Posts Tagged ‘dogs’
Trip Images
Here are some additional images that represent our journey thus far…
A view of the outside and inside of the front door to the Morales’ gorgeous home in Guatemala City.
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A view of the back of their house and the beautiful hanging blossoms over the deck.
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Their variety of dogs. The pack was never stationary long enough to get them all at once.
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And more from the stable, Dunia riding, and their horses. I loved the look of the two-story housing.
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.Fandango and Sarnac
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More Carnivore
Content Advisory: The following post contains probably more detail than necessary about predator/prey animal activity. If you have sensitivity about such content, you have no obligation to read any further. I do not wish to offend, so proceed at your own risk.
Our dog, Delilah, has been on a run of success for finding rodents of late. Maybe the cold temperatures slow them down, or maybe their scent becomes easier for Delilah to discern when everything else around them is frozen solid. The other day I watched one get away after she “soft carried” to an area of packed snow on our trail. When she dropped the poor thing, it squirmed a bit. She pawed, licked it, and took tentative nips at it. She would pick it up in her mouth, but never got around to applying a fatal pressure.
All the activity eventually moved them to the deeper snow beside the trail. Each time the mouse would get dropped again, it would attempt to burrow into the powdery snow beneath the upper crust, forcing Delilah to hurriedly search with her nose to locate it again.
After several go-rounds of this game, the critter landed on good footing and immediately darted between Delilah’s legs toward the safety of its previous lair. By the time Delilah could spin around to chase, the mouse had gained its advantage.
All I could think was, never give up. I had totally written off that mouse as doomed. It survived a lot of abuse, but took advantage of the opportunity that presented itself just moments prior to death.
Make a run for it, and there’s a possibility you live another day.
As an aside, this gives me a twinge of sadness to think of the humans who commit suicide when consumed with a perception of doom from their condition, instead of mustering the equivalence of what that mouse had, and making a run for it.
After Delilah does end the life of her rodent prey, she has a habit of strutting around with her prize. For some reason I don’t comprehend, she stops frequently to drop it. She then licks it and smells it. When I show an interest in proceeding, she picks it up again and trots ahead. A short distance later she drops it again.
Usually, she surprises me by inconspicuously leaving it behind somewhere as we resume the regular pace of our walks. A day or two later she will retrieve a previous catch and decide to consume it. Maybe it is her way of “aging” the food, or maybe she just prefers it frozen. When she chooses to do this right as we reach the front door it presents a conflict. We have a rule that she can’t bring dead animals into the house.
Yesterday, she wouldn’t leave the small carcass behind, so I stood and waited for her to do what she does. It was disgusting. I struggled to reconcile what she puts in her stomach.
Then it occurred to me that it is probably similar to the meat by-product ingredients of her canned food. The already-processed canned food just looks more palatable. An average person comfortable feeding their dog canned food might find the sight of a fresh killed meal unacceptable.
Dogs are carnivorous. Living with Delilah, I find myself gaining a better understanding of what that actually involves.
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Luxury’s Lap
I have to admit that genuine moments do actually occur when Delilah settles down on her day-bed for a nap under her own initiative. I find it a bit startling to come down the hallway and find her so elegantly settled in. I was so impressed last night, I took a picture.
She is livin’ in the lap of luxury around here, I tell ya.
Dog ownership is not something I have done as an adult, until we got Delilah almost a year and a half ago. My knowledge and experience are still rather limited. I’m learning on the fly, or walk, as the case may be.
Back at our old house, where we subscribed to cable tv, I used to watch Cesar Millan’s Dog Whisperer program where he trains people to handle dogs, and his methods all seemed like common sense to me. Common sense is what I have primarily relied upon for my interactions with Delilah.
I do regret throwing out Cesar’s basic rule about not letting the dog lead a walk, pulling me along behind, but that is how we operate. Ever since we changed to keeping her leashed (since she began to regularly run off to visit the neighboring properties around us), we have needed to take her for walks.
