White Shepherd Stories

The Days of Our Lives (2)

Our cockatiel, Hanabel died yesterday.  I don't know how old he was.  My son's girlfriend found him in her yard and she had cats - so she offered him to me.  I took him, because I am a push-over for critters needing homes, and that is what I do.  He was a great bird.  He was friendly and sweet and he didn't yell at me like some birds (namely, our Nanday Conure, Bogey) who  thinks he is some sort of king of our castle.  I kind of think Hanabel was old.  He was missing feathers on the back of his head.  He was like that when I met him.  The feathers just never grew back, but other than that he was a handsome bird.

I will miss Hanabel.  He was a happy little guy, always offering a happy reception to us.  He stopped perching yesterday morning and seemed to prefer eating from the seed he had knocked out of his dish.  I put a small dish of water down for him and a soft towel with some seed.  He ate a lot and then, sometime between 10:30 AM and 1:00 PM he just lay down, closed his eyes and died.  I guess when it it time to go, that would not be the worst way to do it.   I cleaned his cage and thought about passing it on to the parakeet, maybe after some of the memories have faded.  

The UPS man brought us a package yesterday.  One of the items is a new bed for Spirit.  It is an air mattress called a "Snoozy Bed".  We have another one that  I got to replace Spirit's saggy foam rubber bed that no longer gives him enough support.  Pirate likes that bed and Spirit was happy to keep his old bed.  

I opened the package and located the little mouthpiece that I am supposed to use to blow up the bed.  I got the bed layed out on the couch under the watchful eyes of Quest, Pirate and Journey.  Spirit was comfortably asleep on his blue cot.  I inserted the little mouthpiece thing in the mattress and started to take a deep breath to start blowing it up.  I did not accomplish much as when I took my first breath, all three dogs tilted their heads in sinc.  That made me laugh and I had to start again.  This time I did not look at them.  I began to blow into the mouthpiece and all three dogs suddenly jumped on top  of me.  It seemed they were trying to sit on my head and put their noses in my mouth and just going crazy about what they seemed to consider my odd behavior.   I told them to sit and they did so - still in sinc - heads tilted to see what I was going to do next.  The situation seemed impossible and I would have put them outside, had it not been raining so hard.  

Journey, Quest & Pirate

I tried to act a little more stern and sent them to their beds in the window corner of the room.  I made them stay there while I blew up the mattress.  It is not as firm as I would have liked, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.  I put the sheepskin type cover on it and put it in our bedroom.  Quest decided it was something he had always wanted and Spirit stayed in his favorite saggy foam rubber bed.  Well,  so much for Spirit's new bed.

A couple weeks ago I switched Journey's wire crate for a soft crate.  It looks a little nicer in the bedroom, but best of all it does not hurt as bad if I stub my toes on it.   The soft crate has zippered doors - one at the end and one at the side.  Journey knows how to unzip the door.  He doesn't open it at night, but in the morning I hear a soft little "zzziiippp" and in a moment a soft, warm puppy joins me in bed.  I love it.   Sometimes he goes out his doggy door first, then comes back inside and we go back to sleep. 

Around 6:00 PM I remembered that I needed a few things from the store, and I wanted to pick up Spirit's prescription at the same time.   The dogs were muddy and I took each one into the shower and sprayed their legs and feet.  After towel drying them, we were ready to go, without much time to spare, as the pharmacy closes at 7:00 PM.  

My dogs all love to go anywhere in the car.  They normally line up nicely to get in the car.  If they even suspect we may be going somewhere I cannot keep them out of the car.  This time one of them started to go out of the garage.  I called him back and instead of him coming back, all three somehow thought they detected something in my voice that indicated they should run down to the muddy fence race track, in the rain.  

I helped Spirit into the car and started the engine, just so the others would know what they were going to miss.  They all came flying back and I shut them in the pool house while scolding them.  I was SO mad at them.  

Spirit and I left the bad boys home and we went shopping.   First we went to the pharmacy drive through, so the woman in the pharmacy could say hello to Spirit.  She likes him.  He sort of pretends not to notice that there is a woman on that small screen who knows his name.  When he is in the car he is on "guard mode" and he considers it undignified to respond to a woman on a tiny screen who knows his name.  That tickles her and she keeps talking to him.   He eventually turns his back to her, but he ocassionally rolls his eyes back to see if she is still there.  

Next I picked up a few groceries and made sure Spirit got some treats so the other guys would be jealous. When we got home they were just so glad to see us, they seemed to have no memory of anyone being bad.   It has always seemed to me that once you teach a dog something and he obviously knows it well, you should not have to re-teach it.  I was wrong.   Like kids, if the lesson is not reinforced occasionally, they think you don't really mean it.  

We are now waiting for another package from the UPS man.  I ordered several long lines, in graduated lengths.  We will be practicing recalls until they come as if their lives depend on it.  You never know when that may be the case!    

