Posts Tagged ‘pets’
Usual Elevation
Home again at an elevation my lungs are more accustomed to, my mind lingers in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the priceless fellowship of precious friends sharing an affinity for bicycling.
Yesterday, I drove from sun-up Mountain Time to sun-down Central Time in a completely different muscle-stiffening endurance exercise than pedaling nonstop for hours on end. I crossed most of South Dakota and Minnesota to get back to Beldenville in Wisconsin, where Cyndie and Asher were awaiting my return.
It’s good to be home.
The wide open expanses of South Dakota offered a stark reminder of how small our little rectangle of fields and forest really is. The massive hay production underway for mile after mile was remarkable to see now that I know a little more about the process.
The horse ranches are just as impressive. We saw real cowboys wrangling cattle as we whizzed by at over 80 mph on I90.
As I made one of the last few turns around a cornfield toward our driveway, the clouds looked busy in the sky. When I pulled in, I came to Cyndie walking in my direction. She was looking for Asher, who was chasing after a cat that appeared on our property.
He came running to me soon after in a special “welcome home” that only dogs excel in performing to such a degree.
This morning was a treat to reconnect with our horses. I smirked to myself while cleaning up their manure after a week of dodging cow messes on the trail. I’m glad I don’t have to clean up after cattle herds.
I’ll be thinking a lot about the previous week while I am mowing the overgrown grass that grows so thick at our much lower elevation compared to where I huffed and puffed while pedaling that marvelous gravel Mickelson Trail.
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Regular Adventures
Over the years, much of my old wardrobe that I haven’t been able to part with has ended up in a closet at the lake. It is always a fun moment for me to rummage through the variety of shirts to pick an old favorite to decorate my day when we are at Wildwood.
We packed up early yesterday and then waited for the delivery of our new oven. As the appointed hour neared, I hopped on a bike and rode up to the end of the driveway to help guide the truck to our place. After almost 60 minutes of riding circles and watching traffic pass by, I came back to the house because I was getting chilly.
As I walked in, I heard Cyndie on the phone with the appliance place, and they were telling her the guys are on their way. I didn’t go back out again. Turned out I didn’t need to. Moments later, they were at the door. Old stove out, new one in, connected, leveled, and calibrated without any complications.
Too bad we weren’t hanging around long enough to bake the first batch of cookies in the new oven.
It was good to get home and find everything mostly in order, and the animals happy to see us. The gardens are growing well, the raccoons got into the bin of kitchen compost, and there is evidence that Asher did some unauthorized digging in the yard.
The jewel weed is looking about as happy as we’ve seen it in years. It’s hard to tell which of the two plants wants to spread out more: the strawberry patch that Cyndie’s trying to rein in or the wild jewel weed.
It rained off and on all weekend at home, but there was barely a quarter of an inch showing in the rain gauge. It hardly looks like the lawn grass has been neglected. I think I’ll get away with waiting closer to the end of the week to mow before I’m gone for the next week on the bike trip.
It’s time to really appreciate the luxuries of my bed and private bathroom, because that comes to a temporary end by Saturday. My countdown is definitely on, looking forward to the next adventure.
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Season Swing
The pendulum of spring weather has swung decidedly in the direction of summer in the last few dry, sunny days. The forecast for our area was in the upper 70sF, but the reality yesterday had us well into the 80s. There are still plenty of tree leaves that are still in the bud phase but it felt like summer is considering an early visit.
Did someone mention trillium? It is an extra thrill whenever we spot some on our property in places where we definitely didn’t transplant them.
Yesterday morning, I noticed one right beside one of our busier trails. Way to go, ants! (Ants spread the seed pods.)
The higher daytime heat has our grasses growing significantly from one day to the next. Mowing is once again becoming an almost daily activity for me. On Monday, when I parked the riding mower and pulled the six batteries for charging, I was shocked to find that one of them gave me a flashing red LED of failure. I called the service number to report my problem, and the recording on their end said the call center had closed early for the day. I wonder how many days that message runs.
As Asher and I were on our way back from feeding horses yesterday morning, I stopped to grab the battery from the shop. However, before doing that, I plugged it in one more time to confirm the failure still existed. Good thinking, John. This time it worked! I’m pretty glad the call center went home early on Monday.
While I did some much-needed mowing in the heat of the afternoon, I left Asher in the house on his own. Cyndie was visiting her mom in the Cities. When I finished, I gave Asher a chance to go for a walk. We made it about halfway around the property, and he decided the shade of the evergreen tree at the end of the driveway looked too good to pass up.
