Posts Tagged ‘leash’
Longest Disappearance
This morning I am writing while seated near our front door, wondering if Asher will ever return. Moments before Cyndie was to drive off on an errand, Asher bolted into the woods as she was about to bring him inside and feed him.
I had just finished feeding the horses and came up to find Cyndie planning to drive to the neighbor’s place where he had recently made unauthorized visits three different times. She didn’t find him there.
Now she is gone and my walk around in search of any sign of him proved fruitless. This is the longest he has been awol in the six months we have had him.
Watching two squirrels chase each other around the trunk of a tree out the front door informs me that Asher is still not in the vicinity. He has trained them well to seek the highest branches and get out of sight whenever he steps outside.
The sight lines are wide open today, which is a drastic improvement over yesterday morning. While feeding horses yesterday, it looked like we didn’t have any neighbors because of a heavy fog. We could hear cars driving on the road but we couldn’t see them.
At least Asher won’t have any trouble seeing our house if he decides to return. Since his recent forays to the house across the road, we have been making him wear his orange vest to which we attach a leash to restrain him. At least he will be easily identifiable as someone’s pet by that vest.
Cyndie was slowly granting him opportunities close to the house to move off-leash while she lured him with treats to pay close attention to her.
Yesterday, after the fog lifted, we lounged on the back deck with Asher tethered on a long leash. He basked in the warm sun.
I hope that my post tomorrow will be able to describe his return without incident. I may spend today thinking about how big an area we could fence off to contain him if that ends up being a solution.
After failing to achieve control with our previous dog, Delilah, I am hoping we don’t end up in the same situation with Asher…
He’s Back!
Before I finished typing the previous sentence, I spotted Asher slowly walking up the driveway. His orange vest is more dirt colored than orange. He took a big drink from his bowl but didn’t seem the least bit worried that he hadn’t been served his usual breakfast.
I don’t know where he’s been or what he may have found to eat, but he seems rather exhausted and perfectly content to just lie down and rest.
I wish that his return would make me feel just as perfectly content.
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Disaster Averted
Not my eyes again! Why did it have to be my eye?
We use a retractable leash for Delilah and yesterday’s wet snow was sticking to it something fierce, occasionally plugging the return function. When I took her in the barn on my way to feed the horses, I hung the leash on the hook I use every time we go through this routine.
From that distance, Delilah can wander out far enough to see the horses while I do a little housekeeping under the overhang, prior to serving their feed pans. Before bringing out the feed, I stop to temporarily lock the retraction on the leash, after shortening the reach to a point where Delilah can’t disturb the herd while they eat.
Her past performances have dictated her fate. She can sit by herself in the barn while they munch.
With the retracting feature off, the extended wet leash was laying on the sand floor of the barn. When I was done with horse duties and ready to take Delilah for an extended walk, I grabbed the leash with an instantaneous thought that I should run it through my gloved hand to scrape the grit off it before it spooled up.
I didn’t quite think it through all the way.
With my right gloved hand, I grabbed the leash between Delilah and the ground. Leaving the spool on the hook, I reached up with my left hand to release the lock. I don’t know if it is obvious to you as you read this, but I had grabbed the wrong side of the leash with my right hand.
The result was so fast I didn’t have time to blink as the spool spun and whiplashed the wet gravelly leash across my face in the ultimate insult.
WHAP! Take that!
My right eye closed in time, but the left eye got a rude stinging slap and enough sand to wreck a day. What happens when something touches your eyeball? You close it as fast as you can! I closed mine over some grains of sand that immediately lodged under my eyelid.
It hurt to blink. It hurt to leave it open. It hurt to hold it closed. It hurt bad enough to make me cry, but I think the tear ducts were plugged with sand, because there weren’t enough tears to wash it out and end my dilemma.
Delilah was kind enough to just sit there while I flinched and cursed and cried and stumbled around. When I knew it wasn’t going to self-remedy, I had to cancel Delilah’s walk and rush back to the house for help.
It’s always wonderful when the person convalescing suddenly has to step up and become the care-giver. Cyndie didn’t hesitate to rush her walker into the bathroom with me to start hosing the eye down with her saline solution.
I really don’t like getting squirted in the eye. That stung and made my eye try to close, which hurt tremendously because there was still sand under the eyelid. I wished I could fold my eyelid like some kids used to do when I was in grade school.
Cyndie worked heroically to clean it out as much as possible and added a drop of something to sooth the eye. I tried laying face down and just letting my eye rest. I figured it was possible that I had scratched my eye and that was what was hurting every time I blinked, so I was about to just wait it out.
Then I stood up again and grabbed my eyelash for the umpteenth time to pull it away from my eye. It was something of an instinctual reaction. I just felt like there was something under my eye lid.
With a blink, I determined that’s exactly what I was feeling, because the stinging pain was suddenly gone. Just like that, I was back to my old self, blinking pain-free.
Disaster averted.
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Delilah Maturing
A shot of Delilah taking a moment to look up when we do a status check on her. We have been giving her chances to roam off-leash while we are working around the property, but we try not to let much time pass between our calls for her to confirm her whereabouts. So far, so good. She seems to have picked up some new insight about our expectations after her recent re-training time back on the leash. I won’t be surprised if this lesson will need to be repeated several times before she ultimately overcomes the urge to take off and explore distant properties, but for the time being, we are enjoying this little period of success.
Our little baby just might be growing up.
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Relative Something 