Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
More Carnivore
Content Advisory: The following post contains probably more detail than necessary about predator/prey animal activity. If you have sensitivity about such content, you have no obligation to read any further. I do not wish to offend, so proceed at your own risk.
Our dog, Delilah, has been on a run of success for finding rodents of late. Maybe the cold temperatures slow them down, or maybe their scent becomes easier for Delilah to discern when everything else around them is frozen solid. The other day I watched one get away after she “soft carried” to an area of packed snow on our trail. When she dropped the poor thing, it squirmed a bit. She pawed, licked it, and took tentative nips at it. She would pick it up in her mouth, but never got around to applying a fatal pressure.
All the activity eventually moved them to the deeper snow beside the trail. Each time the mouse would get dropped again, it would attempt to burrow into the powdery snow beneath the upper crust, forcing Delilah to hurriedly search with her nose to locate it again.
After several go-rounds of this game, the critter landed on good footing and immediately darted between Delilah’s legs toward the safety of its previous lair. By the time Delilah could spin around to chase, the mouse had gained its advantage.
All I could think was, never give up. I had totally written off that mouse as doomed. It survived a lot of abuse, but took advantage of the opportunity that presented itself just moments prior to death.
Make a run for it, and there’s a possibility you live another day.
As an aside, this gives me a twinge of sadness to think of the humans who commit suicide when consumed with a perception of doom from their condition, instead of mustering the equivalence of what that mouse had, and making a run for it.
After Delilah does end the life of her rodent prey, she has a habit of strutting around with her prize. For some reason I don’t comprehend, she stops frequently to drop it. She then licks it and smells it. When I show an interest in proceeding, she picks it up again and trots ahead. A short distance later she drops it again.
Usually, she surprises me by inconspicuously leaving it behind somewhere as we resume the regular pace of our walks. A day or two later she will retrieve a previous catch and decide to consume it. Maybe it is her way of “aging” the food, or maybe she just prefers it frozen. When she chooses to do this right as we reach the front door it presents a conflict. We have a rule that she can’t bring dead animals into the house.
Yesterday, she wouldn’t leave the small carcass behind, so I stood and waited for her to do what she does. It was disgusting. I struggled to reconcile what she puts in her stomach.
Then it occurred to me that it is probably similar to the meat by-product ingredients of her canned food. The already-processed canned food just looks more palatable. An average person comfortable feeding their dog canned food might find the sight of a fresh killed meal unacceptable.
Dogs are carnivorous. Living with Delilah, I find myself gaining a better understanding of what that actually involves.
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Rinse, Repeat
February is beginning to feel like a lot of the same thing over and over again for me. It’s all good, so I don’t want to complain, but I’m finding myself increasingly thinking that a little more variety in the weather would be nice. I need to be careful what I wish for, or I could end up facing the kind of epic weather that Boston has been enduring.
To keep things interesting, I have taken to purposefully trying to widen the trails Delilah and I walk everyday, by tromping down the edges on each side so it becomes about 3-times wider than just a single person walking footpath. Most places that is pretty simple to do, but out in the open the trail keeps getting obliterated by drifting snow. It’s like starting over each time when I run into drifts, and it packs down on top of the previous path, so the trail gets higher and higher instead of deeper. If you step too close to the edge, it becomes a dramatic drop through all the unpacked snow to a level much below the packed trail.
Delilah doesn’t like to walk in the drifts, so when we come to them she will move over to a nearby ridge and trot along easily as I bullheadedly try to forge my way straight through the deepest part. I’m sure we make quite a sight.
The later sunsets are becoming very noticeable now and even though it is still very cold, the added light seems to be enticing the animals toward shedding already. Information about Delilah’s breed, Belgian Tervuren Shepherd, suggests she should be brushed weekly, which I don’t come close to achieving. We prefer brushing her outdoors because it creates a blizzard of dog hair, but it isn’t much fun in the extreme cold.
I tried to do just a small bit inside, grabbing hair off the brush at every stroke, but soon the air flowing through our heat vents was carrying stray hairs aloft in spectacular numbers. One of those comical disasters.
