Posts Tagged ‘e-collar’
Getting Grumpy
Don’t mind me, I’m just grumpy because the Minnesota Wild are getting thumped by Colorado in this second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. If the puck had bounced in just a little bit better direction for us last night, things might have turned out differently. The Wild are now trailing 3 games to 1 in the best-of-7 series. I will not be anticipating a 3-game sweep to happen in our favor to keep our season from ending in the second round.
Or maybe I’m grumpy because I have been unable to solve a problem with my electric riding mower that regularly shuts down the PTO with an over-temp error code after a very short period of use. I have a thermal imaging device that indicates the actual temperatures are barely warmer than normal room temperature.
I spent a lot of time on the phone with the manufacturer and a designated service provider yesterday, but have made little in the way of helpful progress. Negotiations are ongoing. Too bad the grass doesn’t take a break from growing while I’m dealing with mechanical issues.
Thankfully, the asphalt repair crew showed up as promised and did a bang-up job of making cracks disappear.
It was intriguing to watch them scrape off the upper layer of material after heating it with torches. They brought chunks of old asphalt and melted them down to make an almost good-as-new patch. Asphalt artists, those guys.
The bonus on the day was finding the controller for Asher’s e-collar that had come unhooked from Cyndie’s pocket a few days ago. We’d thought it was lost for good, and Cyndie had even purchased a different version of collar as a replacement. We hadn’t figured out the more complicated controls on that one yet, so we will now happily return it and go back to using the one we are all familiar with.
Those were just enough happy outcomes to balance out the grumpiness over the hometown hockey team loss and the error-prone riding mower.
At least I’m not entering a new decade of years today like someone else I know. Happy Birthday, Marbare!! That number sounds a lot older than my age. Hope you will be celebrating in the least grumpy of ways! Love to you!
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Painful Dislocation
What a way to wake up. All she did was sit up in bed, and suddenly Cyndie yelped that her jaw had dislocated. We were both dumbfounded. While she whimpered in pain and desperately tried to self-analyze what was going on and how to resolve it, I felt totally incapable of doing anything to help.
I’ve had my jaw pop out of joint before, and it was incredibly painful and scary, but it was only momentary. With no logical trigger for what had occurred to Cyndie, we feared that a correction may be beyond our reach. I wondered if I would be driving her to urgent care, and whether I should try to take care of the dog and horses before going, when Cyndie reported she had managed to get her jaw back into position.
At least that ended her crying over the intense pain. It’s brutal to be the observer when the closest person to you is visibly and audibly suffering in acute pain, and there is little you can do to fix things.
As awful as that is, at least there’s no physical pain involved. No one goes unscathed, though.
After a morning that started like that, the rest of the day is wide open for improvement. Cyndie was able to rally and resume her planned art class in Hudson, and Asher and I carried out our duties, living a life of luxury at home.
As I was getting Asher ready to go out for a walk, I opened the door without looking to let him charge after a squirrel or rabbit or whatever threat he imagined was out there. It was after he took off like a shot that I spotted the delivery truck coming up the driveway.
As fast as I let him run, I was suddenly hollering at him to stop and grappling with the ecollar controller to push the alert button to distract his focus away from the vehicle. He obeyed just barely enough that the driver made it three-quarters of the way and rolled down his window to hand me a package. I grabbed Asher’s collar to keep him in place while the driver turned around to depart.
Later in the day, I was spectacularly successful in convincing Asher to hang out close by while I pushed the mower through the labyrinth for the first cut of the season. Mia wandered out into the back pasture to graze, and Asher made himself comfortable, sprawling out to survey the horizon for anything else that moved.
It feels very rewarding to be able to accomplish the first cut before the growth has gotten too far along. The hardest part of the job is pushing the mower over the raised ridges from the voles that think they own the place.
Cleaning the deck afterwards, I scraped as much dirt as I did grass clippings.
It was a good finish to a day that started out a lot scarier.
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Above Freezing
As our planet spins its way away from the winter tilt, the minutes of daylight are getting noticeably longer. The horses show signs of appreciating the freedom from blankets. Despite my love for winter, my advancing age brings a new level of acceptance for above-freezing February days with sunshine and dry pavement.
I’ve been reading reports from friends who had to deal with “snowcrete” to our east after the big winter storm “Fern” two weeks ago. Has me counting our blessings for how easy we have had it in comparison.
This month will mark the two-year anniversary of my crash landing on a walk with Asher when the temperature climbed to record warmth and thawed the first inch of turf, making the ground too slippery for my boots to grip. My shoulder never fully healed from that fall. That was back when we kept him leashed. I couldn’t dig in my heels to slow him down.
Thank goodness we’ve moved on to an e-collar so he can run around untethered. Yesterday afternoon, he spent a large amount of time snuffling around the chunks of the willow tree that still lay where we cut them last summer.
An unidentified critter was under there somewhere, but it wouldn’t come out. The horses used to react with heightened anxiety when Asher was in pursuit of prey, but lately they seem less bothered by it. Maybe that’s because of his low success rate in his predatory endeavors.
