Posts Tagged ‘Delilah’
Horse Mischief
Lest you think my incessant blathering about the muddy mess we are suffering is excessive, I offer a couple of images as evidence of the saturation in which we are wallowing. After a few days without additional rain, and even some sunshine yesterday, we are enjoying some long-awaited progress in drying of the intermediate areas, but the wettest sections continue to hold standing water.
Those areas remain a magnet for Delilah, who rushes to sink her feet into the muckiest of muck when we arrive to feed the horses each morning, rendering her abolished from the house until we can get her washed. I think she measures the quality of her days by how many baths she gets in the kiddie pool stationed by our front door.
I lied in my post yesterday when I wrote that I wouldn’t get any mowing done since I would be biking and barbecuing. We had a fantastic ride in beautiful weather, and then dove into eating everything in reach as fast as it arrived to the table. It was a wonderful time that I enjoyed thoroughly, and I arrived home in time to help Cyndie get the horses fed and then do some mowing.
My main objective was to cut the back yard, but after feeding the horses, I noticed the jungle of growth on the uphill side of the big paddock behind the barn. It was twice as bad as the yard, so I decided to give that first attention before moving on.
The horses took great interest in my actions. Instead of moving away from the loud noise of high RPM tractor engine and mower, they came right up to the fence to witness the horror. I got the impression they were galled at the audacity of my cutting down the green growth right before their eyes. I guess I could have taken a moment to convey the reason we have been unable to give them access to this area outside their fence, but something tells me they wouldn’t have bought it. The growth was fresh, green, tall, and surely rich with sugars that would give them the rush they seek.
My drain hose from the trough that sits beneath the downspout on the barn was strung across that area I was mowing, and I flipped it toward the fence, out of the way after I had made the first pass. This morning, when I showed up to feed the horses, I immediately spotted that garden hose pulled way into the paddock!
Had I tossed it too close to their fence yesterday? No. When I started pulling it back out of there, I quickly discovered that it had been pulled in from the other end; the end that had been attached to the trough. How did they get a hold of that!? Lo and behold, the trough itself had been dislodged from its position. Someone had been up to some mischief overnight.
Message received. I think they were clearly letting me know how they felt about my decision to mow that area right before their eyes, at a time when we are firmly limiting their minutes of grazing on the new spring fast-growing grass.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Dirty Pants
If I venture outside on our property, especially if I expect to traverse the horse paddocks, I will trash my pants with mud. When we walk in the door, we remove our muddy boots, but my pant legs will sometimes be just as bad as the boots. I have been known to remove my pants at the door, too.
It doesn’t make sense to me to put these in the wash every day, as the next pair I put on will get just as dirty in a single outing, so I have taken to wearing the same pair for days, or even weeks. They pretty much stand up by themselves after a day or two.
When I decide to finally wash them, I will lay the pants on the driveway and spray the mud off with a hose, before running them through our washing machine. They get that bad.
It feels a little weird to be saving my dirty pants at the end of each night. It’s even weirder to be climbing back into them the following day. I have to be delicate about sliding them up when putting my boots on, to minimize how much debris breaks loose and falls on the floor, or into my boot. When I come in for lunch, I can’t sit on the couch or nice chair, and try to step carefully around the house.
Our cat, Pequenita, isn’t bothered by the mud at all, and climbs on my leg regardless how grimy they are. As an indoor cat, it’s her chance to be close to the earth.
I suppose I could step into the kiddie pool we have out the front door for washing Delilah before she comes in the house. It seems only fair. Of course, the mud I get covered with is incidental to the tasks I get involved in, whereas Delilah’s mud is a result of her deliberately getting herself into the worst areas and marching back and forth or digging. She needs daily washing —sometimes multiple washings in a single day.
My system of keeping dirty pants gives me many more wearings between eventual necessary washes.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Fighting Frustration
I know that I can just give in and stop trying to make progress when barriers repeatedly frustrate my attempts to advance toward a goal, but I seem to have an ingrained attachment to that angst of repeatedly banging my head against the problems that arise. Eventually, I will go back to grazing, but for now…
Yesterday was a day to give up and go back to bed, but I forged ahead regardless, and bashed headlong into the fruitless exercise of trying to get something done anyway. It probably wasn’t as bad as I’m making it seem, but the final straw was trying to write this post live online when our internet connection was doing an endless dance loop of resetting, creating a repeating pattern of pages hanging mid-load, and slamming the brakes on any attempts to actually achieve something productive.
