Posts Tagged ‘dog’
He’s Home
Of all the issues clouding our activities of late, this one feels like the most tangible: Asher is home with us again.
He seems pretty pleased to be back in the comforts of his previous territory and free from the constant distractions of other canines needing to be assessed. One clear thing the trainers noted was his constant need to determine the potential threat of the various other dogs coming and going at the kennel. That is not an unusual behavior in a dog but it did clarify that inviting visits with other dogs at our place may be a challenge.
Progressing from the assessment time with the professional trainers, we plan to now work on helping Asher to more consistently respect commands outdoors and learn that the boundaries of our property are non-negotiable. There may be a series of 3 to 5 on-site visits from one of the trainers to supervise the process.
Basically, that means she will be here to teach us more than to teach Asher. I’m sure he already knows what is expected of him. He’s just waiting for us to figure out who the bosses are in our relationship.
An unexpected outcome from two fresh COVID test kits yesterday morning indicated Cyndie’s previous positive result probably wasn’t a fluke. She still looks to be infected and intends to remain isolated from contact with others as much as possible. Thankfully, she is not feeling much worse than any other normal spring day with her allergies to practically everything in our environment, especially hay and molds, in addition to the pollens from every growing plant.
My test came out almost perfectly clean.
The instructions say to look VERY closely because even the faintest hint of a line should be considered a positive result. There is a faint hint but compared to my other test results that were clearly positive, we take this to indicate the virus is losing its command over me.
I’m left with a residual cough that has been my reality for most of my life after an illness. Based on past experience, it will linger for longer than seems reasonable but I’ll eventually get over it.
The tropical rainforest conditions we have been experiencing have the air around here filled with spores from molds, mushrooms, and every manner of flying insects.
Areas of our lawn grass that aren’t beneath standing water will get mowed with brand-new blades that I installed yesterday.
This afternoon we will install flags to mimic the installation of an invisible fence along one of our borders to use in training Asher. In hindsight, it seems so simple after we met with impressive success fencing off our landscape pond and the composting manure piles to train him that those were off-limits.
He has respected that training ever since. (knock on wood)
We are optimistic about the likelihood that Asher will respond equally well to instructions about our property borders once Cyndie and I master the art of being consistent and clear with our leadership.
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Double Punch
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. I have done what I could to put the COVID infection behind me and resume normal activity but putting it behind me wasn’t supposed to be literal. I now find myself about as far away from normal activity as I have been in years.
There is something terribly wrong happening in my lower back that feels in every way as if one of my discs is bulging against the nerve that generates incapacitating waves of pain. My poor brain automatically leaps to a conclusion that the timing of these two latest physical maladies are entirely related, but I have no knowledge that this might be true.
All I know is that I am now one week away from the day my health insurance ends with the company that covered me for the first five months of the year and starts with my new choice under Medicare. I was hoping to get through the transition with a clean break from activity on either account.
Today, it is shockingly difficult to avoid stabbing pain when I cough at a time when my asthmatically reactive lungs are teetering on the backside of a virus notorious for negatively impacting breathing.
I am not a pretty sight.
If I could walk without fear of losing my footing, I’d wander down among the horses and bask in their late spring serenity.
We are fast approaching the end of Asher’s on-site training session at a kennel up north. The trainer has scheduled a call this afternoon during which we expect to learn how Asher has been faring during the previous week and what the plan is for picking him up to continue the training at home.
It would really mean a lot to me to be able to walk without pain by the time of Asher’s return.
Walking is once again the exercise that will become my primary focus.
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Rock Fitting
On the way to the lake yesterday, we dropped Asher off for his in-residence training and he accepted the unfamiliar surroundings without complaint.
Asher is barely visible in the far pen beyond the front area occupied by a dog he didn’t yet know. He passed by this front dog with a brief check, and receiving no response, he decided to ignore it and move on to sniffing every surface in his pen.
We felt it was a great start. Satisfied Asher was in good hands, we hopped in our car and drove the rest of the way to the lake without him.
While we are up here, we are planning to add a finishing touch to the old cabin where the log guys cut off the bottom of rotting logs in March. Having a large stash of faux rocks at home, we brought some up for the job.
These rocks had spent some time as markers in our labyrinth and as a result, developed a layer of dirt that needed to be removed.
That’s fine. We had some time to spare.
After cleaning them up and spreading the rocks out so we could see them, we tried mocking up the layouts for each space.
