Hi, I’m Lucas Bales. I’m a junior here at Austin Peay State University and I have been a member of the men’s cross country team and The All State student newspaper for all three years. I also work athletic events and tutor here at APSU, not to mention I take a full course load of 15 credit hours each semester.
Needless to say, I’m a pretty busy person when I’m in Clarksville, Tennessee.
During the summers, I work for myself in a small town just outside of Knoxville called New Market, Tennessee. I run a small alternative landscaping business that uses goats as a means of nontraditional landscaping and an agent against invasive plant species under the name of Bales Goats. With a herd of 20 or more goats at all times, and my livestock guardian dog, life is never boring. On top of that, I volunteer with my high school cross country team back home, where I plan on coaching post-graduation. I also work for my 80-year-old neighbor many afternoons, help manage my family’s farm and care for my grandmother.
Needless to say, I’m a pretty busy person when I’m in New Market, Tennessee, too.
Bear, my aforementioned LGD, is a Great Pyrenees just shy of two years old and one of the smartest, most loyal dogs that I have ever encountered. I have no doubt about his ability to protect both me and my goats. Without a doubt, he is the best $300 I have spent since I started Bales Goats, though when I first got him, I wasn’t so sure.
I got him at less than a year old, and at the time, I failed to realize I had set him up for failure. His herding instinct, something I wanted to break him from (He was to be a livestock guardian dog, not a herder), took over when he was bored, as this was a form of play for him. When this would happen, he was originally far too rough, and he had scalped three of my goats’ ears while I was away.
But Bear is not like people. He does not change how he acts with me. He remains the same, and he always aims to please. That is something that cannot be taught. It is instinct. A dog either has it or he does not. Bear has it. Once I worked with him more, his behavior issues were quickly alleviated. As I said, he aims to please, and that does not change. He is a good dog, a smart dog, a loyal dog and a fierce protector of both me and my herd. No one comes near when he is on duty.
Now, I am able to confidently leave him with the goats full-time, whether at home or on job sites that are as far as forty-five minutes away.
However, he also does not listen to or work for anyone else, much to the dismay of both Maryville City P.D. and my parents. He and I are bonded, and no one else shares that bond with either of us. I have always had dogs in the family, but none of them have been quite like Bear. There is something special about the first dog that you buy, the first dog that you decide to bring into the family. It is a connection that cannot be replicated, even by my goats.
This past summer I found myself working a job site in Maryville, Tennessee, where I discovered a small Indie bookstore nearby. There, searching through the countless books on display, I found one of the most inspiring books I have ever read. That book was John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley (In Search of America).
Travels With Charley follows a slightly fictionalized account of Steinbeck on the edge of slumps in both his personal and writing lives while he begins to question the accounts of America he has previously written about. With all of this in mind, Steinbeck reinvents his truck as an impressive makeshift RV and sets out with his poodle, the titular Charley, to catch a break and validate his perception of the country he’s written so much about.
I finished the book this November, and I was immediately imagining going on a similar journey with Bear. This stuck with me. For weeks, it was nothing more than an idea, a sort of ‘What if?’ that I never thought would see the light of day.
That changed when I went to Crumbl with one of my teammates shortly before Thanksgiving Break. We talked about a lot of things, but when we were almost back, I remember talking about this summer, this semester and just how busy and drained I was. She said I needed a break.
“This is my break,” I told her, referring to being in Clarksville. I was only half kidding.
She told me that I needed a real break. She was right.
And with that, I was convinced.
My journey will be a little different than Steinbeck’s as it will be a smaller scale, one across the state rather than the country. I will be making some planned stops in Maryville, Chattanooga, Dunlap, Murfreesboro, Waverly, Paris, Clarksville, Greenbrier, Gainesboro, Knoxville and finishing back home in New Market. I’m certain that I will also make multiple spontaneous stops along the way.
Stay tuned as Bear and I hit the road from Dec. 17 through Christmas Eve!