Talk about frustrating! We were trying to research costs for materials for our next phase of pasture fencing, to compare with the quote we have received from our fence contractor. We also got stopped in the middle of trying to do online research for information on improving the surface of our paddocks.
The reason we were indoors doing research is because it is raining outside again. Speaking of frustration, the rain gauge revealed 2 more inches fell overnight Sunday to Monday morning. The wetness around here is crazy-making!
Since I couldn’t work on anything else, I walked right down to the wettest area of our planned grazing pasture —probably out of spite— where two dead trees had toppled over in the storm that destroyed my woodshed (I think the woodshed failure is frustrating me more than I am admitting to myself), and I started cutting them up and creating a new brush pile. Man, will it feel good to ignite that bonfire. Too bad it will have to wait for months because the pile is currently located on an area of standing water.
I let my focus wander to the drainage ditch that forms the southern border of our property, where the water of the last few storms is still flowing along in an irritatingly pleasant manner. Standing in water up to my ankles, I began the work of cutting out the 1-to-2 inch volunteer trees that were allowed to grow unchecked to clutter the ditch, making a perfect snow-stop that creates dams and backs up flow during the spring melt.
The plan is to clear the ditch, and the junk trees that have been sprouting in the area just above it, because above is where we will run the southern leg of our new grazing pasture fence.
While I was down there working, our delightful dog, Delilah, was happily exploring to and fro, prancing in the running water, and generally being a sweet companion… until she wasn’t. She disappeared on me while I was engrossed in aggravating the tendonitis in both elbows, working our ratcheting pruner to cut down the forest of unwelcome growth.
After Delilah’s performance on Sunday —moments after I had received a subtle comment from our neighbor about her frequent visits to his place— where she ran away from me to interrupt that very family’s Mother’s Day picnic on their front lawn, she has me so frustrated that I have decreed that she must be on-leash now when outside and not being directly watched.
It’s all got me plenty frustrated, I tell you, but the regression to need to leash Delilah again is at the top of the heap.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Disappearing Act
It is that time of year again when piles of brush get burned into oblivion. This pile was on the top of the hill on the north side of our driveway. There was a moderate collection of fair-sized branches that had been there since before we arrived. A couple of days ago, I tossed on some cuttings I recently cleared that were leftover from when I mowed this area last fall.
That created a collection that was half-fresh-cut and half-long-dead. I wasn’t sure how it would burn, because the old wood was damp from the recent rain, and there was a gusty wind that could help, or it could possibly drive it out of control.
I started daintily, pulling a small amount of debris off the pile to create a moderate fire, although, up wind of the rest of the fuel. I started on that side to take advantage of the wind, because I felt I needed it to cause the green wood to burn.
Progress was ideal and I enjoyed a fine afternoon by the fire. Cyndie made the trek all the way out on her crutches, and kept an eye on things while I took a break to walk the horses, one-at-a-time, off that damn muddy paddock and out where they could graze for a spell on the grass. After that last storm and its additional inch of rain, the little spot of grazing I fenced off for them is too soft for their weight and they will tear it to shreds if we let them on it.
When I got back to the fire, I found Cyndie had outdone herself with the cutest little burn pile ever, all clean around the edges, safely pulled away from the main one, making me think I may have over-stated my concern that she do it my way. She was sitting on a chair, weaving a basket out of the vines that were growing all over the ground up there. Being forced to use crutches does little to stop her ambitions, it just redirects her energy toward more creative pursuits.
It had turned into an absolutely gorgeous evening for a bonfire, so we decided I should head to the house to feed dog and cat, and then bring back a picnic dinner. That meant washing the manure and mud off of Delilah, before letting her inside.
That done, I picked up my bag of food and headed for the door. Before I even opened it, I could see the flames through the glass. The entire pile was ablaze something fierce. I know the feeling of standing next to that. Elysa and I were present last year when one of our burn piles went rogue and roared alive with incredibly dramatic energy. I pictured Cyndie in that chair, hobbled by the healing hip, and my heart jumped a bit.
Luckily, this pile wasn’t quite that large, and although dramatic, it was not a catastrophic event. I arrived with the bag of food and prepared to make a joke about her little clean pile burning safely on the side. She asked if she could tell me something funny.
