Ruining Fate: Today, I’m offering some Bedlam Farm Etiquette Lessons for people who send electronic messages to communicate with other people. Julie and Nicole were kind enough to send me a message explaining why I failed in training Fate to herd sheep.

In their messages, they explained to me what my dog is like, what my sheep are like, and how I will fail again if I don’t get better sheep (this is a new twist for me).

Mostly, they told me what I am like. I am happy to talk to anyone about herding sheep any time, even if we disagree, which sheep herding people often do. Their messages were not helpful to me, even offensive in an unintended way.

Nicole and Julie are nice people, I am sure, and knowledgeable sheepherders. My problem with them is their manners, not their ideas. My favorite words are “I don’t know’ and “I’m not sure,” clauses neither seems familiar with.

My problem is that I see messages like this every day and so does anyone who uses social media or gets and sends e-mail.

What bothers me – and what makes this worth discussing – is my growing belief that e-mail as a means of communicating with other people is making a lot of people miserable. I read an interesting article in the New Yorker this morning that makes that point and inspired me to write this piece.

I wonder if I am one of those miserable people.

This isn’t Watergate. And Fate’s training is not that big a deal. She’s happy, and we are happy with her. No real harm was done, except to my ego.

But if you look at the horrifying decline in the quality of public or political discourse, it’s clear that something is wrong with our country.

The rise of e-mail and digital communications and social media coincides exactly with this decline in civility. When we communicate this way, we have no idea, no way of knowing who we are really talking to or how to approach them.

I believe it’s an important subject and that’s why I write about it and will k eep writing about it, using my own blog as a reference point.

The old etiquette of civil and thoughtful discourse is crumbling under the weight of instant communication. There are no longer any boundaries between work and home, privacy, intrusion, civility, no way of protecting or continuing the ability to listen and learn.

As importantly, I think e-mail is killing off good manners, even in good people. The world has never seen so many unsolicited messages from strangers before; the send button is too easy, too free, and too fast.

A huge segment of our population now believes everyone wants their opinion about anything any time, day or night, and that they have the right to offer it, wanted or not.

I’m not Miss Manners, but I believe in manners, in treating other people with respect.

Online, it is so easy to forget there is another human receiving the message.

What bothers me about these new kinds of messages is that they are helping to tear apart our country – especially rudeness and the death of empathy on e-media – and they are are dehumanizing our conversations.

Julie and Nicole are saying things that they would never say if they were sitting in my living room: that my opinion doesn’t matter and isn’t even worth asking, that my 20 years of herding sheep with dogs in snow, rain, sunrise,  darkness, in fields, small towns, with visiting trainers, in deep mud, with aspiring herders, sheep owners,  border collie lovers and herders means absolutely nothing to them and is worth nothing.

People so quick to lecture me rarely take the time to ask for a single thought or observation from me. And I am the only one who was there. I am a receptacle for their thoughts and observations.

If I were actually speaking to Julie and Nicole, I would be – am – curious to know how they train and what suggestions they might make. I am not interested in being lectured to by strangers, not after all the hard work I’ve put into my dogs and their work with our sheep.

My dogs and I and our sheep have dealt with coyotes, bears, horny Rams,  stray dogs, blizzards, lightning storms, and temperatures as low as -30 degrees.

None of this means I am right or that I haven’t failed Fate and other dogs as well. It means I don’t deserve to be dismissed and treated like an idiot. I might be crazy, but I do not believe I am stupid or blind.

Like Nicole and Julie, I’ve learned a lot. Unlike them, I know I have a lot to learn.

I’ve spent scores, perhaps hundreds of hours being trained by accomplished herding and trial trainers, and then helping to training several others. I’ve lambed my sheep a half dozen times and worked with them daily for almost all of those 20 years until very recently.

No one, in all that time, has ever dissed my sheep as unworthy; that comment is usually aimed at me. And none of it has made me a first-rate herding or border collie trainer. That is not the focus of my life or my work.

The sheep are here mostly for Maria and her love of wool and her interest in selling fine yarn. I don’t have a herding dog now and am not looking for one. We are all happy here on the farm, we each have our missions, our passions, the work that we love – dogs, sheep, artists, blowhard, and barn cats.

I’m more focused on my therapy work with dogs, which has replaced herding as my passion when working with dogs.

I am grateful that no dog people are telling me what my therapy dogs are like or what they should do.

What bothered me was that Julie and Nicole didn’t even pretend to consider what I think, feel, or learned (or didn’t.) They showed me no respect, and that is not something I ought to be silent about since many people told me I was dumb when I was in school; they didn’t know about dyslexia then.

Identity is important to me. So is treating others with respect. When the techs at Wal-Green’s gave me my first dose of the Covid vaccine, I thanked them and gave them a box of chocolates. I didn’t need to ingratiate myself with them, I needed to show them respect for the hard work they are doing.

I am not a  human or a living entity to Nicole and Julie in these messages, but a point of argument, an opportunity to know it all, to lecture, and to make insensitive assumptions to and about a total stranger – yes, a stranger, even if they read the blog every day.

I see criticism and blunt truths as an act of intimacy, if I need to do it, I do it only to people I know and only if they ask for it or tell me convincingly they need to hear it. I never assume it’s my right to do it to anybody who crosses my path.

That is not a good formula for communicating with another person.

So my response is not to argue with these two good women about my dogs, sheep, and feelings, but to offer them a lecture in return: on social media etiquette.

I hope it is more helpful to them than their lectures were to me.

As they almost certainly know, or ought to know, if they have further thoughts and observations about me, my training, dogs, and sheep, they are always welcome to e-mail me: [email protected].

Trainers e-mail me all the time with observations and suggestions; I value my time with them. We often stay in touch.

Or, God forbid, we can even talk on the phone, as I often do with border collie owners and sheepherders and trainers.

