March 27, 2020
Welcome, TCCA clients and fans. I hope you are all well and perhaps even a bit bored because there is no drama in your life! We are “back” at least in blog form. Hopefully, we will be back physically in class soon with you and your wonderful dogs, training, laughing, and enjoying being alive in the company of like-minded people.
A Blog was planned when we first designed our website and now that classes were canceled for a whole session the time needed to actually get it going has appeared. We may as well make a little bit of lemonade from this giant lemon.
Our TCCA blog will cover a lot of topics and we will Post frequently. Some Posts may teach a trick. Some may give a housebreaking tip. Some may introduce you to a beautiful poem or a beautiful horse. We will cover a range of topics and because I will be integral to the blog you can get ready for some psychology, philosophy, and literature and lyrics along the way. I hope our blog helps you learn something, smile a bit, think even more, relax, and stretch your ideas about dogs, training, life, what it means to be a community, and to love.
When you are facing a pandemic and you are about to turn 70 years old after a small but adventurous life – a little nostalgia is acceptable. So I will share two things important to me in this first Post. #1: This is one of my very favorite poems by the Kentucky farmer poet, Wendell Berry. It was published in 1968 which was a truly difficult year for the United States. The assassination of King, Kennedy, and the Tet Offensive all happened that year. It was a time of turmoil on so many levels. People struggled to stand for something important to their own soul, and wondered really, what was the soul of America all about? This poem is like a deep sigh in the midst of confusion.
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
I hope you print that poem and put it up somewhere you can see it when the news rattles your mind and heart. I have it up. You may not be able to go lie down “where the wood drake rests” but you have a dog. You can rest in the quiet breath of that dog, in the softness of their ears, the weight of their head on your lap – your dog chooses also to not “tax their life [lives] with forethought of grief”. They simply ARE. We can take a valuable lesson from this.
#2: Movement. I am a child of the 60s and 70s. I loved to dance. I still love to dance though I do it by myself these days when no one is looking. So find that dancing queen in your heart. Check out Dancing in the Moonlight (King Harvest) on Pandora all alone in your basement (though a willing dance partner, human or doggy, is even better). It has the right beat for dancing with yourself and at least one very important thought: It is indeed hard to be uptight dancing….especially in the moonlight. Move to music. Move. Close your eyes and move as the still water moves…just slightly. You may feel a bit silly. You may feel marvelous. Either way, you may also find yourself smiling.
Patricia
Owner, for the TCCA Team