Posts Tagged ‘Delilah’
Other Things
There are other things than horses for us to deal with around here, even though the new herd is commanding the majority of our attention. Last Saturday, we did sneak away long enough to attend the “booya” hosted by our fencing contractors. There was plenty of good eatin’ to be had, but what really made the night for us was a trio playing blues music of a quality that could headline any venue in the city of Chicago. In a pole barn in the countryside outside of River Falls, no less! It was a wonderful surprise, not that I hadn’t been warned, but this was way better than I had expected.
Over the weekend, our trees came to life with the colors of fall. Each morning we would find that it looked like someone had been up all night painting leaves. I was walking Delilah in the evening when I spotted the setting sun through the trees. It made for a nice picture.
Yesterday was my weekday that I stay home from work, and I did some catching up on chores that have been neglected during the final preparations to get the horses here. I sorted through the pile of clothes that were pouring out of my closet and put away items that were clean, and washed things that needed it.
It was a perfect day for hanging laundry outside to dry: warm sunshine and gusting winds.
We have been here over 11 months now, and I had yet to ride my mountain bike on our trails. I think that is a function of how much the projects to get us ready for horses have dominated the bulk of our time. Well, no more. With the horses now here, with things pretty much in order, I felt the need to address some of the areas that have been suffering from neglect. I pumped up the tires and lubed the chain for the old bike’s maiden voyage around Wintervale.
The trip was made even sweeter by the company of our dog, Delilah. This will be a great way to get her some exercise that will burn off her energy. With her little orange vest on, we headed into the woods, down the steepest hill.
I don’t think she knew what she was in for, as we went from zero to high-speed in an instant. She loves to chase, and I made the perfect “rabbit” out front to encourage her to sprint after me. As the grade changed to flat and then eventually to up-hill, my speed dropped to near zero. Delilah would pass me by and go running ahead on the trail. It is kind of deflating to have her out front, pausing frequently to look back at me, as if to ask, “Are you coming?”
Or maybe, with my wheezing and panting, she was asking, “Are you going to be alright?”
Since it was my first ride in a long time, I made it a short one, to save my legs and lungs for other pursuits, and then went to the paddocks to let the horses out into the big field. After that, I needed to mow the lawn, as we have been neglecting this chore for weeks.
It was a day for tending to things not directly related to the horses, and by evening, I had brought some order to the chaos. It was a good way to wrap up September. The month that vanished into thin air.
How the heck did October get here already?
Featuring Hunter
Last night, Cyndie had a dinner date in the cities, so it was my first night alone in charge of the horses. I sat and watched them graze for a long time, then collected some apple treats for them, from the stash on our trail. After that, I wandered away to retrieve Delilah from her kennel.
Lately, the usual routine for me letting Delilah out, involves her rushing to the front yard to grab a toy for me to toss around. Not this time. Interestingly, she showed a very distinct interest to head the other direction around the house, toward the trail that leads to the paddocks. She led me right back to the horses for a visit.
Before Cyndie left for the evening, she had described her day with the horses. Cyndie and her friend, Mercedes, had walked pairs of the horses around our property, to better familiarize them with their new surroundings. The route included a stop at Delilah’s kennel, where the horses were now on the outside of a fence, looking in at the dog, in contrast to their previous meetings at the paddocks.
I’m wondering if Delilah’s immediate interest to go see the horses stemmed from their interactions at her kennel earlier in the day.
I had my camera with me while I was sitting to watch the horses graze earlier, randomly snapping varieties of their positioning. Upon review, when I got the images displayed on my computer, I discovered that the horse seemingly always in the front position was, Hunter.
He’s certainly not camera-shy.
Dezirea had a swollen eye, so earned a fly screen mask to give her a break from the unrelenting harassment of the winged beasts.
Identifying them in this last shot, from left to right is, Legacy, Cayenne, Hunter, and Dezirea.
Pet Pics
Maybe I am compensating in advance of getting horses, (because I expect to be taking a lot of pictures of horses in the near future) but I found myself taking a fair number of pictures of the dog and cats this past weekend.
It is not uncommon to find the cats napping on our bed in the afternoon. Most of the time, they pick their heads up when we enter the room, but every once in a while, they are so zonked out they fail to stir, even if we are being noisy. That happened Saturday, and I was in and out of the room several times when I decided to grab the camera and capture Mozyr with his paws all curled up. On the second image, he managed to open one eye to see what was going on.
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Delilah was being a fun playmate and playing tug-of-war with me. I prefer chasing her when she plays keep-away, because she always gets me laughing, but she often morphs that game into tug-of-war by finally running right at me and getting me to grab whatever she has clutched in her jaws.
We continue to exercise her to condition her to come when called. For the most part, she appears to be responding well. That doesn’t preclude her from still wandering into the neighbor’s field if we lose track of her for too long. It makes doing chores a little more complicated, because when she is off-leash, we need to pay almost constant attention to what she is doing.
