Posts Tagged ‘dog’
Got Away
Made it to the lake place yesterday afternoon for a few days of solo holiday. Without doing much in the way of additional cleanup of snow from Wednesday, in the morning I walked Asher with Cyndie, and we did horse chores together. The scenery was pretty striking, with the bright morning sunshine bouncing off the oodles of snow that had fallen.
The horses didn’t seem as fixated on their grain as usual, and Light even left her food to seek some hands-on attention from Cyndie. After obliging Light with lots of robust scratching, Cyndie ended up covered in shedded horse hair. When she got back to the house, Cyndie changed her shirt but moments later reported she was soon covered in dog hair.
After breakfast, Cyndie assembled enough home-cooked meals from our freezer to feed me for more than a week and sent me on my way for the drive to the lake. Before I left, I drove my car around the hay shed a couple of times to convince myself the crude job I did of clearing the heavy, wet snow would be adequate for traffic while I was away. We are expecting the farrier today.
I texted a message to Cyndie to let her know the tire tracks were mine and not some unexpected visitor. When we were walking Asher first thing in the morning, I spotted footprints in the deep snow of the north loop trail, so we trudged over to check them out. Cyndie asked if they were mine from the day before when I brought Asher back from the neighbors’, but I said no. We wondered who would have been walking on our trail.
Then, when we came upon a pile of branches under the snow, I realized it was me who had made those tracks. I remembered noticing the branches and had thought it was a limb that had fallen in the storm before figuring out it was the pile I had created when cutting up the downed tree a couple of days before.
Memory problems much, John?
When I had been pulling Asher down the middle of the unplowed road after his escape, I spotted a truck coming toward us and diverted to the ditch to give the driver the full width of the road to navigate his way against the drifts. We then made our way along that short section of our trail to reach our driveway. I blame the temper tantrum I was having at the time for completely forgetting we’d made those tracks less than 24 hours before. [shaking my head in embarrassment]
There is a lot less snow in Hayward. The short leg of the driveway to our place hadn’t even been plowed.
I am going to see how long I can keep myself from shoveling the front steps as an exercise in letting one of my compulsions go unaddressed for once.
While puzzling in the afternoon, I listened to a couple of 1960s recordings of Bill Cosby’s standup routines. I have no idea what caused me to think of choosing that.
I think my mind really needs to get away for a while.
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Delayed Escape
I’m still at home this morning. The snowstorm that the weather service named “Lola” created more work than I could complete in a day. And it was miserable work, indeed. On most occasions, I actually enjoy clearing snow. Yesterday was not one of those days.
First of all, we awoke to more than 8 inches of heavy, windblown snow plastering everything. Beneath that coating of white was a layer of slush left from the gradual transition from rain to sleet to snow. All of that rain had nowhere to go since the ground is frozen and once again, hydrostatic pressure pushed water up through the concrete floor in the basement or along the block walls and soaked all the area rugs.
Cyndie said she would tend to the horses so I could get a start on plowing. It would have been easier to stay with her. The wind was ferocious and new snow was still falling. My goal was to try just breaking through with a couple of passes to make it a bit easier to do when it stopped snowing. It was barely possible. The machine and I got coated with a complete layer of sticky snow as I tried blasting my way through the deep drifts with the blade only lowered part of the way down.
After breakfast, I was using a roof rake to pull down the giant drift overhanging our front door and letting Asher play with his favorite ball while dragging his 30’ leash behind him. I noticed he had stepped away from the ball and I called to him to command his return. He gave me that look of mischief, turned, and ran full speed the length of the driveway.
I knew right where he was headed, to the neighbors across the road, where he started barking ferociously at their cat. I needed to trudge through the deep snow on the unplowed road to climb the rise to their driveway and was completely exhausted when I finally reached him. The ONLY redeeming aspect of this angering situation was that I got to visit briefly with our neighbor, Eileen.
