Fences are an act of love.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about fences lately.

Probably because my life seems to revolve around boundaries, both personally and on the farm. And thanks to some goats who refuse to get along and a livestock guardian dog who refuses to stay within her own territory, I’ve been looking back at some spiritual fences I’ve encountered within the last few years.

Our literal fence issues started toward mid-2021 and have carried us into mid-2022, so I’m looking at an entire year’s worth of evidence on fencing. It’s given me a fair amount of time to collect some thoughts on the subject.

We electrified the pasture fence to keep our Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog (Dixie) in the fence. People, in general, tend to think that it’s the goats that like to jump their fences. And I suppose in some cases, this is true. But for us, with the single exception of Wesley escaping his buck pen to reach his ladies last fall, the goats don’t seem to be terribly inclined toward escape. They know who feeds them and where the food is within the pasture; why would they stray?

No; it’s that dang LGD with a penchant for adventure and chasing the neighbor’s chickens. I have chased down that dog more times than I’d care to count, and we finally had to break down and go for electric. It is literally the only thing that can keep our Great Pyrenees in the fence.

The very nature of the breed calls for this.

When choosing a livestock guardian dog, it’s important to determine your goals before making the commitment. The type of livestock (goat, sheep, chickens, etc…) you own comes into play as well. There are plenty of great guardian dogs, so do a good amount of research based on your needs for your herd/flock.

The dog breed will determine the amount of training you’ll need to put into the dog (though some of the guardianship qualities are innate), and then beyond the guardian attributes, each breed has its own benefits, quirks, and pitfalls.

I can really only speak to my own experience with our Great Pyr, but in general, this breed of guardian dog is the kind that likes to go out on patrol of his/her perimeter. This dog likes to head off an attack before it can even happen. Great Pyrenees work well in pairs, but only if they’re opposite sexes and one is at least two years older than the other. So don’t buy two puppies (especially from the same litter), because it will lead to problems, such as littermate syndrome.

One such example of littermate syndrome is this: if both dogs are female, one will become more dominant (or will try to be), and they will fight. Sometimes it comes out of seemingly nowhere, and the dogs will fight to the death. You’ll walk out to the pasture one day and find one of your dogs dead. There are plenty of good groups on different social media platforms that you can join if you’re looking for support and advice on purchasing, raising, and breeding livestock guardian dogs.

Another reason to not buy two puppies together, even if they’re opposite sexes, is because puppies are untrained. So any bad behavior in one of the puppies that you’re wanting to train out of him/her can be picked up by the other puppy, thus exacerbating the bad behaviors, which increases your work load. This will end up being a zero sum game, as the puppies will continue to feed off each other’s bad behavior, doubling down on their bad qualities. You’ll end up with two disobedient, untrained dogs unfit for anything other than becoming house pets. Don’t waste your time or your money.

Believe me: we’ve got our hands full with just the one Great Pyrenees; she still has puppy brain at times, and she’ll turn 2 this December. GPs are also incredibly stubborn, curious, and intelligent; they are brilliant climbers and diggers, and they are extremely pain tolerant. They get bored quicker than lightning – run as fast, too – and they need a lot of encouragement and positive reinforcement.

Now, all that said… Once you get your first Great Pyr raised to adulthood and trained to your liking, then you can think about adding a second GP to your pasture. When the older dog is trained and mature, he/she can help teach the ropes to the new puppy.

Having two Great Pyrs can be good, because if a threat does make it onto the property, one of the dogs can meet the threat, and the other can run the herd toward safety.

Other breeds of guardian dogs stay with the herd/flock and defend if/when an attack happens. I’ve heard good things about Anatolian Shepherds, and a friend who raises sheep has a few purebred and mix breeds, and she likes them for her flock. It all comes down to the land, the needs of the herd, and your personal preferences.

So all that being said, we had to put up electric fencing, given that Dixie’s nature is to leave her area and go on patrol. In theory, and if we had hundreds of acres, I could see the benefit, because she probably wouldn’t meet a human for miles. But we still have some neighbors, and I know those neighbors don’t want their chickens and other pets harassed because my dog is an idiot.