She tried to be all innocent, on one occasion when she took a long time to return, but her feet smelled so bad from the manure that had been spread on the field, it was a dead giveaway as to where she had been. That earned her one of several baths she ended up getting over the weekend. I captured a shot of her in the sun, revealing some of the wave her coat gets when wet.
It’s Sunday
It is Sunday, and we’ve got more things on our mind to accomplish today than there is time to achieve. It is both wonderfully exhilarating, and frustrating. Luckily, we are pretty used to this scenario, and tend to roll with whatever pops up, consciously choosing to not let it frustrate us too much when we don’t get it all done. Not being able to get it all done is one of the reasons it has taken us this long to get where we are.
At the same time, we frequently hear messages that we have accomplished a lot in the short time we have been here. It is a relative perspective, eh?
Last night, Cyndie got a text from her niece, questioning whether we had gotten horses yet. No, not yet.
I’ve been dabbling with getting a web site created for Wintervale Ranch and creating a logo. I know what I want, but need to learn more of the functional manipulation of vector graphics and using Adobe Illustrator, which somehow Cyndie has on her computer. I think that is funny, because she has no idea how to use it. I know just enough to quickly get entirely frustrated (gee, there’s that word again) over not knowing how to achieve the outcome I can visualize in my mind.
I need to learn how to properly manipulate files to load our Wintervale site with pages. Time in front of the computer screen is time away from the work that remains to be done on the property. (And time on the computer doing Wintervale web site work is time stolen from composing Relative Something posts…)
Yesterday, Cyndie brought home additional panels for Delilah’s outdoor kennel. We want to expand it to give her enough space to be comfortable relieving herself in a spot that is away from her “living” area. Currently, it appears she waits all day for us to let her out, which really defeats the purpose of her having an outdoor kennel.
Delilah is doing great, by the way. We have mostly kept her leashed since her run into the neighbor’s field where she found the carcass that kept her from heeding our commands to return. We are exercising her on returning to our calls, providing treats and praise when she obeys. Repetition, repetition, repetition. She is a great dog, and excellent companion, so it is well worth our effort.
The cats are less enthralled with a canine companion, but they are making the best of the situation. Since the dog is mostly confined to the front room of the house, I am always surprised when I find her balls in the bedroom or bathroom. I think the cats enjoy being able to confiscate them. I have caught Mozyr eating out of Delilah’s food bowl more than once. When the dog’s away, the cats do play.
We have noticed evidence of a bat in the house (droppings and scratching in an inside wall), but have not seen any in flight, lately. As the season continues to shift toward winter, I wonder if the dog and cats will deter the likely onslaught of bats and mice, in case we get anything like what stormed our fortress last year.
It’s Sunday. I’ve got to get out and join Cyndie in some work. Hope you enjoy your day!
Dog Day
The description of our hot days of summer as “dog days” is supposed to be in reference to the hottest days, or a period of inactivity or sluggishness. It was particularly hot here yesterday, but nothing about the day was sluggish, especially for Delilah. She had a day that pushed us to our limits of tolerance. It all started with an unplanned visit to the vet, for which we certainly don’t hold her at fault.
Last Monday, we were down at the labyrinth, with guests, and had been attempting to keep Delilah occupied by tossing a “frisbee”-type disc for her to catch and return. As we visited, I somewhat absent-mindedly gave the disc a fling and as Delilah bolted after it, she caught a hind leg on a short wire decorative fence that Cyndie had placed to mark part of the labyrinth border. Delilah let out a yelp and briefly panicked as the multiple linked sections of the fencing appeared to be chasing after her.
At the time, we didn’t realize the degree to which it had punctured her leg. Five days later, Cyndie noticed the wound was looking worse, not better, and called the vet. Delilah earned another round of antibiotics and this time, did come home with the “cone of shame” to keep her from chewing at the spot of the wound.
By the time they got home from the vet, Julian and Allison had arrived, with her dog, for a visit. Having another dog here as a guest provided a good opportunity to work on socializing Delilah with other animals, but it takes a fair amount of attention to manage the interactions. No surprise to me, since Delilah has yet to calm down when our cats show themselves, Delilah demonstrated over-excitement and a fair amount of aggression toward the unfamiliar canine presence on her turf.
After those guys departed, we closed a door to keep the cats in our bedroom and provided Delilah a chance to move around the house, off-leash. She eventually found her way over to the spot on the carpet where Allison’s dog had been, and promptly peed. I guess I don’t blame her for behaving like a dog, but it didn’t win her any points for having house privileges. Out the door she got tossed.
