Arrow grew into the absolute most trustworthy guardian any human could ever hope to ask for.
He steadfastly REFUSED to harm ANYTHING (that didn’t belong on our property**).
WARNING: This is not a fun part of the story, but it IS something many farmers deal with at one time or another…
One time, one of my children made a terrible mistake and forgot to feed and water a group of baby ducks. (I admit, I did not check up on my child that time. Learning that people will trust them and that sometimes it’s important is a VERY important lesson for a child – even if the lives of other critters may be sacrificed in the process). OK, so, my oldest was given the job of looking after a group of young ducklings. He forgot, and by the time I checked on them (2 days later), some had died of thirst, and others, while still alive, were beyond help. It was a horrible discovery for me, BUT, Arrow, my ever-faithful guardian, had not touched a SINGLE duckling.
I saved those I could, but those who were too far gone were gently laid on the ground to meet their ends naturally.
Arrow checked them all and he NEVER ONCE touched a ducking that was still alive. (I will admit I tried an experiment – I laid out a number of ducklings – some dead, and some near death). Arrow did NOT touch or harm those ducklings who were still alive.
Arrow acknowledging the existence of the “new guy”, Digit, in 2007.
As he got older, Arrow showed me critters who needed my help more than once. He was the most dependable guardian any human could ever hope for.
I once found him diligently licking the feet of a duck that had become stuck to the ground by ice that formed while it was playing in its water tub. It was the depth of winter and about 40 below outside. Arrow could easily have killed and eaten the duck – it was the very embodiment of a sitting duck. Instead, he very likely saved its legs and feet from frostbite by licking them till I could come to the rescue.
Along with Scanner, Arrow became so dependable, that for many years, I stopped thinking about the job he was doing for me altogether.
However, once Scanner died, Arrow became less effective. The very spring after Scanner died, we began to have trouble with coyotes again.
Poor turkey.
One morning I woke up to barking and looked out my window just in time to see a coyote running down our driveway.
By the time I got outside, it was gone, of course, but the damage had already been done. One of our turkeys had been wounded (mortally, as it turned out).
We brought her into the house to try and warm her and clean her wounds, but alas, she died anyways.
That is when I realized that even though our place was small, we still needed two dogs to protect our little flock. It turned out that the coyote I had seen run down the road was one of a pair …. the other had gotten into the yard while Arrow was distracted and tried to steal the turkey. It was the one in the yard who had injured the turkey.
Arrow needed a partner.
Enter:
Rubic:
a.k.a. Gozer: Destroyer of Worlds.
Rubic was, again, an entirely different kind of livestock guardian. She was, in many ways, a perfect storm created by a combination of the best and worst of both the Great Pyrenees and my beloved Rottweilers. I am fairly confident that I understand Rotties, and having lived with 2 LGDs now, I also thought I knew livestock guardians.
Again, I was wrong.
We were not ready.
Rubic is a Sarplaninac.
We failed.
We failed Rubic.
We failed our birds.
We failed our small farm.
Rubic was (*IS*, as she still lives at the time of this writing), an amazing dog, but she was likely never suited to a life as a poultry guardian.
Try as we might to convince her otherwise, she never could resist the allure of the turkeys. After killing and eating her umpteenth turkey, we finally admitted that she needed to live in a place that had no turkeys. She was the first (and so far ONLY) dog we ever had to “re-home”.
Through it all, Arrow remained ever-faithful.
**Arrow DID once kill, and mostly eat a muskrat that wandered onto our property. Clearly, THAT critter DID NOT BELONG. An LGD’s job is to make sure ONLY critters that belong get to stay on our property.
This is the forth in a series of posts about Arrow, and about grief.
Stay tuned for more in the coming days.
If you are at all curious why I named this guy “Arrow”:
Listen:
The dogs especially.
Let’s not beat around the bush – these animals are killed. The vast majority of the life on my farm ends (i.e. dies) when *I* say. Sometimes it is because I honestly believe I am ending their suffering, but most often, it is because they are the right size to be of value to us for meat. The reality of the world is that 
I’m sorry. The rest of this post is pretty much a rant, so if you don’t want that, skip to 
Problem THREE: This pair simply distinguishes between learner centered and teacher centered instruction, and really has nothing to do with games or gamification. Good instruction, regardless of the medium used, could be described as “striving to present the right level of challenge to the learner”, and BAD instruction could be described as not doing that. This is one the 
I would hasten to add that most educators are NOT game designers. In fact, a great many teachers (and this goes double for higher ed) aren’t even very good instructional designers. One of the huge differences between entertainment games and educational games is that people play entertainment games voluntarily. It’d be wonderful if we could ignore that pesky little fact, but we can’t. Popular games are popular with the kind of people that like that kind of game AND for whom the particular levels of challenge offered by the game are just right. Those that find the game too hard will not play it. Similarly, those who find the game too easy will also not play it. We don’t have that luxury in the classroom. When we present a game or gamified lesson to our class, we are (usually) presenting it to our WHOLE class. Our students don’t really have a choice. The bright kids will often find it boring, and the struggling kids will often find it too hard. What the kids will likely tell their teacher though, is: “It beats doing another worksheet”. I’d hardly call that success.
Problem FOUR: C’mon! This is clearly written in such a way as to lead the reader to the conclusion that games are better than gamification. Otherwise, why add the negative descriptor “weak” to one and NO descriptor at all to the other. Perhaps the addition of “awesome” in column one was too obvious? Got news for you; it’s still pretty obvious.
Problem SEVEN: Um, that is true of ALL learning, whether it is a game, a lecture, an assignment, gamification, or anything else you can think of. This does NOT distinguish games from gamification. Rather, like the others, it distinguishes between good and bad education.
Some educational games do this, to be sure, but this excludes a whole bunch of games, such as drill games. Now, many drill games are pretty bad – little more than interactive worksheets, really – but there are also some really GOOD drill games. I’m not sure what kind of “new understanding” 
Problem NINE: To this, all I can say is,
Problem ELEVEN: Now, this really is kind of insulting. It implies that *I* won’t provide scaffolding, since after all, I am the one who designed my gamified course. I’ve come across more than my share of educational games that lacked scaffolding altogether. Providing the appropriate amount of scaffolding is important in ANY kind of instruction.
Yup.
NO, the bird did NOT make symmetrical eggs so there’d be more room! Those eggs that had more room tended to hatch better, and maybe even produce stronger babies. THOSE babies survive and then THEIR eggs are more likely to be the same shape as theirs were.
Just imagine what the oceans would look like if even HALF of those millions and millions of eggs survived to adulthood. They DON’T. They were NEVER designed to. In order to keep the population stable, ONLY TWO of those eggs need to survive long enough to reproduce.
In addition to that, the egg needs to survive its own life as an egg …. meaning it needs to come out without injuring mom, stay in the nest, survive mom (or dad) sitting on it, and do that long enough for the baby to develop and hatch. This easily explains the difference between ostrich and kiwi eggs: ostriches are BIG birds and lay their eggs in a sandy nest – round is fine, and kiwis lay gigantic eggs in relation to their body size – their eggs HAVE to be body shaped or they’ll never make it out without injuring mom.