagine that myself. (Maybe they could date Dr. Spock from Star Trek?)

So here’s my question to you: what do you do when and if your dog does something that challenges your frustration tolerance? I’m assuming here that we all agree that simply expressing anger isn’t constructive (or do you disagree?) Are there ever any circumstances where it IS appropriate to let a dog know that you are truly steamed? I look forward to your thoughts . . .

Meanwhile, back at the farm, I am sparing you a photo of the floor as it was when I came downstairs. (You’re welcome.) Here’s a nicer image: what it looked like outside about the time I got everything cleaned up:

I thought it was fun to compare this to a photo from outside of Naples, Florida, in Corkscrew Swamp. A bit of a difference!

Not much time to write, sitting at Barnes and Noble to latch onto their wireless internet connection, but thought some of you might enjoy some of the photos we’ve taken of the wildlife here (around Naples, not at B & N!). It’s pretty much bird heaven here, even though it is colder here than since the ice age. Between fund raising events for The Brody Project (both smashing successes, thanks to the organizers and to the generous people of the area), Jim and I have soaked up some of the animals in the mangrove swamps and the beaches.

We’ve watched river otters playing in a mangrove swamp, dolphins arcing through the waves in the sea while we ate breakfast, Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets (with feathery white plumes, black legs and yellow feet — they look like Dr. Suess animals), White Ibis, Wood Storks in the mangroves, Pelicans and Terns dive-bombing into the waves, Black Skimmer flocks swooping in like groupies at a rock concert, and leaving in one group just as fast, as if attached by invisible strings. The weather cleared (it’s raining hard right now) yesterday morning and we had a glorious morning of sun and bird watching on the beach. Granted, it’s cold, windy and rainy now, but hey, we got one glorious morning!

Here’s the Great Egret hunting in the swamp alongside our walkway to the beach. Such a gorgeous bird.

And here’s the flock of Black Skimmers swooping in for a group sit in on the sand right in front of us. Skimmers are amazing birds–their lower bill is longer than the upper one, and they feed by flying just above the water, lower bill drooping into the water. When it hits a fish, it snaps up and throws the fish down their gullet. This is a feeding style I can get behind… eating anything that hits my mouth. (The diet begins Monday….

Meanwhile, back at the farm, the wonderful farm sitter reports that it has snowed 6 inches since we left, it was 2 below this morning with a high of 9 today, that Lassie is peeing in the house every afternoon (too cold outside to empty her bladder? just old? bladder infection? liver troubles affecting her bladder? we’ll be back at the vet’s when I get back). But she’s also super playful, great appetite, and Will and sheep are all doing well. Thank you Lesanna for being such a great sitter! (Is there anything more important than a great pet sitter if you travel?)

I’ve loved reading your comments about Animal Assisted Activities and Animal Assisted Therapy (which is done as part of a medically approved, therapeutic treatment plan). The Brody Project does the latter, and is doing a fantastic job working with the staff at Moorings Park Retirement Community. The stories of how the therapeutic teams have changed people’s lives are oxytocin generators of the finest kind. The Brody Project is funded by Paula Brody, who saw how dogs profoundly improved the life of her mother, Sarah Brody, in her last years, and is, if I do say so myself, brilliantly directed by my friend Karen Lasker. She and some amazing volunteers have done a fantastic job getting this program off the ground, and it was a honor to be able to help raise funds for it.

Tomorrow we leave for home, back to the farm, the snow, the dogs (oh boy), and lots and lots of work. Will attempt to leave five pounds of holiday weight here with me….

I’ve loved our discussion about the “Right Stuff,” and how every dog has its own talents. I think that is never more true than when asking a dog to do Animal Assisted Therapy. AAT is on my mind now, because I’ve just finished working on a speech I’ll be doing in Naples, Florida to raise funds for a worthwhile cause, The Brody Project. I’ll be dining with donors this Wednesday, Jan 6, and speaking on Thursday, Jan 7th on “The Power of Pets.” The Brody Project does AAT at Moorings Park Continuing Care Retirement Community and if you are in the area, I’d love it if you came up and said hi. I also just finished a chapter for a new book by Audrey Fine, the silver-back of AAT, on what caretakers of assistance dogs need to know.