The Days of Our Lives (1)

Saturday started out about as normal as our days ever are.  I took my cup of coffee to the couch, and sat where I could see what was going on with the neighbors across the road. My interest was because they had parked their huge motor home outside of their barn and for several days they seemed to be preparing for a trip.   The thought of that made me especially happy because I then anticipated a peaceful few days without having to wash mud off of dog feet numerous times a day.  The only place in our yard that is really muddy is along the fence in front, by the road.  Rocky, their young Shepherd, comes across the road numerous times a day,  barking and yipping hysterically.  That is the signal to my boys, for a wonderful interlude of running back and forth along the fence, in the mud.  My boys run silently, but Rocky makes enough noise for all of them.  He is young, and he is actually afraid of my guys, but he is getting braver unfortunately.

The worst part of the situation is not the mud, but the risk of Rocky getting hit as he dashes back and forth across the road.   There is nothing I can do about it because we are out of the city limits and no one seems to care about Rocky's life except me.  

Before Rocky, there was Kona and Cody, from the next house up the road.   Kona was much worse than Rocky.  He is also a Shepherd, but a very odd one.  He also did the hysterical bark thing, but he was mean and actually connected with Quest a couple times, once ripping his shoulder and requiring stitches. Cody, a Labrador, was worse if possible.  He tried to dig under our fence and I kept having to put additional wire and tent stakes down to prevent it. .Cody would come under the fence, normally when my dogs were inside, but one time he miscalculated and and ended up confronted by Spirit, who promptly ushered him off of our property.  That was several years ago and Spirit was not just tough, he was physically strong also.  When Cody got to the fence he did not want to turn his back on Spirit in order to slide under, but one look at Spirit convinced him he had better do it fast.   Spirit has always been wonderful at handling situations with no bloodshed.  As far as I know, Cody has never come back under our fence.   I keep it tacked down with tent stakes though.   Cody finally got hit by a car and although he survived that, I have not seen him come over near as often.  Kona was getting worse and worse and he took to snapping at people across the road from his house as they attempted to get their mail from a row of boxes.   I don't know for sure what the determining factor was, but those neighbors finally stopped leaving Cody and Kona loose for the most part.  I suspect Kona may have bit someone, but I don't really know.  It was so peaceful - for maybe a couple weeks, then Rocky started doing the same fence attacks and I guess this is just one of the hazards of living in the country where people do not believe in fencing their dogs.   We don't have any problem with dogs that just pass by on the road, as most dogs do.  It is just the ones that challenge at the fence.   They are actually on our property and Spirit, for one,  just thinks that is wrong.  The other three seem to just enjoy the race.

Anyway I could use a vacation from them so we could enjoy a few days in our yard with bird sounds, enjoying the spring.  I watched as they loaded the RV.  They were even pulling an additional trailer for toys - oh boy, they must plan to be gone for at least a week. The kids were all excited and Rocky was so excited he raced around the RV all the time they were packing.  Then they got in the RV and pulled out onto the road.  

I watched with something like horror as Rocky ran behind them for a while, down past our woods.  Eventually he came slowly walking back up the hill .... back home, with his head down.  All the joy was gone out of him and he simply walked across his yard until I could no longer see him.  His family had gone and left him.  It brings tears to my eyes this morning as I write this.  

I believe someone is stopping by to feed Rocky.  I hope so anyway.  If he gets hit by a car while they are gone I guess it is just Rocky and me who will have to deal with it.   I don't like humans much today.  

St. Patrick's Day Memories

When I was married, I used to live in Alaska. We had a huge yard, all planted with grass. My husband always left the lawn cutting to me.  In fact, the lawn mower was a birthday gift.  He was practical. (One Christmas I received a vacuum cleaner.) Cutting our lawn was quite a job, as summer in Anchorage has about 19 hours of daylight per day and it caused everything to grow like crazy. One day as I was outside playing with the dogs I saw a four leaf clover. It was the first I have ever found. I continued searching in that area and I found about a dozen more. Such a thrill, although I am not really superstitious, it was still exciting to actually find them.

I took the special clovers in the house and carefully pressed them in a large book between tissue papers. I noted the exact spot of the magical clover plants and planned to continue my search in the next few days. I was hoping that more of the wonderful clover would appear. I thought of many things I planned to do with the clover and mentally made a list of those with whom I intended to share them. What fun!

Several days later on a weekend day, I was working in the house when a sound vaguely entered my conscious thought ... must be a neighbor. As I went upstairs, the sound grew louder and I realized it was not coming from the neighbor's yard. The sound was coming from my very own lawn mower, in our very own yard, as it mowed down my sacred clover patch. For the first time in my married life I witnessed my husband doing actual physical labor, mowing the lawn. I was momentarily incensed and overwhelmed by his viciousness. It just seemed to be the culmination of our entire dysfunctional relationship. Irrational thoughts of revenge nearly overwhelmed my reason. The magical area of clover was already down and although I was completely baffled as to why, after all this time, when I had actually begged him to cut the lawn in the past, he had taken this time to actually do it. His action, if coincidental (I was not convinced), seemed exemplary of our life together.

Perhaps it was at that moment I first visualized myself packing my belongings and driving down the Alcan highway, headed back home. Well, maybe not, but our marriage did end and I do still occasionally recall that moment when I discovered him destroying my magical four leaf clover patch. As is common in relationships that are just not meant to be ... it felt as if this was just one more sign of our incompatibility and lack of communication. In my more rational moments, coincidence enters my mind, but I wouldn't bet on it!

I often think of this story on St. Patrick's Day. I guess it is all the clover that reminds me.