Still photos only tell so much. Especially when you have someone like me, using an Iphone camera, to capture the essential feeling of what it's like to be here with many dogs. I almost wrote, with SO many dogs. And that's a case in point; after a couple days with the team, they don't seem like SO many or TOO many dogs at all. When they're awake, they're movements are for the most part, sleekly concise and made with an awareness of what else is going on around them. That doesn't mean they are always doing the same thing at the same time. More often than not, each dog, or a pair of dogs, are attending to something in the environment or to some internal cues. Knowing their environment, or their Space, appears primary: who's where, what's the wind making move "over there," what direction is that moo'g coming from, who is it that just peed right here?
It reminds me of a dance practice called flocking. Moving your individual dance through space, staying close to the other dancers who are also each moving their individual dance alongside yours. It's beautiful to watch and somehow deeply satisfying for the body to practice flocking.
Difference between flocking practice in the dance, and the dogs in the yard, is the dogs don't seem to need any practice. My guess is we wouldn't need much practice either if we'd continue flocking from our natural instincts to run with our kind, other humans, from the beginning of our lives: don't children run & play in a flocking formation fairly often? Making their way across space, each ones arms and legs flailing in their own way, staying as close to each other as they possible can. I don't remember anyone ever
teaching me to run & play like that, do you? Hmmm...
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