Posts Tagged ‘Delilah’
Brooke Writes
Guest Post
Today’s post is a contribution from my niece’s daughter, Brooke Friese, age 11. Brooke and her brother, Drew came with their mother for a visit last Friday. I was thrilled when she accepted my invitation to write a guest post about their day.
I went to my great aunt Cindy and uncle John Hays’ Wintervale Ranch. It was one of the best days of the week!
They have a beautiful (and furry dog) named Delilah that loves to slobber all over frisbees when you throw it :). They also have an adorable cat named Pequenita; we also have two cats which are twins. Pequenita and my two cute cats are very alike. They are both small and they both are tortoiseshell cats, the only difference between them is my cats have more black and Pequenita has more brown.
Anyway back to Delilah and Pequenita (‘Nita for short), Delilah, being a dog, obviously wants to play, chase, sniff, and lick ‘Nita until she runs and hides meowing at Delilah all the way.
We also went on a walk through the beautiful (but very muddy) woods; we passed a fallen tree that Uncle John has nicknamed “The Brooke tree,” we walked down to the labyrinth, it was super cool!
I can’t wait to see it in the summer! My brother and I followed the winding trails to the middle and then back out again.
Then uncle John led us to the barn where we said hello to the horses. Legacy, (a beautiful snow white horse) acts as the boss of all the other horses (Hunter, Cayenne, and Dezirea) he pulls back his ears and jerks slightly towards the horse(s) that is bugging him.
Dezirea acts as the mother, making sure everyone is fed before she eats, and makes sure everyone is using manners at all times, but she will never scold Legacy, after all he is the boss!
Then we headed over to the hay barn, I wasn’t expecting much, I mean it’s called “The Hay Barn,” there’s bound to be a few stacks of hay . . . oh no, when I walked into the hay barn I was surprised.
I saw tons and tons, two huge piles of hay both stacked in the form of stairs. My brother and I had fun climbing and exploring on the huge mounds of hay (with Uncle John’s permission).
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After my brother and I were exhausted from climbing on the two piles we walked over to Uncle John’s compost/molding horse manure piles, there were three piles of manure covered in thousands of flies. Along with the three piles was a still frozen compost pile that was now almost dirt, and wheel barrel full of more almost-dirt-compost, (My brother, Drew also pulled apart the poo with his bare hands so he could see what it looked like inside! Delilah also ate some manure! Ewwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!) Then Uncle John shifted the manure with a pitchfork, and the moldy compost started to steam! Uncle John measured the heat of the manure and it was around 130 degrees! Wow it was only around 50 degrees outside!
After that we headed inside, we played a hide and seek game with Delilah where we hide a ball and she had to go and sniff it out, it was awesome! My visit to Wintervale was super fun and exciting from Ellsworth’s cheese factory to Legacy’s bossiness. I can’t wait to come back! 🙂
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Under Represented
I tell so many tales about Delilah’s daily escapades, and the horses are such a powerful commanding presence around here, that our beautiful cat, Pequenita, ends up being too often overlooked. Today she gets some well-deserved air time.
She is a wee little thing, but she knows how to use her claws to get respect when she wants it. That mostly applies to her dealings with Delilah. I’m pretty sure she means it affectionately when she reaches up and hangs her front claws in my pants leg. She likes me a lot so I get that treatment various times throughout each day. Most of the time I am wearing heavy Carhartt pants that have a double layer of fabric over the knee, so she gets away with it.
It surprises her when she tries that maneuver on the occasions I am wearing something else and I recoil in shock over the silly habit.
When I climb in bed at night with hopes of doing a little writing before nodding off to sleep, she immediately shows up in search of some tender loving care. Pequenita tenaciously navigates a position between my eyes and the display of my laptop, and settles in for some scratching and a massage from me.
My efforts are rewarded with a contented purring and handfuls of her hair.
We find her most often perched on our bed in various levels of slumber. Some days I walk in to grab something and she doesn’t move a bit. Makes me question her survival instinct a little that she can fall asleep so hard and ignore activity around her. Of course, all the other times I walk in, she rises from her nap to see what I want and I end up feeling guilty for rousing her when I didn’t plan on giving her any attention.
Most likely, the bedroom remains her preferred hangout because we usually have a gate up to keep Delilah out of there. It becomes a room where Pequenita can relax without a cold nose constantly pushing on her butt. They do continue to improve on tolerating each other’s presence, but Delilah can’t help herself from playfully brandishing her most dog-like aggressive-looking gyrations when she wants to roughhouse.