Not that she’s malicious; she’s just still very much a puppy and doesn’t know her own power and strength. (Can you imagine the poop storm it would be if we had to train two of these dogs at the same time?) I really don’t think she knows that she’s a giant breed. Why do large dogs think they’re made to be lap dogs, while small dogs think they’re Rottweilers? I will never understand it. Dixie wants to play (puppy brain), and deep, deep down, she aims to please. She is very loving and sweet. But man, if she doesn’t love chasing chickens… At least she has those innate guardian qualities we were promised, so given enough time, she’ll eventually be a great guardian dog.

The rest of 2021 was slower paced and somehow blurry all at the same time. It feels as though we have lived in this house for such a short amount of time, and yet like we’ve always lived here, too.

This dichotomy is both surreal and comforting. How can there be a life we led outside of this place? It feels foreign and far away, and yet firmly grasps an old part of me that’s somehow deep within my psyche. It’s like we were always meant to be here, but we took the long way around.

I seem to have a boundary line separating who I am now, and who I used to be. A life I once lived, and the life I live now. A before and an after, split distinctly down the center of my heart, mind, and soul. How do these parts of me become reconciled, or rather, how am I not always torn in two?

Tragedy can leave this sort of mark. But that’s not to say that my life is defined by tragedy, at least not anymore. There’s a sort of internal calendar by which I can count days – a way to mark the passage of time with emotional landmarks – but by now, with therapy and the grace of God, I can look back across the expanse of my past with a sort of peaceful resignation. I cannot change it, and there are scars, but I am who I am because of those wounds, and I wouldn’t be who I am without them. I believe that’s called acceptance.

The paradigm shift was excruciating, and there’s a gap of time where I clung desperately to the past, wishing it were anything but my reality, but no matter how much I wanted it to be different, there was no going back to that life. The fence was built, and I was cut off. Eventually, there’s nothing that can be done but walk away from the fence. My only other option was to be just as short sighted as my dog, constantly climbing over, crawling under, digging tunnels, searching for any way to escape my new pasture in hopes of regaining the old life I falsely believed was freedom. Anything to run from the pain that was my present at the time.

That former life was actually the tragedy. I just didn’t know it. Now, I’m not saying that there weren’t good times, but overall, I can say that now I live in a sort of freedom that I never before knew existed.

I had a lot of false beliefs about myself, about God, about Jesus, about marriage, about life… So many things I thought were true turned out to be misguided, and in all of it, I didn’t even really believe that I had any value or gifts to offer others. I was incredibly insecure, I didn’t know my own worth, and I thought myself incapable of being loved by anyone. My whole life was dedicated to proving my worth and value to others, whom I was hoping would tell me I mattered and that I was loved. Not receiving that caused me to work and try harder, but it was never enough. That was the great tragedy of my former life. And had I gotten my way in the beginning, I’d have run back to that, because it was familiar and comfortable. I didn’t know how miserable I was, and I couldn’t fathom that a better life was waiting for me on the other side.

But I had to let go of the fence.

I had to stop trying to constantly climb back over it in an attempt to regain that which had been lost. God, in His loving kindness, removed me from that old life. He put up a barrier so that I wouldn’t be able to get back to it. It wasn’t for me anymore. He had something new, and something better. And if I had spent the rest of my life angry, bitter, and railing against reality, I’d have missed it. I couldn’t forgive the past and walk into my future, where God had work for me to do, if I stayed stubbornly tied to the fence post. Or if I’d desperately vowed to climb back over the fence at all costs. We have boundaries in our lives for a reason, and they are both defensive and protective in nature.

One such account comes to mind: that of Sodom and Gomorrah. God sent messengers to literally pull Lot and his family out of a location because He was about to destroy it. They were told to not look back, but Lot’s wife couldn’t bare it, and as she stole one final glance, she turned to a pillar of salt. I don’t know how long the salt stood in that place, but I can imagine it became a sort of ominous memorial – a warning to turn back – for as long as it remained. There was no going back to that life because God burned it to the ground.

There are other instances in history where God put up barriers to prevent – even forbid – people from returning to a location. The Garden of Eden comes to mind. Adam and Eve couldn’t stay in paradise once they fell, and perhaps it can be looked at as a punishment, because it was – there are certainly consequences to bad life choices – but it was also an act of grace and mercy.