Walking the equally arduous distance back in my seething frustration left me too tired to finish shoveling away the snow I’d pulled off the roof. I went in for lunch and waited for it to stop snowing while Cyndie took up the task of clearing the mess of snow in front of the garage doors. Every scoop of the shovel would end up sticking.
It’s hard to plow by the house because there’s nowhere to push the snow, so hand shoveling is usually easier. When there is almost a foot of snow, nothing is easier.
I made reasonable progress cleaning up the rest of the driveway with the plow in the late afternoon. The township plow on the road left quite a thick mess I needed to hand shovel because it was too much for the Grizzly to push. At least the driver was nice enough to be cautious around our mailbox this time.
Looking back toward the barn, you can see by the snow line in the trees how that hill protects from the north wind. The whipping wind had cleaned all of the upper branches, but the lower half of all the trees still held snow.
I won’t be surprised today to find blowing snow has drifted into the driveway again. I’d like to head up north before dark, so I intend to do the absolute minimum of additional plowing or shoveling with that in mind. Best laid plans, and all that… Wish me luck.
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Gross Bug
Cyndie spotted a giant dead bug on the floor that looked so gross she went to get some paper towel to pick it up, wondering what the heck it was and where it had come from in the middle of winter.
Upon closer inspection, it was a shard of Velcro that Asher had chewed to bits. Since Asher likes to focus his toothy destruction on the Velcro of his Tearribles toys, we decided Cyndie could try sewing up a toy that is basically just Velcro seams for him to gnaw on. She has yet to test it on him.
I figure we will be seeing plenty more of these kinds of gross bugs lying around once Asher gets a chance to chew on this latest homemade dog toy experiment.
Maybe we will give it to him next week in celebration of his 3rd birthday.
Speaking of birthdays, yesterday was Mia’s actual birthday. I think I’ve written before that Thoroughbreds all have their ages incremented on January 1st each year to simplify grouping the horses for racing. As of the first of the year, Mia turned 25, but the actual day of her birth is February 13. One of the volunteers from This Old Horse, who has developed a special fondness for Mia, stopped by yesterday with a treat for her: a mixture of some sweet feed, carrots, and peppermint.
The other three horses all got a token serving of carrots to munch.
Happy February Birthdays to Mia and Asher!
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Unplanned Shots
It was just a normal walk with the dog that ended in a play session in the front yard. Cyndie directed my attention to a leaf standing up on its stem in the snow. The spectacle seemed photo-worthy to me, so while she was tugging and throwing Asher’s favorite outdoor toy, I crouched low to capture the interesting phenomenon.
Not convinced that this was the optimal angle, I repositioned myself to try again. As I did, Asher took interest in my movement. In my haste to get off another shot before he arrived to obliterate the scene, I heard my phone camera clicking off a burst of photos.
As quickly as I could, I leveled the phone for one last try before Asher arrived.
I like how it turned out.
He didn’t entirely flatten the leaf; its stem remained frozen to the ground, but he disturbed the surrounding snow enough to make the scene a much less interesting mess.
To complement the fun photo shots of our natural environment, we’ve also been listening to a lot of catfight sounds the raccoons have been making for whatever reason raccoon conflicts might be occurring. (See: sounds raccoons make during mating season.) While walking through the woods this morning with Asher, I heard a wonderful owl hoot. When we caught up with Cyndie in the barn, I told her about having heard an owl.
She said she heard it, too. She then told me she’d recently read up on the sounds the raccoons have been making, and it said that sometimes a raccoon can sound like an owl screech when mating. That would have spoiled it for me, except we both agreed the sound we heard was not a screech at all. It was definitely a perfect, pleasant hoot, and we’re going to go with it having been an owl.
Our natural world at its finest.
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Writing Results
On the 31st day of January in the year 2025, our weather is mild, and life on the ranch is serene. Yesterday, spring-like songs were floating in the air from birds taking full advantage of the softening of winter’s grip. Cyndie has been reporting from the coast of southern California and sending me pictures of textures in the sand and surf that she knows I appreciate.
