Posts Tagged ‘dog’
Twice Fooled
It’s the dog, again. She fooled me twice yesterday, and will now be back on a leash or in her kennel for a while when in my care. Each time Delilah runs off I feel like such a sucker to her shenanigans. She had been doing well lately, so I had become less concerned with her getting out of sight on occasion.
Yesterday morning, she was behaving like her usual self and checking out the crew and equipment of the fencing company. With all the activity happening, it surprised me that she would run off and leave it. She was gone so long that the fencers finished and left, and I went in the house for lunch without having seen a hint of her for hours.
I kept my eyes out for her during my lunch, and eventually spotted her movement down by the barn. I hollered at her and got her to come running for the house. She was a mess of burrs. Delilah was confined to quarters while I tended to a few indoor projects after my lunch, but then something in me decided to give her a second chance.
To start, I gave her 100% of my attention, and we spent a long time together on the front lawn where I worked diligently to detangle the burrs from her thick coat. It was another beautiful day, as sunshine had returned with such strength that Delilah needed to get up and move over to some shade in the middle of my de-burring effort. The beautiful wispy clouds in the deep blue sky were dreamy.
As I lay in the grass beside her, I closed my eyes and realized I could easily fall asleep. It was probably less than a minute, but the sound of her rustling in the leaves nearby woke me from the brief slumber and told me I needed to get back to an activity that would keep her around. Delilah did great, keeping me close company while I worked in the shop to repair a broken bird feeder.
It’s the one that has been laying on my shop floor to dry out for, oh… probably 6-months, after an incident when Cyndie was on crutches and took Delilah out on a leash in a thunderstorm. A boom of thunder had caused Delilah to bolt for who knows where, wrapping her leash around the post of the bird feeder, tipping over both it and Cyndie, as well as the bush growing there, all in one frenetic moment of panic.
I kept Delilah in close contact while I fed the horses and as a load of gravel was dumped in front of the barn. She smartly gave the huge truck due respect and stayed by my side. As I spread some of the gravel around, she laid down in the shady grass on the other side of the pile. In a blink of time, I came around the pile and she wasn’t there anymore. No sight of her in any direction. No answer to my whistle and calls.
She’d done it to me again, twice in the same day. I was really irked by that. After giving her a reasonable amount of time to return on her own, I set out on an unhappy hunt to find her. With my suspicions about her visiting the neighbor’s place across the street, that’s the direction I headed. I popped out of some brush at the edge of our property onto 650th Street, just in time to see her sprightly stepping off one neighbor’s property about to cross the road (without looking) to visit another neighbor’s property.
My angry shout for her obviously caught her by surprise. She approached with trepidation, clearly reading the message in my tone. I did not put any effort toward removing the fresh batch of burrs she had acquired. It had to wait until I could work myself “back to grazing.” Hopefully, that will be today. I just couldn’t get myself there last night after getting fooled twice in the same day.
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Mucky Misstep?
I’m having some doubts about part of the solution we settled on for improvement of the footing in our paddocks. The water is not draining through the layer of lime screenings we added. We did not focus on packing it down immediately, thinking the process would occur naturally over time. We weren’t granted that gift of time by mother nature before the heavy dose of rainfall put our efforts for improvement to a test.
The wet screenings have taken on a consistency very similar to fresh concrete.
I’m not so sure that the water would run off the top of the surface if we had packed it anyway. It is discouraging to see standing water in all the divots left where the horses have stepped. Maybe I am expecting immediate results where the reality is that the ultimate improvement will not be perfection, but a reduced duration of muck. We can hope.
What I found to be even more demoralizing yesterday was, one of the bad spots is located above the main area that the drain tile installation is intended to help. Even after the drain tile is in place and working as designed, my impression is that the high ground just beyond the barn overhang won’t be greatly affected. I’ll be thrilled to find I am wrong about that.
On a more positive note, we are entering the winter season in a completely different situation than we experienced a year ago. Last year it was dry, dry, dry. I firmly believe that the dry fall of 2013 significantly contributed to the loss of many of our pine trees when the winter that followed was so severe. This fall the conditions are almost too wet, if that is possible. Our growing flora look healthy and happy, and should be ready for whatever winter dishes out this year.