We headed down to the barn, where Cyndie had been watering the seeded dirt along the new access around the building. Unfortunately, the water pooled in a couple of low spots where the new gravel had been spread. It was good to learn, though, and I set about raking the area to correct the situation. Now, instead of a pool of water, I had a soupy area of muddy gravel, graded just right. We went around the other side of the barn and put up boards in the high heat of the late afternoon.
When we finished with the boards, and were headed back up to the house, we turned the corner to find Delilah lounging in the cool of that muddy gravel soup.
Then Cyndie decided to try sprinkling some additional seed on the high side of the dirt slant above the gravel, around which she had already constructed an impromptu fence to keep people and dogs off the new seed. Of course, Delilah got in there and dashed to and fro, chasing some invisible enticement. Cyndie hollered, I scolded and commanded, Cyndie threatened, and Delilah thrilled at the excitement. What a circus.
To top it all off, Delilah then wandered off our property, into the neighbor’s field. I was up by the house when I heard a gunshot –a frequent sound around here, but this seemed closer than others– and then noticed Cyndie calling for the dog. I grew alarmed, because we keep talking about wanting to introduce Delilah to our neighbors who own the woods that surround two sides of our property, since we know they hunt and shoot guns a lot, and because Delilah has a distinctive profile that appears wolf-like, and coloring that matches some of the fox around here. We don’t want them to mistake our dog for a wild animal, if Delilah happens to wander into their woods or fields.
After several frantic calls, I spotted Delilah through the trees that form the border between their field and our property. She had an old mummified carcass in her mouth. I have no idea if the gunshot was related to her being over there, but it sure feeds my grave concerns about her lack of response to our commands. With a dead animal in her jaw, she seems to switch off her “pet” mode and cares nothing for our alpha role.
She’s the one with the prize.
Muddy, and hoarding her smelly dead prize, Cyndie left Delilah on the front lawn, to chew her grotesque carcass, vowing to leave the dog out all night alone.
It didn’t last. By the time dinner was almost done, when Delilah took a break from gnawing on her find and showed up at the back door, Cyndie was moved to go out in the dark and give Delilah a bath. They finished the night, both freshly cleaned, cuddling on the floor.
What a dog day!
Big Bone
Over the weekend, Cyndie reported that Delilah had dragged a carcass out of the woods. I was in the shower when she came in the house, looking for a camera. I asked what it was, but Cyndie said she couldn’t tell.
“It’s something big!” she announced.
It’s funny how our minds quickly conjure up images of what it might be. I stood there, washing my hair, imagining a variety of gory scenes of dead critters with dangling legs being dragged by our dog. A possum? A porcupine? How big was Cyndie’s “big?” How badly decomposed was it to be unrecognizable by Cyndie?
I offered her my camera, when she couldn’t locate her own, and continued to ponder whether it was something Delilah killed, or the remains of some other wild circle-of-life event that took place in our woods.
Delilah has a big fondness for bones. Cyndie has purchased several chunky bones, like pig knees from Fleet Farm, that Delilah carries around, often burying them, and sometimes crunching them to pieces. There was a time, a few weeks ago, when Delilah showed up with a long bone that looked like a leg bone, that she had found in our woods. That became a prized possession for several days, beating out all others for her attention.
When Cyndie returned with the camera, I got my chance to see what she was talking about. Yeah, it was big, but it isn’t what I’d call a carcass. My guess is that it came from the same source as that leg bone. I believe it is probably from the skeleton of the same deer that I discovered in our woods last fall.
That skeleton made quite an impression when we found it last year, and it’s still having an impact to this day. I’m actually a bit relieved that it wasn’t a new carcass that showed up. This one seems familiar, and we have made our peace with the loss of life that occurred.
Cyndie’s Idea
We are in the middle of a multi-day excessive heat advisory and that high dewpoint temperature is making quite an impression. It is hard to drink enough water to offset the amount lost to sweat. My belly gets so full from drinking water that it gurgles when I walk, and I’m still thirsty!
I took Monday off from work and lounged around for some extra hours in the morning, just because I could. Since it was so hot outside, I decided to let Delilah stay inside and nap on the cool tile floor. She was asleep when I stepped out to take on a couple of outdoor projects. Later, when I stopped back to check, I found her gnawing on the wood of our sunroom walls. She hadn’t done that again since the first time we caught her, so I was hoping we were beyond it.
Regardless the heat, I banished her to the outdoor kennel. It is covered, and in the shade, so I wasn’t worried that she would over-heat, but I knew it wasn’t going to be as nice as being inside the air-conditioned house.
When Cyndie arrived home from work, she had some fresh ideas for how we might advance our progress on normalizing the relationship between Delilah and our cats. Up to now, we have been keeping Delilah confined to a small space near the front door, and the cats have had free access to the whole house. The cats seem to have gotten used to the presence of a dog, but Delilah continues to over-react to most sightings of the cats. Our plan has been to keep her restrained until she proves she can remain calm when the cats appear.
