THE TEAM

When Doc first came to live with us, Llewis made it clear that although Doc was cute as a baby bunny and about as dangerous, Llewis wanted nothing to do with him (Doc) and was to be left alone.

 

But Baby Doc wanted to play and in typical Belgian style, decided that he was going to play with Llewis, whether he liked it or not.

And so, thus was born THE TEAM.

 

Doc, a little hesitant in his new home, began waiting for Llewis to go out. When Llewis came in, Doc looked around to find himself either alone or at the mercy of Conley, and came in. It got to the point where one rarely went out without the other, and both came in at the same time.

And it is still that way. When they play tag, Doc is carefully restrained.

When they play "Chase Me", Llewis leads off and is rarely captured.

 

 

 

Llewis seems to be mysteriously faster than Doc, despite having one unworkable back leg and one partially goofy back leg. The "Bunny hop run" with Llewis is necessity.

 

 

Doc watches from his spot at the back fence. He and Llewis wait for Ori, the Border Collie who lives in back of us, to come out so that they can run the fence. They understand that when I show up with the leashes, the game is over. (Or, the jig is up.)

 

 

Here are the two Terribles, discussing what they can get into, destroy, drag around the yard. My understanding of this relationship is that Llewis actually picks out the object they are about to torment and destroy, and sends his guided missle to get it.

In this photo, Llewis is saying:

Remember the last garden hose they bought? Well, that's the new one. YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO!!

 

And off goes the black dog to resection the new garden hose.

WAIT! I am Conley. What does Llewis have that I don't?

HAHA I will tell you what I have that you don't have:

a Bodyguard.

 

HOW DOES YOUR STUFF GROW?

This used to be a neat, carefully built Robin's nest. For years it has been. The Robin returned this year and began carefully reconstructing his home. Somewhere in there, between tucking in a piece of string and finding another, came a Sparrow (a House sparrow, i believe.) and finding a nice foundation, appropriated the nest.
The difference, to me, between the two birds, Robin and Sparrow, is staggering. This is the kind of stuff I find fascinating. In addition to the overall appearance of mess (it looks like my room) the entrance to the nest is impossible to see from anywhere that I can stand. I have seen the Sparrow coming and going, so i know where the entrance IS, but I cannot SEE it.

This is Spiderwort. I first saw it growing in ditches and became curious about it. Finally one day John pulled over and I clambered into the ditch and grabbed some which i then planted. Imagine my surprise when, visiting my parents some 500 miles away, I found a row of carefully cultivated Spiderwort along our fence. My Father had seen some in a ditch and brought it home. How alike we were, but I never suspected until I was grown and gone.

 

My first rose of the season, albeit a wild rose atop a man-eating rose tree with canes as thick as a man's thumb and thorns designed to tear your gizzard out. They still smell great, and they are still beautiful.

When I was a kid I rode my horse almost every day past a beautiful blue-grey tree with a gnarly, coal black trunk that I loved. I loved the way the leaves blew silver when there was a wind or storm coming, and I loved the medium size, the contrast between the leaves and the trunk. It was, my Mother told me, a Russian Olive and I vowed someday to have one. They were awful, she said: dirty trees that break. How on earth I wondered, can a tree be dirty? It drops it's fruit, she told me, everywhere.
Oh, like the Walnut tree in our backyard or the oak trees next door.
So I grew up and moved away and raised my children and bought a Russian Olive after all these years, and this is my little 3 yr old Russian Olive in my back yard.

This is the Jungle. Due to the heavy rains it has grown like crazy. In the Jungle if you look carefully you will see the resident wolf and one of his cohorts scouting for deer.

This is the cohort (Llewis) rushing to get a piece of deer (Milk Bone.)

This is the wolf, contemplating the chances of capture if he comes any closer to claim his piece of deer.

And these are the mushrooms of which I am going to paint a picture. I hope. (Expectation often exceeds reality.)