I chose not to join him on the ground because I have had wood ticks crawling up my legs much too frequently for my liking over the last few days. The ticks must be enjoying the arrival of this warm weather. There was no reason to rush Asher because I knew a secret that he didn’t.
Cyndie was going to be coming over the hill within five minutes or so, and knowing how much Asher loves riding in cars, I figured Cyndie would be happy to give him a lift back to the house. This time of year, the house holds the cool evening air nicely throughout the day while the outdoor temperature heats up.
Every day without new rain brings us closer to putting in posts for the shade sail in the paddocks. Our current target day for the work is next week on the 14th.
I have a feeling the horses will be wishing for more shade every day until then.
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Got Away
Made it to the lake place yesterday afternoon for a few days of solo holiday. Without doing much in the way of additional cleanup of snow from Wednesday, in the morning I walked Asher with Cyndie, and we did horse chores together. The scenery was pretty striking, with the bright morning sunshine bouncing off the oodles of snow that had fallen.
The horses didn’t seem as fixated on their grain as usual, and Light even left her food to seek some hands-on attention from Cyndie. After obliging Light with lots of robust scratching, Cyndie ended up covered in shedded horse hair. When she got back to the house, Cyndie changed her shirt but moments later reported she was soon covered in dog hair.
After breakfast, Cyndie assembled enough home-cooked meals from our freezer to feed me for more than a week and sent me on my way for the drive to the lake. Before I left, I drove my car around the hay shed a couple of times to convince myself the crude job I did of clearing the heavy, wet snow would be adequate for traffic while I was away. We are expecting the farrier today.
I texted a message to Cyndie to let her know the tire tracks were mine and not some unexpected visitor. When we were walking Asher first thing in the morning, I spotted footprints in the deep snow of the north loop trail, so we trudged over to check them out. Cyndie asked if they were mine from the day before when I brought Asher back from the neighbors’, but I said no. We wondered who would have been walking on our trail.
Then, when we came upon a pile of branches under the snow, I realized it was me who had made those tracks. I remembered noticing the branches and had thought it was a limb that had fallen in the storm before figuring out it was the pile I had created when cutting up the downed tree a couple of days before.
Memory problems much, John?
When I had been pulling Asher down the middle of the unplowed road after his escape, I spotted a truck coming toward us and diverted to the ditch to give the driver the full width of the road to navigate his way against the drifts. We then made our way along that short section of our trail to reach our driveway. I blame the temper tantrum I was having at the time for completely forgetting we’d made those tracks less than 24 hours before. [shaking my head in embarrassment]
There is a lot less snow in Hayward. The short leg of the driveway to our place hadn’t even been plowed.
I am going to see how long I can keep myself from shoveling the front steps as an exercise in letting one of my compulsions go unaddressed for once.
While puzzling in the afternoon, I listened to a couple of 1960s recordings of Bill Cosby’s standup routines. I have no idea what caused me to think of choosing that.
I think my mind really needs to get away for a while.
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Gross Bug
Cyndie spotted a giant dead bug on the floor that looked so gross she went to get some paper towel to pick it up, wondering what the heck it was and where it had come from in the middle of winter.
Upon closer inspection, it was a shard of Velcro that Asher had chewed to bits. Since Asher likes to focus his toothy destruction on the Velcro of his Tearribles toys, we decided Cyndie could try sewing up a toy that is basically just Velcro seams for him to gnaw on. She has yet to test it on him.
I figure we will be seeing plenty more of these kinds of gross bugs lying around once Asher gets a chance to chew on this latest homemade dog toy experiment.
Maybe we will give it to him next week in celebration of his 3rd birthday.
Speaking of birthdays, yesterday was Mia’s actual birthday. I think I’ve written before that Thoroughbreds all have their ages incremented on January 1st each year to simplify grouping the horses for racing. As of the first of the year, Mia turned 25, but the actual day of her birth is February 13. One of the volunteers from This Old Horse, who has developed a special fondness for Mia, stopped by yesterday with a treat for her: a mixture of some sweet feed, carrots, and peppermint.
The other three horses all got a token serving of carrots to munch.
Happy February Birthdays to Mia and Asher!
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Writing Results
On the 31st day of January in the year 2025, our weather is mild, and life on the ranch is serene. Yesterday, spring-like songs were floating in the air from birds taking full advantage of the softening of winter’s grip. Cyndie has been reporting from the coast of southern California and sending me pictures of textures in the sand and surf that she knows I appreciate.
