Sunday will mark one week that Fate has been in our lives, we met her last Sunday at Karen Thompson’s farm in New Kent, Virginia, we brought her home on Tuesday. They say you don’t find a dog, the dog finds you, I’m not certain of that, I think we looked long and hard for Fate, and with Karen’s wonderful help and heart, we found her there. I do believe dogs are spirit animals, they mark the passages of our lives, they come at a particular time for a particular reason, and they find a way to leave when they are done

One week later, Maria and I looked at one another, and said almost at the same time that we needed this dog, she has filled our lives with love and laughter. The training of Fate has gone beautifully. She is reliably house-broken, is doing her “come” and “sit” well and continuously. She was a maniac for several days, a dervish, but she is visibly calming down, she has powerfully attached to Maria and to Red, and I have to say I am pretty crazy about her as well. She is my other girl.

Maria keeps telling me I have not smiled so much or laughed so hard in awhile. And I do love training, it is a passion of mine, and I am proud that my calming training is already having a pronounced and positive impact on this intense creature. It took Fate a couple of days to figure out that this is home, this morning, I surprised Maria by  bringing Fate upstairs and lifting her up onto the bed. It was a joy to see these two burst into joy at the fight of one another, Fate crawled right up next to the pillow and wriggled with love.

This is a challenging time for us. We have fought long and hard to keep the first Bedlam Farm from going into foreclosure, and to do it, we have very nearly ruined ourselves. Bedlam Farm went on the market four years ago for $495,000 and it is now under contract for $230,000. I am happy it has been sold to good people who love it. But it is, of course, a bittersweet thing.

We will have some challenging days ahead of us to figure it all out, we may have to sacrifice much more. We spent all of our savings and then some preserving the farm and the idea of it. Neither of us regrets it, we knew what we were doing. The Bedlam Farm idea was worth preserving, and the farmhouse deserved to keep it’s dignity and structure intact.

But it has been a grinding and difficult process, and it may get worse before it gets better.

I told Maria this morning that I believe this is one of the reasons Fate has come to us. She is, like Red and Rose and Lenore and Orson, a spirit dog, she will mark this time for us, and become a magical helper herself.

Karen Thompson is a mystic and a spiritualist, one of those magical helpers Joseph Campbell writes about, and just as she knew to send Red to me, she knew to send Fate to us. Karen seems to know Maria even before she met her, she knew the right dog for us. Fate has already woven herself deeply into our lives, she has been to the hardware store, to meet Connie and Marilyn Brooks at  Battenkill Books, to see Scott and the staff at the Round House Cafe.

We have broken through to her in a training sense, she is almost frighteningly smart, she loves Red and he is gentle and loving with her, the two are already nearly inseparable, although he does go off alone once in awhile to get some peace. Fate is with Maria all day in her studio, she lies quietly while Maria works, an astonishing thing for a border collie puppy not yet three months old. Anything is possible with this dog, she has entered into a sacred communion with us, lifted our spirits, reminded us of the power of our love for one another, and for the animals in our world.

I will celebrate with her the magic of the animals who work with people and join them in the partnership of life, good and bad. We are looking out for her, she is working out for us, fitting into the contours of our life and supporting it, as the spirit dogs do.