Posts Tagged ‘Asher’
4th Down
The NFL Wildcard Playoff Weekend is not over yet (2 games left today), but I am already a little woozy after two days of elimination desperation decision-making about going for it on 4th down. They weren’t all close games but they all contained the drama of getting knocked out of the playoffs in the first week if you lose.
Watching football several days in a row is a lot easier to do when the weather outside is frightful. It’s also a little less stressful for me this year because my team isn’t a contender. My allegiance leans toward teams representing the same division and conference as my Minnesota Vikings, but it’s not unlike me to change my mind in the middle of a game and root for their competition if circumstance dictates.
Color me fickle when it comes to other franchises and their fans. I had to pull for the Detroit Lions last night because I wasn’t up to seeing fans’ disappointment if they’d lost.
As the series, “Ted Lasso” reiterated, “It’s the hope that kills you.” In an earlier game, it was Dallas fans who had their hopes crash and burn in dramatic fashion. I felt sorry for them but it was offset by how thrilled the fans of Green Bay were.
Asher was a little disappointed we didn’t spend as much time outdoors as usual. He wasn’t interested in any of the NFL games. We pretty much exhausted all of his favorite indoor games. We’ve converted his outdoor “indestructible” throw ring into an indoor chew toy that occupies him for large chunks of time when he gets in that groove.
His bin of indoor toys becomes a wonderful time sink when a handful of his dry food is tossed in and around the objects so he has to nose stuff out of the way to find the precious morsels.
When that game is over there are usually more toys scattered around on the floor than remain in the bin. We can tell the exercise is completed when the sound of crunching kibble stops occurring. He might move around a few more toys, but when the munching is over, he’ll soon be looking for a new distraction.
I count myself lucky when he decides the next activity can be a nap instead of incessant whining to go outside.
It’s funny, I’m just the opposite. I start whining when I want to take a nap. When I’m successful and permission to sleep is granted, it’s a bit like getting a first down on that dramatic 4th down try.
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Cold Outside
Much of the U.S. is experiencing dramatic levels of cold outside so I don’t feel alone in my experience tending to the horses this morning. There is an interesting sort of pressure pushing on you when trying to do everyday tasks at extremely cold temperatures.
The horses handle it as stoically as they always do against weather extremes. They were pretty much all business this morning as they consumed their feed pellets while I was cleaning up the incredibly hard frozen rubble of manure from around their feet.
The fresh snow cover offered clear evidence of unseen goings on overnight. Plenty of hoof prints and turned up leaves exposed deer activity in our woods that intrigued Asher greatly. The horses appear to have been active in both the hay field and the back pasture. The connecting gates between those two fields are not currently open so the horses must choose a single opening from each of the two paddocks to get out.
In the past, they have been slower to cover so much ground after a snowfall. One side or the other of the paddocks will show little to no tracks for days. This morning their tracks reveal they had been moving around more than usual in the last 14 hours.
Back inside, I had a warm couch partner keeping me company after breakfast.
I was thinking about preparing this blog post but Asher seemed to prefer I focus on him instead. He rearranged himself when I brought my computer to my lap and Cyndie took a picture.
He looks so cute it’s hard to feel frustrated with his escape yesterday morning that led to our neighbor from the south phoning to alert us to the unsanctioned whereabouts. I was plowing at the end of the driveway and hadn’t heard my phone ring. The neighbor was out plowing, too, and pulled up to share the news in person.
While we were talking, Asher came trotting back. I didn’t have a leash with me so I hopped on the Grizzly and enticed Asher to race me back to the house. He happily took up the challenge but I don’t think he liked that I decided to drive so fast he could barely keep up.
I figured it would be to our advantage to make sure he was exhausted. Taking him out for extra exercise in these temperatures is contra-indicated.
Thank goodness it is warm inside.
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No Worse
Things being “no worse” is not a ringing endorsement of happiness but I’m claiming it as a victory. There was no sign of water on the floor in the laundry room one day after Cyndie had cleaned it all up. Instead of blindly calling any plumber to help us diagnose a potential problem with the water softener, I figured I should at least try to learn enough about it to discuss its functions.
In searching online for a manual, I learned of a company in Red Wing that services our model. Without needing to see it in person, a plumber talked me through testing the “regen” operations over the phone. At each step, he could tell me where to look for the possibility of leaking water.