‘Nita would prefer the game involve a dramatic reduction in the smacking of jaw and baring of teeth. Delilah’s eventual change from that behavior to trying to sniff Pequenita’s butt doesn’t seem like much of an improvement to the cat by that point, either.
When it gets to be a bit too much for her, she retreats beyond the gate and takes a time out. It is not strange to see her choose to return after a very short time, but Delilah rarely figures out that it’s an invitation to try something different, and the scene goes through a bit of recycling back to the over-excited doggy gyrations.
Pequenita is a precious addition to the non-human members of our family. She definitely deserves more attention than she usually receives from us.
Maybe that is why Delilah over does it so often. She is trying to make up for the other periods of attention deficit that Pequenita experiences.
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Hooves Trimmed
Taking full advantage of the quick-dry we are enjoying this March, I was out raking the lime screenings on the upper slope around the barn and picking up the never-ending crop of manure the horses like to deposit there. 
As I often choose to do lately, I had Delilah tethered to an outside hook on the paddock fence where she was doing her best to behave like she was an integral participant in my project.
For whatever silly reason that only dogs can understand, she picked a perch that looked like she was claiming ownership of one of the piles I was trying to pick up.
I was hoping to get the area cleaned up in time for the scheduled appointment to have our farrier/neighbor, George Walker, give the horses their routine periodic hoof trimming.
We are starting to get the hang of the process and for the first time since he has been coming to do this, we prepared by getting a halter on each of the horses and tethering them up near the barn in advance. I give Hunter credit for this bit of wisdom, as he always played hard to get when it was time for his turn. George would be stuck waiting while tried to quickly talk Hunter into cooperating.
Quickly cooperating is not something he is inclined to do, especially when it is our agenda and not his.
Case in point, just getting him into his halter yesterday took 3-times longer than it did the rest of the herd. Having done so, the 4 horses were in an out of the hoof trimming station in record time. The only thing that slows down the process is all the precious gabbing we end up doing while George works.
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Horse Models
Wow, the days sure seem short when you spend 10 of the waking hours commuting and working. When I arrived home in the afternoon, I freed Delilah from her kennel and took her for a short walk to check on the horses. They were calm and serene, which rubbed off on Delilah and she was surprisingly patient while I fed and then cleaned up after the herd.
We found Hunter all dressed up in his favorite colored wet lime screenings for our visit. It looked like he was wearing a work of art.
When chores were done for the horses, I grabbed a rake and walked Delilah up to the high gate into the hay-field. Inside the electric fence, I can let her off leash to get exercise on her own while I work on breaking apart and spreading piles of manure.
The high ground has dried nicely with the last few days of sunny breezes, and we took full advantage of the conditions. Delilah was totally compliant and roamed freely while I worked. To finish off our time, I pulled out a couple of squeaking tennis balls that she loves to chase.
I think she made up for being stuck in her kennel all day during that short exercise, running herself ragged with a noticeable smile on her face and gleam in her eyes.
When we passed back by the barn I found one of the horses missing. Everyone but Cayenne was under the eave munching hay. It is very uncharacteristic to find just one of them so far off on their own, but she was away in the distance, out grazing in the late afternoon sunshine bathing the back pasture.
The other three stepped out to see what I was up to with my stopping by again, and I was able to capture a shot of them with Cayenne in the distance. Don’t they look choreographed? Hold that pose!
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Commuting Again
I’m going to take a little sabbatical from the full-time ranch management gig and go back to the old day-job for a couple of weeks to help them process a large volume of orders they have received. I wonder if I remember how.
I expect the change of environment might reveal how precious my work on the ranch is to me. Being able to spend every day, all day, tending to projects and caring for our animals is a very rewarding experience. Just like everything that becomes routine, it gets easy to lose perspective of just how special that routine can be.
Even though I am often bothered throughout my day with responding to the constant demands Delilah puts on me, I expect that she may be one of the things (that doesn’t sound right, she’s not a ‘thing’) I miss while being away at the work-place.
Yesterday, I needed to make a run to pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy, and I decided to bring her along for the ride. She doesn’t usually ride in the car with us, unless on a trip to the vet. To keep from putting her in the kennel (since unbeknownst to her she will have some day-long stints there starting today), I chose to give her an opportunity to ride in the car when it didn’t end up with a vet visit. She got a bonus when the pharmacist tossed a couple of dog treats in with the drugs.