I’ve heard it said that had Adam and Eve stayed in the garden and eaten from the Tree of Life after having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would have lived forever in a fallen world, forever separated from the God who loved them. That sounds like a literal hell on earth to me. I could be wrong, but if the person who first said this is correct, then God barring Adam and Eve, and every human thereafter, from the garden was an act of love. To allow His creation to live forever separated from Him was unbearable. God is relational. Adam and Eve couldn’t fix it; they broke it. No other human could fix it after them, either; we’d just break it all the more. No; God would have to send Someone else later on, the perfect One, fully God and fully man, to redeem the whole thing. To fix that which had been broken.

What Adam and Eve had was a good thing. It was perfect, actually. It was paradise. Heaven on earth. The stark contrast between the beauty that was Eden and the evil that was Sodom and Gomorrah makes my head hurt, and yet both places were deemed harmful, and God’s people were not allowed to stay. Lot’s family was ushered out because of God’s promise to Abraham and His faithfulness to His word. Adam and Eve were driven out because of God’s love for mankind and His desire for redemption and relationship.

When Adam and Eve messed it up, they couldn’t stay. It doesn’t mean that what they had prior to the fall was bad, but it did mean that they couldn’t stay there. That life was over, and they had no choice but to leave, to move forward, and to find joy in whatever came next.

My fence situation was not all that different. By no means was it as evil as Sodom and Gomorrah, but it was nowhere near a perfect paradise either. There were some good things sprinkled in. Not every memory of my former life is bad.

I can call that which is evil evil, and not rewrite past history to fit my narrative, at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. They can commingle and still come out with the truth intact.

I recognize the bad parts as bad, but I can see the good for what it was, too. The past is not all ugly and tainted. There were good times there, and I refuse to paint with such a wide brush that everything labeled as before becomes dark, twisted, and macabre. There are still rays of light, and I believe it’s my job to find the good. But I still have to move forward. In order to take hold of what lies ahead, I have to let go of what is left behind.

On the other side of this metaphorical fence, I feel a sense of wholeness once again. I can look back to that former life, not with sadness or regret, but with sweetness where it can be found, and with forgiveness where grace and mercy are needed. Does that fix the broken relationships? No. That will require some heart moves on the part of the other person/people, but should that day come, I’ll be here.

Now instead of seeing that boundary line as a prison cell wall, I see it as an Ebenezer – a memorial that points to Where my help comes from, and to where we’re going.

And I will build an altar/ Stack it stone by stone / ‘Cause every Ebenezer points to where my help comes from / You’re still just as good as when I met You / You’re still just as kind / Don’t let me forget that You’re still the same God / Who led me through the fire / You’re still the same God / Who separates the water / Come do what only You can do / God, I need You
“Just As Good” by Chris Renzema

So… we put up electric fencing.

The installation was pretty straight forward. We’re not electricians around here, but Hubby figured it out. I was there for moral support, and honestly, after he’d already nearly electrocuted, and then literally concussed, himself earlier in the year, realistically speaking, the chances of him unaliving himself weren’t zero.

Thankful that we didn’t have to make a trip to the ER, we patted ourselves on the back for a job well done and for a dog that could no longer escape her fence…

It wouldn’t be too terribly long before Dixie would figure out a new way to escape, so flash forward to spring 2022, and chasing down this dog and bringing her back to the pasture became my daily task for a while. Sometimes more than once per day. We have a temporary fix at the moment, and this summer we’ve been working to clear more land in the final acre of our property so that we can expand the entire goat pasture and give everyone more roaming room and pasture on which to graze. But this all takes time, money, and for the heat index to not be the equivalent of a thousand suns. So it’s slow-going.

But we’re getting there. Well, at least until we ran into an underground yellow jacket nest right along the path where we’re trying to clear trees and brush for the new fencing… but we have a plan to get rid of the unwanted stinging insects, and we’ll be working on that this week. We have to get this part done before we can move our pasture fencing, which is happening this coming weekend.

It’s always something.

Yet we persist.