The good news is that by his analysis, the softener was unlikely to be the source of the leak. The bad news is we are now even more confused about where the water had come from to soak all our throw rugs. The plumber offered his thoughts about other possible causes, but nothing definitive came of it. For now, we are hovering in an observation mode and not returning any rugs to the floor.
Asher kept busy by familiarizing himself with a new pull-apart toy Elysa gave him for Christmas. I think he’s getting the hang of it.
My project for the ethernet cabling to the Wi-Fi repeater faired much better than being labeled, “no worse.” I reviewed the wiring in the last connector I crimped, using a magnifying glass, and deemed it visibly faultless. That led me to dig deeper into the software initialization of the hardware.
In a phone conversation with Julian, we were making our way through the connections and I climbed up to look one more time at the original router and associated hardware on top of the desk shelf in the den. The answer appeared right before my eyes. I had failed to plug in an RJ45 connector that I had disconnected when testing the attic cabling.
2024 is already looking better for us on day 3.
After succeeding with the repeater, my next step shifted to getting the camera mounted and connected to AC power down at the barn. I was thrilled to find the horses curious but not the least bit disturbed by my showing up with unfamiliar tools, making potentially scary sounds, and focusing on my task when they were expecting me to be serving feed for them.
I couldn’t finish last night, but completing the camera installation should be in reach today. Although, I am beyond committing myself to actually reaching such a goal.
At this point, I’m leaning toward seeking to make things ‘no worse’ for two days in a row. I’m on a roll!
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Camera Progress
The testing phase of adding a WiFi surveillance camera to view the horses was completed successfully yesterday. Julian figured out that I needed to get a newer version of the camera software that would recognize the serial number of our new camera. After we installed that fix, the rest of the process went pretty smoothly.
With a cable strung out of a cracked open window in the den and the repeater lying on the roof, we set the camera on a step ladder by the paddock fence.
Swings appeared to supervise the strange activity of us setting up boards teetering in the ladder and stringing extension cords for power.
It worked! Julian selected a camera with pan and tilt features so we will be able to adjust the view to monitor the waterer and portion of both fields as well as the hay shed and driveway. He also used his coding skills to demonstrate a potential option that Cyndie exclaimed would keep her endlessly watching from the comfort of our bed.
We’ll be able to watch the horses on our televisions. The sound of snorting horses reverberated through our subwoofer to our great delight. It’s almost like being there!
Now if we could feed and clean up after them remotely, we could stay in bed all day! Oh, except we also have a dog.
Never mind.
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Days Disappearing
Where are the days going? The minutes and hours of the days following Christmas have disappeared in a blink for me. We have passed the time with little in the way of agendas beyond resting in recovery from the busy holiday activities. Adding a long nap in the middle of the day swallowed a big chunk of time. As has binge-watching a couple of streaming episodes for entertainment.
The weird weather hasn’t been much of a motivator. We are stuck in a pattern of in-between-ism. Not like winter, but well beyond fall.
The ground is so saturated from the recent rain that it seems to resist freezing solidly overnight when the temperature has dropped below 32°F. It gets firmer, but not rock-hard.
Asher has been a little stir-crazy and allowing him to lead on bushwhacks through the woods on a sniff-fari has produced a few obsessive bouts of digging dirt or chewing wood in a hunt for pesky varmints.
Yesterday morning he surprised me with sudden success in rooting a mouse out from its hiding spot. The poor critter wasn’t fast enough to evade his bite when trying to make a run for it.
The horses seem a little tired of the wet and muddy conditions, but maybe that’s a projection on my part. They’ve rolled in it enough times to look particularly rough and ragged.
I suppose the fact that Cyndie has been feeling under the weather the last few days has contributed to our loss of time. We’ve bailed on a plan to head to the lake over New Year’s Day. At the same time, she still soldiers on with projects like dismantling all her Christmas decorations around the house.
I spent the afternoon yesterday trying to connect a new surveillance camera to the software. Multiple attempts to identify the camera by serial number failed, but when I finally tried allowing the software to simply search for it, it successfully found it –identified by serial number. However, the software still wouldn’t connect to the level of displaying an image.
A software professional has offered to stop out and help me this morning. Thank you, Julian.
Once we succeed in connecting to the camera, there is a repeater to install. Getting the Ethernet cable from outside our log home to inside where the router is will be a trick. Then, we can test communicating with the camera when it is located near the barn. When that is achieved, I will need to figure out a way to mount the camera in a location that has AC power and a view beneath the overhang as well as out into the paddocks.
It’s obvious to me that these activities will swiftly disappear more hours and days from my life. Before we know it, it will be next year.
