Farm Dog

There is a new dog in the house. Twelve weeks old, border collie, for the record; farm dog.

Our lab is getting on and while I am nonchalant about death of human millions, overdone as we are, I am distressed over the end of an honest dog. Preferring my homestead not to go that empty, expressed in the farm lexicon as without a dog. Right up there as without a prayer. I am of a mind to take the same precaution for continuity should my wife die, however I don’t know how one goes about this legally. When my dad died I was tempted to buy my mother one of those electrically heated “companion pillows,” according to instructions set up lengthwise of the bed. So she could sleep next to something warm. Not her husband exactly but a good substitute in the middle dark.

We are not particularly honest about such transitions in our society. Instead allow people to suffer through it as best they can when what is needed is a simple appliance. No anatomical resemblance required, just a warm, middle mass in the dark.

The house is a mess since the puppy, a creature born to chew; chewed paper, chewed shoes, whining for attention, potty breaks, accidents. A bit of a throwback to have the house ruled by youthfulness again, the urgency to go play, ever mindful of training, the slow acquisition of words.

His name is Duncan, recall the king of Scotland murdered by MacBeth. The other options were Guinness, Bunker and Whisky. A gentle pleasure is to name something, the sweet memory of naming children. The nice thing about naming dogs is family protocol or precedence isn’t at issue. On the farm we name things more than the average person might have opportunity to exercise. I might feel better about modern thousand-cow dairies if those beasts also had the chance of a name. At the same time I realize numbers are far more individual to us and to cows than are the names we bestow on each other. I was raised in that age when my Catholic friends were by practice named after saints. I can recall no exception. Lately there is an enthusiasm for Old Testament names, Celtic and Gaelic names are on the ascendancy. Few, if perhaps the Old Norse, can compete with the individuality of the naming tradition practiced within the American Indian. Comparable to the time in the Old World when Ethelred and Daniel meant the equivalent of a Native American name. We do not name people Dances-with-Cellphones, if perhaps we should, to gain thereby some equality at last to the individuality provided by numbers.

There is a means to do this with a degree of dignity. Reduce the too-editorial name Dances-with-Cellphones to any archaic language, Gaelic comes to mind. When you want to sound inventive a deceased foreign tongue is the simplest means. I have a John Deere tractor named Urbeart, the term right out of the Gaelic-English dictionary, means green machine. Not exactly brilliant to name a John Deere “green machine,” but as Urbeart lends an immediate artistic flair, a degree of intellect, never mind it is the same dim-witted label.

Behind his back I call my friend Jeff Laskowski, who is a loyal citizen of John Deere Nation, urbeart neach cuthaich, which means green machine maniac. It looks more the mouthful than it is, since Gaelic like Polish contracts pronunciation. As we in central Wisconsin should know, at Polish you proceed as if some of the letters aren’t there, the problem is which ones aren’t there. On the flip side is the mathematic pronunciation of Menominee where every addition factor is added to the sum total of the word. So a simple phrase like…cold beer anybody? becomes na twah kesi cewan kena hokow, flows fast stuff that pelts you in the head? The neat thing about Menominee is the practice of law is prohibited by the language itself. Gaelic on the other hand is designed for the female mind-set, it is rapid fire machine-gun-like words, ideal for sportscasters, designed to be misconstrued, as a result also ideal for politics, where every innocent expression easily becomes quite juicy. Menominee on the other hand is a language for sages and physicists. It occurs to me the institutions of higher learning should attach to various fields of study languages consistent to that study, Menominee to accountants, sages, and nuclear physics. Latin already in force in science and medicine, but the law better served in Gaelic, where slight shades of meaning go nicely with litigation. For farmers I would reserve Hebrew and the ancient Hittite. For truck drivers sign language, same for professional athletes. Except for Lou Alcindor/Kareem and Bill Bradley you don’t want these people talking anyway.

The next issue for our new dog is how soon it is allowed to drive the tractor and pickup truck. Once you cross that boundary most farm dogs assume immediate ownership of the truck. At which point you might as well give it a percentage of the farm income, buy it a plot in the cemetery, a place at the table, a pillow on the bed, and a toothbrush at the sink ’cause it’s marital property all over again. That dog owns the farm same as those with their name on the deed.

We bought Duncan at a dairy farm a little south of Slab City. They were milking when we got there, half a dozen words, hundred bucks, no papers, no vet, no license, no shots. Duncan already knows how to operate the turn signals; farm dog.