Posts Tagged ‘Delilah’
Daily Companions
First things first: Dezirea is hanging in there. I don’t think she is quite herself yet, but at least she didn’t return to the condition in which we found her on Thursday morning. She’s on a restricted diet and seems to be satisfied with it. She tends to move off by herself, but before long, one of the herd will wander over to check on her. Sometimes she responds by coming back to the group, other times she stays put.
We want to have her drink as much water as possible, so I filled a bucket and brought it to her where she was standing. Soon, each of the other horses wanted to get their drinks from the bucket. I guess it was something novel. I wonder if the water tasted better.
I decided to intercede on Dezirea’s behalf and motioned a boundary to prevent the other horses from disturbing her. The boys quickly lost interest and returned to the hay feeder. Cayenne stayed nearby. Slowly but surely, almost politely, she navigated her way around behind Dezi, pausing several times, until she was eventually positioned within reach of the bucket of water. I didn’t have the heart to chase her away after that effort, and she got her turn to drink from the bucket.
Delilah continues to improve as a companion dog while I am tending to chores around the property. She will appear to be totally engrossed in hunting in our hay-field for anything that moves or that has a scent, but when I finish cleaning the paddocks and head toward the upper gate with a full wheelbarrow, she comes running.
Yesterday, after I dumped the wheelbarrow and began turning some of the composting piles, she gave me a good laugh. I turned around to find Delilah had taken a position in the shade, laying right in the middle of a knocked down pile of manure, looking all regal and poised. She looked to be the queen of her castle, oblivious that she wasn’t laying on a silk-covered bed.
The thing is, when she is dry, she can stand up out of that pile and look as composed as if we had just brushed her. She will smell as wonderfully dog-sweet as she always does, not taking on any aroma of the composting manure. Having her lay in the manure pile is preferable to collecting burrs in her fur from all over our property.
Those are my primary work-day companions lately, Delilah and the horses. I am a very lucky man to have them.
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Delilah Games
One night last week, when I was taking the memory card out of my camera to download the day’s photos to my computer, my finger slipped when I pushed on the card to eject it. The card popped all the way out and went sailing past me to the floor below. Delilah scooped it up the second it landed. I could hear the sound of the hard plastic clicking against her teeth as she checked it out.
In a panic, I scrambled from my stool and pushed my fingers around her jaw and into her mouth. I wiped off the saliva and inspected it for teeth marks. There were none. Disaster averted. Thank goodness for dogs ‘soft grip’ ability.
What a drama one slip of the finger can create.
You know, that gentle touch with her teeth reminds me of the amazing prowess that horses have with their lips. I was watching Legacy yesterday, while he rushed to graze some clover greens from which he seemed to anticipate I would pull him away. We were on our way over to the north pasture, but I was in no hurry, and actually was happy to have him trim the growth along the side of the gravel driveway loop. So, I let him have at it, and studied his technique.
There was a dead cottonwood leaf that seemed to be right in the way, and at the rate he was going, I expected it to get sucked right in with everything else. With an impressive combination of motion between his head and lips, that leaf was manipulated out of the way several times as he gobbled up all the greens on every side of it without ever slowing down. Talk about having touch.
Anyway, back to Delilah; Miss Quick. She’s a dog. She likes to chase and retrieve. She is also very fond of playing keep-away with us. She will keep bringing whatever the toy of the moment is for us to grab, so she can shake her head to pull it away. Even more, she loves to be chased and shows off her incredible athleticism with dodges and direction reversals rivaling an NFL running back.
The problem with this is that her game of keep-away wrecks the game of fetch. I throw something once, and she brings it back for an instant game of keep-away.
Having neglected to properly train her to drop things on command and play the game I want, when I want it, I instead devised a work-around. I bring two, or sometimes three objects for the game of fetch. Her compulsion to chase, overrides her desire to play keep-away. If I have another object to throw, she is more than willing to drop the one she has in her mouth.