The temperatures at each of our locations are not that different, but it’s chilly where she is and warm at home.
If you are a person who journals, this might be obvious to you, but it has been helpful for me to write about times when I find myself getting in the way of my own progress.
After posting yesterday about my situation with the trail cam and the pruning saw, I was compelled to take another crack at both. I stopped off in the shop after feeding the horses with the intent of giving a more intense effort hunting for the saw in the 4th place I thought I may have stashed it. It wasn’t there, but then I turned around and spotted it in plain sight on a shelf by my circular saw. A saw by a saw. Perfectly logical.
That success inspired me to grab the trail cam and set it up by the fence where there is an obvious animal trail that I believe is our neighboring fox. Asher and I left that spot and headed down the Perimeter Trail toward a series of young oak trees from which I wanted to remove low branches. To keep the dog tethered to me, I brought a clip to hook his leash to one of my belt loops. That allowed me to have both hands free to tend to my pruning.
It didn’t occur to me that taking my eyes off him might lead to something unsavory. I was working down in the dry creek along our southern border, which gave Asher access to the neighbor’s side of the ditch where I wouldn’t normally let him meander. When we set off on our way again after I finished sawing, I noticed he had a thick wad of grass wound up in the prongs of his collar. He had been rolling around in the tall grass.
With the warm temperatures, the thawing ground offers all sorts of scents that Asher can’t resist rubbing against. It wasn’t until we got back into the house that it became noticeable, but his coat now has picked up a heady aroma of dusty, dry grass and some wildlife perfume that smells a bit like plastic when it gets too hot.
It’s not as lovely as it sounds.
I am not writing that to inspire me to give him a bath.
We spent time out on the deck in the afternoon heat, where I could sand my current wood sculpting project without concern for making a mess, and Asher’s stink was only occasionally annoying.
No, I have no intention of trying to bathe him.
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Animal Focused
There is nothing else I need to do. Caring for and entertaining (in Asher’s case) our animals is my only duty for a week. When Asher and I approached the paddocks yesterday morning, I thought it looked like the horses might have been spooked into the back pasture. Light was alone in the round pen. Her movements gave me the impression she didn’t want to be in there anymore. However, she wasn’t making any progress to the open doorway.
I carried on with cleaning up under the overhang, filling hay nets, and preparing their buckets of wetted grain while they messed around in the fields.
The horses kept looking in the direction of a crowing rooster pheasant to the north. The apparent alarm of the horses had me wondering if the pheasant was calling out a warning of a predator in the vicinity. The next time I looked to see if I could find what was bothering the horses, I found the pheasant strutting around on our driveway like he owned the place.
Well, that indicated to me there was no threat around, or that pheasant would have noped out of there long ago.
I walked through the small paddock toward the crazy bird, and he took to the air with all sorts of squawking and disappeared across the plowed field north of us. Slowly, the horses made their way in and settled down to eat.
Asher and I headed out mid-morning to check on how nice the thaw was progressing and found the horses standing rather sleepily in the sunshine.
Since the dog and I had trudged a full circuit of the property, I offered him a chance to pause in the warmth radiating off the doors of the hay shed, which was also serving as a good windbreak. I leaned back against the shed door and closed my eyes, knowing it was going to be very easy to fade into a nap.
The sound of a horse stumbling rejuvenated my alertness. It was Light. She is notorious for failing to lock her knees sufficiently when she drifts off into a standing slumber. I liken it to the feeling when fading off to sleep at night, that suddenly the bed is flipping over and startles me back to awake. That hasn’t happened to me for a long time. My sleep arrives easily without any fuss these days.
Asher was too busy surveying his kingdom to nap with the rest of us. He saved that for later, on the floor in the house where the heat was amplified through the full-length glass in a door.
I never said focusing on the animals is strenuous each and every minute. Since they are all great nappers, there are plenty of moments when it can be superbly calm and restful.
Even more so when the weather is sunny and warm.
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Lost Ball
Asher’s favorite outdoor toy is a Jolly Ball with a thick rope through it. Sometimes, he just wants to chew on the rope, but mostly, he wants someone to try to take it away from him. A little tug of war, a hearty “kill shake,” and if I don’t show enough interest, he will stand to put his front paws on me to engage in some more aggressive tugging play.
Our goal is usually to get it away from him because when we throw it across the yard, Asher leaps after it with such infectious, joyful energy it fills us with the utmost glee. Then, he races back to us for another round of “please take this from me; no, don’t.”
He stopped for a moment the other day and looked around. It looked to me like he lost the ball.