She was sitting there as the fire appeared to be burning itself out, and was fretting over having let it burn out while I was gone, by not adding enough new fuel to the side fire. Knowing I could just re-kindle the burn, she decided to stay seated. Without doing a thing, the core of the pile ignited!
Fire is not to be trifled with. Kids, don’t try this at home.
We dined by the warm fire on a chilly evening at sunset, lingering until after dark, when our shadows eventually appeared in the moonlight. A spectacularly magnificent experience for us once again at Wintervale. Cyndie used my camera to take a few more pictures after dinner…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Acknowledged Risk
Yesterday was supposed to be the day I took Cyndie back to where her surgery was performed, for an appointment to get her stitches out. We ended up rescheduling, when the risk of severe storms loomed large for the time we would be on the road. It turned out to be a smart decision.
Our dog, Delilah, has been demonstrating an extreme anxiety over rumbles of thunder. Unfortunately, the thunder-booming storms started here on Wednesday evening, and her panic-barking kept me up until well past midnight. I was at the veterinarian’s office yesterday to pick up some new tick repellent, since our previous product isn’t doing the trick, and when I happened to mention Delilah’s anxiety, they asked me what we “give her” for it.
Hadn’t entered my mind to medicate her. Their first recommendation was Benadryl, but they also reminded me of the “thundershirt,” a hugging body wrap that calms dogs. Good idea.
Shortly after I returned from the vet visit, our predicted rough weather rolled in. I’ve been through worse, but we did receive a blast of wind, small hail, and heavy rain that more than convinced us we made the right decision to stay home. If we had gone, Delilah would have been trapped outside in her kennel during the worst of it. The folks at the vet’s office said dogs can, and do, injure themselves in their efforts to escape whatever is causing their anxiety.
That wind would have probably put her into a tizzy, especially when it picked up and rolled over my woodshed, which is located right next to her kennel.
Lesson learned on the heartiness of simply standing the structure on stones in the ground. That was the design I chose, even though I knew it was a risk. On the bright side, it gives me a chance to try building my second structure ever, using what I learned on the first one. I guess the next one will have posts buried well into the ground.
I’ve discovered an interesting fact about how I see our woods. No matter how familiar I think I am with the views, after a big wind storm, I have difficulty identifying what is new damage, and what is old. There are plenty of downed or leaning trees and broken branches. In the area near the up-turned woodshed, something doesn’t look right to me, but I’m not certain if it is damage from yesterday’s event, or something previous.
Actually, with another inch of rain increasing the saturation of our ground, it’s a wonder there are any trees left standing at all.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Animal Images
We can look at these guys each day, but you have to wait for me to post pictures. Here are some shots taken in the last two days…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Yesterday, when we put the horses out to graze on grass, Cyndie and Delilah and I had a little picnic lunch beside them. It was rather idyllic. Well, truth is, every day that we get to enjoy the views of these fine animals could be described as idyllic.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Two Incidents
With Cyndie laid up in recovery for a while, I have sole responsibility for tending to the horses. After only one day, I already have two incidents to report. The common denominator for both situations happens to be our lovely dog, Delilah. If I didn’t keep letting her tag along when I head down to feed the horses, things would probably have come off without a hitch, but she needs to get out just as bad as I need to go feed the horses.
Most of the time, Delilah is getting along well with the horses. It’s similar to the way she is with our cat, Pequenita, in that there are still too many moments out of the blue when she works herself into a tizzy and begins barking and baring her teeth at them. Our cat is small enough that it appears that Delilah just wants to play when she gets all riled up and pouncy. The significant size of the horses appears to be more intimidating, and Delilah comes across as trying to establish some control and to prove her skills at herding. She is a shepherd, after all.
After I got Cyndie home from the procedure on her hip, I discovered that the straps that run under the belly of Hunter’s blanket weren’t connected properly, and it was flipped up over his back. He seemed calm enough to allow me to monkey with it, so I tried to quickly unhook and then re-hook the two straps. Off they both came, and then the first one clicked right into place, at which point Delilah went nuts and did some ferocious barking at Hunter. The horse lurched back and I lost hold of him and that second strap, which was now dangling precariously under his belly as he maneuvered in response to the canine troublemaker.
