The Surveillance State

To say I don't like modernity is an understatement.  Oh, for sure I like the ease and efficiency that certain technological advancements have afforded us, but I wonder if it's all worth it for what you lose.  I don't think it is worth it at all.  I don't like the fact that information about us is being gathered and sold.  If you google search a product or ask a question, pop up ads appear on your computer and phone.  If you talk about something, your phone is listening and you will receive ads for the topic of your conversation.  It is really just too much!  The genie, it appears, is out of the bottle, and I don't see any way of getting her back in.

But now I am going to contradict myself.  With the predation we've seen on our chicken flock, it is high time to get Belle, our Great Pyrenees guardian dog out protecting her charge.  Our problem is that Great Pyrenees LOVE to roam.  They don't stay where you want them to stay.  Highway 26 is just east of us and it is a very busy road.  Belle has gone across the road, and I don't think she understands the danger.

For that reason, we have a collar on her with a long tie-out cable to keep her from roaming.  We allow her to roam supervised each day and take her on walks with a lead rope.  But like us, she desires FREEDOM!  We looked into some GPS collars, but they are doggone (pardon the pun) expensive.  Finally we settled on one that allows you to set a radius.  It is not the Cadillac of dog collars.  It is more the Nissan Sentra.  This one costs $99.  We worked on setting it up, playing with the dimensions of the zone and calibrating the center.  This took some trial and error and walking around, holding the collar, listening for the buzzing.

The way it works is that you charge up this collar.  It will hold a charge for 12 hours.  Belle roams free, but when she gets to the edge of the boundary, the collar beeps, vibrates, and administers a shock.  Now, I know that may sound cruel, but if it works it is less cruel than being on a tie-out or running the risk of getting hit by a car.  The beeping, vibrating, shocking is designed to keep Belle within a big range of acceptable roaming.  At least that is the idea.  It has a 90 day money-back guarantee return policy.

We have been trying it out as time allows.  We put the collar on:

It takes a minute or two for the collar to link up and find the GPS coordinates.

The flashing light lets you know it is linked up and ready.  Time to test out the fence without a fence.  A virtual fence, you might say.

And then...  You let her go.  Belle immediately ran around like she always does.  We watched her as she went way out into the pasture and noticed that when she got near the set boundary, she acted funny, no doubt noticing the buzzing.  She changed directions and walked back into the safe zone.  For the rest of the day she wandered around... FREE!

At one point I went looking for her as I couldn't find her in the pasture, but I soon found her.  Can you see her hiding place?

She has a nice hole that she has dug under a log.  We call her the "log dog."  It's a good spot.  If I was a dog, I think I'd hang out there as well.

No sir, I am not breaking any laws that I know of, but I don't like being tracked, surveilled, spied on, controlled, or watched.  But if this thing works, it will be a win-win for Belle.  I will admit that a part of me thought this collar would have been great to put on the kids when they were teenagers.  Just joking, of course.  Or am I?

We sing an old hymn at church called "Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing."  It was written before the Revolutionary War.  I thought of the words to the third verse, as I was watching Belle with her new GPS collar:

O to grace how great a debtor

daily I’m constrained to be!

Let that grace now, like a fetter,

bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

prone to leave the God I love;

here’s my heart; O take and seal it;

seal it for thy courts above.

We are all prone to wander, aren't we?  We're different than the animal kingdom, though.  We have a soul and we have free will.  While we have a sinful nature that we constantly battle with, if we are believers, the Holy Spirit prompts us and convicts us, (much like Belle's collar) to remind us to stay within a boundary that would bring glory to God.  Because we have free will, we can ignore the conviction and do things our own way.  In so doing, like Belle, we put ourselves in danger.  

We will continue to test out the collar on Belle.  She did great the first full day.  Like me, she's prone to wander.  May the Good Lord take care of us both!  If it works, Belle can take care of our flock.

The Recycled Goat Collar

And I have led you in the wilderness for forty years; your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal has not worn out on your foot.  Deuteronomy 29:5

It is very interesting to me that when God led the Israelites out of Egypt and on to Canaan that he miraculously made all their stuff last.  Their clothes and shoes never wore out!  Our stuff does.  Most every morning, we pray that things that we own will not break and that we're able to keep ahead of maintenance issues on our home and homestead.

We try to 'stretch' things to make them last.  We save things that break.  Before throwing away items, we rob any reusable parts off of them.  Tricia told me that her Dad was like that as well.  She came in today and told me, "My Dad would be proud of me if he was here."  I asked her why.  She said, "I'll show you."  She went outside and got a piece of a cow halter.  It had worn out, but there were still usable parts on it.  This piece below is part of the strap and buckle that went under the cow's jaw.  We cut that piece off.

Tricia told me that one of the goats (Mocha) did not have a collar.  Goats can be like bad kids.  You need to have a way to grab them and hold on to them and pull them one way or the other.  A goat collar runs somewhere between $4.99 to $13.00, depending on where you get it.  Tricia told me that we could make one for free.  (We had done it before).

A piece off of an old cow halter

Maybe you have a bowl or a jar like this?  This is on my work bench.  It contains a plethora of nuts, bolts, screws, springs, parts and pieces.  If you dig around in it long enough, you could find a wheel bearing for a 1957 John Deere tractor.

To put our reconfigured goat collar together, all I needed was to drill a hole in both ends of the old cow halter.  Then I fished out a carriage head bolt and nut from the 'junk bowl and fastened it together.  Then I got my grinder and ground off the end of the bolt that was sticking out.  This is some red neck engineering, for sure.

But it found a new life as a goat collar.  I put it on Mocha this afternoon, and I think she wears it well.

A repurposed collar for the goat.  Price: $0.00  I like that price point!