Let me just back up a moment here and point out that this is something I said I would not do —keep a dog on a leash. I guess that was before I was being paid to take care of her. When we created the position of Ranch Manager, the responsibility of caring for all our animals shifted to me. Right now, she doesn’t get free-run privileges, so I walk her on a leash, chewing on my words all the while.
I used to also diligently avoid ever tending to the cat’s litter box. Funny how things change over time. I picked up more cat litter at the grocery store yesterday (grocery shopping being another thing I once shunned with gusto).
Who am I? I don’t have any idea any more. Don’t bother asking.
But I digress. Back to walking Delilah and learning about her by simply living with her. I decided to let her walk in front because it feels like a simulation of how she would behave without being leashed. I have been letting her choose the route (unless I have a more pressing agenda), and allow her to stop and investigate enticing scents. I let her practice hunting rodents and wait patiently as she pounces on some grass and then listens to see if anything moves. She works feverishly to pursue the source of some scent that must be fresh, based on her reaction.
I call it “practice” because she almost never catches anything. I’ve watched plenty a critter scramble away while she remains oblivious to its departure.
I have been pretty vocal about her passion for eating other animal’s poo. It drives me nuts. She works way too hard to break loose frozen poop she finds on the trail during our walks. I have recently gained new insight on this behavior, but I don’t know what it means.
There appears to be an animal, or something an animal has eaten, to which she has quite a different reaction. Several times I have watched her sniff a pile of scat and then leap sideways and make a conscious effort to give it a wide berth.
Apparently, it turns out our dog has discerning taste in animal poo.
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We’re Off!
We are off to a walloping start for the new year at our place. We took care of some details that have been lingering unaddressed during the time we were overly focused on our open house/party, and the Christmas and New Year holidays. Cyndie now has Wisconsin license plates for her car, and I learned that our energy company does the billing for electric and propane, independently. I applied for auto-pay, but it only went into effect for the electric bill. I was past due on the propane, because I needed to apply for that separately. Who knew? It’s all taken care of now.
We made some great progress in designing the layout of our future horse spaces, and the fencing that will define it. Our special friends, Barb and Mike, were here to ring in the new year, and helped us identify a miscalculation (confusing ‘feet’ for ‘yards’ in our numbers), which allowed us to move past a stumbling block that was truly foiling our attempts to plan. Then they graciously accompanied us in trudging through the snow to ‘test’ our layout in real scale.
I remain pleasantly encouraged that we have plenty of space to accommodate what we currently have in mind. It’s not a perfect science, since we don’t know which of our potential plans will actually be achieved, in the long run, but the possibilities appear to allow room for us to fit any of the variety of visions that are floating in and out of our dreams.
The owners of the fencing company came to our house on the afternoon of the New Year holiday, to consult on the current status and future planning. We came a couple of steps closer to choosing the type of fence, and are now leaning toward a vinyl-coated high tensile wire strung between wood posts. It will help keep the total cost of this phase of our project down in a range that almost fits our budget.
They will be pounding some stakes and stringing temporary lines to help us visualize how the fences for two paddocks around the barn will look.
These are significant steps for us. In the month-plus since we started talking with this company about our wishes, the progress has felt rather hobbled. There is a very good aspect to the delay of progress, in that, we have had time to adjust our perceptions and work on our imaginings of what we wish to create.
I take it as a good sign, that none of the changes that have evolved are very significant. Overall, it is pretty much on plan with our combined visions.
On top of the energy we felt from working on that project, our inspirations were led to spend some time together exploring the possibilities for a dog, or dogs, that will be good companions for horses, and visitors, and our cats, and us! We share a feeling of attraction to certain, but not all, herders, for our situation. We like the Belgian Shepherd, Australian Shepherd, Sheltie, and Great Pyrenees. All tend to have similar benefits/challenges. It will be a tough choice.
There is plenty ahead for us in 2013. It feels like we have picked up right where we left off in 2012, and we got a pretty good start on day one. Hang on for another wild ride!
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