Our muddy troublemaker
I definitely have not succeeded in teaching Delilah what “No!” means. Apparently, she thinks it means she should keep doing whatever it is that she was doing when I suddenly burst forth with the word, repeating it in ever-increasing intensity.
Eventually, I fooled Delilah into approaching me close enough to allow me to grab her collar, after which she was dragged unceremoniously into the barn and tied up. It took a little patience, but after a short wait, Hunter allowed me back in position to reach under him and pull the strap through to hook it up properly.
Yesterday, I had finished filling the hay feeders at their dinner time, when I noticed that Hunter seemed to be following me wherever I went in the paddock. I allowed myself to linger longer than I really wanted to, finally choosing to just stand in his space when he repeatedly closed any gap that I created by my movements.
When I spotted Delilah beginning to bare her teeth and revving up to bark at him, I decided to intervene swiftly to alter her focus. I tried kneeling down and holding her next to me, soothing her anxiety as Hunter nosed around, taking in big whiffs of her scent. I was hoping to nurture a calm, close-contact interaction between them in hopes it might set a precedent for them developing a more congenial companionship.
Without warning, Hunter suddenly lunged forward and tried to bite Delilah as I held her. I felt awful that I had put Delilah in that dangerous proximity, despite her anxiety of the risk. In fairness to Hunter, he was only returning the treatment he has been receiving from her for far too long. Delilah wrenched out of my grip quickly enough to dodge any real harm, and we both decided it was time to hustle out of the paddock and out of Hunter’s reach.
Hunter went back to grazing.
I have added a couple of notches to my belt of experience managing our dog while in close proximity with our horses. I’m looking forward to my coach soon being able to use her crutches to come down and supervise my lessons, hopefully before any more risky incidents play out.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Uninvited Situations
As April draws to a close, we would like to be preparing our minds for the transition that May should offer toward connecting us to summer. Instead, we are feeling shriveled and wrinkly from 6 inches of rain in 6 days. The events and situations of the last few days are beginning to take a toll. I think one of my unconscious responses is to clench my jaw more than usual. I have been trying to practice better awareness of that habit. Each time I catch myself clenching, I am startled at the discovery. How is it that I so easily start pressing without realizing it? I can’t help but wonder about how often I do it and fail to notice.
Our house feels uncomfortably out of whack, because I haphazardly pulled furniture out of the far end of the sunroom and stashed it anywhere and everywhere to get things out from under the leaks.
One of our garage doors is so water-logged, the electric opener can’t lift it. When I pulled the release handle, a pin popped out and now the bracket hangs loose, and swings menacingly.
Cyndie reported that she discovered one of the boards of the wall separating Legacy and Cayenne’s stalls in the barn was wrenched loose and lying in Legacy’s stall yesterday morning. She thought Legacy had done it, but I am suspicious of Cayenne, as she appeared to be working on the next board down while I was in there feeding them and freshening their water buckets. I’m gonna need longer screws.
After throwing one of Delilah’s toys for a series of “fetch” exercises before dinner, she walked past me on one ‘retrieve’ and stepped into the wading pool where we often wash her before letting her in the house. Pretty smart way to let me know she is ready to go in. After we got inside, I toweled her off and noticed she started to favor her left front foot, sometimes drastically avoiding putting any weight on it. She went from walking fine, to limping obviously, in an instant.
I have developed my first poison ivy rash of the season, on the inside of both arms, very consistent with the most likely source being contact with Delilah’s fur.
When I got home from work yesterday, I noticed something on the floor in front of the kitchen sink. There were six small ball bearings in one spot. I deduced that they must be from the pull-out waste basket under the sink, but I have no idea why or how.
These kinds of little uninvited situations start to have a cumulative effect, but they are probably small potatoes compared to what is really weighing on my mind. Today I will be driving Cyndie to an appointment to have an arthroscopic procedure done to clean up her hip-joint. She will be confined to crutches for an uncertain amount of time.
It sure would do us wonders to have the rain end and get a little warm sunshine beaming down on us soon. It would at least be one less reason to grit my teeth.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Significant Soaking
For all those many days of last July through October that left our land under stress from drought, I wish I could capture the current thorough soaking and redistribute it later this summer. This is what spring is all about though, and all the growing things will be happily slurping this up, soon to burst forth with explosive growth.