Can you see Legacy’s breath in the cold air?
Unlike this picture, the horses are currently wearing their blankets. I think Legacy’s blanket is really bugging him. I keep spotting him trying to scratch his itches and he hooks the blanket on everything possible, making it look like he is trying to rip it off. He rarely tolerates me putting hands on him, but the other day he leaned hard into my hand as I scratched his neck and chin for him. There was plenty of hair floating loose, so I think the horses are on the verge of changing their coats.
Other than issues of shedding, our routine is on repeat from the day before, and the week before that. Walk the dog, feed the horses, clean up after the horses.
Not that I’m complaining, mind you.
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Soul Collages
On Saturday, our friend Julie came over, despite the frigid outdoor temperatures. We were able to go for a short walk and then visited the horses twice, but the majority of time was spent indoors. Spontaneous inspired conversation blossomed and we soon found ourselves watching a prized “TED talk” video of Brené Brown giving her Power of Vulnerability speech. If you have never watched/listened to this talk, I hope you will find a way to claim 20 minutes and click the link. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
“The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating — as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, “I love you” first…”
Later, Cyndie was thrilled for the opportunity to go into the basement and pull out her extensive collection of crafting resources in order for us to make individual soul collages. We were in a mode of being mindful and in the moment, and this was an exercise in creating a collage that captures and reflects messages both from and for our soul.
Delilah was so thrilled with Julie’s presence, she made every effort to be near her. You can see in this image that she had laid down to nap, making sure to hold a paw in contact with the tray Julie was using.
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We shared a couple meals of great food and strengthened our bonds of precious positive energy and inspirations. In what felt like just a blink of an eye, evening arrived and our day with Julie was over.
Now, two days later, what is lingering with me from the day is having been able to again re-watch Brené Brown’s message. There is a good portion of it that resonates with the depressive tendencies in me.
It’s too good not to include an additional excerpt, but please, if you at all can, do watch her give this talk. She describes her research with wonderful humor and the insights she uncovers are valuable and revealing.
“We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability. …you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can’t say, here’s the bad stuff. Here’s vulnerability, here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s fear, here’s disappointment. I don’t want to feel these… You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable…”
Here’s to embracing our vulnerability, and to sending love into the world with our whole hearts, despite a lack of any guarantees.
Thanks, Julie, for blessing us with your presence for the day! We love you!
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So Windy
Not today, please. It’s too cold. All night long the wind has been making its presence known with gusts that cause our log home to creak.
With a little sunshine and calm air, the bitter cold of arctic high pressure systems is tolerable this time of year. Sure, we would prefer to bask in the warmth of mild waning winter days, but we are still in cold-mode around here, and it is February, after all. We can do extreme cold.
But the wind, that is another thing. It literally puts the bite in biting cold. Today, that bites.
We have company coming to soak up the vibes of Wintervale Ranch, be with our horses, maybe do a chore or two, and definitely play with Delilah. I’m afraid the wind may just push the activities indoors where we will sit by the fire or work in the kitchen on something that involves baking in a warm oven.
Since taking ownership of a property that involves multiple acres of wooded land, I have gained a new awareness of how significantly the blowing wind impacts trees in a forest. I feel an increased trepidation about the well-being of our trails and fences.
Not a day goes by that I don’t find evidence of new pieces of trees laying in the snow. Usually, they are small, probably snapped off by the activity of an aggressive squirrel. After a windy day, the size of branches finding their way to the ground increases dramatically.
There is no mystery as to the phrase “winds of change.” Our woods are changing constantly from the gusts of moving air. That is a new perspective for me. The growth of trees happens slow enough that we often don’t even notice. I tended to see forested land as protected space, preserved from development.
On the contrary, the woods are probably developing more than the grassy fields around them.
Even the dead and dying trees have a little life left in them. Outside our sunroom door on the side of our house that I refer to as the front, there is a tree that is folded over in two, after the upper half snapped in a fateful wind. In even the slightest breeze, that tree wails and moans from the wound. It makes a wide variety of eery sounds, especially at night.