December, I hardly knew thee.
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Lap Dog
Weighing in at somewhere between 75-80 pounds, we don’t think of Asher as a lap dog. Especially, because he shows little interest in climbing up to sit on our laps. However, he seems to feel differently when he finds visitors sitting down.
Our kids stopped by on Sunday and Asher climbed up to sit on Julian.
Since that doesn’t happen very often, we captured the novel moment with a photo. It was just so cute. Little did we know, it would get even more photo-worthy.
I hadn’t been paying attention until Julian mentioned his legs were starting to fall asleep.
Asher was out cold, sprawled across the arm of the chair and Julian’s legs. Cyndie has tried many times without success to entice Asher to lie down by her to share his warmth. Silly dog.
Speaking of silly, I gave Asher full freedom to dig for something that was really captivating his nose. I’m glad there weren’t any buried cables in the vicinity. He chewed through roots and dug, and dug.
I wish I knew what he was smelling that interested him so much. Ultimately, he came up with nothing but dirt.
All that digging appeared to tire him out but still, he showed no interest in resting on our laps when we got back inside.
Maybe we should refer to him as being a selective lap dog.
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Sweet Anticipation
This is one of those times when any words I could assemble into descriptive sentences would pale compared to a simple photo to depict the sweet anticipation when Cyndie begins to prepare for her seasonal baking extravaganza.
When the cookie tins come out, and huge bags of baking flower, sugar, flats of eggs, and tubs of butter show up from the grocery run, I know it is time to dig out my excessive calorie warning.
The house is decorated, lights are on, purchased gifts are being delivered by all the acronyms (USPS/FEDEX/UPS), and songs of the season keep popping up.
The only thing missing is a hint that ours might be a white Christmas this year. There’s still a little over two weeks to go, but forecasts don’t sound promising in that regard. At this advancing stage of my maturity, a lack of snow bothers me a lot less than it did in the past.
The problem I keep needing to cope with is that our frozen mornings feel so dang cold compared to the warm afternoons we have been enjoying the past few weeks. The back and forth is more taxing on my body than when it just gets cold and stays that way for months. Or should that be, more taxing on my mind? Probably both.
Asher decided to do his best to contribute to the festive decorations Cyndie has been putting up in every available space of our house.
The snuffle mat Cyndie created out of a sink mat became a colorful spread of fabric and plastic shards this morning. It worked well while it lasted. I suppose Asher was just making sure none of his food nuggets had gotten lodged between the plastic and the felt strips.
He has no clue about the smells he is about to be smothered with from Cyndie’s kitchen this weekend. I have no idea whether it will compare to the animal scent trails he freaks out over on our walks around the property. Given the intensity of Cyndie’s Christmas cookie-baking process, I suspect the sweet aromas from the house will have all the wildlife in the vicinity at risk of spiking their blood sugar simply by smelling it.
Don’t worry about me, though. I’ll survive. It hasn’t killed me yet in the past [mumble-mumble] years.
Now, where is that special excessive sugar warning that needs to be re-issued…?
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Lower Branches
There was a time when I neglected to put effort and energy into trimming the lower branches of pine trees, especially ones growing in the natural field on the north side of our driveway. I’ve changed my mind.
My old thinking was that trees out in a forest don’t have people trimming branches. I wanted nature to be able to take its course. My new thinking is that pine trees look better when their growth is managed, and the sooner, the better.
Over the weekend, I was able to give some of our long-neglected pine trees fresh attention and found myself surprised by what I learned. Even though we strive to always pull out vines that start growing up our tees, unseen vines were making their way up most of the trees I trimmed.
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The tool of the hour, day, and weekend was my Stihl GTA 26 cordless chainsaw pruner. Even in cold temperatures, the battery lasted longer than I did. That saw is perfect for this chore.
After seeing how poorly some of the trees have grown, in terms of putting energy into long lower branches instead of strong leaders gaining overall tree height, I made a point to start early on all the young trees I came across.
Why wait?
While I worked, I had Asher tethered to my hip on a 30-foot leash, occasionally enticing him with dropped handfuls of his food bits for him to snuffle through the grass to find. His patience lasted until he spotted someone walking on the road. That led to extreme straining against the leash and annoyingly desperate barking.
After a lunch break, I decided to reward his mostly good behavior of the morning with a chance to play off-leash. He did not make me proud. Sprinting directly from our front door to the neighbor’s woods in pursuit of squirrels, he disrespected every attempt I made to entice him to return.