I captured a shot of the rain gauge showing that we came just a fraction short of a full inch-and-a-half over about a 24-hour period. It was the perfect ongoing precipitation, able to soak through the top layer and saturate everything very completely. In fact, it seems wetter now than at any previous point during the recent melt of the full winter’s-worth of snow.
Another difference from then and now is that there are worms coming up out of the ground all over the place. If that doesn’t feel like spring…
We took a chance of leaving the horses out in the overnight rain on Wednesday evening, and it turned out to be the wrong choice. Cyndie went out into the soaking rain early yesterday morning to feed them, and found them all shivering drastically and begging to be let inside. They were crowding so tight at the gate that she couldn’t manage getting Legacy through alone, although he was the only one she had a rope around. All four horses came in at the same time, and with no hesitation or funny business, they each walked directly into their appointed stalls.
Message received.
I checked on them several times during the day yesterday, and they seemed as happy as could possibly be. I topped off their water and when the rain stopped late in the afternoon around their dinner time, I opened all the outside doors for them while I delivered feed and fresh hay. Not one of them gave a hint of being anxious to get out of the barn. It’s a good thing, because even though the rain had stopped falling, the runoff was still flowing and every last hoof print in the paddock was filled with water. There was not a dry place to stand anywhere outside.
I spent the rest of my day trying to be productive in the office of our house, organizing files and putting documents away in places where we just might stand a chance of finding them again should we need them. Delilah alternated between lounging around, napping, and demanding to go outside and get soaking wet in order to come right back in and get dried off so she could beg to be let back outside to get soaking wet so she could come right back in to get toweled off again. I started to wonder if she didn’t just want to be rubbed with a towel over and over.
Today should be a different day altogether. We expect to get some sunshine and reach reasonably warm temperatures. Will it dry up enough to mow? I doubt it, but there are other outdoor chores available. If nothing else, I can always get another kind of soaking, bathing in the warm solar rays while watching buds appear on tree branches. This is spring!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Darling Delilah
For a reason that is beyond me, there are times when our dog, Delilah, will circle an unusually large number of times before finally choosing to lie down in some random spot. Last night, it was a towel spread on the floor for her. I’d love to know what that thought process is all about.
In case I have neglected to mention it, Delilah has made great strides toward mastering the art of behaving well unsupervised, off-leash, and roaming free on our property. She performs charmingly well as my cohort in a variety of chores and exploits around our land. When I am raking or digging, she is all in, usually un-doing progress I have accomplished, but very obviously well-intentioned toward assisting with my tasks.
In a simple trek down the driveway to pick up the mail, she is a cheery companion, trotting ahead a short distance, turning to check my progress, then romping off to the side to explore the enticing smells left by critters large and small.
From the mindset of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone, I want to be aware of how much she adds to our experience here. Caring for her can be a lot of work, demanding our attention at times when it seems we can least afford it, but having her in our lives makes it well worth the effort.
Now if she can just learn to avoid baring her teeth and barking at the horses when it is time to be calm. We put the horses in the barn last night because of the cold rain, and at the critical moment when Cyndie was vulnerable between two horses who were anxious to get in, Delilah starts into a snarling, growling-bark to antagonize them. Another case of her “helping” in a way that absolutely does not help.
We think she and Pequenita are making great strides toward becoming friendly, respectful house-mates, but there are still too many times when Delilah will be amped up beyond reason and pursue the cat with too much exuberance.
Between moments of seeming to nap last night, she jumped up at the presence of Pequenita and upon my hearing what sounded like uncharacteristic amounts of hissing and meowing in protest, I was disturbed to discover a bit of fur on Delilah’s chin.
“Did you bite her!?” I exclaimed with startled upset.
I suppose it could just as easily have been a piece of Delilah’s own fur that Pequenita had dislodged with a swipe of her claws. I checked ‘Nita, who had parked in front of her food and looked no worse for the wear. In fact, in a page from the horse’s mode of behavior, both dog and cat were back together in minutes and appeared to have disregarded the previous interaction, appearing as if they were “going back to grazing” with no apparent angst carried over.
How could we love darling Delilah any more than we do? We lucked out in a big way when Cyndie uncovered the surprise availability of a 9-month-old Belgian Shepard Tervuren at a breeder not too far from us. Since then, she has grown into a beautiful, perfect dog for us.
In this case, we do know what we’ve got, before it is gone.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 