It seemed like a good plan to me. We felt encouraged by the process and figured the hard work was all behind us. The next phase involved a new adhesive from Techniseal called Stickystone. It is a fast-setting vertical hardscape adhesive.
Unfortunately, it didn’t go as well as my test case back at home. A few rocks had fallen off the foundation of the house in Beldenville so I tested the Stickystone to reattach them and it worked with ease.
For some reason that I haven’t figured out, getting the adhesive to hold the rocks in place up here is only successful about half the time. After completing two of the five surfaces, we were using up the limited supply of adhesive too fast and my patience was dwindling.
We had spent so much time cleaning and prepping that the mounting and remounting had pushed us past the dinner hour. We were tired and hungry and I was very frustrated. Our remedy was a trip to Coop’s Pizza for dinner.
If it’s not too rainy this morning, we’ll try hanging more rocks until the adhesive runs out. I will be looking to focus on the outlook that partial progress is better than no progress at all.
Come to think of it, that’s also one way we will be considering Asher’s training while he is away.
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Asher Away
Today we are taking Asher to camp for a twelve-day live-in training experience where he will get time to socialize with other dogs and begin learning lessons wearing an e-collar. It is a new step toward improving Asher’s respect for our commands to him with the ultimate goal of allowing him to roam our property off-leash while obeying the confines of our property borders.
Last night we had a wonderful consultation session in Hudson that introduced Asher to one of the staff who works at the kennel where Asher will be “vacationing.”
Cyndie had contacted these trainers after Asher had received a ban from the doggy daycare place where we’d been taking him for playtime with other dogs. At the time, when the daycare reported Asher was “reactive” to two other dogs, we thought it was a worst outcome. Now, we see it as a good thing because it moved us to this next level of training with skilled professionals.
During yesterday evening’s ‘meet-n-greet,’ we were allowed to sit on the curb and let the trainer handle Asher while a colleague walked two different dogs nearby in a busy parking lot beside a busy street.
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Asher definitely took notice, but the trainer was able to reclaim his attention and continue walking without difficulty.
The next dog was bigger and the handler was playing rambunctiously with it and had her dog bark on command but Asher was nothing more than curious.
At the completion of their exercises, they returned with the verdict that they didn’t see Asher’s behavior as being “reactive.” They described it as being understandably curious.
When we told them the name of the facility that applied the term “reactive” to Asher’s scraps with two different dogs, their response was instantaneous that the level of training of staff at such a location was not of the highest quality. That helped us to give the upsetting news they reported about Asher’s behavior much less weight in our minds.
With this brief exercise with Asher, the trainer has a good idea about an itinerary she and the kennel owner/trainer will plan for the next week and a half at their facility with other dogs that will be on hand.
There are a lot of promising circumstances with our new trainers. The kennel is on the way to our lake place. The trainer we met last night lives very close to us in Ellsworth. She will be able to come to our property after Asher completes his training at the 40-acre kennel property and help us apply the things he learned up there at our home.
She also proposed the possibility of her picking Asher up and taking him to the kennel on future occasions to save us the drive since she would be going there frequently. That would be handy for us in times we weren’t otherwise on the way up to Hayward.
Both trainers last night felt very confident that Asher will be able to learn to respect our commands more reliably and to respect our property borders with more training and his natural maturing.
That speaks well to their confidence that we can be trained to be more effective dog handlers, even at our age.
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Diet Transition
Imagine if people had to be as careful about changing their regular diet as the animals in our care. Full disclosure: this line of thought is coming from someone who doesn’t have any food allergies.
For two completely different reasons, we are currently in the process of changing the foods of both our dog and the horses. It is a long period of gradual transition from the old food to the new, serving a portion of each at a sliding percentage.
The horses don’t appear to care much about the introduction of something different thus far. I haven’t seen any indication of change in preference for the mixture we’ve been serving them.
Asher may be happy with his changing mixture because it was starting to look like he didn’t care for the food he’s been served since we adopted him. He’s shown no hesitation with the new brand.
I feel very lucky that the food I can choose to eat isn’t dictated by someone else. Unfortunately, that leaves it up to me to make smart choices. I was thinking the other day that it takes constant mental energy for me to avoid succumbing to my cravings for carbs or sugar foods.
It’s always great when you are granted a free pass to have as much as you want of a healthy food. Why doesn’t spinach taste more like chocolate? I love the feeling when I am thirsty and my body seems like it can’t get enough of a tall glass of ice water. Guilt-free reward.