That’s what people of good faith do when they wish to offer help and guidance to a colleague or a friend. That’s what I do. I would never dream of doing that on Facebook or a public blog post.

But you have to see somebody as an equal to do that, not as a well-meaning but bumbling idiot.

Digital communications are often hostile, abrupt, or aggressive. Suprise attacks rarely generate thoughtful or courteous replies. I see that throughout our culture now, notably in politics, but almost everywhere online.

So I’m patching together the first chapter of my new Bedlam Farm Social Media Etiquette Guide. It can apply to politics, family conflicts, and issues relating to dogs. I hope it is of some use.

Here are the two messages that Nicole and Julie posted on my blog. Neither are especially nasty by Internet standards,  and I am not trying to shame them. But the messages both struck me as patronizing and borderline offensive.

This kind of communicating is, to me, in great part responsible for the anger and bitter divisions wracking our country. We are forgetting how to talk to one another, and more and more, I point to the Internet, headquarters for arrogance and intolerance. I never get messages like this in person. People don’t talk to one another this way face to face.

So it is important to talk about and write about how we talk to each other, online and off.

Here are the two messages:

___________

Nicole: Jon, I’ve trained border collies for stock work for more than forty years, and I have also had a working sheep farm for most of that time–this year, I’m lambing 300 ewes. I can say confidently that Julie is right: your current sheep (I can’t speak for sheep you’ve had in the past because I’ve only read your blog for the past five years) would ruin even the most talented dog: the best trainer in the world could not bring a young dog along on such sheep. Perhaps they weren’t as inappropriate in the past as they are now, but you and Maria have made pets out of them. Sheep that don’t respect people (that is, who don’t want to avoid human beings and instead seek them out for petting and treats) can’t help young dogs understand how to move them. If you don’t get better training sheep and you attempt to train another young border collie, you will fail again. It’s inevitable. Red was a highly trained sheepdog before you got him–he competed at the Open level, and I have seen him with his previous handler myself–and so was able to adjust to your sheep. A dog who does not have his experiences to draw upon is something entirely different. It’s fine to turn sheep into pets if that’s your jam, but it’s never going to work for stock dog training.

Julie: Unfortunately, you ruined Fate for sheep. What she is doing when she runs circles around the sheep instead of stopping on balance is called “orbiting,” and it’s always the result of poor training and confusion. The problem isn’t anything that Fate lacks herself—from what I’ve seen; she could have been a good working dog. The problem is that you tried to train her using pet sheep that do not react properly to dogs, and the inevitable result was that she lost confidence in her ability to work.

_____

 

Here are my rules of online etiquette

1. Don’t criticize people publicly. If you have something constructive and sensitive to say, say it via e-mail.  Or offer to talk on the phone.

When people criticize me out in the open, this tells me that they are more interested in being seen or fighting than helping me. And that they are not really interested in offering useful information.

2. Dialogue is a two-way business. Remember the words “I think” or “maybe” or “it’s possible.” Notice that nowhere in Julie or Nicole’s message is there any room for doubt or uncertainty, let alone error.

Messages like that don’t get me to ponder the message. They get my bristles up. That’s not the point of good communications.

There isn’t the sense of offering a thought; rather, they are offering a declaration, their idea of truth, take it or leave it.

That always feels like a scolding, not a message in good faith.

3.Electronic messages are not licenses to be rude. Do not say anything digitally or openly that you would not say in a person’s home. I doubt that either Julie or Nicole would walk into my home – and my blog is my online home – and lecture me about how I failed in my dog training.

That is invasive to me.

4. Listen. E-mails and text messages seem to encourage the idea of declarations, not dialogue. As the person on the other end, if it’s okay to talk about something. Then listen to what he or she says. As in: “Do you agree? Does this make sense to you? Is this helpful?”

5. Empathy. Be sensitive. It is not a simple thing to tell someone like me – dogs are so important in my life – that he failed his dog. Please take a minute to think about how you will present that information to him or your business to present.

People make mistakes, with or without dogs. I accept that. They rarely need me to rub salt in the wounds.

Neither messager asked me a question of any kind. “What did I see? What did I learn?”

Let the recipient participate in the conversation. “Nicole, it is clear that you failed in communicating with Jon in that way? Here are some ideas for how you might do it differently? What do you think?”

If you think so little of him or her that you don’t care about their opinion, then go away and leave them in peace.

5.  Ask yourself, “Did anyone ask me for my opinion?”  My rule for online communications is the same as my rule for offline communications. I do not give advance to anyone, but certainly not to strangers who have not asked for it.

6. It’s not all about you. If you really want to help someone, approach them thoughtfully and make sure they are open to feedback. Don’t lecture them or ignore them. If you don’t want to help, then go on FOX News Or CNN’s websites and go at it.

I take responsibility for being unable to train Fate how to herd sheep.  If I undertake a dog’s training, then I am responsible for how it turns out, period.

For other reasons, I’m not working with dogs and sheep any longer. I loved it when I did, but now I love something else. It is not my life and was never meant to be.

Sometimes with dogs and with people, there is no definitive answer, and the issue doesn’t have much relevance for me any longer. I have three herding ribbons on my wall; I don’t want or need anymore.

My grandmother taught me what I know about etiquette.

Treat people with dignity and respect, she said. She told me to believe that everyone has it worse than me, and in that way, I will treat people well.

Mind your own business. Please don’t say anything about them that you would not say to their face in their own home.

Remember that you are not smarter than anybody else; assume you are dumber. That way, you will respect the people you talk to. Don’t give advice unless asked. Don’t accept advice unless you ask for it. Fools won’t take advice, she said.

Smart people don’t need it.

This was long before the Internet and social media. But it’s a testament to my grandmother that they hold up so well.