Category: dogs

It’s a Black & White Problem

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I know it’s been awhile. I haven’t traveled nearly as much as I used to the past couple years, so travel stories haven’t been as abundant.

However, I’ve realized even when life isn’t in the clouds, my Life On The Ledge still has things to share. Although the characters are different, the entertainment value is still strong.
So back by popular demand (or no demand at all) the all new view from my Life on the Ledge!

This story starts in the black of night.

Right before I’m headed off to bed, my trusty four footed companions decide to do their excited dance at the door. I figure the chances are about 90/10 that the dance is due to some uninvited visitor in the yard vs upset tummies that were going to wake me up in the middle of the night with the need to use the bathroom. I hesitate for a minute, but decide that despite the low odds, I really did not want to be woken up in the middle of the night, so I opened the door and let them out.

As soon as the door opened and they took off around the garage, I knew I played the wrong odds.

Sure enough, their run was soon accompanied by their “Oh, look! A new friend!” bark.

I gave it a minute or two, then called for them to come back in. Not only did they not appear, but I recognized their “Hey look! We want to show you what we found!” barks, so I grabbed my flashlight and decided to go look so we could all go to bed.

I came around the garage and the flashlight found the pups hanging out in front of the chicken coop.

Followed quickly by lighting the black and white fluffy friend running around inside the chicken run.

Luckily, when I gave a quick yell to the pups, they came running back to the house with me, and I decided our little skunk friend could show himself out.

Apparently, Pavi’s experience last year getting sprayed in the mouth by a skunk (Yes. Directly. In. The. Mouth) was enough for him to learn to leave the black and white kitties alone and he had avoided the spray.

Ember, however, had not had the chance to learn that lesson.

She seemed to only have gotten a glancing blow on her neck, though, which I quickly scrubbed with dish soap and vinegar before it could set in, and the smell remained quite mild, considering.

Bullet dodged.

So off to bed we go to a great night sleep.

Bright and early the next morning, we’re downstairs and ready to start the day.

Somehow, even before my coffee, my brain kicks in enough for me to think maybe I should just go double check that our guest had made his way back to his own home over night before I let the dogs out.

I was really glad I did, because sure enough, as the chicken coop comes into view, there is our Oreo colored friend, still running back and forth in the run.

Hmm. Why did he choose to stick around? Surely there are more exciting places to explore than my chicken run.

The chickens had dug a hole in the corner of the run, which I had covered with chicken wire to keep them from escaping, and I realize Oreo had pushed up under the wire from the outside to get in. But now that he was in, he was standing on the wire, so couldn’t burrow back under it to get out , so now he was trapped.

Which means now I have to get close enough to the coop to let him out.

My run has two sections to it, a larger one and a smaller one. Both sections have doors in them, and since Oreo is currently running back and forth in the smaller section, I decide my best bet is to open the door in the larger section.

So I very slowly make my way towards the door, keeping my eye on Oreo the whole way.

At first, he is too focused on his panicked pacing to notice me, but just as I get into range to touch the door, he stops and looks at me.

So I stop and look at him.

I figure as long as I’m seeing the two-eyed side of him, I’m safe. It’s the one-eyed side I need to avoid.

So I keep my eyes on him and slowly reach out and open the door.

Once I get it open, I quickly retreat around the corner of the barn, and watch from a safe distance.

But Oreo has just resumed his frantic pacing along the back stretch and seems unaware his path to freedom is behind him.

That’s fine. I’ll go inside, get some breakfast and coffee, and surely he’ll be gone by the time I’m done.

Except he isn’t.

I load the dogs into the car for our morning walk and go to check, and Oreo is still doing his military march on the back of the chicken run.

Now what?

I decide maybe I need to open the door that is closer to his pacing path.

And also about 3 ft from Oreo’s business end.

I find one of Pavi’s strategically placed, enormous sticks lying between me and the coop (Now I realize he wasn’t creating a mowing obstacle course, but a home defense system!), so I grab it and again slowly advance into the danger zone.

I use the stick to flip the latches on the door, but I can’t get the right angle to pull the door open with it, so I have no choice but to creep in and pull the door open.

But I make it! And now Oreo has a clear escape path just 3 ft behind him.

I take the dogs for our walk, and when we get back an hour later, this time I’m sure Oreo has moved on.

And yet again, I’m wrong.

Not only is Oreo still pacing the perimeter, one of the chickens, who had still been shut up in the inside coop, had somehow let herself out, and was now pacing around with our black and white friend.

2 doors standing wide open to the outside world, and both of them are just getting their steps in the cage.