Cyndie’s new idea involved confining the cats to one room, and giving Delilah a chance to roam free throughout the rest of the house. I thought it was such a great idea, I wanted to try it right away. Delilah was very keen about diving into the cat food that we left out. We corrected that quickly enough. Then it was a game of following her nose to every nook and cranny where those cats have left their scent.
While we were in the mode of allowing Delilah to exercise some new freedom, Cyndie decided to try letting her go outside the front door all by herself. From my perch on the couch in the main room, I asked what the dog was doing. 
“She walked out into the yard. Oh, now she is headed around the garage.”
One second later, Delilah was at the back door, on the deck, peering in at us. Cyndie let her back in.
I think it was a brilliant change of routine to give her some free access to the rest of the house. We are intent on not rushing the cats into making contact with the dog, but my patience is being tested waiting for the dog to relax around the cats. This is a helpful exercise for me, because it provides a new way to advance toward our goal, and gives me a sense of making progress in that direction.
It Happened
Here I go again with the old, “be careful what you wish for” line of thinking. I was hoping that our new dog, Delilah, would eventually turn out to be good at controlling the populations of critters around here; or at the least, discouraging them from being a nuisance.
Late on Saturday, to our surprise, she landed her first kill. She found a little bunny buried deep in tall grass, and sat at that spot for most of the evening. As daylight faded into darkness, we began to wonder what was going on out there. It appears she felt no compulsion to need to eat it.
The next morning, after Cyndie let Delilah outside, she returned to the front door, after a brief period of free time, with the still-intact, yet definitely dead, rabbit. She was carrying around her little trophy like it was a precious new play toy.
Eeew.
Critter Controllers
Back in October of last year, when we arrived as new owners of this property and home, we immediately discovered that mice and moles appeared to be all too comfortable here. The mice inspired our energies toward getting a couple of cats as house mates. Mozyr was to be our big mouser, based on his incredibly intelligent and athletic showing-off performance during our visit to the feline rescue shelter.
Pequenita is just a wee little thing, but proved to be quite the go-getter and primary instigator for affection and initiator of conflict.
Neither one of them has left a gift carcass for us, during the time since we brought them home, but we have not seen any evidence of a mouse indoors during that period, either.
They are doing something right for us.
Last fall, the grounds here had an unnerving amount of dirt mounds and trail scars to indicate we had quite an infestation of moles and/or gophers. There are oodles of suggested ways to trap them, poison them, or chase them off. One brilliant method involves eliminating the insects and grub worms under the lawn that the varmints find so appealing. I’m just not up for all of that.
We got a dog.
Up to this point of the summer, we haven’t been seeing any new mounds of dirt, but something is slowly, but surely, tunneling under the grass, leaving a maze of scars in the lawn. I have no idea if Delilah will turn out to be the solution for driving off the moles, but last night, she displayed a fair amount of interest in chasing a scent she picked up when I directed her attention to one of the soft spots trailing across the turf.
Happy Reports
For those of you following my story as far back as June, when I may have mentioned missing my annual June bike trip to remain at work covering for a person out on a surprise medical leave for a potentially fatal affliction… I have news of a good outcome. It has been a long wait since the June diagnosis all the way to an August surgery. The surgical procedure went better than anticipated and I learned yesterday that recovery has progressed in leaps and bounds in the last few days.
What a joyous relief!
While filling in at work, I’ve returned to a full 5-day work week, and yesterday it was a good thing I was there on a Monday. My attention was needed in a lot of directions, most of them customer related. Luckily, business volume is holding steady, although on the brink of not as much as we are comfortable with, and I am processing a fair number of recent new orders.
Then the happiness continued at home!
In the mail, I found we received our first rebate check for the installation of our new geothermal furnace. Woo hoo!
Cyndie and I spent some focused time with Delilah, and decided she seemed a little under the weather. She has been on antibiotics for over a week, treating her Lyme disease. It seems like there is a battle going on in her. We hope the antibiotics are winning.
She recovered enough energy to come down to the woods with us to help clear trail. We let her run loose while we worked and then gave her repetitions at the exercise of coming when called. She performed well every time, earning enough treats that I think she is getting the picture.
I got her to grab a few sticks and move them away, and while I was digging out rocks, she gladly helped do some digging. Unfortunately, she has a penchant for coming back and digging up the holes I had just filled. She returned from one of her forays into the woods, with a particularly precious prize: an animal bone.
Our success with her, and our work down on the trail, brought us much happiness at the end of an already happy day.
I couldn’t resist stacking a few of the stones that we dug out of the middle of the path. Distributed in random groups on the side of the trail, they add a sense of spirit to the wonderfully magical route that we have carved through that part of our woods.
And that made us very happy, too.
Relative Something 