The temperatures at each of our locations are not that different, but it’s chilly where she is and warm at home.
If you are a person who journals, this might be obvious to you, but it has been helpful for me to write about times when I find myself getting in the way of my own progress.
After posting yesterday about my situation with the trail cam and the pruning saw, I was compelled to take another crack at both. I stopped off in the shop after feeding the horses with the intent of giving a more intense effort hunting for the saw in the 4th place I thought I may have stashed it. It wasn’t there, but then I turned around and spotted it in plain sight on a shelf by my circular saw. A saw by a saw. Perfectly logical.
That success inspired me to grab the trail cam and set it up by the fence where there is an obvious animal trail that I believe is our neighboring fox. Asher and I left that spot and headed down the Perimeter Trail toward a series of young oak trees from which I wanted to remove low branches. To keep the dog tethered to me, I brought a clip to hook his leash to one of my belt loops. That allowed me to have both hands free to tend to my pruning.
It didn’t occur to me that taking my eyes off him might lead to something unsavory. I was working down in the dry creek along our southern border, which gave Asher access to the neighbor’s side of the ditch where I wouldn’t normally let him meander. When we set off on our way again after I finished sawing, I noticed he had a thick wad of grass wound up in the prongs of his collar. He had been rolling around in the tall grass.
With the warm temperatures, the thawing ground offers all sorts of scents that Asher can’t resist rubbing against. It wasn’t until we got back into the house that it became noticeable, but his coat now has picked up a heady aroma of dusty, dry grass and some wildlife perfume that smells a bit like plastic when it gets too hot.
It’s not as lovely as it sounds.
I am not writing that to inspire me to give him a bath.
We spent time out on the deck in the afternoon heat, where I could sand my current wood sculpting project without concern for making a mess, and Asher’s stink was only occasionally annoying.
No, I have no intention of trying to bathe him.
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Animal Focused
There is nothing else I need to do. Caring for and entertaining (in Asher’s case) our animals is my only duty for a week. When Asher and I approached the paddocks yesterday morning, I thought it looked like the horses might have been spooked into the back pasture. Light was alone in the round pen. Her movements gave me the impression she didn’t want to be in there anymore. However, she wasn’t making any progress to the open doorway.
I carried on with cleaning up under the overhang, filling hay nets, and preparing their buckets of wetted grain while they messed around in the fields.
The horses kept looking in the direction of a crowing rooster pheasant to the north. The apparent alarm of the horses had me wondering if the pheasant was calling out a warning of a predator in the vicinity. The next time I looked to see if I could find what was bothering the horses, I found the pheasant strutting around on our driveway like he owned the place.
Well, that indicated to me there was no threat around, or that pheasant would have noped out of there long ago.
I walked through the small paddock toward the crazy bird, and he took to the air with all sorts of squawking and disappeared across the plowed field north of us. Slowly, the horses made their way in and settled down to eat.
Asher and I headed out mid-morning to check on how nice the thaw was progressing and found the horses standing rather sleepily in the sunshine.
Since the dog and I had trudged a full circuit of the property, I offered him a chance to pause in the warmth radiating off the doors of the hay shed, which was also serving as a good windbreak. I leaned back against the shed door and closed my eyes, knowing it was going to be very easy to fade into a nap.
The sound of a horse stumbling rejuvenated my alertness. It was Light. She is notorious for failing to lock her knees sufficiently when she drifts off into a standing slumber. I liken it to the feeling when fading off to sleep at night, that suddenly the bed is flipping over and startles me back to awake. That hasn’t happened to me for a long time. My sleep arrives easily without any fuss these days.
Asher was too busy surveying his kingdom to nap with the rest of us. He saved that for later, on the floor in the house where the heat was amplified through the full-length glass in a door.
I never said focusing on the animals is strenuous each and every minute. Since they are all great nappers, there are plenty of moments when it can be superbly calm and restful.
Even more so when the weather is sunny and warm.
