Maggie the exterminator

Maggie is our hunter; no doubt about that.  She has an impressive kill list, and for those with weak stomachs, well, this entry is not for you.


Maggie is extremely obedient, smart, determined, agile, and she eliminates vermin with a vengeance.  I swear she has the biggest canine teeth of our dogs, and she is not a big dog.  More than that, she knows how to use them.  She is the ruling bitch in the house, because she has the weapons and the moxie to use them.  Because she is smart, she has never to my knowledge actually had to use them.  She speaks softly and carries big teeth!

She will go after pack rats (for you city folk out there, these are the hoarders of the animal world, and they are real animals, large rats that like to chew on automobile wiring harnesses among other indigestible things, and that collect things from small tools to trash and carry them to their huge nest mounds.  Their nests are made of sticks, grass, bark and other materials and they can be 3 feet (1 meter) or more high mounds of stuff, with the stolen booty buried deep inside.  We have found screwdrivers, box cutters and children's toys inside a nest, along with plastic bottles and insulated wires.  Most nests are off the ground in the fork of a tree, but some are simply on the ground in a bush or corner of a seldom used shed.  We have had pack rats in the barns, chicken coop and windbreaks.  They are pretty rats, white bellies, large eyes, but very destructive.), opossums, raccoons, regular rodents like mice, rats, voles, moles, shrews and gophers, squirrels, rabbits (they are not rodents, of course), muskrats, the occasional birds (from sparrow to pheasant,as well as an owl once), reptiles (snakes and turtles are her favorites, but she will chase a skink now and then) and as of yesterday, even a woodchuck.

Woodchucks are not too common here in Kansas, but she found one in our shed, buried under a cabinet, and Maggie will not give up, when the hunt is on.

Poor dead chuck

Our arrangement it that she may keep the kill outside, and she keeps her end of the bargain.  Of course guarding the woodchuck is work.  Maggie is too busy to come on walks.  Maggie will only come when the other dogs are not nearby or when I use "the voice".

Maggie with her prize

Oh she is so PROUD

The other dogs have long learned their lesson - don't even try.  They seem to know exactly where the safe distance is.

 Skeeter tries to bribe her with a toy, but no trade.  

  

Fishing

While Decibel gets bored with being marooned in the house, haying has been a bit stressful for her humans.  The weather didn't play nice, and there are always tractors and trucks and trailers around the place, so we have to be careful when we release the hounds.  It cramps my style and makes me crabby.  I can't even go skinny dipping, since it might scare the natives.

Last night out neighbor invited us to fish at his pond, and that was a bit of stress relief.

Harold had bought some fancy lures that I was SURE wouldn't work, but they really did, even I caught a big mouth bass with it, and I haven't caught one of those in ages.  He caught several large ones and a bunch of small ones, and I got my share of sunfish with an old lure I have been using for a decade or so, so it was great fun.

This was the bass he caught on the first cast... phone picture, sorry.

We were visited by a snapping turtle that tried to steal our fish before we could get them out of the water and off the hook (all fish were released), so we decided to get it drunk.  Seriously the turtle was not shy at all, and seemed to like beer poured on it.  It kept coming up and striking at the bottle... one for the road?

Hay is BOOORING

Decibel checking out the bales

Compared to July, August has been only moderately hot, but unusually wet, which is a poor combination for haying.


With so much of the country experiencing drought, we had requests from a neighbor to hay some of the ground that we usually keep as prairie.  Naturally we agreed, which turned out to be a good thing, because while they didn't exactly bring in the hay dry, the neighbor that usually hays for us had worse luck.  After swathing we had a strong wind, which, no kidding blew half of the hay away, and then it poured on the rest of it.  It kept doing that at night, storms, lightening, rain, wind, all of which resulted in little sleep and no hay worth speaking of.

For the dogs haying is terribly boring.  When the big tractors are around, they must be cooped up in the house and yard, and that is no fun at all.  There are new people and best of all 'trucks' (for Ralph any noisy machine is a 'truck'), and being cooped up is just stupid.  Sometimes they even miss out on chores, since we don't know when people come back, so we can't have the dogs out.

Hay maze

Decibel tries to climb into the cab with me

How do you get up there?

This one pulls the rake

This one pulls the baler

This old one is mine, it moves the bales

Harold and I have taken advantage of the cool mornings and gone riding, which really adds insult to injury for Decibel and Maggie.  The girls suffer more of this imprisonment, since they are more active and determined to go hunt and check everything out.  Harold has been riding Sweetpea, with rather better than expected results.  She has not bucked him off, and his neck is not broken.  Actually Sweetpea has managed to walk nicely for Harold, and Molly has only gotten better, if that is even possible.

At least, once the bales are moved off the fields, the short grass promises to be great for racing and hunting.  Maggie and Decibel are looking forward to that.

Turning on the charm

Yesterday Decibel wanted some of Harold's dessert.  Nothing remarkable about that.

What is remarkable is how she can go from ordinary pretty dog to sparklingly stunning beauty whose wishes must be obeyed.

