The Sabertooth Briard

With Decibel, it would be best to have a built in camera, since she always does something that is funny, silly, or just incredible.  Here she is trying out a larger size "fangs":

Look at my fangs!

ROAR!

Or does she have one of those teenage vampire crushes?  

I vant to suck your blood!

Decibel the helper Briard

Decibel is always willing to help out and ever curious about what is going on.  Nothing new or out of place escapes her.  With spring the ducks and geese are checking out the ponds and Decibel is very busy swimming after them and chasing them off.  I don't mind that, especially not in our 'swimming pond', since those birds can be messy.

Harold got himself a new toy, and after convincing me that this will make weed and poison ivy control more effective, and that fences will be repaired, and that wood lots will be cleared out, well, he came home with the ATV.  I should have got a video camera for the unloading of the thing, which involved backing the truck up to a bank, and using some flimsy pallets as ramps, but amazingly nothing major went wrong.







Naturally now all of us have to learn how to work with and around the thing.  The dogs are doing pretty well so far.

A new tree came in to replace the almond tree that never grew, and Decibel did her level best to help, inspect and clean up.  She is a natural for gardening.

What's in the bucket?

Water!

Daddy did it, not me.

I can dig with my paws, but this technology is promising.

Put your back in it, Dad!

Old tree disposal.

Today Decibel caught on that Harold wanted the tall weeds by the chicken coop gone, and she actually pulled one and brought it to him!  How clever is that!  She is a very clever girl.

Then for another swim in the pond, and some wood ducks took off, and circled, and Decibel managed to paddle in place, watching them in the deep water!  I have never seen a dog tread water before.  She is a strong swimmer and likes going for laps, just because.  I don't mind, it keeps some of the soot out of the house, washes her big paws off.

Prairie Fire

A large portion of our land is enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which keeps highly erodible land out of production agriculture and yet preserves the land.  We are obligated to keep our land as tall grass prairie, which is what it used to be centuries ago.

Prairie used to burn every now and then, which maintains the grass and gets rid of the shrubs and trees and other weedy invaders.  These days burning is a management practice but like most managed things, it gets complicated.  Because of the CRP we cannot burn from April 15th to July 15th.  Most of the grass would benefit from a late April, early May burn, but rules are rules.

Foreground is pasture, which didn't burn much, background is prairie, which did burn.

A good burn

Get the dogs to swim AFTER they walked on the ashes!

So we burned in early April, and thanks to our neighbors' help, we did get a very good burn in.  A good burn is one where the house and barns are intact afterwards, the tall grass is gone and burned to ashes, and no neighbor got burned out.
We didn't even have smoke on the highway, and the only time law enforcement came by it was to compliment us, because there were many other burns that had gotten away from the controlled category, and firefighters were out in force.  Part of the blame for that is with the weather forecast, which is as good as studying entrails, if you ask me, but since the weather including wind speed and direction is forecast hourly for the coming days, people tend to believe that sort of prediction and use it to plan their burns.
We have done so in the past.
However, we were ready a bit before our scheduled start time, and so we decided to 'get her done', which turned out to be a stroke of genius (dumb luck, really).  We were done before the winds picked up to twice or three times the predicted speeds (not to mention that the directions were wrong, too), and since we burned there has been no let up in wind, only it keeps getting colder and shifting.

We got good back fires in, had enough time to get back to the house, where Harold and I had mowed previously, and not even a hay bale got singed.  We were both rather sooty at the end of the day, but it washed out, and the dogs were rather snooty, since they had been locked up, but that was better after they all got cookies.

Where is the birdie?

Decibel helped with the clean up, she bites the water from the hose, and then tried to lick the camera.  Maggie tries to camouflage herself by becoming one with the soot, and suffers from excessive bathing.  She does not like it one bit.  Ralph just wants to sit in the truck, and Skeeter has no clue.

I know where to go to get black paws!