The ability of wind to change the trees of a forest causes me to feel increased marvel over the majesty of the oldest and most grand of our trees. For a hundred years or more, these trees have braved countless gusts.
It occurred to me recently that in the years of life I have remaining, I will not see any new trees on our property achieve the grandeur and majesty of a hundred-year-old tree. What we have now is all I get. It makes them all the more precious.
It also makes the gusting wind all the more ominous.
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Who Cares?
Life is pretty great when it involves staying home everyday and taking care of our animals, but there is no denying a sense of isolation that shows up on occasion. My world is horses, a dog, and occasionally a cat. Currently it is also snow and snow plowing, wood splitting, and walking our snow-packed trails. It is pretty idyllic.
I scan news headlines and feel far removed from everything I see. Issues like the struggles in Syria and Ukraine, Islamic State terrorists, Boko Haram mass kidnappings, epic snow storms in and around Boston, measles outbreaks, and million dollar lottery jackpots. If any ripples from the daily top news events are making it to the middle of our country onto our precious property, they are so dampened that I cannot detect them.
I live in the luxury of not needing to notice. At the same time, I can’t help being influenced by struggles in other places. Closer to home, there are ongoing difficulties that family and friends face which have some measure of influence on my psyche. That is something that I can more tangibly grasp and contribute my thoughts of love toward.
Most difficult for me is when the person I am closest to is heavily burdened by the ongoing challenges of her professional responsibilities. I think that is my Kryptonite.
One of my defense mechanisms for dealing with all the world’s ills is to not care. It seems like a poor choice of reaction, but it is a superficial method of saving myself. Deep down, I really do care, and am moved by the suffering of fellow human beings. What I mean by superficially not caring is that I move past the tough news without dwelling too long on any one issue.
When I have the strength to do battle for people or causes, I become active in those with which I am connected and which are within my reach to help. As a person living with depressive tendencies, I need to pay attention to maintain a healthy balance in my “reason to live” file. Feeling like you can do nothing to help others in this world is a dangerous mindset to allow. Even if my only contribution ends up being that I send love out into the world, that is significant for me. It reflects that I am healthy enough to make that choice.
A depressed person generally wouldn’t be so inclined.
Who cares? I do. Really, I do. Even if I pretend that I don’t.
I’m sending love.
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Never Question
Well, we have another classic canine carnivore story for Delilah’s scrapbook. I don’t know why I ever question her nose. Over and over again she has keyed on something when I see absolutely no evidence to support her suddenly manic focus. My tendency to doubt her level of excitement comes from the endless number of times she has torn up a good part of our grass in her quest for a mole or pocket gopher, and come up with nothing but a dirty nose and messy yard.
However, each time she surprises me with an unexpected success, I am led to believe the likelihood of a critter having been mere centimeters away from her bite all the other times is probably high.
Monday, it was her tenacity that had me fascinated enough to give her all the time she wanted as I stood patiently and observed. We were almost back to the house after a long walk around the property when she inexplicably diverted off the trail through some trees. There were no tracks in the snow and her nose wasn’t to the ground, so I couldn’t tell why she was straying course.
There was a portion of a tree trunk coming out of the ground at an angle that had been cut off about 5 feet up. The amount of bark that was sloughing off indicated there wasn’t much life to it. Wait a minute, that’s the wrong way to describe it, because according to Delilah, there was definitely some life there.
She got increasingly worked up over her find and searched for some access to the prize her nose indicated was inside. She started peeling the bark off, getting a flap in her teeth and ripping it loose, then spitting it out emphatically before going back for another piece.
There were two knot holes where branches had once been that she could stick her nose in while balancing on her hind legs. Doing so just fueled her zest for this conquest. There was definitely something in there.
I walked over to get a closer look. Sure enough, when Delilah put her nose in one hole, I spotted the face of a mouse as it peeked out of the other hole. I think it saw me and decided to retreat in hopes of riding out the attack.
Had Delilah seriously smelled this mouse from over on the trail? I can see why this breed is often used in police work for bomb or drug sniffing. Something kept her fixated on harassing that tree until the rodent had no other choice but to bail and make a run for it.