                    "What the hell happened to my nest???"

TRANSLATION

Dear Doc,
You're such a softie.If I say the wrong thing, you hide. If I raise my voice, you will be shocked. How could I be so cruel?
You are my heart and soul.
You are my sunshine. I sing this song to you. Horrible in my off-key voice and you pretending to like it. I love watching you. I watch you move and I'm thrilled with the ease that your body negotiates the turns and bumps and sudden stops.
I see your Plumey tail wave.
I can not imagine my life without you, although I know this is probably inevitable to me.
Be well, my son. Live long. Love life.

 

 

 

Lieber Doc,
Du bist so ein softie.If ich das Falsche sagen, verstecken Sie. Wenn ich meine Stimme erheben, werden Sie entsetzt. Wie konnte ich nur so grausam sein?
Du bist mein Herz und Seele.
Du bist mein Sonnenschein. Ich singe dieses Lied, Sie in meinem schrecklich, off-Taste = Stimme und Sie vorgeben, es zu mögen. Ich liebe dich beobachtet. Ich beobachte dich bewegen und bin mit der Leichtigkeit begeistert, dass Ihr Körper die Windungen und Stößen und plötzlichen Stopps verhandelt.
Ich sehe Ihre Plumey Schwanz Welle.
Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, mein Leben ohne dich, obwohl ich weiß, das ist wohl unvermeidlich.
Sei gesund, mein Sohn. Live long. Liebesleben.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KARMA

(Google photo)

This is a Pit Bull Terrier. I am not a fan.Two of the dogs, my elderly cat and I have been attacked by PB's. Around here there is a HUGE element that fights Pit Bulls, so you never know, if you see one loose, whether it is a nice Pittie and or one who is going to charge first and ask questions later.
Consequently, I do not like them loose in the neighborhood.

But around here, the Cops shoot them. And/or they are euthanized, the fighting ethic so pervasive among owners that the shelters and adoption agencies generally would rather kill than risk a lawsuit. It is not without justification.

Years ago I told my husband I did not walk the dogs where there was a Pit being walked because the kids, the teenage boys,like to turn them loose when they see another dog coming. He said this was ridiculous and I was wrong. We had one of those neverending fissing matches about it until one day when we were both walking the dogs in the park and I saw a young man with a Pit. "I'm going back" I said, and spun on my heels and retreated.
"That's just ridic---------" he began, and watched as the young man leaned down to take the leash off.....
Some things I know.

So this morning here i sat and I glanced up in time to see a grey rump and tail vanish into the bushes leading to the backyard across the street and my brain instantly identified it as a Pit.

Grabbing a leash, and two treats, I bolted out of the house and started across the street as the Pit trotted out of the bushes and crossed to my side. She was a young bitch and i wish I had checked to see if she were in season, because it turned out my husband had seen her several days ago. She had a big wide pink collar and no identification.
I sat on the sidewalk and let her come to me, which she did readily enough. We chatted, and I slipped a leash on her.



Had she looked like this, her behavior would have been the same...


So I didn't have my phone, I couldn't take her home or near my house without setting off the cacaphony of hound and herder. There was a woman down the street taking out the trash. I hollered. M'am, could you call animal control,please, for me?

Oh,she says...and then... that dog lives there, where the green car is.
Oooooooooooooooo an owner!!!

Because I know, yes I do, I know what the end result will be for this dog if I call AC and nobody claims her, and around here,people tend not to look too hard.And she is, after all, a nice bitch.

So I walk down and pound (like a Cop) on the door, and someone is at the curtain and I say M'am, is this your dog?

Oh yes yes yes indeed she was, her name is Karma and thank you thank you HOW DID YOU GET OUT?

And I know-- this isn't fair but I know it-- that she is not going to go check the fence to find out,because if she were that concerned she would have done it last week, when my Husband saw the dog loose.
She can get under our gate when my dogs are out and she might well NOT be friendly then.