Obviously time to regroup.

Oreo is now in the larger run area, but also under the inside coop. As far from the doors as it is possible to get. The chicken is hanging out by the open door, so I figure I need to shut the doors and figure out how to corral Matilda before I can continue trying to encourage Oreo to move on.

I decide if I can try to corral Matilda in the smaller area I might be able to grab her and remove her from the equation, so I go get some grain and throw it down in that area to lure her in.

Sure enough, she takes the bait.

But as soon as I open the little door to try to nab her, she squawks and runs the other way.

Straight at Oreo. And straight into his smelly shower.

Somehow, I still avoid becoming collateral damage, but now Matilda is not happy and squawking and flapping, and Oreo is even more agitated.

Perfect conditions to continue with Plan Rescue.

Matilda finally calms down enough to go back to the grain and I’m able to grab her.

So now I’m standing hugging a skunk stink chicken.

Somewhere along my quest of collecting useless trivia, I had remembered hearing that once a skunk sprays, they are unable to spray again until their supplies replenish, so I had googled that earlier in the morning to see if I might be able to use that to my advantage, knowing he had sprayed the dogs last night.

While it is true, they can actually spray 5-6 times before they deplete their supply.

So I do debate, for a minute, whether I should just throw the chicken at Oreo 4 more times to run him dry, but quickly decide I’m unlikely to come out of that plan unscathed.

I stuff Matilda back in the coop through the nest boxes and reach in and lock the door so none of the other girls get the bright idea of trying to join the party.

Then I swing the outside doors wide open again.

Meanwhile, Oreo continues his frantic marching.

Now what?

I grab what is left of my blackberries from the fridge and again venture back to the danger zone. I toss a handful of berries back towards Oreo and then strew the rest of them to the door and out.

There. Plan Hansel and Gretel is sure to work.

I head inside to give Oreo the room he needs.

An hour or so later, I again make my way out to the chicken coop. Only to see Oreo still running back and forth.

Really??

I had already tried a stick to attempt to prod Oreo towards the exit, but it wasn’t very effective through the wire of the run.

Which is how I find myself doing something I never thought I would be doing .

Throwing rocks at a skunk.

Oreo is still pacing as far away from the door as possible, so I start throwing rocks at the coop near Oreo to get him to move in the other direction.

And it works! Oreo runs to the other end of the run- right past the two open doors (and over all the blackberries) and resumes pacing on the other end.

Old Oreo is proving to be a formidable opponent.

Apparently Oreo is only going to go out the same way he came in.

Except now Oreo is pacing directly over the entry point.

So now I’m throwing rocks again to get Oreo back to the other end he just came from.

Once he is safely back at the far end- again- I move in, tug the wire out from the bottom of the run, prop up the corner with a piece of wood, and move in for the final volley.

Back to the other end of the run to throw rocks-again- to move Oreo back to his chance at freedom.

Finally!

Oreo gets back to open corner, slips back out under the coop, and disappears under the fence.

And I survived 3 hours of battle with a skunk without getting sprayed once.

Victory!

Hopefully chickens don’t have a strong sense of smell, because their coop was not so lucky.

The Big Bad Wolf and the Scary Woods

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I have two big dogs. And while I didn’t get them for protection, and they are both friendly to dogs and man, I always figured they’d be good to have on my side if ever we were to run into Big Scary Monsters.

Today I learned how true that is.

It’s been cold here this weekend, so we haven’t been venturing out for as many daily miles as normal. In fact, it was a balmy 2 degrees when we woke up this morning, so we decided to postpone our morning walk a little and hope for a little more red to appear on the thermometer.

By the time we ventured out around 10, it had warmed up 6 times over to a much more reasonable 12 degrees. And since it was also nice and sunny, it felt like at least 13.

We had done a nice vigorous hike through the woods to get our body temp up, and Pavi had rearranged the forest by moving a few trees from here to there to keep his blood pumping, and were heading back to the car.

We had come out of the woods and were crossing the field to the parking lot, when Pavi, my big, intimidating, 95 pound black Shepherd, suddenly stops dead and stares intently into the woods.

Then the hackles all the way down his back go up and he starts barking at whatever he is staring at.

I walk up next to him and prepare myself for an enormous porcupine, or coyote, or wooly mammoth or BigFoot himself to charge out at us.

But nothing happens.

After a few more seconds pass with no monster emerging from the woods, I start to relax.

But my furry 4 footed companion has not.

And now he’s added a little lunge forward/ leap back move to his armor.