There was a frantic scramble as both creatures dashed, turned, leaped, and ran, but Delilah got her prize in the end after the mouse made an oddly fatal decision to loop back and head directly toward Delilah’s menacing jaws.
Yesterday, I gave her a chance to return to the scene, curious as to whether she would show the same interest. Nope. Not this time. I guess that tells me there were no more mice in there. I’m sure her nose would have brought on a much different response if it had been otherwise.
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Thinking Back
Yesterday we spent a little more time thinking ahead to what comes next around here and what steps we need to take to actually hold some training seminars. I shared a monthly expense worksheet I created a while back, and we were able to identify some critical items to add that I had overlooked.
Little doses of financial reality do wonders to moderate unbridled optimism, but our situation is not so far out of balance that we feel any reason to seriously doubt the possibilities of achieving our dream, eventually.
This morning I feel myself looking back to the day the horses arrived here. It was September 25th, in 2013. I posted my description of the occasion on the 26th, and you can read about it in the Relative Something archives by selecting the month in the drop down menu in the margin on the right.
No matter what we ultimately accomplish here, the experience of that day will be hard to match.
September 2013
February 2015
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Seriously, Horses
Not all that long ago I was living in a suburb of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, in Minnesota, where my wife and I raised our children, and I was driving a mere 11 miles to a day-job that occupied my weekdays. As often as I could, I would participate in team sports with a couple gangs of like-minded friends, playing soccer and floorball for fun and exercise. I can honestly say I had no idea about the changes that lie ahead for me.
Seriously. Horses?
Turned out, yes, horses.
Now I find myself spending each day tending to our herd of 4 horses. In a short time I have gone from having no experience with horses to having a personal relationship with 4 of them.
Last week there was one night when the temperature dipped below zero, and it felt even colder due to a brisk wind. I gave the horses a night inside the barn.
We usually move them in one at a time using a lead rope temporarily draped around their neck. I succeeded without incident with Legacy and Dezirea. As I attempted to bring Cayenne in, Hunter quick-stepped his way through the gate before I could push it closed behind her, getting past Cayenne as I held her in place with the rope.
She did well to remain calm and respect my control as he entered her stall despite my verbal objections. He went straight to the feed bucket in there and chomped up a mouthful. I stood at the opening to her stall with her on my right shoulder and tried talking him out of there. My mind raced through options.
It wouldn’t be the first time we swapped their positions because of something like this, if I just put Cayenne in Hunter’s stall. My intuition moved me to do otherwise. Risking potential disaster, I walked Cayenne into the stall along with him. She went right for her feed as if he wasn’t in there, basically wedging him against the back wall. He looked totally stunned.
Suddenly he went from the frisky little “I can do whatever I want” guy to looking like a confused child. Since Cayenne was ignoring him, I stepped in to push her butt over so he had space to exit, which he did without hesitation. Hunter rushed out of her stall and headed directly into his own, appearing very happy for the opportunity.
For some reason, I don’t feel a tendency toward panic when things don’t go the way I intend with the horses, which may just be a function of my relative naiveté. I give credit for some of my control to Dunia and Cyndie for the horse wisdom they have provided me. It also helps that I have the benefit of daily interaction with our herd. Our horses seem to recognize my contributions of serving up their input and cleaning up their output, and demonstrate total comfort with my presence in their midst.
Yesterday, Cayenne came to me as I exited the paddock through a gate while holding Delilah on a leash. Similar to the precious shared moment she gave me a while back, Cayenne pushed her cheek into mine and we lingered together, breathing in each other’s smell while Delilah patiently waited her own turn for my attention.
My life has changed a lot from 4 years ago, and I couldn’t be more honored to be doing what I do now.
Yeah, horses. Seriously.
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Winter Comfort
Yesterday was the “day after” our little snow event and the sun was shining, birds were singing, and the chilling wind just didn’t feel all that cold. Much to my dismay, my little pocket camera only had enough battery power for a couple of pictures in the beautiful light of the rising sun, before it said goodbye and powered down.
