I’m re-doing the Bedlam Farm logo a bit, something I hope to do every few months. I posted this, of course, and am enjoying the inevitable and welcome feedback.

My idea, which I wrote about, is to add Zinnia, keep Red, remove the chickens and the sheep,  and add a donkey image.

That isn’t final, just where I am now.

I’m always amazed and challenged by the diversity of the feedback I get.

One person worried that I might offend Maria if the artist Abrah Griggs did the re-design (she did the current one.) I have no idea where that came from, Maria has never done a logo and doesn’t do them in her artwork  (first  sketch  of Zinnia by Abrah below, we all like the one on the left.)

.

A lot of people said all of the animals on the farm should be in the logo, and some protested removing the sheep and the chickens. A lot of people were upset that I am not planning to include Bud.

This is not unwanted or unwelcome advice; it is sought and appreciated. I do want to be honest and explain my decision making.

First of all, it would wreck the logo if every animal on the pace was included.

We have three dogs, two donkeys, two hens, two barn cats, ten sheep. This isn’t a high school graduation photo; the logo speaks to the spirit and ethos of the farm.

With Red’s death, the sheep have moved more into Maria’s sphere than mine.

I’m not working with them any longer, and Maria is, she collects and sells their yarn. It is for her, I think, to write about them and photograph them on her blog more than I do, they are more central to her at the moment than to me.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about them, or won’t write about them,  it just means I can’t focus on all of the animals with equal passion all the time — the balance changes.

My blog is a reflection of me, as Maria’s is of her, and as close as we are, we don’t want to get so close as to lose our own identity, we have each worked hard for it and mean to keep it. So our focus is often on different things, as it should be. We are not one thing.

It’s interesting that no one has asked me to put Fate on the logo, even though she is a central figure here. She is Maria’s dog, they are wonderful for each other, and Maria writes about her and recognizes her often on her blog.

She is rarely with me, except for our continuing therapy work together. Maria does her great justice, she is a remarkable dog.

Bud is a shared dog, he is a family dog, and although he has recovered from much of his mistreatment,I don’t trust him to go off the farm off-leash, for his safety. A lot of things still frighten him. He loves the house and the  yard and the other dogs (and us.)

All of us, including me for sure,  are prone to class issues, and Bud and Zinnia trigger them in me as well as others. Zinnia is the dog of privilege, spawned by two champions, bred and brought into the world by a wealthy and experienced breeder.

Zinnia is the Dog Of Privilege; she had every possible benefit and luxury a newborn dog could have.

Bud had a brutal,  almost precisely opposite life.

He is the emotional favorite of people in some ways, a rescue dog in great trouble; he was abandoned nearly to death for a couple of years in Southern Arkansas, where he lived in an unsheltered fence outside for two years (his pen mates died of exposure) and lived partly by eating his feces and by his powerful spirit.

He was very damaged and very sick – exposure, heartworms, the terror of men,  malnutrition – when he came there, it is hard not to root for this sweet and very loving creature to get all the recognition there is.

Zinnia has had few, if any, hard moments in her life; she is the canine equivalent of royalty. Well-bred lovingly cared from birth to now. Her friendship with Bud is inspiring and holds many lessons for us.

She may have some hard times ahead of her, but so far, life is a golden cruise.

And I love her deeply and dearly; we are attached. She is the sweetest and easiest dog I have ever had. She reads my mind, as all great dogs do.

For me, the animals on the blog logo aren’t emotional favorites only; they are iconic symbols of the farm. They stand for something beyond themselves. Red will always be on the logo; he is a great lifetime dog who did extraordinary work with people in need.

He will always be a symbol of my life and aspirations.

Zinnia is also going to be a therapy dog.

I have worked harder and longer on the process of getting and training her than any dog in my lifetime. She is the embodiment of all that I have learned and all I wish a dog to be.  She is a symbol of the good that good breeders do in keeping the best traits of dogs alive.

She is a living rejection of the notion that there is only one way to get a dog.

Zinnia is on a straight track for good: she has already had a significant impact on Bishop Maginn High School, and on the Mansion residents, she brings so much joy to so many faces.

The donkeys – Lulu, Fanny, Simon – are a potent symbol of the farm.

Their sweetness, Simon’s rescue and recovery, Maria’s connection to these remarkable people – have touched many thousands of people.

There are few donkeys left in our world; their numbers are fast declining as the animal rights community drives more and more animals from our lives for increasingly absurd reasons. (I don’t see the activists writing about all the elephants slaughtered or sold into harsh and awful bondage since they were driven from American circuses.)

I believe they are important, and their images needed to be on my blog logo.

The blog is a statement of my life, a living memoir, and it changes, as does the logo.

In my mind, Bud is not as iconic or compelling a symbol as Zinnia, Red, and the donkeys; he is not as central to the identity of the blog and my life as they are.

That doesn’t mean he is not essential. As a family dog, he is vital to us and is much loved. But I have to make choices, that’s my job.

It isn’t about who loves who and it isn’t a popularity contest.

Symbols are important, and I choose the ones that lift my heart and speak to the wider world. All of our animals are important to Maria and me, or they wouldn’t be here.

I do appreciate your comments, and I do read them. Keep them coming. I wanted to explain about Bud. I’ll keep you posted as Abrah sends me sketches.