And here’s the bottom line: They need to know if their dog is truly and inherently suited for assistance work. I had a client come to me last year to help turn his neophobic dog into a therapy dog, when the dog was silently yelling to me that he couldn’t, he just couldn’t . . . “oh please please don’t make me go to that scary, smelly place again. . .”

There are many traits that make a good therapy dog, but here are the two that stand out to me:

1) Inherently social–the kind of dog that seems to think it’s a miracle that there is an endless supply of people in the world. I’ve mentioned before that when Willie sees a new person (as long as it’s not a loud, tall, unfamiliar male who runs up and looms over him), I swear he is thinking: “LOOK! There’s ANOTHER one! Oh boy, another person! Where do they all come from?” I don’t mean that the dog needs to be beside himself with excitement like Willie is (see #2 below), but you just can’t train dogs to deeply care about people they’ve never met if they don’t feel that way naturally.

2) Non-reactive and relatively calm–Thus, cross Willie off the list. Will would not be a good candidate now, because he is so enthusiastic about greeting new people. Oh, he keeps his butt on the ground (with great effort), but when people enter the house he is literally beside himself with joy, and can barely contain himself. I imagine, if he were in a hospital setting, that oxygen and IV lines would end up flying around the room, potentially joined by a previously immobile patient after being mauled by four overly enthusiastic paws and one very pink tongue.

However, Will may be the perfect dog when he is older. That’s something that Audrey and I talked about a lot for his book, that so many dogs are tested (and failed) at two years of age or so, when most dogs do best after they have aged and matured a bit. Many dogs need time and maturity to do grown up work, which doesn’t seem surprising when you think of it. How grown up are people anyway when we are twenty years old? Very grown up in some cases, but in others, not so much. No matter who you were when you were twenty, did you have the same level of balance and maturity at twenty that you did at forty? Fifty? Sixty? (Okay, lots of you are dropping out, but at 61, I felt compelled to continue listing the decades!)

I will never forget sitting in the International Dog Trials in Scotland many years ago, and noticing that the dogs seemed surprisingly old for such athletic work. I later figured out that the average age of the dogs in the trial (the olympics of herding competitions) was 7.5 years of age. Some dogs ran at age nine. Dressage horses don’t compete seriously until they are at least five or six years of age (someone correct me on this, or add to it… I’m estimating), and many of them aren’t considered even close to fully trained until they are over ten.

I’m curious about your experiences. Several of you commented on my last post about your dogs becoming therapy dogs after being pulled from another activity. How old were they when you started? And what do YOU think is required in a good therapy dog?

FYI, one of my dreams for when I retire is to do animal assisted therapy or animal assisted activities, whether it be working with a medical team in a hospital-like setting, or getting involved in the Reading to a Dog project. But, it’ll have to wait. Until then, I’ll look forward to your comments and write from Florida.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, it’s cold cold cold. Minus 8 F yesterday morning. That’s nothing for Fairbanks, I know, but for us Wisconsinites it’s cold. Highs in the low teens all weekend, so Lassie goes out to pee or poop, and will only do one at a time. She eliminates whatever needs to leave her body first, and then trots purposefully into the garage, and goes back into the house. Her belly is shaved and I worry her feet will frost bite, so I don’t hesitate to put her inside.

But Willie still loves to be out, and so we snow shoe up the hill and play fetch in the deep snow. It is an inexpressible joy to be able to play frisbee or “fetch the thrown stick” with Willie now. We can because the deep snow insulates the impact when he lands or short stops, so it doesn’t seem to bother his shoulder as it does otherwise. What heaven for us both. Here’s a photo Jim took a few days ago when we were playing in the orchard pasture up the hill behind the house.

xx