This weekend I took my Tibetan Mastiff puppy to the Tibetan Mastiff Club of America National Show.The Bodhi placed third in 3-6 month dog. This is one of the national clubs devoted to the Tibetan Mastiff. The other is the American Tibetan Mastiff Association. TMs are a very rare breed. For more information on the history of the breed click here. TMs are among the oldest breeds of dogs with a recognizable appearance going back to more than 2500 years. Ths first written accounts of the breed are from China around 1100 BC. Most breeders today believe the TM served as the foundation source for the modern working breed dogs. In Tibet the animal is used as a guardian and flock guardian.


The show was held in Sacramento, a city I had never visited in California - a long six hour drive across the central valley filled with large scale farms. Farms very different than the small family run operations I had know as a kid in Indiana. Here the business of farming is just that a business. As a opposed to the family run operations which had been a family for 4-5 generations, these farms had the fresh newness of California on them, clean wholesome and at the same time industry and troubling. The farm lands of the Central Valley are like the myth of California itself. Heavily irrigated with water from the Colorado river, these lands would be barren without the water. They provide the illusion of fertility, with a heavy price. The land is barren otherwise. The water disguises and hides the dead land underneath. Life is produced and consumed, lush green life heavily fertilized with industrial pesticides. It provides the dream of California gleaming in the sun, whose cost is born by other people, other towns and other lives.