My birthday

Well, it seems that I am not immune from getting older, and worst of all I have friends (?) who remember and celebrate the fact.  Just kidding, I was amazed at the birthday attention I rated.  Cards galore, and not one but two parties, one the day before, one the day after, which worked out just fine.
I got specially prepared sushi, a wonderful cake, and a card from all the critters (they are so talented), and then at dog class I got brownies, a "Man training kit" with a rolled up paper, a spray bottle, treats, and a glow in the dark leash.  That last item has potential for various things, but I am trying not to jump to conclusions.

Decibel will think that we now dress for dog class, she wore the leis and tiara like a pro.  Melinda brought all four of her GSDs, and they heeled and sat and downed in unison it was something to see!

Thanks, you all!

Pinky revisited

Well, it appears that Decibel is over her fear of the flamingo.
Today she noodled the thing long enough for me to go and get the camera, wait for it to open up, and for the incredibly slow shutter to deploy, and she was still playing with Pinky.  Of course now I had to stop her before she chewed his tail off.

In the backyard Decibel does much landscaping and she is very busy rearranging the downspouts from the gutters.  She likes pulling them off and carrying them around.  She then tries to be helpful when I put them back.  I think I will try and harness this energy for good, and train her to pull the downspouts off when I have to mow the grass, I always forget about the darn things.  Of course that could backfire with the girl...
Decibel always makes me laugh.  This morning she was rowdy, and so I gave her a bear hug and demanded a kiss.  You have seen the shrinking kids when an overly affectionate relative wants a kiss and the kid just wants to get away?  We had the same kind of wrestling match, and then she had a bit of a temper tantrum, then she gave me a BIG sloppy kiss and off she went.
What a girl!
Her newest trick seems to be to paw visitors so they will pay attention to her.  Another thing to work on.  I'm sure that is not on the Canine Good Citizen list.

Yesterday she showed how brilliant she is.  I built a small hurdle for my horse, to teach her to step over things, and Decibel had to check it out.  On a lark I said: "Hop", and over she flew!
I said it again, and she jumped back!  How very clever.  Maybe she should try out agility.  But I am too old for that, I think.

All in all this spring is not too bad, a few warm days make up for a lot of mud.  Ruby the cow is back, and we are all glorying in milk and dairy products galore.  The dogs are learning to mind their manners while I milk and lap their milk gladly.

Spring Swim

It is relatively mild today, and for some reason I thought that vacuuming might be good, but that turned out a bad idea in a way.  The door opened, and our neighbor walked in.  There is a horse on the highway, mine, since it is black and white!
Well that is not good.
I had not heard the dogs bark or anything, but as I run out, I look up to the paddock, and that there is my horse.  So the highway black and white horse is at least not mine.  Small grace.
Sure enough though, there is a black and white pony running around next to the road, so I open the gates and have the guys drive the horse through.  It is a pony, and definitely not mine, and it is racing up the drive toward my horse, who might be in heat, so that would explain things, for the pony is a male.  I lock the gates, thank the guys, and go after the pony, closing gates as I get to them, so at least the little beast is contained.  With a halter I drive him into the paddock, secure him there, where he races the fence and makes squealing noises at Sweetpea, who promptly bucks and rears.
Ah spring has literally sprung!
I call the vet, and she can think of one person who might own the pony, so I call Janel, the hairdresser and get the 411, which is her address as well.  Janel soon finds out where the pony belongs, and sends help.  The pony is picked up in short order.
Well after that excitement I take the dogs for a walk, and Decibel finds an empty plastic bottle, and races around crunching it, and playing with it.  She goes into the pond, and puts the bottle down to drink, but the thing floats off.  Decibel is confused.  Why is it moving?  She sits down in the water, studying the situation, just her head sticking out.  The bottle is floating, sailing across the little pond.
Then she has an idea!
Decibel jumps up, hops out of the pond, races to the other side, jumps back in, swims about three paddles worth, grabs the bottle, gets back to shore and races around triumphantly with her newly caught bottle.  Well, she was pretty clever about it, running to the other side.
I hope there won't be more excitement today, this was enough fun.

Several thousand reasons why I hate to save daylight