Cyndie reported hearing some wildlife screaming during the night between Monday and Tuesday. I recently read that this time of year is mating season for skunks, and they can make quite a racket. The animal shrieking we usually hear sounds a lot like cats fighting, but I think it’s either raccoons fighting or negotiating their consummation.
As long as those nocturnal animals all avoid a run-in with Asher, we’ll all be better off. I’m not confident that he will pay attention to our pushing buttons to activate his collar during any close encounter with a creature he considers potential prey.
Please, please, no skunks during this February thaw.
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Animal Activity
When out on a walk around the property yesterday, Cyndie came upon a love message from the burrowing gophers that wreak havoc on our turf.
I guess they’re trying to get on my good side. We definitely don’t have any problems with soil aeration. I assume all the mole and gopher activity is an indication that the world below the surface has plenty of living organisms on which they are feeding.
It would follow that the large population of moles, voles, and gophers around here is why we also have so many snakes, owls, hawks, and coyotes, too –the circle of predators and prey.
The horses were quietly chilling in their post-feeding morning lethargy when the backup-warning beep of the forklift vehicle down at the road put them on alert.
Light ran down to the gate of the paddock, which didn’t provide her much of an advantage because the truck was out of sight over the hill. She stood there for a second with her head held high and ears perked, then returned to the higher ground under the overhang.
I don’t know if the horses have come to recognize the pallet of white bags as their sustenance yet, but as soon as the funky vehicle appeared over the rise, they all relaxed their attention and returned to their previous stupor.
Later, when I rolled the trash bin down to the road with Asher just after sunset, I spotted the horses all grazing in the back pasture. Yes, there are horses visible in that photo, hiding in the darkness below that orange glow in the sky.
When Asher and I got to the road, there was a grain trailer parked in the field yonder that I felt might tempt him to leave our property to investigate. As I tried to park the bin precisely, I was also fumbling to get my hand on the controller for his e-collar in case he didn’t obey my command.
I saw the white flash of a cat dart away from the trailer about the same time that Asher did. My commands didn’t stand a chance. He disappeared after it into the tight rows of dried cornstalks before I could find any of the buttons.
Beeper. As if.
Vibration. Whatever.
Shock. Nope.
Is this thing working? I started pushing all the buttons, trying to hit the control to increase the shock’s intensity. The moderate breeze rattled the dried stalks enough that I couldn’t tell if it was wind or Asher, and I couldn’t see any sign of him in there.
Before anything truly problematic occurred, Asher reappeared around the corner at the near end of the cornstalks as if nothing had happened.
I use the controller so rarely that I need to remember to pay better attention to what I am doing, but I also think we should tighten the collar so it won’t be easy for him to ignore the signals at his choosing.
The day provided a powerful feeling that we are but a small fraction of the much larger amount of animal activity going on around us all the time.
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Aftermath Dealing
I didn’t plan on coping with the work that now lies before me. When a big tree comes down unexpectedly, it suddenly claims a large chunk of one’s time.
We started in on the effort to cut up the limbs of the big maple tree in a short block of available time on Friday.
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Cyndie stood and contemplated the prospect of somehow clearing away all the branches and lumber that lay before us. Asher pitched in to do his part by gnawing the ends of branches to show them who is boss around here.
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The broken limb visible in the picture on the left above is not the maple tree. That is an example of collateral damage to nearby reasonably-sized trees, unfortunate to have been directly in the path of destruction. The photo on the right includes a thin maple tree that has been folded over with a 180° bend.
The tangle of surrounding trees adds a significant level of drama to attempts to cut the mess into workable sizes with my chainsaw. It is difficult to detect where the stored energy of torqued limbs and trees is holding things in place or tangled in a way that will suddenly spring free with great force when cut.
I experienced both in the short initial session we worked. There’s a lot more work left to be done when we can get around to it.
Yesterday afternoon, we enjoyed the great pleasure of a visit from my niece, Tricia, and her kids, Brooke and Drew. They were in the area for Drew’s orientation at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. It will be super to have family so close next year, especially since there is a great deal of fondness between Drew and Asher.
I think they will be good for each other.
We’ve been experimenting with using an e-collar on Asher to practice recall and allow him to move around without a leash, but stay on our property. In the last few days, Cyndie has only needed to drive up to retrieve Asher from the neighbor’s place one time.
We know that learning involves making mistakes in order to figure out the corrections, but who is fond of that part of the process? I am guilty of finding it easier to just grab a leash at this point, even though I really want him to learn to stay around without one.
It’s more work for me to stay constantly poised with a finger on the button, needing to quickly decide if he is fine to chase around in our woods or quickly needing redirection to maintain contact with me. When he bolts, it happens so quickly that I can’t tell if my commands are heard and the collar tone or vibration is even being activated.
Yesterday, he came back on his own after chasing a rabbit, so I didn’t fret.
I’m definitely not a fan of dealing with the aftermath when he fails to respond to my calls. It’s so much easier to lavish him with praise when he comes as called.
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Relative Something 