Ready?  Set....

CUTE!

She rounds out her eyes, opens her mouth, lets the pretty pink tongue show just enough to offset the pearly whites, and oozes charm and sweetness.  Then, with agonizing precision and control her paw lifts.  At first, it merely points at the person who could make her life better by sharing.  Then there is gentle contact.  Pretty soon she collects her reward and repeats.  It is a good thing she doesn't gloat.  We are pretty much hers for the taking.






Now you might say, oh, that's just the breed, but look at Ralph:

Hey, you got cookie?

Smiling, cute, but let's compare:

Decibel's high voltage smile outshines Ralph's.

It does amaze me just how well she can do in classes, when she pretends that we are in charge.  It is all prelude to another treat in her mind, I am sure.

Buzz bugs

As always, Decibel can make me see the happy side of life.  These days that is not so much the sunny side, there is just a bit too much of that around.  Still, today promises to stay below 100°F (37.8°C for the rest of the world), now there's a treat.  All we need now is a cool breeze, but I'll settle for a drink...

I had forgotten just how much there was to just ordinary day-to-day living until Decibel came.
She still discovers things for the first time... and I rediscover them with her.  Like cicadas, which are now hatching or whatever they do.  They crawl out of the ground, and can't quite fly yet.  Like butterflies they have to let their exoskeleton harden, and while they do, they buzz, to get their wings inflated and unfolded and dried out, and Decibel heard one and launched herself, pounced in the most graceful arc, landed with her front paws and nose on the spot that had buzzed in the tall grass, and then did the same thing in reverse, shaking her head wildly because the buzz-bug startled her.


Oh how I laughed!

What a face!

She did too - laugh that is, after a bit.  She has that goofy way of bumping into me, wagging her tail, and getting a pat and a hug, that is like snickering with your best friend.  That's after a while, when she is pretty sure that the new thing was harmless, and that she just did a funny thing.

A previous dog, a little Tibetan Terrier bitch who ruled the house, Sassy, loved the buzz bugs, as cicadas are referred to in our family.  She found them easy prey and mighty tasty.  Years later I saw people in Shanghai collect them, and a Chinese friend of ours does so here, and fries them, and what-do-you-know?  They're good!

They really taste a lot like peanuts!  You just can't look at them, because they look like bugs.  He collects them when they haven't hatched out of their wingless form yet, so they aren't truly buzz bugs yet.

When it is too hot for the pond, they go for the creek

Heatwave

While I like it hot and am glad that this summer isn't one of the cool rainy ones we have had for the last three years, we've hit the 100°F and above (about 38°C plus) for days in a row and next week it's more of the same.  Add to that the frequent rains (okay, I really miss the drought), we are talking steamy heat that makes one drip in sweat just walking across the barnyard.  To top it off the winds die down in the afternoon, so the stifling sauna is complete then.
Decibel is always up for a walk, in spite of the temperatures, but she heads ducklings to the water of the creek and then the pond beyond that.  When I go swimming with her, she comes up and uses me as a floatation device.  She wants to be held, and just soak in the cool.  That means I have to stand in the mud, which is a bit yucky, but the little princess doesn't care.  Then we head back into the cool air-conditioned house, where plenty of tiles allow the dogs to keep their bellies chilled.
The horses are soaked with sweat and get hosed down (okay, it is a good thing there is no drought, since we are on a well and would have to restrict water for necessary drinking purposes then) and you can almost hear them sigh with relief.  It might just be the steam coming off them.  Even donkey (donkeys hate water) enjoys a quick spritz and doesn't complain.  Needless to say I can only ride early in the morning or not at all, but that's okay too.  When I do get on Molly, she is perfect.

Molly

After a long time looking, giving up, a few wrong turns and such, I brought home Molly a week ago, and she is a keeper.  Molly is a nice old mare, kind and well mannered and I have been riding again, and happily so.  She got along with the place right away, with Sweet Pea in a few days, and everyone likes donkey; she's no exception.

Here is Molly when we first went to take a look at her:

Bllp, I can tell you human know nothing about horses!

Once she was 'home', I rode her as often as I could and the weather would allow for the first week.  I still have another week of trial period, but I don't think I need that time to decide:  

Molly is staying.  She's my horse.

I can ride her out in the tall grass, through the woods, and I always have a smile doing so.  What could be better than that?

Oh, there is one tiny problem... 

The little princess is a tad upset.  She feels neglected.  How dare her human go and leave her for HOURS in the morning?  Just to play with a smelly horse?  What is going on here?  

So a few tantrums have occurred, Decibel style.

Well, it is just stuffing, and her own toys, and after a walk and some special attention she feels better.  Decibel is a very sweet girl, and her teenage moments are few and far between, so when she does have a fit, it usually just makes me laugh.  A few obedience reminders are generally all it takes to reestablish who is in charge.  Or at least she lets me think I am in charge.  She might be royalty, but she does have a generous streak.  And she is very easily bribed.