Of course, that simply led to her upping her game a level so that she drops the first item farther and farther away from me, hoping to pick up the second thrown object and then beat me back to where the first lies. It was funny watching her struggle to fit two balls in her mouth at once, until she eventually perfected that skill (thus my solution of bringing a third…).
To mix things up, sometimes we throw discs for her to chase, instead. She loves leaping for them, when we get the throws right. She makes us laugh when she scrambles to try to pick up both discs at the same time. I expect she will hone that skill, too. I might as well start looking now for a third one of those, as well.
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Big Surprise
During the afternoon on Wednesday, when the gales of “Sept-ober” were blowing, I heard a crash while I was out scooping manure in the arena. It sounded to me like something very large had tipped over in the barn. However, I couldn’t think of anything in the barn that would have made that sound. I began to question my perception and wondered if something could have fallen up in the shop garage.
As I walked back toward the barn I had the thought that I probably shouldn’t leave the doors wide open on such windy days. I like getting fresh air moving in there, but the place sure is a dust factory as a result. I couldn’t see anything amiss, so I wandered over to the garage for a look. Nothing out of place there, either. It didn’t make sense.
Something about the sound brought to mind metal shelves, or the metal roof and sides of the barn and garage. With no evidence available to match what I heard, I promptly forgot about it.
Yesterday was a completely different day, with a stillness that exuded peace and tranquility. I walked the horses, one-at-a-time, over to the north pasture for a couple of hours after my lunch. They were exceptionally well-behaved. While they alternately grazed and raced around, I busied myself in the vicinity by trimming the scrub growth that looks decades old along our north property border.
Can you see Hunter positioned alone, away from the other three?
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The wild plum trees are producing a bumper crop this year.
I don’t remember this much fruit last year. Heck, we didn’t even figure out they were actually plums until a few weeks ago. Now we are all excited for having trees producing fruit we can use.
Well, more trees, that is. We do also have a rather tall apple tree that looks like it grew wild in the woods between the back yard and the barn. It dropped a lot of fruit last year. This year’s crop looks to be a bit more subdued.
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The horses were cute when I got them back into the paddock. All four of them settled into a late-afternoon nap after all the excitement of the new grazing pasture. It was so calm and quiet that the few isolated bird calls came across as being extraordinarily loud.
I sat down on the arena grass, which in no time led to laying down, and just watched them looking so peaceful. Then I realized one reason it was so tranquil. I still had Delilah confined in her kennel.
I hiked up to let her out and started tossing balls for her to chase. She was thrilled to have the attention, and was being as playful as ever. I walked down the hill to get one of the balls she had dropped and that’s when I discovered a BIG surprise.
I know what the crash was that I heard on Wednesday afternoon, and it wasn’t anything metal.
We lost a huge limb off a big old maple tree.
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Simple Project
We had a little excitement yesterday when a dog without a collar wandered onto our property while we were preparing to take down the temporary fence around our grazing pasture. Cyndie had driven the ATV down to the south side of our property and had Delilah roaming freely with her when a mellow old black lab wandered toward them.
Cyndie’s initial reaction was to grab Delilah’s collar in case our girl would behave aggressively toward an unknown guest infiltrating our property, but quickly caught herself. She wanted to avoid radiating her anxiety to either or both of the dogs. She took a breath and sent both dogs thoughts of loving kindness.
Delilah did fabulous. The visitor presented no signs of a threat, so the two dogs calmly performed the typical canine introduction of smelling butts and that was that. No big deal. The old lab came up near the barn and was checking the place out when I spotted a truck pull into our neighbor’s yard and turn around. The driver’s side window was down and the person had his arm out the window. Everything about it looked to me like a person looking for a dog.
Cyndie headed down our driveway toward the road, but the truck didn’t stop near our place and was out of sight when she got there. I last saw the dog headed back toward the direction he had arrived from, and as fast as the excitement started, it was over. We went back to work removing fence to clear the way for heavy machinery that will be creating a more defined drainage swale across that area of our field.
