Posts Tagged ‘dog’
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!
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.
Itchy Dilemma
I’m grateful that I enjoyed 10 months here without this problem, but that time is over and now I face a new challenge that needs to be managed: Poison Ivy. I am sensitive to it. Cyndie says, “That’s an understatement.”
It has been a few years since I have had any serious reactions, so I was beginning to hope my sensitivity was waning. I would most often come in contact with the troublesome urushiol, the sap of the plant, up at our lake place in Hayward, WI. One of those exposures caused such a severe reaction that I had outbreaks of rash all over my body and required medical intervention to control it. I was told that I had likely breathed smoke from one of our outdoor fire pits, where wood with the oil on it was burning.
If I have a cut, or any break in my skin, and the oil gets in there, I will have a systemic reaction, and the rash can appear anywhere and everywhere. So far, with today’s infliction, the rash is limited to my arms and hands. From the location of the affected areas, and the timing of the reaction, we believe that I came in contact with the oil when touching our dog, Delilah, after we finally allowed her to run free on our property.
It is highly unlikely that we would be able to eradicate the poison ivy plant from our 20 acres of fields and woods, and will be impossible to keep Delilah from brushing up against it, so I am facing a new dilemma of how I can avoid exposure. It is dreadful to think that I won’t be able to touch our dog again. We had plans to let her roam inside our house. That seems risky to me now.
It’s really sad for me, because I was so enjoying seeing her run free. Now I have the perspective that the more she runs, the more threatening she becomes to me.
I have some time to think about this, and what I will do about it, because the rash tends to last about 1 – 3 weeks. It has me itching to find a solution for this dilemma.
Running Free
Our darling puppy, Delilah had quite a day yesterday. We extended her freedom to run unleashed on several different occasions. It was superb to watch her run full-tilt after the disc we throw for her, turning to sprint back toward us, passing right by to go the same distance away in the opposite direction, before returning again for attention and to drop the disc for the next throw.
Sometimes she comes to us when we call her. We figure that is better than never at all, and will work toward improving the percentage of proper response, so we are considering this phase a success, at least until we run into a major consequence failure.
We had a minor consequence back-slip yesterday, when she peed and pooped in the sunroom. We decided it was half our responsibility, since it had been a long day for her in the outdoor kennel, and she doesn’t appear to be interested in relieving herself in there yet. Unfortunately, that was one of the purposes of the outdoor kennel, so she wouldn’t suffer if we are late getting home.
Yesterday, there were several distractions that probably disrupted her from completely tending to her business before we came in for dinner. I have no idea why she didn’t try to get our attention to go out again, but won’t rule out the chance she actually did try, and we missed the signal.
By the end of the evening, when we were ready to come in, we discovered that she was a tangle of burrs acquired from her untethered explorations off-trail. I’ve been wishing all along for her to be free to roam. Another realization of needing to be careful about what I wish for.
Not Food
Time appears to be assuaging the angst, and moods are lifting for all the inhabitants of our household. Yesterday, for the first time since we brought her home, we let Delilah spend some time in the yard with us, off leash. She did wonderful. Since she was focused on the play, it’s not entirely clear that she even noticed that she was free of the leash.
Before untethering her, Cyndie was tossing the squeaking tennis ball for Delilah to help her practice catching it in mid-air
We continue to work on training her to respond to our commands, and she is showing continuous improvement, thus far.
There was also significant advancement in the process of acclimatizing the dog and cats to sharing house space. The cats are both showing clear behaviors of decreasing the distance they have been maintaining from Delilah, and the dog has actually had moments of calm, or at least, semi-calm, in their presence.
Last night Cyndie was coaxing the cats closer with some treats, and then decided to share the treats with Delilah, too, for behaving civil with the cats in plain sight, and within close proximity. It seemed like a moment of family bliss, and a hint of possibilities for the future.
A bit later, when Lilah was straining on her leash to get after Mozyr, she didn’t even realize that Pequenita had come to sit on the stool just over her head. The dog made a loop around to the other side of the kitchen island, searching for a better look at Moz, and then came back, suddenly appearing surprised to find Nita just sitting there overhead, inches away.
We were pleased to see Nita hold her ground, and even swing to tap away Lilah’s nose when she felt it was getting too close for comfort.
The phrase, “friends, not food” is being repeated often around here lately. I think we are getting the message across.
Just missed.
Ball is hard to spot; in line with the truck front bumper.
Sweet Delilah
Every day we seem to get a step closer to acclimating Delilah to her new surroundings, to us, and to our routines. Well, I guess nothing is routine for us lately, but we are trying to discover something of a routine involving her.
I am feeling grateful that, of the options available to us, we ended up selecting the older dog. She already has been widely socialized, and is house trained and used to sleeping in a crate. She seems to have quickly accepted our night routine, and sleeps well for the hours that match our schedule. She has a cute cuddly cow and a squeaky lamb that she snuggles with in her crate, and last night, before we had headed for bed, Cyndie discovered Delilah had pulled her lamb and cow out of the crate and was wrapped up with them, falling asleep on the tile floor. Cyndie ushered her into bed in the crate.
I think the activities of the day had used up all her energy. That’s good to see, because otherwise, I worry that she will keep moving at her rapid puppy pace (for a 9-month-old Belgian Shepherd) long after we are out of gas.
We are keeping her on a leash, indoors and out, for the time being, allowing our indoor cats a chance to still have the bedroom as their protected sanctuary, and to develop a sense of the boundaries of our property outdoors. She almost pulled my arm out of the socket when a rabbit bolted out from under cover as we walked by. I get the feeling she won’t recognize any borders when it comes to pursuing bunnies or other potential prey.
Her demeanor is generally a pretty calm happiness. She rarely barks, which I am very happy about. Pretty much the only problem we are facing initially, is her desire to gnaw on anything and everything. She waited a full day, to allow us to grow complacent about the possibility, (which we did, leaving her way too many options of things on which she could sink her teeth) and then she surprised us by choosing to rip into the couch by the front door, the basket of slippers nearby, the dining room rug, a box outside by her doghouse, the corner of her new doghouse, and a couple of times, pulling things down off the counter in the kitchen.
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Sweet as she is, we’ll need to stay diligent about policing the things that she devilishly finds interest in testing to the crunch of her teeth.
Relative Something 