If he stops playing long enough, I invite him to join me in returning to the warmth indoors since that is where I really want to be after too many minutes of this game in frigid temperatures. His usual reaction at this point is to pounce on the ball again like it’s the first time he’s seen it in weeks. It often takes several tries at ending this game before he lets us “win” and leaves the ball behind.
There are times when we aren’t ready to go in the house but intend to take him for a long walk. If he sees the ball as we just stepped out of the house and bounds after it for chewing, shaking, and tugging, we find ourselves encouraging him to walk first and play later. Yesterday, Cyndie set off down the driveway with Asher, and he carried the ball away, clenching the rope in his teeth as they walked. She said he kept it in his grip the whole way to the lookout knoll with the rocking chairs, back to the barn where Cyndie checked on the waterer, and up to the house again, finally choosing to drop it on the driveway in front of the garage door before they came inside.
He is so attached to this toy we ended up buying a smaller-sized version that we let him have indoors. He took to the little one right away, but I think he prefers the thickness of the rope in the outdoor ball. He seemed so happy to chew on the rock-hard frozen rope during this cold spell that it gave me the idea of setting one of his indoor felt Kong balls outside long enough to freeze. It made it so hard to chomp in order to squeak it that it wasn’t the thrill for him I imagined.
For the record, no ball was actually lost in the activities described in this post. This is Asher I’m writing about. He knows exactly where all his dropped toys are at all times.
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Counting Leaves
It is not impossible to function at -14°F (-25°C), but it can be a bit of a hassle to tie up hay nets and distribute buckets of grain –one of which now gets watered down— in such extreme conditions. I am very happy that Asher showed a keen sense of efficiency and adapted perfectly to my plan to shortcut our morning walk and get his business out of the way as swiftly as possible.
The horses were equally focused on their tasks and offered no resistance to assuming their positions and chomping grain with their frozen whiskers getting messier by the minute.
The feelings of accomplishment when returning to the house and getting the feeling back in our fingers and toes don’t entirely dispel the intense urge to have remained under the warm covers of our bed instead.
We tell ourselves these extreme cold snaps that are difficult to survive help to control the populations of pest animals and insects, as well as the number of added people who might consider moving into our region when their homes prove to be inhabitable.
I looked up at the leaves in the big oak tree over our driveway and had two thoughts.
There aren’t many leaves left clinging to all those branches. On the other hand, there are still more leaves up in that tree than I could count.
In contrast, there is a young oak nearby that looks as though it still is holding all its leaves after they dried up and turned brown.
There is also a birdhouse with a birch bark roof that features an opening that wasn’t there when initially built.
I think the residents left for a warmer climate a long time ago.
As harsh as this weather is, the forecast indicates the bite will be even more intense tomorrow. The critters that survive this will have something to brag about.
I have no conclusion that wraps these contemplations this morning into a logical theme. That would involve more thought than I have to muster. With what little energy I have, I intend to curl into a ball like Asher is doing right now on the couch beside me and save what I can for the next foray into the Arctic elements outside later this afternoon.
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Nurse John
Personally, I don’t find that my nursing abilities offer all that soothing a touch, and now our head cook has called in sick, so I am faced with pretending I’m a chef in addition to her nurse. No pressure. Only, I’m going up against the comparisons to a person who has nursed and fed me better than one could ever imagine whenever I’ve fallen ill.
It just seems like such an unfair circumstance for Cyndie when she gets sick. Laid low by a fever, she is currently confined to quarters and stuck with me as her primary caregiver. Luckily, she is a very patient patient, and repeatedly tells me I’m providing everything she needs. It never feels like enough to me.
Plus, there’s always the battle against her trying to do things for herself so as not to trouble me as I struggle to anticipate her next move and cut her off in the nick of time by getting her the ice pack or warming her heating pad in the microwave.
Nurse John is not that much fun when he gets grumpy as he is trying to soothe what ails the patient and serve Malt-O-Meal and toast before it gets cold.
I am thrilled with how sensitive Asher is to Cyndie’s not feeling well. Instead of being a pest and demanding more roughhouse play, he has chosen to mirror her as a way of showing his support.
Right up until he hears something outside that requires a rant of “big boy” barks followed by some half-hearted “woofs.” I’m sure that does wonders for her headache. At least he gets back to the mirroring part in short order.
That allows me to practice a little of that mirroring support of my own, although I suspect that technique is not included in the practices one would find in the nursing handbooks, not to mention that it leaves the kitchen looking a frightful mess.
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Relative Something 