This helps me pinpoint the Big Scary Monster.

Someone had rolled a big ball of snow, like the bottom of a snowman, through the field and left it beside the trail.

And this Monster Snowball had set off all the alarms and sent my ultra tough protector into DefCon 5 mode.

It wasn’t until I went and sat on the snowball and finally lured my watchdog in with treats, so he could neutralize the threat, that we could finally continue down the trail and back to our car.

I don’t know what will happen if we ever do encounter Big Foot, but at least I know I am safe from snowballs.

Protect the Family Jewels

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This weekend my niece turned 5. And you can’t turn 5 without all the presents.

You just can’t!

So the pups and I headed out for a road trip yesterday morning for the 2.5 hour drive to my parents house.

I have a nice big car for my little monsters, and one of those cargo gates in my car, to keep those monsters in their area, and we have taken many a road trip (including one all the way cross country) with this set up without any issues.

Everything with this road trip started out in much the same way. But about an hour into our trip, things started to go in a different direction.

All of a sudden, my boy Pavi, starts pacing around in the back, whining and basically freaking out.

Strange. He sometimes gets a little antsy on a long ride, but not like this.

I try to talk to him from behind the wheel and get him to calm down, but he doesn’t, and now he’s trying to climb over the grate barrier into the back seat. Meanwhile, I’m trying to talk, then coax, then adamantly insist that he knock it off and stay in the back, all while hurtling down the highway at 75 mph.

Needless to say, none of that works, and within a few minutes, Pavi is halfway over the barrier, but since he is literally a monster, he can’t get the rest of the way over and is now stuck half in the back and half in the backseat, and now is truly frustrated.

I decide I have no choice but to get off the highway at the next exit, find a place to park and get him unstuck.

I pull into the back of a motel parking lot, get out of the drivers seat and open the back door to figure out how best to unstick my dog.

I decide the best route is to try to get him fully into the back seat -which is full of presents, dog gear and all our stuff, btw, and is making it even harder for him to find solid footing to squeeze through the small gap between the ceiling and the cargo barrier. I put his leash on him and proceed to try to assist him up and over.

I just start gently tugging and trying to coax him over, when something odd catches my eye.

Why does Pavi suddenly seem to have an extra appendage trying to make the trip over the barrier?

It takes me only a couple of seconds to realize that, indeed, my buddy’s “wee Willy winkey” is in fact tangled in the barrier grate.

Precisely at the same moment that he starts to howl in discomfort.

Now I have no idea how this appendage came to be tangled in the gate, or why the pen was even out of the case at this moment, but I don’t have much time to consider that, because full blown panic is starting to set in for Mr. Magoo, and he is wriggling something fierce to get himself out of this situation which is only going to end very, very badly.

So I do the only thing I can do.

I reach in and untangle the family jewels just before Pavi makes the final push into the back seat and out the door.

We spend a few minutes walking around outside, mainly to lower both of our blood pressure’s, but also because I still don’t know what set this all off in the first place, so I’m expecting expulsion of some sort of bodily fluids on top of all that fun, but nope. He seems fine now.

So we head to the back of the car to load up and get back on the road.

As soon as I open the back, it is evident what set off this series of events.

One of my two monsters has vomited all over the blanket I have covering the cargo space, and Pavi is adamant he is not going to spend the rest of the road trip riding in those conditions.

I decide, after all this drama, him riding shotgun for the rest of the trip is not the worst that can happen, so I open the passenger door and he happily climbs in.

I climb back in behind the wheel, and look over to set some ground rules about where his turf stops and my starts, only to notice that poor “Little Pavi” is now resembling our famous east coast red hot dogs, swollen to the size of a kielbasa.

That can’t be good.

I’m neither male, nor a veterinarian, but I know enough that this could be bad enough to warrant medical attention if it stays this way or gets worse.

And it’s Saturday, when all normal vets are closed, and I’m an hour from home and an hour and a half from my parents, and no idea where there might be any emergency vets on that route.

I make a call to my dad and my sister, they do some quick Google work and send me the info for a couple emergency vets along the way, and I decide since the big guy doesn’t seem to be in any obvious distress at the moment, we’d keep going and hopefully make it to one of the emergency vets before we had a full blown emergency.

Luckily, after several minutes, Little Pavi returned to normal size and returned himself to his shell, Big Pavi had calmed down and didn’t seem to be in pain, and a larger crisis seemed to have been avoided.

And lucky for Pavi, there were no plans to put those Family Jewels to use at any time in the future, so all’s well that ends well, as they say.