Here’s hoping I am able to help the work-place get caught up, our animals will do okay with me being gone again, I manage to stay awake while driving to and from work, and that I discover how unconscious of my exceptional situation I have grown in the time since I first made the transition back in July.
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Bad Girl
First off, I’d like to admit that I am feeling at fault for failing to successfully train our dog, Delilah, to come when called, to stop barking on command, to treat our cat, Pequenita, with respect, and most importantly, to stay on our property. After months of confining her to a leash, hoping it might condition her to the boundaries we want her to respect, late last week I began to give her a few opportunities to be free of the leash when outside with me.
She did spectacularly well for two days. Yesterday, she failed miserably. As a result, all privileges have been revoked, effective immediately. The urge to follow natural instinct is strong with this one.
It’s not so much the fact that she strayed from our property, it’s that she distinctly snubbed me when doing it. She sure knows how to push my buttons. I was furious.
After I unclipped her leash, she walked with me for a few steps, then bolted ahead and made a mad dash and a left turn, ignoring my calls. When I caught up to where she had made that abrupt turn, I was able to spot her out in our neighbor’s field, sniffing around in the snow.
I called to her and she looked up at me, but then quickly returned to whatever scent on the ground was commanding her attention. When I tried again, she gave me a stare that spoke volumes. Then she turned and sprinted for the woods at the edge of the field.
It was that moment that felt the most disrespectful. I called and whistled to no avail. I got in my car and drove around the border of the woods. There was no sign of her, so I came back and went to work cleaning the paddocks. Delilah failed to reappear.
She had been gone two hours when I finally heard her barking at something near our front door. I was already back in the house having lunch by that point. I opened the door and called her in. To her credit, that time she came, probably because she was thirsty. I gave her the cold shoulder for the rest of the day.
At least her high intelligence helped her to recognize that I was unhappy with her. I have no idea if she understands why. Hopefully, she will get a clue when she realizes she is back to being on a leash again, every time we set foot outside the door.
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Goodbye February
Regardless my wonderfully slow-paced daily routine on the ranch, I cannot keep up with the days flying by that become months sailing away. February just started and now it is over. Humans may not have invented a time machine yet, but who needs it? We are living in one.
We have been experiencing a string of below zero (F) overnight lows the last few days, but since it wasn’t windy, we left the horses outside to deal with it. Cayenne was able to show off her awesome eyelashes with an icy white highlight in the morning during breakfast.
I have been working to prepare for the possibility that someone other than me would be doing the animal chores around here, on the chance that Cyndie would successfully find enough animal sitters to allow me to join her on a visit to our friends in Guatemala.
The person that did the job for us over New Year’s weekend was no longer available. Thursday night, with our children’s precious acceptance to figure out a way to fill the few holes in coverage that remained, we made a commitment and purchased airplane tickets.
Look out, Dunia and family, here we come!
So, I’m hoping to make it as easy as possible for our animal sitters to maintain some semblance of cleanliness in the paddocks. It is not easy to pick up manure that first melts, and then re-freezes into the frozen snow and ice packed on the ground everyday. After the struggle to get it up, hauling it to the compost pile is another battle. I have started to create piles within the paddock where it can be temporarily stored.
I brought Delilah with me yesterday to work on the project. She is still confined to a leash when I am unable to give her my constant attention, so I tethered her to a hook on the outside of the paddock fence. There she is able to squeeze under the lowest board and feel like she is not entirely excluded from the action.
Unfortunately, she can’t restrain herself from periodic antagonistic barking and snarling fits at the horses when they are close. For their part, the horses seem entirely nonplussed by the big show she puts on, but are complicit in their repeated decision to wander over close to her if she has been calm and quiet for too long.
I really delight in seeing them serenely coexisting, which happens for brief glimpses, so in contrast, her sudden outbursts are a jarring disruption to the tranquility. While I was raking away, I glanced up to see what looked like a zen exercise Legacy was employing to convince Delilah to mellow out.
Legacy looked like he was sleeping, except that he was also very subtly decreasing the space between them. I think Delilah was feeling the closing proximity and would make her own adjustments of position. The problem with this game was that Delilah was tethered and was moving further into the paddock to the end of the reach of her leash. Legacy, whether intentional, or not, was closing in on her escape route.
To her credit, Delilah didn’t give in and erupt on her own. It took me becoming alarmed and hustling over to set her off to barking at him. I was continuing to rake while keeping and eye on them, until Legacy got close enough to reach her leash and got it in his mouth.
I figured nothing good could come of this and dropped the rake to hustle over there and intervene. Delilah barked, Legacy startled, and the game was over.
