dog games

It was raining all morning just lightly, good for the plants. We got up and were so glad that our son came up and re-roofed the porch yesterday. It was a toss up for us because both days were supposed to be rainy. He and a friend decided to come up Saturday and do the best they could. Although the skies looked threatening for a long time the rain held off until long after they left in the evening. New roof and it got tested right away.

Our weather has fallen into a kind of tropical pattern with thunderstorms almost every afternoon or evening and hot humid weather earlier in the day. Today we had the cool rainy weather early and now it’s sunny and steamy. We have been blessed that none of the storms here have been bad; the bad ones go above and below us. And there has been some wild weather this year in my corner of Michigan. Huge hailstones, wind, tornadoes, torrential rains and lots of lightning have hit close by.

My tomatoes have quarter sized fruit and my corn just may be knee high by the fourth of July. We have been eating leaf lettuce, although that’s better when there are tomatoes to go with it. It’s been hard keeping up with the weeds but everything is looking nice in the gardens. My landscape roses are blooming and some daylilies. Evening primroses and dayflowers are nice right now.

I just came in from fence fixing again. We have 15 dogs on this farm, yes that’s right 15, and 14 of them generally stay within their boundaries, either their kennels or the large fenced yard. We have 8 foot fence around the yard with a board at the bottom and boards on the inside to discourage diggers. In the back of the yard, where the fence shares a boundary with the east pasture and there is a view of the back of the barn we erected a secondary fence 10 foot from the first fence also 8 feet high.

Despite this Ginger, our small red Jack Russell – Yorkie mix manages to escape pretty much at her pleasure. This wouldn’t be quite as bad except when she escapes she likes to kill small things, like kittens right now. Two days ago she jumped to the top of a rail 4 foot off the ground, walked down it to a spot where the top half of the fence wasn’t tightly hooked to the bottom fence and squeezed through. Then yesterday before the guys arrived for the roof she managed to get through both fences in the back by climbing one and digging under the second after squeezing between some privacy type fencing that’s there and the newer wire fence.

I, of course don’t see her do this, I go out and look for signs. She never tries to escape when she knows anyone will see her. The other dogs usually tell on her by barking wildly if they see her getting out. For a while her son Buddy was following her, but he is too heavy to climb well and most of her recent escapes have involved climbing. When ever we hear a certain kind of frantic barking we run to check on Ginger.

Our house dogs have a doggie door that they come and go from into the fenced yard. Ginger has always been a house dog but we are at our wits end. Next weekend weather permitting, we are going to rebuild the whole east boundary fence. It just seems like we are spending a lot of time on one little dog’s mischief. She is the dickens to catch once she gets out. She won’t come to you until she is tired. Her sole aim is to get to the kittens or ducklings or chickens or what ever she can grab. Her eyes light up and she seems to be having loads of fun, but it isn’t fun for us or whatever she is chasing.

In the old days a dog like this would have been destroyed. But she is so cute and loving to family and so smart I could never do that. I am afraid to find a new home for her because I would worry that she would get out and be lost. She is also great at darting through doors between your legs.

I have had the bad experience twice of finding homes for older dogs and having them run off soon after they got to the new home. In both cases I spent days trying to catch the lost dog with a lot of sleepless nights and anxiety. One of the dogs, a female named Peanut was gone for over a week in cold weather and when we found her was semi-conscious and near death. I nursed her back to health and she is still at our home, although her health has never been great after that experience.

The other was a six month old male, who took off on the elderly couple I placed him with by slipping a collar. He was hanging around their farm but wouldn’t let them near him. He had seemed happy with them when he left. I couldn’t coax him back either, although I saw him several times on their farm and spent hours sitting on the wet ground trying to convince him to come to me. Dogs get funny when they are scared and lost and sometimes even avoid those they know.

We ended up catching him by setting a live trap baited with hotdog. Once back inside the couple’s home he was again his loving, happy self. They decided they still wanted to keep him. They brought him back once to visit, and 3 years later he is a spoiled and well loved pet and now has the freedom of the farm.

