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.