Our animals appear just as ready. Delilah was so vibrant yesterday morning, sprinting around at full speed with a gleam in her eye and a smile on her little doggie face, looking as if the temperature had finally reached a comfortable range for her thick coat. I think her preferred seasons of the year have arrived.
Winter has always been my favorite season. Now, if I could just find a way to be as ready for it this year as our plants and animals are. First priority will be new muck boots. My two main choices of footwear have both developed leaks in them. The recent rains have been good for making that known to me.
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Unwelcome Interruption
The morning had been routine thus far. All the animals were fed and my breakfast was complete. It was calm and quiet when I headed off to the bathroom for my usual morning answer to nature’s call. While in the midst of my task, I heard something tip over and then, the sound of water running. The water kept running.
I was thinking fast to assess the urgency of my response. I was home alone with the dog and cat. Could they have knocked over something that somehow turned on the kitchen faucet? I could hear water pouring. Whatever it was, it needed to be addressed, and I was the only one home to deal with it.
I executed a rather hasty end to my bathroom visit and stepped out to find a vase of flowers laying down on the table in front of the couch, with water pouring out of it. It was pooling on the short round table, then running down onto the rug below. When I first saw it, the water was beading up on the rug. There was a LOT of water.
Amid a flurry of curses, I ran to the kitchen for towels, tossed them on the puddle, then headed out to the garage for a wet/dry vac. I needed to open it up and remove the filter before using it to vacuum water. By the time I got back in, the water had soaked into the rug. I sucked water out of that rug for quite a while.
Not once did I spot Pequenita this whole time. When I came upon the scene, all I saw was Delilah licking water off the table, making her look awfully guilty. She received the brunt of my angst, even though the odds are much more likely that the cat was involved somehow. The green leaves show evidence of being chewed on by ‘Nita.
I re-filled the vase with water and set it on the counter by the sink, …which, now that I think of it, is probably a more dangerous perch from which it could be tipped. I’m guessing that it might have been interaction between the dog and cat that led to the accident on the short table, so if the cat gets after it while it is up on the counter, at least she won’t be bothered.
It took some extra effort to get over being frustrated by the incident, but eventually, I was able to “get back to grazing.” However, the day never did fully return to the calm and quiet routine that had been so rudely interrupted.
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Monday Ponderings
We opened our home to guests this weekend and were richly rewarded. Once again, we enjoyed evidence of how Wintervale comes alive with the addition of visitors. I, in particular, enjoyed the chance to talk with new acquaintances.
The weather was spectacular. Warm as a summer day, but with the lower angle of sunshine that late September offers. Our maple trees are peaking their color change to fluorescent orange. This time of year, days like this offer a chance to absorb every last possible feature to our core, in hopes it might somehow provide extra ballast for enduring the winter months when they arrive.
On Saturday, I met some folks (and their families) that Cyndie now works with at her (relatively) new job. Sunday, our precious friend, Melissa and her daughters came to spend some time. During their visit, our daughter, Elysa, and her friend, Anne, walked in the door, to our great joy and surprise. Later, I spotted the text message from Elysa, informing us of her plan.
The two days served to re-energize us and provided inspiration to keep after our dream of making Wintervale always be a place that will inspire others. With all the leftover food treats that remain from Cyndie’s bountiful spread, I could use a lot more visitors right now to help keep me from ultimately consuming it all myself.
Today, I get back to work trying to make appreciable progress on at least one of the 4-or-5-various projects I have started that deserve timely attention. If I am lucky enough to have landscapers or fence installers show up, that will be a bonus that determines the immediate priority. If I can’t decide, there is always watering to be done for the new grass seed I put down. That’s an easy way to consume a couple of hours.
I’ve turned over mole-control to Delilah. She seems to enjoy digging up the spots where they have created tunnels in the lawn. It’s not actually effective, in terms of controlling the population of moles, but it does serve to keep her out of other trouble for a reasonable span of time.
Happy Monday, one and all!
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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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Relative Something 