Back to Ginger, if you are reading this and thinking she should be obedience trained- well she is. Inside or in the yard she will do anything I tell her. She completely ignores every bit of training when she gets loose. I know she gets bored. But she has a large area to run in and several dogs to wrestle with and lots to watch around her. They get to run in the pond area every so often, which is an even larger fenced area with tall grass, and water to splash in. Most of the dogs love that, Ginger just goes around looking for a way out.

It may be the attention thing, none of these dogs ever thinks they get enough attention. But mostly I think she is smart and has the hunting terrier instinct in her so strong she can’t help herself. It’s like working a puzzle to get out and then there’s that addicting thrill of the chase. The worse thing is that she is learning that when the other dogs “tell” on her the fun is cut short. So she is sneaking away when the rest are quietly lying at our feet and even the kennel dogs aren’t watching, for more fun before someone realizes she’s gone.

So we are playing this game of chess. I move then she moves. When I am through here in the office I will let her out of the room she is shut in and see how long it takes before she is loose. Sometimes days go by before she figures something out. Then we start all over.

bits and pieces

I just came back from a run to the little store in the little country town we live next to for the Sunday paper from a big city a hundred miles away. Once in a while I like to get caught up on world news. One of the little houses in town had two old motorcycles with side cars and two life size models of soldiers, fully dressed in uniforms one sitting on the bike the other standing. There were helmets and other gear on the bikes. A street sign said “Paris 60 miles”. This must have cost a few bucks. It’s Fathers Day not Memorial day so it seems a bit odd, but maybe his father died in WWII.

I guess people must think its odd that I have two half tires hanging from posts by the driveway, painted iris blue and filled with pink and white impatiens. Geez – redneck all the way.

I walked around the pond this morning looking for a snake. I have seen this really unusual snake – about 3 foot long but slender, dark brown on top and golden yellow underneath. I had seen a smaller one just like it early in the spring by my flower bed under the oak- which is also where the big one was. I tried to look it up and the only Michigan snake that came near it was the Copperbelly water snake, which is endangered and not known to be in this part of Michigan.

I talked to a friend at the Nature center and she directed me to a herpetologist at MSU. He though it unlikely but couldn’t tell me what kind of snake it could be either. He wants me to take a picture of it- and catch it to do so if I can. Of course I haven’t seen it since. Steve saw it or one like it down by the pond though. If it’s the Copperbelly they like to eat frogs, which we have plenty of. I am not afraid of snakes and would catch it if I could. I got a good look at this one because it just froze and let me look at it. I wish I had thought to catch it then. I know garter snakes and rat snakes fairly well and most common snakes and this was none of them.

While walking around the pond I found another mystery, a big white egg floating in the water. It was the size of a chicken egg, but we don’t have any layers right now and the nearest other chickens are a half mile away and penned up. The egg had a hole in it like it hatched or was opened to be eaten. I haven’t seen any ducks on the pond except for our poor solitary white male, who lost his male friend two weeks ago. I guess it could be a wild duck or turkey egg that a coon carried there, although I have seen no signs of coon either.

Some of the wild cat’s kittens are missing, but they could have just moved them farther from the barn. Coons and fox will eat eggs and baby kittens. We have kittens everywhere so a few missing are not a problem. I counted 20 last week, different sizes and colors. I found one dead by the back barn door but it didn’t look like anything got it.

All the cocker pups are sold but we got the little Jack Russell pup we sold back. Bessie the cocker mix is due any hour now but that will be the last litter we will have for a good while.

The sweet corn is up and the tomatoes are growing like crazy. The hot wet weather is great for plants and weeds. I just got finished weeding the big flower bed out and now I need to get back to the rest. I am going to mulch the veggies as soon as I can. The tomatoes I had in the house are lanky but they are flowering. I’m trying to find the best way to support them, some are still in pots.