On the surface, it seems like a simple enough project. Take down the temporary fence, move it over to the north side of the driveway, set it back up there. In my mind, it seems as though Cyndie sees it as just that easy. I tend to feel like her antagonist and naysayer, as I am inclined to see all the hazards and difficulties inherent in the project.
- How will we handle the white woven fence tape when we take it off the posts? (We laid it back and forth in the ATV trailer. Needed to add the height extensions because it was overflowing the sides. It ended up working slick, except one moment of lapsed attention when Cyndie was driving over to the north side of the driveway and some of the tape spilled out the back and then got wrapped around a trailer wheel a few times.)
- How will we pull all the T-posts? (We used the 3-point lift on the diesel tractor.)
- How will we attach to the T-posts to pull them up? (I rigged up a chain and hooks.)
- How will we attach the post-pulling plate to the chain so it can be quickly released? (After several tries, came up with a spring-clip carabiner.)
- How will we get the horses in and out of this new grazing pasture? (We will use a gate and wood fence posts that were surplus material left by the previous owners.)
- How will we attach the gate to the posts? (Needed to drill a new hole in a fence post and move an old existing gate support to the dimensions of a short gate we chose to use.)
- How will we bury the posts? (We have a post-hole digger, but that phase is on hold until utility company marks where the electric lines are buried.)
We will need to rig up a system of supplying water to this remotely located pasture, but we have a plan for that. We don’t have a source of power to electrify the woven fence tape, but if that becomes a necessity, we can buy a portable system.
It is a simple enough project, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one detail after another that needs to be considered. It made for a full day, but we believe we now have everything in place to get this new grazing space horse-ready, once the buried utilities are all identified.
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Precious Peace
This morning the temperature was September-chilly when we woke up. We built the first fire of the season in our living room fireplace. It is my favorite time of year. Cyndie collected some of our wild American plums that are falling off the branches (they’re about the size of a cherry), with a plan to make jam. The sunlight is painting the trees at a noticeably different angle. The constant transition of seasons is entering one of those phases of being more obvious.
I was working in the labyrinth garden yesterday afternoon under a cool cloud cover and once again the herd made their way over to graze in close proximity. Delilah was mostly well-behaved and as I raked up grass cuttings from the previous day, I found myself in the midst of a most precious and peaceful working environment.
(Speaking of peaceful, as I write this, Pequenita has arisen from her warm curled sleep at the opposite corner of our bed to come lay on my chest and purr. She must have sensed what I was writing about.)
The power of that herd to settle Delilah and swaddle me in a blissful calm is precious. I get the impression that they recognize what Cyndie and I endeavor to create with this labyrinth garden. It seems as though they are letting us know we have their full support.
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Canine Assistant
It’s cute, really, the way she tries to help me. Some days our dog, Delilah, will appear to make a very conscious effort to participate in the task in which I am engaged. Her participation is usually counter productive, but there was a moment yesterday when she was right on the money with her support to me.
It wasn’t happening when I started the day, tending to our composting manure piles. As I dug down to the base layer in a couple of areas, I kept pulling up sticks that were in that location from before we started dumping there. I pull them out and toss them into the woods. Unfortunately, Delilah’s version of helping was to retrieve those sticks and bring them out into the grassy area so I could hit them with the lawn mower next time I mow.
After the manure pile, we headed down into the woods to put in more time clearing trails. Delilah ran all over the place in excitement over being in the woods. For a while, I figured I had lost her to the neighbor’s property, but she wasn’t gone long and came racing back to me when she did return. Apparently she had been off trying to remove all the burrs from the plants in the woods. What a wonderful helper.
She laid down right beneath where I was working. Normally, I would be extremely pleased to have her lying nearby while I work, but in this case, I was sawing a tangled mess of a tree that was about to crash down in some unpredictable manner. I tried tossing a stick into the woods. That trick worked wonders, earlier.
This time, instead of carrying the stick off to someplace nearby, she returned to lay directly beneath the hazardous branch.
I took a break from sawing and moved up the trail to trim branches with a pruner. I came upon a spot with a fair amount of common buckthorn, which is an invasive that I passionately strive to remove. When possible, I pull them up by the roots. As I tugged on one and the dirt began to give way, Delilah jumped in to help, clamping the little tree in her jaws and pulling along with me.