Hopefully, prior to all the excitement, Delilah absorbed enough of Legacy’s zen-like message to practice staying calm when the horses wander over to say hello.
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Two Things
While trudging through new drifts on a walk with Delilah yesterday morning, it occurred to me… there are two things. I’m sure it can be argued that there are more than two things, but that is a topic for another time. I’m just writing now about the perception of two things. There are always two and though they may be distinct, they are undeniably, inextricably linked.
Case in point: there is Delilah pulling me up the steep hill at the end of our walk, and there is me being pulled up the hill by Delilah. Two things.
There is happiness, and sadness. Hope, and despair. Winning, and losing. Those are obvious. How about, almost there, and not quite there yet. Dreaming your reality, and realizing your reality is a dream. Waiting for tomorrow, and wondering where tomorrow went. There is pondering how this could have been a poem, and seeing how likely such a poem would seem trite.
The thing that I find most fascinating about all this silliness, though hardly surprising, is how it is revealing the chasm which inevitably swallows all the creative momentum and ingenious possibilities between the amusing period of conception and the time-delayed attempt to build the idea into a rewarding post.
Yesterday morning, it was vapor, filled with potential. Then it evaporated. So I tried anyway, long after my brain was wallowing in the distractions of being back in the house. My poor brain, which more than anything enjoys every opportunity to take naps whether the eyes are open or closed. Maybe I think of naps because that has become the length of time I can do anything of my own agenda. It is the duration of Delilah’s naps.
Luckily she naps frequently. When she is not napping she is begging for attention beyond my capacity to engage with her. It’s right out of the breed description: “not typically recommended for people who are inexperienced with dogs. His temperament and activity level can be overwhelming to people who haven’t had a working dog before.”
When I went down and sat with the horses on Thursday, I had left Delilah in the house. She hesitated about accepting her leash and I wasn’t up to the game of enticing her. I went out without her. That is why I was able to spend a full half-hour of blissful serenity with the horses.
Two things. I was sitting in observance of the horse activities, and I was with them as a member of the herd.
Two things inextricably linked: my daily inspirations that become blog fodder, and the hard-fought battle of doing those inspirations justice in words, sentences, commas —or not— and paragraphs. No wonder I always try to include images.
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Steaming Cold
Yesterday morning we awoke to double-digit below-zero temperatures. It was probably the coldest night we have left the horses outside to endure. They did have their blankets on, and despite significant frost on their faces from their breath and some nasty snow/ice buildup on the bottoms of their hooves, they seemed to have handled it fine.
I experienced another first when I decided to see if I could to anything to help Legacy with the excessive buildup under his front hooves. After locating a hoof pick in Cyndie’s tray of tools, I stepped up and invited him to lift his foot for me.
Based on my vague memory of watching our farrier, George Walker, I maneuvered to hold Legacy’s leg between my knees. He seemed to welcome my efforts and was very accommodating of my untrained technique. It is probably best to have another person to handle the horse for this procedure, but he and I were the only ones available. We made due.
The whole chunk wouldn’t pop off like I’d hoped, so I scraped and scratched as best I was able to grind it down to a less severe knob. Legacy stood stationary after I finished that first hoof, so I took that as a sign of approval and walked around to repeat my performance on the other side. Other than his leaning excessively to the point of scaring me he was going to topple over, it went about the same as the first one. He seemed satisfied with the partial progress.
On a whim, I tried to see if I could get any good pictures of the ice crystal formations that grew on piles of manure. I thought the juxtaposition of the two might produce and interesting result.
It was steaming hot for a little while.
Surprisingly, the extreme cold doesn’t stop the biological processes at work in the compost pile, so the crystal growth gets a lot more substantial. That small mountain of manure is cooking and the steam rises all night long.
I was hoping to get a good image from the main pile, but it was probably too cold overnight and the ice accumulation grew so thick it got beyond the delicate beauty I was wanting to capture. Of course, that didn’t stop me from trying.
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When all the morning chores were done and Delilah and I had finished our breakfast, I made an extra trip back down to check on the horses. I had spoken with George about the ice buildup and confirmed I was doing the right thing. Emboldened, I wanted to see if I could help any of the other horses.
They were all napping in the sun. I sat on the ground with them for about a half an hour, soaking up the cold sunshine and enjoying the serenity with them. They didn’t need any further intervention from me.
By the afternoon, it looked like they had all successfully shed the accumulation that was stuck to them in the morning. A much better solution than my trying to do it for them.
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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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Relative Something 