I told the woman: I am concerned because she is a Pit and around here the Cops shoot them.

Only partly true. The Cops are not bad guys, but...

Well, I did what I could. Here's hoping Karma's Karma doesn't include getting picked up by animal control.....good luck, dog.
 (from Google)

LET THERE BE LIGHT (In the yard)

When EVERYTHING happened a couple of years ago and the house flooded we came back to find that the rehabbers, restorers and rebuilders had cut the power to our big floodlights on the roof as well as removed that handy outside electrical outlet in the back. Some more mumbo jumbo about codes that we never completely (like a lot of the codes consisting of "move that pipe to someplace entirely inconvenient and impossible to reach in case we need to replace it someday" understood.

All we knew was, suddenly, we were unable to see the dogs at night in the yard and, more to the point, unable to check for varmints before we let them out.

 

We had nothing to go by other than the moon and flashlights to check for

(photo by Google)

 annoyed raccoons

  (Photo from Google)

 

annoyed possums

 

And so on.

 

Since Doc will not go out at night without an escort with a flashlight and/or Llewis or Conley this has been inconvenient. The biggest problems is actually not being able to check for skunks BEFORE I open the door and send the pups roaring into the night.

 

Some women are handy with tools. I know what a shovel is, and a trowel, but wrenches and hammers leave me in a cold sweat. Unfortunately, for the most part (He did put my grill together withouot mishap) DH is about as "handy" as one of the dogs.

Doc is good at deconstructing, but not at putting things back together again. He and DH share some traits that  way, altho DH at least makes an ATTEMPT to put things together.

 

But see, we have a neighbor who is a master electrician.

 

So yesterday Roger came over and began putting up new floodlights.

But it rained. And rained, And rained. The yard looks like a rice paddy. The Garden, which I have allowed to go wild, looks like Indochina.

 

So Roger had to quit, plunging us back into blackness in the yard.

And what does he do?

 

He sets up his own floods on his pool deck overlooking our yard! So I step out the door and it is virtually daylight at 11 at night!!!

I still went out with the dogs because Roger had left some things behind and I was afraid the Bassets and Doc would build an escape route over the fence.

(Actually I didn't want Doc eating Roger's stuff.)

 

But it was such a thoughtful gesture. Do we have cool neighbors or what?

At least on one side....

 

 



GRILLING TIME

Last fall I put my much maligned and rusted grill out on the curb for the trash.

The other day I decided I had to have a new grill, and since Menard's was having a grand opening I went and picked up (well it weighs 85 pounds. I didn't actually pick it up,other people did.) a new gas grill, a little fancier than the one I had and hopefully with an ignition that worked. I really hate lighting propane with a match
(photo from google)

The grill is right outside the back door. Everything was great. Mr.Husband put the whole thing together while I stayed far away. Everything was fine until we came to the nice rubber hose that carries the gas from the cannister to the ignition and Mr.Husband and I stood  and stared at it in horror , at exactly the kind of thing that the almost a year old puppy Doc LOVES TO CHEW.

       (I would NEVER chew a garden hose.Look what I found!)

He is a hose dog.
He chewed our garden hose into pieces. Little pieces. This new hose, was not a garden hose, and the consequences of his chewing it were enormous. (kaboom). (He would only do it once.)

Consequently the grill now stands proudly behind an old ex-pen. Like many things in our home, it looks a little weird, but we sleep better.

So now I am grilling everything. We had burgers the other day and chicken.(a little dry).

The dogs stay in the house while I am cooking. (No, hubbie does not cook. Or Grill. That the man of the house always grills is a myth.)

The garden hose, which we had to buy since ours was in chunks all over the yard, is in one of those plastic hose containers and that, being plastic and another chewable, is in a metal dog crate.

(If you have too many crates and want ideas on how to utilize them, ask me.)

It's going to be a bit awkward but perhaps the hose will make it through the summer.

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

                                Me? I would NEVER!