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Lost Ball
Asher’s favorite outdoor toy is a Jolly Ball with a thick rope through it. Sometimes, he just wants to chew on the rope, but mostly, he wants someone to try to take it away from him. A little tug of war, a hearty “kill shake,” and if I don’t show enough interest, he will stand to put his front paws on me to engage in some more aggressive tugging play.
Our goal is usually to get it away from him because when we throw it across the yard, Asher leaps after it with such infectious, joyful energy it fills us with the utmost glee. Then, he races back to us for another round of “please take this from me; no, don’t.”
He stopped for a moment the other day and looked around. It looked to me like he lost the ball.
If he stops playing long enough, I invite him to join me in returning to the warmth indoors since that is where I really want to be after too many minutes of this game in frigid temperatures. His usual reaction at this point is to pounce on the ball again like it’s the first time he’s seen it in weeks. It often takes several tries at ending this game before he lets us “win” and leaves the ball behind.
There are times when we aren’t ready to go in the house but intend to take him for a long walk. If he sees the ball as we just stepped out of the house and bounds after it for chewing, shaking, and tugging, we find ourselves encouraging him to walk first and play later. Yesterday, Cyndie set off down the driveway with Asher, and he carried the ball away, clenching the rope in his teeth as they walked. She said he kept it in his grip the whole way to the lookout knoll with the rocking chairs, back to the barn where Cyndie checked on the waterer, and up to the house again, finally choosing to drop it on the driveway in front of the garage door before they came inside.
He is so attached to this toy we ended up buying a smaller-sized version that we let him have indoors. He took to the little one right away, but I think he prefers the thickness of the rope in the outdoor ball. He seemed so happy to chew on the rock-hard frozen rope during this cold spell that it gave me the idea of setting one of his indoor felt Kong balls outside long enough to freeze. It made it so hard to chomp in order to squeak it that it wasn’t the thrill for him I imagined.
For the record, no ball was actually lost in the activities described in this post. This is Asher I’m writing about. He knows exactly where all his dropped toys are at all times.
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Counting Leaves
It is not impossible to function at -14°F (-25°C), but it can be a bit of a hassle to tie up hay nets and distribute buckets of grain –one of which now gets watered down— in such extreme conditions. I am very happy that Asher showed a keen sense of efficiency and adapted perfectly to my plan to shortcut our morning walk and get his business out of the way as swiftly as possible.
The horses were equally focused on their tasks and offered no resistance to assuming their positions and chomping grain with their frozen whiskers getting messier by the minute.
The feelings of accomplishment when returning to the house and getting the feeling back in our fingers and toes don’t entirely dispel the intense urge to have remained under the warm covers of our bed instead.
We tell ourselves these extreme cold snaps that are difficult to survive help to control the populations of pest animals and insects, as well as the number of added people who might consider moving into our region when their homes prove to be inhabitable.
I looked up at the leaves in the big oak tree over our driveway and had two thoughts.
There aren’t many leaves left clinging to all those branches. On the other hand, there are still more leaves up in that tree than I could count.
In contrast, there is a young oak nearby that looks as though it still is holding all its leaves after they dried up and turned brown.
There is also a birdhouse with a birch bark roof that features an opening that wasn’t there when initially built.
I think the residents left for a warmer climate a long time ago.
As harsh as this weather is, the forecast indicates the bite will be even more intense tomorrow. The critters that survive this will have something to brag about.
I have no conclusion that wraps these contemplations this morning into a logical theme. That would involve more thought than I have to muster. With what little energy I have, I intend to curl into a ball like Asher is doing right now on the couch beside me and save what I can for the next foray into the Arctic elements outside later this afternoon.
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Excited Morning
It was not a quiet week in Wintervale this morning. It is cold out there, but not below zero yet. I took Asher for a walk, and Cyndie headed straight for the barn to minimize her time out in the cold. Just as Asher and I popped out of the woods, a noisy truck could be heard up by the house. The dog was only mildly intrigued, and I was able to quickly deduce the neighborhood coyote hunters were busy at it.