He nosed around in their woods, extending the distance away from me with each zig-zag. When he got out of sight, I headed off across the cornfield to intercept him but by the time I got there, I spotted his paw prints headed in the direction of the neighbors’ place with the outdoor cat.
Fool me twice… shame on me.
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Wonky Weather
When you woke up today, did you realize it was the last day of November? Our weather took a step back toward October yesterday. That served to complicate my assessment of what day and in which month we find ourselves at the moment. Of course, that confusion rides on top of the daily challenge one experiences when living in retirement and not having anywhere one is required to be on any particular day.
Warm sunshine was a welcome change and reduced our snow cover significantly.
Only the areas shaded from the afternoon sun retained evidence snow has already fallen this year. 2023/24 is an El Niño winter year for us, meaning many storm paths will shift to our south. We still may get some snow, but it is predicted we will see more occasions of mixed precipitation or even rain. Not my favorite scenario.
Yesterday’s pleasant weather made it comfortable for the farrier to trim the horse’s hooves. The horses were relaxed when I showed up to put on their halters but by the time the trimming got underway, it was precariously close to their usual feeding hour. With each passing minute, they showed an increasing impatience for feed pans to be delivered and a decreasing interest in standing around calmly for trimming.
Life’s an adventure.
My adventures with Asher were a little different. He was confined to a leash all day but I tried to give him freedom to choose his path. Unfortunately, all he wanted to do was revisit the very same off-property places that got him in trouble the day before. We’d walk a while until I stopped at the limit of our property line and then he’d do a little tugging and redirecting until he gave up and then the same thing would happen further down the line.
It wasn’t very rewarding for either of us, but at least I was able to prevent him from running off. That was a win for me.
My brain is not able to tell that 29 days of November have already passed. Maybe I should be putting an “X” on each day in a calendar as they become history to help my perception. The wonky weather sure isn’t helping me out.
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Around Again
Sitting on the cold, hard ground with a pile of dog treats beside me, I watched as Asher passionately made another manic pass around the neighbor’s outbuilding. Their cat had dashed under a tiny opening to avoid capture. Sure, I was feeling angry. He had clearly disrespected my commands for the last twenty minutes as he freely trotted along well beyond the repeatedly demonstrated limits of our property, but that wasn’t entirely unexpected.
No, what was irking me even more was the way our horse, Light, walked right up to my face while I was cutting through the back pasture and without warning, reared up on her hind legs giving me a much too close encounter with one of her front hooves. WTF, girl!
My startled audible response was enough to get all the horses to react, rearranging themselves to different positions. I didn’t have time to deal with them at the moment because I was on a mission to regain control of Asher while thinking about what model of shock collar I wanted to convince Cyndie we should buy.
When I crested the hill of the hay field, I caught sight of Asher and saw him turn toward me in response to my call. Then he crossed the road and continued his illicit sniff-fari along the cornfield’s edge in gross defiance.
I phoned Cyndie and asked her to ring the “dinner” bell at our front door because we’ve trained him to return to that and sometimes it actually works. He definitely heard it. He turned and began to run. I thought we had him and I started running for the gate near the driveway to meet him, but he kept going along the road and headed directly for the neighbor’s place with the cockapoo and the barn cat.
Did I mention it was cold? I really didn’t want to be sitting on the ground, but it was obvious that Asher was not going to allow me to catch him. I needed him to come to me. Offering food was not enough enticement. Each time he came around the building, he returned to the spot the cat had snuck under. Each time he took off around again, I moved closer to that spot.
Finally, I was able to reach him and attach the leash to his harness. I am not proud of my performance as I practically dragged him back the long walk to our house on that leash.
The ambiance in the house was warm and pleasant as I whipped dog and leash through the door before slamming it angrily to go feed the horses and pretend I wasn’t thoroughly pissed with Light’s unsafe behavior.
I was triggered, majorly. My old self would have proceeded ignorantly. I wanted to shut down. I didn’t want to look at the dog ever again. I didn’t want to be the only one feeding the horses every day. I didn’t want animals. I didn’t want to be married.
You see where this was headed. But, I know better now. My depression has been treated by professionals.
I have also learned life lessons from horses. I quickly got back to grazing. Deep breaths. When Light began her spastic leg flexing that always ends up spilling her feed pan, I stood beside her and moved my hand soothingly along her chest and leg until she calmed down.
We don’t always take the time to do that for her. In this case, I was also doing it for me.
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Relative Something 