We got part of the new fence up around the pond yesterday before it got too hot. Soon the dogs will be able to have a good run out there again, unless too may baby kittens are out there. More storms are predicted this afternoon, possibly severe. This has been an active weather week although we have been lucky not to get much damage or lose power.

Its June

Today I took the long way back from the post office just to see the beautiful countryside. The dogwood is blooming and the air is full of the scent from blooming autumn olive. That stuff is so invasive but it does smell good. The bees love it which may be another reason to tolerate it to some extent, because bees are getting so scarce. Autumn Olive can take over a pasture in no time at all if it isn’t grazed. Sheep and goats love to eat it, horses and cows will eat it when it’s young. The red berries it makes in the fall are attractive and they are higher in lycopene than tomatoes. They can be made into jelly that’s very pretty- but it doesn’t have much taste. I’ve tried making it.

Speaking of sheep, ours are gone. We sold them including Taco, who went to a pet home. It is dry this spring and our pasture wasn’t supporting them well. Hay was up to $7.00 a bale. First cutting of hay is being made this week around here, but with the weather so dry it will probably be grabbed up at a good price. My husband made the point that we could be doing a lot of home improvements or I could be buying a lot of plants for the $100-$150.00 dollars a month we were spending on sheep. They kept getting out and destroying trees and shrubs and we need to fix many of the pasture fences.

I always feel bad when I send animals off but we just weren’t using the sheep like we planned, which was to make some lambburger for the dogs. I can’t justify spending that much on pasture pets. Now the grass is growing longer, but I have already started planting new young trees in the north pasture- I am going to make it my arboretum.

One of our old ducks died. They had started their walk- abouts looking for girls this spring- two old bachelor ducks trolling the neighbor’s ponds. But he died in our pond- from what I don’t know- maybe just age- they were 8 years old at least. The remaining duck is very lonely. However I was given some baby mallards whose mom was hit on the road and when they are a bit bigger they will go out on the pond.

I bough some more baby turkeys, a cross between Bourbon Reds and Blue Slates, heritage breeds, and put them with the ducks. It helped the mallards find the food better. They all sleep in a little pile together. Our other baby chicks are quite large now and have the run of the inside coop. In about two weeks I will let them go outside. The white turkeys we bought with them developed leg problems, probably genetic, and are in various stages of lameness. They still eat well so maybe we will be able to eat them soon.

We sold all the cocker pups but two. The little Jack Russell puppy also went to a new home. I gave a cocker puppy to my sister, hope that works out, sometimes these family things don’t. We could have used the money from her but its nice to be able to see one of your babies from time to time. We have one more litter to go this summer and then I hope its over with puppies for a while. All the males but the cocker have been neutered.

There are probably 15 kittens in and around the barn. They are all getting around a bit now and I am so afraid the dogs will get them. They are so cute when they are tiny but then they turn into pesty cats. At our place many of them become victims of our dogs, coyotes or owls. I guess its population control.

I have finally had some time to work on the gardens. We built three large raised beds for the vegetable garden. One is 12 x 5 feet and is planted to sweet corn. The others are 4 by 8 feet and I have planted tomatoes, lettuce, onions, a pepper and potatoes so far. I plan to add cukes and a pumpkin or two. We also have a raised bed up by the propane tank that I planted a few cabbage plants and some carrots in.

I covered the paths between the beds with old roofing from the barn addition we tore down. Recycle, reuse. If we get some rain, maybe the garden will grow. Our May was very dry about an inch and a half below normal rain fall totals. I am hoping it will rain tomorrow as predicted.

I have started working on the flower beds finally, what a mess. I still haven’t bought all the annuals etc, I want but I intend to finish that this week. I work on the guideline- get what you have planted before you buy more! There’s kind of a lull in flowers here right now, Dames Rocket and alliums are about all that’s in bloom.

The Orioles and the other birds are going to take what money I saved from selling the sheep. They are going through a suet cake every other day and a jar of jelly a week plus sunflower seed. I hear baby birds everywhere. But I sure love to hear Mr. Oriole sing!