Cyndie had a chance to check in with them near the barn, telling them we had seen the coyotes on our night camera a day or two ago. She told him she would keep our dog in the barn while they were in the vicinity.
Much to my glee, we returned to the ordinary orientation for feeding the horses this morning. Mix and Mia on the same side together, and Swings and Light on the other.
Mia is doing well and consuming much closer to her regular amounts of grain again. We are back to watering down her servings, which is a hassle in the extreme cold. If it prevents Mia from having further problems, it’s a hassle we will endure.
The high winds in our forecast had not started yet, but when a breeze hit me and made the air biting cold, I suggested we blanket the other horses sooner rather than later. Light was not interested in accepting a blanket and danced a few circles while we made several attempts. About that same time, the hunting dogs started howling in our vicinity. That put Asher in a tizzy of barking in the barn.
Soon, we heard shots being fired in the field next door, and the horses went on high alert. About the time things should have calmed down, one of the hunters could be heard calling his dog pleasantly. That quickly changed from pleasant when it became obvious the hound wasn’t obeying. Cyndie saw the pup slip through the growth on the edge of our property and sniff around one of her gardens. Asher kicked up his barking to a new level.
One of the hunters drove up our driveway to retrieve two of their straying dogs, and we all lived happily ever after.
We left Light blanketless and headed up to the house for our breakfast, tolerating Asher’s unrelenting urge to continue barking throughout our meal. I’ll be interested to see if Light will be a little more accepting of her blanket as the temperature drops throughout the afternoon.
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Found One
The day appears to have arrived when this old Boomer has been forced to adopt the “Block” version of composing my WordPress posts. For a very long time, I have been relying on a link to use what they called “Classic Editor,” but the latest update has eliminated my old path to that option. If my posts look different, it is because I am a newbie in terms of using the “wonderful” (/s) features of the Block mode.
Color me disgruntled.
On to what I was thinking about posting. Last year, at the end of the winter season, I planned to retire a lined flannel outdoor shirt/jacket that had lost a snap closure and had been given two hand-sewn repairs by Cyndie to stretch its life a little further.
We both shopped at length last year, trying to find a replacement. I was particularly interested in seeking out the exact same garment by way of brand name and product numbers. I couldn’t find any proof that it still existed.
New and different versions had some features I was after, but not all of the ones that I wanted. We gave up trying, and I hung the old one on a hook in the closet. When the cold weather finally arrived this winter, I pulled out the same old tattered shirt again, just because.
Of course, it ripped again, this time in a long, gaping, three-way tear that wasn’t worth fixing. I wore it like that anyway for a while but it really was getting ridiculous.
Cyndie searched again and came up with a version from Wrangler that seemed to tick all the boxes. It arrived yesterday, and I am pleased to finally have a replacement winter work shirt jacket with no rips.
Okay, I think I just found Classic Editing. Does this look any different? Honestly, I think one of the more difficult aspects of getting older is not having an interest in whatever the next latest and greatest version of anything is. The world of technology pretty much lost me at touch screens.
A flannel shirt with snap closures, quilted taffeta lining, and side pockets shouldn’t be that hard to come by, no? I don’t want a zipper, buttons, shaggy fleece lining, or a hood, thank you. It wasn’t easy, but we finally found one.
For those of you waiting on pins and needles to find out if Mia pooped, yes, she did. Three and a half times overnight, Wednesday to Thursday. She was eating better all day yesterday and seemed perfectly fine to me. Cyndie is a bit more cautious because Mia isn’t yet back to eating full-sized servings of grain.
I feel bad having her confined to the small paddock when she spends much of her time standing near the fence and staring out into the hay field. It is my hope that she will regain her previous freedoms before today is over. I’m letting Cyndie make the final decision.
Asher and I will just keep giving her puppy eyes to influence her to agree with us that Mia is all better.
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Relative Something 