The scenery was extra special with the powdery snow crystals glimmering in the early sunshine. Very few animals had ventured out yet, so Delilah spent most of our first perimeter patrol of the day fervently checking the scent of the tracks she had made in the snow the night before.
After breakfast, we headed outside to do some shoveling to tidy up the edges of the plowed areas I’d done in the dark Tuesday night, and then tackled the nooks of the shop and the barn that the plow doesn’t get. When I say, “we,” I mean that Delilah stands guard on her leash nearby while I do all the work.
She is a pretty sweet partner. Twice I looked up to discover that she had found a frozen mouse that I had unceremoniously tossed out of traps in the house garage and the shop, days or weeks earlier.
My “toss” is an attempt to get them to land well into the trees, but if you have ever tried flinging a mouse out of a trap without handling it, more often than not, somehow the motion of ejecting it counters the swing meant to make it land far away. It then flops down almost at my feet. Not my proudest moments.
The unquestionable highlight of the day came after I had finished shoveling and switched to scooping up manure in the paddock. By this time, I figured Delilah was on the brink of having had enough of not being the center of my attention, but I wanted to get the chore done before heading in for lunch.
The horses were out in the hay-field, soaking up the bright sunshine and Delilah had squeezed under the wood paddock fence from where I had hung the handle of her retractable leash, scouting out the poo piles. It was feeling about as comfortable as a winter day can get. Soon the horses began laying down for a nap.
They had moved into two groups of two, with a short distance between them. One horse in each group stayed standing while the other two lounged on the snowy ground. I love witnessing this routine. In minutes, I looked again and saw that a third horse had joined the two lying down.
Next time I looked up, they were all on the ground. My clomping and clanking of the wheelbarrow and tools didn’t seem to disturb them a bit. Then I spotted Delilah. She was joining them in a solar snooze, head down and eyes shut, sleeping on the snow in the paddock.
It was so serene I was tempted to lie right down and join them.
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Still Winter
Our general region has had it pretty easy as far as weather goes this winter, especially as compared to the heavy snowfall events that have occurred in the northeast of the US. We’ve had less snow and warmer temperatures than usual. But the past doesn’t define the future. It’s still winter, and yesterday we enjoyed a return of both snow and cold.
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With the temps low, the snow crystals were perfect and we received about 2 inches of wonderful powder snow that came floating down in a windless calm. The woods took on a mystical appearance with snow cradled in every “Y” of all the branches.
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As is typical for our horses, they stood out in the middle of the hay-field during the heaviest snowfall. I coaxed them back under the overhang by bringing some loose hay and putting it on top of the slow-feeder grates. It probably would have been wise to put their blankets on prior to the snow, but they aren’t showing any signs of having a problem with the relatively small amount of precipitation.
Poor Cyndie had to endure a prolonged evening commute as a result of the backed up traffic, but that gave me a chance to get the driveway plowed before she got home. Since the snow was dry and light, that chore was a breeze.
I was walking Delilah when I decided the precipitation had slowed enough to justify some shoveling and plowing. She sat calmly while I shoveled the front steps, walkway, and apron in front of the garage doors. Then she began to demonstrate an interest in moving on. I willingly accommodated her since it was already past her usual dinner time, setting the shovel down to head indoors.
I still wanted to get to the plowing, so I left my jacket on and rushed to put food in her bowl, before heading back out. I figured she should be fine on her own while I worked.
When I opened the door 45-minutes later, I found her laying right inside of it. She looked uncharacteristically subdued. Then I noticed food in her bowl. That is an anomaly. I worried that something was wrong with her and bent down to give her some love and attention. As I stood up to remove my outdoor gear, she got up and walked over to eat everything in her bowl.
To my great surprise, she chose to wait by the door for my return rather than eat her food! I had no idea. It does add meaning to a behavior I have noticed during our routine of coming in the door after a walk. I make her wait in the entryway with me while I remove her leash harness and blaze-orange vest. Then I tell her, “Okay,” as a release to run off and do whatever is tempting her more: chase Pequenita the cat or madly chomp on any available squeaky toy.
I’ve noticed that she doesn’t run off until she sees me taking off enough outdoor wear to feel satisfied I will be staying inside along with her.
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