Finally, her effort to assist me was right on. It seems that she wants that buckthorn out just as bad as I do.
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Fertilizer happens
In about a month we will reach the point of having had our 4 horses for one year. No matter how much reading and planning we could do for manure management, it is nothing like actually seeing and dealing with the real thing. For the uninitiated, a 1000 pound horse can produce around 50 lbs of manure a day. We now have an idea of what that is really like.
The storage and distribution system I naively devised over time worked adequately for this first year, going from having none at all to a year’s-worth. Now we are approaching the point of starting the second year with a lot less open storage space. It is roughly half-filled with composting manure right now.
There are some refinements to my system of manure management that I hope to accomplish. My effort to thoroughly compost is forcing me to rethink my methods and may require some expansion of space to store ‘in-process’ manure. I like working small-scale, but the sheer volume produced might force my hand to take up the offer from neighbor George to use his manure spreader and my front loader to distribute a bulk amount all at once.
I continue to use the oldest, bottom level of partially composted material as clean fill in a variety of places around our property, but I’m guessing there might come a day when I run out of a need for that kind of use. Maybe by the time that happens I will have perfected a system that allows me to offer (sell?) bagged horse manure fertilizer to interested gardeners as a means of distribution.
The current challenge has been moving the pile around to provide access to that base level of compacted material I want to use. Yesterday, when I was doing so, it became obvious how quickly the composting dries out an inside layer. The pile always seems so wet to me that I haven’t been worrying about adding moisture, but the light bulb came on when I saw the dramatic difference as a result of trying to move the entire upper level to a new location. I got the hose out and watered the pile, and Delilah. She absolutely cannot resist chasing water from a hose.
Unfortunately, that meant she was trying to chase it through manure. Not a pretty picture.
Killer Instinct
Here is a picture of the fully functioning wheelbarrow with both tires holding air. It is an essential component of our manure management process. Next to it is my primary assistant/troublemaker. Delilah politely listens to me yammer away, occasionally looking right at me as if she is actually listening to the nonstop nonsense that is beginning to flow out of my mouth in the absence of anyone else to talk with around here during the week.
I haven’t quite mastered the non-verbal communication with her, yet. Unfortunately, the longer I work silently, the more likely she is to wander away from me when I allow her off-leash. That leads to her getting into a tangle of burrs, or wandering off property, or more likely, both.
Speaking of no one to talk to, I’d love it if a contractor or two would show up in response to the multitude of solicitations I have put out in the last few weeks. I was lucky enough to actually speak on the phone with one excavator to whom I had made a follow-up call to yesterday. I was so excited when he said he would stop out to look at what I needed done that I neglected to ask him when that might be.
I kept one eye out for him all day yesterday, while doing some heavy trimming on the far side of our property from the driveway. I guess he didn’t mean he would stop out that very day.
I had put Delilah in her kennel while I was working the trimmer and wearing ear muffs. After I finished, I drove the Grizzly ATV up to let her out and she looked at me quizzically, wondering what this meant for her. I hollered at her to come with me as I rolled away down the hill, and the game was on. She loves a good chase, and of course has an insatiable need to be out front.
Her killing instinct is still as strong as ever. I told Cyndie that I don’t think we will be able to have chickens with Delilah running loose. The other morning, I let her out first thing to accompany me in feeding the horses. She raced on ahead and dashed around the pine trees. I noticed a bunch of birds take to the air. When I caught up to her, it was obvious she had a prize. Delilah was in possession of an unfortunate winged creature that failed to evade capture.
Of benefit to me is the fact that she won’t wander away when she has a fresh kill. I didn’t need to worry while I fed the horses and cleaned the paddocks that morning. When I had finished and was ready to head back to the house, I found her in the same spot where I had left her, still treasuring her new obsession.
I sure wish she would show that kind of prowess with the moles and pocket gophers around here.