Oxygen is something else I can consume as much as I want with no limitation. When my mind yearns for something my body doesn’t need, I can think about the total free pass I have to inhale as many huge breaths of air as possible.
Yeah, I’m weird like that.
This time of year there is a lot of tractor time when thoughts can meander. Yesterday afternoon, I was finally able to drive on and mow some of the areas that were saturated two days ago.
It amazes me how fast conditions change. The high ground around here is getting bone-dry. After I finished mowing the backyard, spotty thundering rain clouds rolled past. I put away the tractor and prepared for a downpour.
All we got was a spattering of drops.
I’m guessing all that ground moisture is getting sucked up by plants and trees making leaves. There is now a fresh new batch of phytoncides to absorb while bathing in the atmosphere of our glorious forest.
I’m going to count that as part of my spring diet transition.
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Budding Signs
We are beginning to see hints of color on the tops of certain trees on the horizon. Many shrubs and bushes at eye level are sprouting tiny new leaves. Looking straight up, signs of life appear at the ends of high branches of tall trees. It won’t be long before we have trees with leaves again.
It’s been a while since we’ve experienced any high-heat days. Recently, our mornings have hovered around the freezing point but I don’t think it has been harsh enough to kill new sprouts. Grasses are going gangbusters and will require mowing soon or some areas will get out of hand.
In yesterday’s glorious sunshine, Asher stopped in the middle of a walk to lie down in the shade and watch the natural world unfolding before us. I decided to sit down with him.
In less than 30 seconds, I spotted a wood tick walking across the front of my shirt. Despite that unwelcome reality, we enjoyed the spectacle of a bird in a tree over our heads that seemed to be practicing every call or song he had ever heard. I never once noticed a repeated sound. Up and down; high and low; trills, chirps, whistles, yodels, slides, chatters, singsong melodies… it seemed to have it all. The “Rich Little” of bird calls.
I guess the budding sights of spring were inspiring that bird to sing in the extreme.
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Left Out
The day started mostly sunny but the forecast warned of a chance of rain in the afternoon. Sometime after Cyndie departed for a couple of days away with friends, I granted Asher a chance to walk through the woods wherever his nose led us, hoping to distract him from already missing her.
Before we set out, I opened a gate to allow the horses some time to graze grass. As far as we can tell, their bodies are adjusting to the gradual change in diet just fine.
While our neighbor to the south mowed grass along our property lines, Asher and I popped out of the woods and made our way between the horses in the field and the riding mower. It seemed like a perfect afternoon of spring sunshine.
The sky was partly cloudy, but it didn’t seem all that threatening. I hadn’t paid any attention to what the radar looked like. I’ve heard the phrase “popcorn showers” used for the dotted image of precipitation blobs that showed up when I finally checked.
Asher and I had made our way around our entire property and into the barn where I left him to kill time while I cleaned up manure and then prepared buckets of feed. I was planning to bring out the buckets as an enticement to get the horses to come in off the field. Before I made it out the door, they came racing in at top speed.
We couldn’t feel the wind at that point but the sound of the howling gusts that suddenly blew through the surrounding trees was downright spooky. Eerie enough to scare the horses back to the safety of the barn. I hung their buckets of feed as quickly as I could to get them focused on their evening meal while I scooted down to close the gate to the field.
I made it back just as rain started to fall. Then it started to pour out of the cloud with an ominous roar that rumbled the metal roof to maximum decibels. I looked out the half door at the horses and noticed why it was so loud on the roof. It looked to be equal parts rain and BB-sized hail.
Unfortunately, of the four spots the horses choose for feeding, Mia’s is outside the cover of the overhang. With enough warning, we can easily move her under but she was already out there when the deluge hit.
I could see the pellets of hail bouncing off of her. It didn’t seem to bother Mia a bit. Light turned around a couple of times to look out at the cloudburst but other than that, the dramatic precipitation didn’t disturb the horses from their feed.
The gusher ended as quickly as it arrived. Mia was wet but unfazed by it all.
Asher and I walked back up to the house under a fresh interval of sunshine and ate our respective dinners devoid of any further meteorologic theatrics.
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Unattended Digging
Yesterday, while Cyndie and I were working in the front yard, she leashed Asher to a tree nearby. It just so happened to be in the spot where he had already been digging a few days before. I didn’t argue. We figured that he had already made a mess of things there, so there was nothing left worth protecting.
Cyndie was digging up ferns to transplant them and I was trimming a limb that was hanging over the roof. Asher was digging.
