The Breakfast Merry-Go-Round

     Feeding the animals their morning breakfast should not be rocket science, but this morning it is.  I take the calf bottle out to the shed and hang it in the holder and then turn to the ewe, who has followed me in.  She wants her grain, but what she really wants is the calf’s grain, which I haven’t put out yet.  I persuade her to leave him and follow me back outside where I dump her grain in a pan.  The chickens come running.  I don’t want them eating her grain because it’s rather expensive, so I dip some cornmeal out and call, “Chick, chick, chick.”  The ewe comes running.  I chase her back to her dish which is full of red hens.  I chase them out and herd them over to the cornmeal, which I’ve poured in two straight lines along the ground.  The chickens settle in and I turn to the dogs.  A little kibble in the morning helps keep them warm.  When I pour Luke’s in his pan, the ewe hears the rattle and comes running.  I have inadvertently locked Luke in the shed with the calf, so I shoo the ewe back to her grain and hurry inside to free Luke so he can eat his breakfast before the ewe does. 

     When I go back out, the ewe is licking up the last of the dog food and the chickens are pecking up what she has dribbled on the ground.  I hurry over and pour Rex his breakfast and step down to the creek to dip out some water for him.  While I am down over the edge of the bank I hear him bark.  Climbing back up, I see Luke eating Rex’s food.  I chase him back to his empty bowl with a promise of more food if he’ll just be patient.  He wags and follows me back to the shed where the calf has finished his bottle.  I dip out some grain for him.  As I’m pouring it in his trough, I hear the door behind me rattle.  The ewe pushes through and I grab her by her neck wool and drag her back out the door.  The calf follows and I chase him around the shed twice before I manage to get him back inside.  The ewe has taken advantage of my distraction and slipped in to finish his grain. I pour him some more, muscle her back out, and cross back through the shed to grab a flake of hay for her.  When I go back outside, she is just finishing the chickens’ cornmeal.  Meanwhile, they have scuttled over and are eating out of the horse trough, where I had dumped some grain earlier.

     Luke has watched all of this with interest as he waits for me to refill his bowl.  I drop a little food in it for him, but the ewe runs up and pushes him out of the way.  I give up and head back to the house.  Luke runs behind me and slips in the door.  I had placed a pan of leftover gravy in the kitchen for the cats and apparently he could smell it from over at the shed.  He scatters the cats and they hiss and complain, so I shoo them outside. They have a bowl of dried food on the porch and they’ll just have to be satisfied with that.  Except it’s empty.  There’s a blue jay perched on the edge of it laughing at me as he swallows the last bite.  

Just Another Beagle

At first he was just another rabbit beagle.  He hunted with our other beagle on warm winter afternoons and we followed him across ridges and brushy fields.  He had a great nose, but no perseverance so he might  be the first to find a trail, but he lost interest in it long before the other dogs. 

 Then he became the chicken-chasing dog and had to spend a lot of time on the chain-of-shame, tied to his dog house.  He might not have been able to maintain an interest in rabbits, but chickens were easy to catch.  He developed a taste for bloody raw meals coated in feathers, sometimes killing three chickens a week,  and we discussed giving him away.  As a last resort, Justin suggested I try using a shock collar, so the following Saturday, I cinched it onto the dog’s neck and adjusted the charge to high.  I spent the afternoon like a super spy, hiding  behind outbuildings and watching the chicken-chaser ease his way around the barnyard. He was a practiced assassin. First, he walked into the group of hens, wagging his tail , then he would lie down, head between his paws.  Hens are naturally curious and have brains the size of a pea, so eventually one would peck her way over to check him out. When she came close, he sprang up.  For two or three hours, the chickens and dog played tag, but he couldn’t catch one. I never pressed the button, because I had this feeling that the dog needed to actually have a chicken in his mouth when he felt pain.  I wanted him to believe it came directly from the chicken. 

Then, he snuck around the back of the hen house.  I was sitting behind a tree and couldn’t see him, but I heard the unmistakable sound of a chicken in distress.  I pressed the button and held it down for three seconds.  The beagle yelped five or six times and then I saw him tearing, tail between his legs, around the henhouse.  He stopped about fifty yards out and looked back.  I could read his thoughts on his face.  “Holy Crap!  Chickens hurt!”

That was the end of his chicken-chasing days.  He became my faithful companion.  When I lost Gus, I thought I could never love another dog.  I really didn’t want to risk it.  But, Luke has a goofy grin and an ear that flips inside out when he runs.  He yips and sings in a high falsetto whenever he sees me coming.  He catches crackers and popcorn in mid-air, sits when asked and will lie down and roll over to have his belly rubbed.  He has pogo stick legs, jumping as high as my shoulders every night as I walk out to feed him.  He’s never met a stranger: dog, cat or human.  Luke loves life and I love him. 

It’s funny how when one dog leaves our lives, another can come along and bring us joy again.  I loved Ruff and when he died, Gus became my dearest dog friend.  Then Gus disappeared and I grieved for so long, refusing to let Luke charm his way into my heart.  But dogs are meant for humans and we are meant for dogs.  Luke is now my constant companion.  Loyal, happy, goofy, and grand.  I am thankful he ignored my disinterest and reminded me of the joy of a doggy friend.

Dog Days and Snake Skins

     At 2:30 this morning, I stomped out to the back forty dressed in nothing but my little blue nightgown and Muck boots. The fog was backlit by a full moon and I walked through liquid silver as I crossed the culvert to the dog houses where I stood for a moment and listened to the distant bugling of my beagle, Sandy. I had let her off her chain at sundown so she could get a little exercise while the chickens were cooped up for the night. Sandy is too fond of white meat for me to let her loose when they are free ranging in the field. Gus, who was still tied, had been howling since 12:00 as he listened to her merry chase and I despaired of getting any sleep unless I moved him to the house to spend the night on the mud porch. I hoped that he would be quiet there.
     When I hopped out of bed to retrieve my loud hound, I wasn’t too happy about a midnight stroll. But, standing in that magical mist, I was glad I’d been forced out. As I listened to my beagle’s howl floating through the fog I could tell that she was running towards me. Rabbits run in a wide arc and Sandy’s singing got louder as she came full circle.
     Closer by, crickets chirped in the grass. My twenty-eighth year of teaching started last week and as always it was heralded by choruses of crickets in the fading meadow and yard. This is a bittersweet time of year. The garden is pumping out produce at a rate faster than I can keep up with and my freezer and cellar are fat with tomatoes, peaches, beans, corn, beets and pickles. But school has started and cold weather is just around the corner. The warm freedom of summer days has come to an end.
     Houdini, the snake who escaped from my room last week, was recovered under a trash can across the hall. As soon as I put him back in the terrarium, he shed his skin. Vernon, our school janitor said it was another sign of the approaching fall. He said snakes shed when the dog days have ended. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but because he had been without food for almost two weeks, I brought the snake home and turned him loose where I had found him. In a blink of an eye, he disappeared into his home hole.
     This is also the time of year when parents all around the county are prodding their children to finish 4-H projects. While Joe and I miss helping our kids with their animal projects, we don’t miss the tension of pushing them to complete their barn displays before midnight. Still, when a neighbor child calls, looking to borrow a lead rope, or a hog waterer, or a halter, Joe is always happy to help.

     So, here we are, empty nesters. Like the singing dog and the shedding snake, we’ve come full circle. I wonder what the next round will bring.