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Thunder Barking
After a delightful afternoon of hosting visits from family and friends yesterday, we were finally blessed with a mild-mannered summer thunderstorm. It has been so long since we experienced thunder, Delilah seemed to have forgotten what it was. She was in a tizzy of nervously running at the door and barking major alarms. We went for the Thundershirt, but it wasn’t enough. Cyndie provided a dose of Benadryl, but when that proved insufficient, she administered an anti-anxiety drug.
We took Delilah out for a walk as the back side of the storm sprinkled down a last few leftover drops. An opening in the clouds allowed a splash from the setting sun to illuminate a spectacular full rainbow which doubled on one end. We have a wonderful vantage point for sunset-timed rainbows. I need to remember the value of getting outside to survey for these marvelous sights whenever the conditions offer the potential.
I took a shaky cell phone photo after we put some hay out for the horses and closed them into the paddocks for the night. They seemed to be enjoying the shower. It was enough to get them wet, but not enough to create too much mud.
After darkness settled in and most of the thunder had moved on, I was just about to comment to Cyndie about how pleasant it was that Delilah had finally settled down and we were enjoying a peaceful… Oops, one more thunder, Delilah up and barking. Oh well.
Later, as we were wrapping up our evening activity, I walked toward the kitchen, where Cyndie was involved in some creative endeavor, and I spotted our lovely canine sprawled on the floor in a slumber that presented every indication of the drugs having finally kicked in. Success, at last.
Weather predictions are for more thunderstorms today, so either I proactively serve up some calming drugs in her breakfast, or I hang my hopes on her having quickly grown used to the booming after surviving last night’s reintroduction to thunder. The scenario is made a bit more complicated by the fact I need to be away from home for a few hours at the dentist today. Hopefully the weather will hold until I return.
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For those of you following closely enough to care… the wheelbarrow tire is holding air adequately after just the two patches! YES! <pumping fist>
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Overwhelming Bliss
Early in the day yesterday, after scrubbing out the automatic waterer for our horses and scooping up manure from the paddocks, I paused for a moment and felt deeply moved by the overwhelming bliss of our place.
Delilah had been a particularly attentive companion during my chores, and afterward, wandered over to rest in the shade. The horses seemed thoroughly content; Legacy and Hunter up under the overhang of the barn, and Cayenne and Dezirea outside the paddock, grazing on the tiny strip I had opened up for them.
It was quiet, except for a few friendly bird calls, and the weather conditions were idyllic. It brought tears to my eyes. This is the environment we have endeavored to create. When it isn’t a muddy mess out here, we have pretty much achieved what we dreamed of accomplishing.
We have 4 fabulous horses, in space that is serving them well, and they seem pretty happy with their situation. We’re pretty happy with it too, and right now I am blessed with being able to be home to care for it every day.
I was working hard to keep Delilah engaged with me while I was giving her some time off-leash. My chores led us down to the labyrinth where I was fixing the sagging wall around the stockpile of fertilizer.
Suddenly there was a great commotion and I spun to see a turkey shoot into the air and fly off over the trees into the woods. I don’t know if Delilah scared it up, or if it surprised her. It was quite a sight. After it was gone, Delilah carried on as if nothing had happened.
To keep her occupied and discourage her from wandering off, I tossed a hunk of a branch into the woods for her to chase. Later, she came to where I was working and almost stood too close. It struck me as odd. Then I stepped back from what I was doing and saw that hunk of wood laying on the ground behind where I was sitting. She had brought it back to me and dropped it. That’s why she was standing so close.
Since it worked the first time, I decided to do it again, later in the day. I tossed a stick into the woods. I figured she wouldn’t find it among all the other branches on the ground. Silly me, I should know better. I should also have had more sense than to send her bushwhacking through our woods.
By the end of the day, she had more burrs stuck all over her than I have yet seen. I spent a long time brushing them out before Cyndie got home, hoping all the while that Delilah hadn’t also been exploring through any poison ivy during the day’s escapades.
Rest assured, I scrubbed my arms thoroughly as soon as we came inside.
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Relative Something 