We started pulling up some of the flagstone slabs and stacking them on a pallet. We experimented with screening out river rock from dirt and debris.
It is all preliminary tinkering before fully diving in to seal the foundation and then re-grade the dirt before laying slabs back down and finishing with river rock.
As I was cutting off the branches from the limb I brought down, Cyndie hollered that Asher had reached a gas line.
“He what?!”
Oops. That’s not a root across that hole he dug.
I think he got a little carried away. We are going to need to find a better place for him to go wild with his digging. I’m thinking maybe the middle of the woods. We probably should have made that “call before you dig.”
I sure am glad he didn’t start gnawing on that copper tube like I’ve seen him do to roots that get in his way.
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Fresh Greening
We’ve survived a few days when the morning temperature teetered around the freezing point with no noticeable damage to new growth sprouting everywhere we look. One of the early above-ground wild plants to show signs of leaves is the black raspberry bushes.
Here’s hoping it will be a good year for the berries.
The grass has gotten bushy enough in spots to warrant mowing. I pulled out the electric push mower to get after the back side of the barn. The ground is not yet firm enough to support the weight of the riding tractor. That exercise went so well, I decided to give the labyrinth a go.
It was my first time walking the labyrinth since the ground thawed. There were many stones pushed sideways and/or toppled by the combination of frost heave and burrowing rodent activity. Mowing was a bit of a hassle. It felt good to finish and move out to the much easier cutting of the area beyond the stones.
I’m expecting the growth of grass blades will pick up dramatically now and I will soon be mowing some section or another almost every single day until we happen to reach a stretch of very dry weather.
Mowing is easy compared to the landscaping project I’ve decided to do myself. The first order of business before improving the grading on each side of the garage will involve sealing cracks that have formed in the concrete blocks. That’s one more thing I have no experience doing but I will shop for materials and then fake it.
The other fresh greening happening is inside on the table in our sunroom where garden plants Cyndie started are bursting out of the dirt with impressive spurts of growth. I suspect they will be transplanted to the great outdoors very soon.
We’ll be eating fresh produce in a blink.
And speaking of things happening in a blink, in just over a week it will be one full year that Asher has been in our family. I think he has accepted us as worthy keepers.
In April, three years ago, the four thoroughbred mares arrived at Wintervale. At the time, we didn’t know if they would stay any longer than the summer grazing season. The fact that we are transitioning them onto green grass again for the fourth year makes it pretty clear we settled into keeping them here year-round. At this point, I dream of them never needing to ride in a trailer again.
It would be great if they would offer their opinion on the subject. I certainly wouldn’t want to keep them here if there was somewhere else they’d rather be.
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Weather Pummeling
Our region took a pummeling from Momma Nature yesterday with high winds pushing some heavy rain sideways. I was on an errand to Baldwin to seek advice from my tractor dealership and pulled over to capture some photos of the wild sky.
With winds gusting into the 40s (mph), the bottom of the cloud cover was getting whipped into undulating waves.
Knowing it was past due time to change the engine oil of the New Holland diesel tractor, I pulled the manual to check other recommended periodic maintenance. I quickly felt overwhelmed by the list of tasks I had no knowledge or experience doing.
It didn’t take long for the Service Manager to convince me to spend some of my savings and have them do the dirty work. He had me at, “We have time to start on it early next week.”
On the way home, I stopped off to take advantage of ‘Discount Tuesday’ at the movie theater to see the four military-embedded journalists race against time to reach DC in the 2024 film, “Civil War.” I sure hope that version of a possible future for the country remains a fabrication for film and has no relationship with an eventual reality.
I returned home in the nick of time to help Cyndie tend to the horses amid the rain and wicked gales. Being immersed in the fictional world for a couple of hours had me rather disoriented in coping with the wild conditions that were turning feeding time into something of a circus that seemed to fit well with the on-screen chaos I’d just consumed.
Cyndie reported some new chaos across one of our trails through the woods.
If that is the only tree that topples under these conditions, I will be surprised. By dinner time last night, we had received over an inch of rain as measured in the gauges Cyndie remembered to put out earlier in the day.
Our soils are saturated and that makes high-wind days that much more effective at tipping tall trees.
One blessing we thoroughly appreciate is that Asher demonstrates zero stress over lightning and thunder. That’s not something I taught him. He showed up with that trait. I need to remember that gift alone should earn him a pass on other behaviors of his I find myself regretting.
Our dog staying calm during a pummeling storm contributes greatly to our quality of life.
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Relative Something 