In fact, we had to emergency-style build a new nursery pen for the younger bucklings on the farm, because Wesley is gearing up for his favorite time of year. No; it’s not college football season. Wesley here is bulking up for rut season.

If you’ve seen any male animals in nature or on something from Nat Geo, then you know that males during mating season have one goal in mind: females. They turn aggressive toward one another, fighting over territory, food, and mating partners. Wesley is every bit the epitome of what it means to be a male specimen in the goat world. He’s trained for this. He’s eaten a ton of calories for this. He’s packed on the pounds for this.

And all other intact males are his competition.

Nevermind that his competition is his own offspring from earlier this year, that the bucklings are half-brothers, and that the bucklings would literally be competing for mating rights within their very own shallow gene pool (gross). None of this matters to these boys.

As a result, Wesley has been attempting to starve out the younger goat bucks. He has been aggressive toward them, pushing them, nipping at them, keeping them from food and water, and otherwise just being a real jerk. The animal kingdom is not kind, especially to those who are smaller and weaker. Nature does not care.

So we realized this was happening and decided that something had to be done immediately. We pulled the younger bucklings and put them in a temporary holding pen. It was too small to leave them there longterm, so we were just going to have to build something right away.

Not wanting to spend any extra money on this endeavor, we ended up venturing into our back acreage in search of parts of the fence that had doubled up lines of pasture fencing. From what we can tell, at one point the previous owners had installed new electric fencing within the wooded area of the property, and rather than pulling the original T-posts, wire, and fencing, they installed all new fence materials, which incidentally, was perfect for what we needed to accomplish.

So after bush whacking a trail to the back acreage, we were able to remove the extra T-posts and reinstall them in their new location in the goat pasture. This took all day, but it was worth it.

We were able to drive the posts into the ground and then attach free, collected pallets to the posts to create a new nursery pen for the two younger buck boys.

The weather wasn’t as blazing hot as it has been this summer, so the work wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, for which we were thankful.

The boys seem to be adjusting well to the new pen, though they are quite vocal when they see us, to let us know they’d still much prefer to have not been moved, even if they were being manhandled by the older male goats. Stubborn children, always. Moving on is hard, it seems, no matter the species.

So this leads us to our next venture: Operation Pasture Expansion. It’s finally happening!

We have purchased the materials needed for running more electric fencing, which will keep Dixie inside the entirety of her expanded property. No more finding holes in the fence line or sneaky ways to escape. This will also give the goats more grazing pasture, which is good because 1. we need underbrush and shrubs removed, and 2. the goats need good roughage for their digestive systems, so this is a win-win for everyone.

Now all that needs to happen is removing current T-posts and moving them farther back into the rest of our acreage. It’s more involved than just that, but we have a plan. We have to disconnect and remove current electric fence wire and insulators, disconnect pasture fencing from the T-posts, pull up every post, move everything to the new fence line, and then redrive every post, reattach all the pasture fencing, reattach all insulators to the posts, and then finally re-run all the electric wire, ground it, and turn it back on. All in a day’s work, right? Many hands make light work, and we’re thankful that we have friends and family willing to come to our aid in this project.

So… fences.

They’re wonderful.

They are both protective of what is inside of them and a deterrent for what lies outside of them. They cause change, they separate, and they make new lives. Healthy boundaries are necessary. To say to something or someone dangerous, “You can only come this far” is a beautiful thing. There is a protection for what is precious inside these fortified walls.

And there is a sort of protection in not looking back at the past and desiring what once belonged to me on the other side of the pasture. The grass is greener where I water it. So I’m trusting God with the past, giving it to Him to handle how He sees fit, and choosing to live in peace, joy, and hope with my new pasture.

Good fences are built out of love.

I would do well to live within the bounds of the fence line with which God has entrusted to me, and to leave that which falls outside of my jurisdiction to Him. He can handle the past, the present, and the future, because He exists outside of space and time. His lands are endless and full of cattle, and the pastures He removed me from aren’t meant for me to tend. Paradigm shifts, mistakes, and tragedies belong in His hands, too, because He alone can reconcile all of it. So what else can I do but move forward in joy, in the life He has given me? It’s a gift, and I won’t take it for granted.