Tag Archives: Stockdogs

A December Morning: Structuring the Day

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On this particular December morning, I am downstairs just after 6, having slept in a bit longer now that the days grow shorter. I let Max and Buster outside before making a pot of coffee. (Buster, our rat terrier, is now full-grown and no longer crated at night, as he was in last year’s missive on my morning routine.) The two bustle off into the predawn darkness in search of small creatures to be caught unawares.

Tip

Buster in rat-catching mode is a sight to behold. I have watched him leap up and backwards, like an orca among seals, head arched almost parallel to the ground, and snatch an airborne rat. With a single brutal shake, he broke the rodent’s neck and tossed it to the side before landing on the ground, already in search of another.

No sooner have Max and Buster gone out than Becky, our aging stockdog, sees the lights come on and emerges from the barn. She approaches the front door and stares. As soon as I open it, she makes a beeline through the house to the back door. She waits to be let into the mudroom, where the other two dogs have slept for the night. She lays down on the still-warm blankets and sleeps. We all have our rituals, and her day has not started right until she has come inside for a few hours.

Just now, writing the words aging stockdog, I recall that it was many years ago when the same description made an appearance in these chronicles. Then, they referred to the much-beloved Tip, and Becky was no more than a feisty youngster. The more things change….

With coffee made I continue with my own rituals. First, a few minutes focused on the list of what I want to accomplish for the day. A well-made to-do list remains an essential to the satisfactory functioning of both my day and our farm. It is often said in this household that “if it doesn’t make the list, it doesn’t get done.” It would not surprise me in the least if someday I find the need to record things like “brush teeth.” But today the list merely contains reminders to send information to our farm insurance rep about a new tractor, go to the dump, weed the Swiss chard, and carry out a few job-related tasks.

List creation made, I turn to my morning readings. The early hours of the day are my main time to read the books I post each week under “Reading this weekend” (A bit of a fudge it is, since I read them all week long). Usually I start with a passage from Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. These may sound more pretentious to your ears than deserved. They are simply good guides to living this life. A page or two read in thoughtful reflection is helpful in starting the day on the right foot: “Remember that you do not lose any freedom by changing your mind and accepting the correction of someone who points out your error.” (That gem is from Mr. Aurelius.)

Seneca the Younger — most famous for the maxim “Life without learning is death” — was added to the mix this year. And it is to his epistle “Travel as a Cure for Discontent” that I turn today. (He was not a believer in the cure, by the way.) I then read for an hour from the newish biography of Booker T. Washington, Up from History. It’s a thoughtful work that reminds us to view the present and the past from a more considered and less reproachful perspective: until you walk in someone else’s shoes, etc., etc.

My quiet time comes to an end as the outside world begins to intrude. The cats are meowing on the front porch, the roosters in the barnyard won’t shut up (Time to butcher a good half-dozen, I think), the sheep are bawling to be turned out onto greener pastures, and nearby the dogs are wrestling over some well-chewed, best-left-unexamined morsel in the yard. Footsteps sound overhead, and reluctantly I close my book. That is enough for now.

Time to engage with the world beyond. I open the door and go out to feed the dogs and cats, leaving time for Cindy to start the day on her own terms.

Postscript: The day’s to-do list (once again) got sidetracked by another project. I spent the best part of the day trying to run the flue pipe on a new woodstove to our smokehouse, but never could establish a correct draw. Sometimes defeat comes in on little cat feet … or is that fog?

Night Sounds

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A midnight thunderstorm has its prelude an hour before arrival: a soft thud of feet from Becky, our English shepherd stockdog, on the front door signals thunder at a distance so remote as to disturb only her sleep. I trudge downstairs and put her on the back porch before returning to bed.

After the storm subsides, a steadier wind comes rattling down our small valley and shakes the windows. A cold front has arrived. Most of the night will pass before it manages to crowd out the warmth of the previous day.

Later, a more distant sound awakens me, the cattle cavorting and kicking up their heels in the hill pasture. The ruckus eventually awakens Teddy, too. An Aussie pup who typically prizes his sleep over our general welfare, he moves to the stone wall behind the house and begins a sporadic solo of barks. A few minutes pass and the cattle move on, and Teddy returns to his slumber. I get up and let Becky off the back porch.

Three in the morning and the sound of short, high-pitched yapping informs me that the dogs are on the trail of a small varmint. The barking follows its target in a rapid serpentine trail, first near the barn, then through the orchard, and finally, dear god, just beyond the bedroom window. Apparently cornered, the quarry resorts to its most effective defense: the acrid smell of the skunk lingers until long after sunrise. I return to my sleep.

Near five o’clock, the rhythms of morning begin to edge out those of the night. I’m reminded that we forgot to close the coop last evening when one of our large Speckled Sussex roosters uses his improvised perch in the grapevines beyond the stone wall to challenge a sun that won’t arrive for another couple of hours.

Piglets moved and enjoying their new home

Piglets moved and enjoying their new home

My brain slips unbidden into wakefulness. In squawky images it starts to review the tasks of the day ahead: moving piglets to a new paddock away from their mom, shifting electric fence for the cattle to a new stretch of spring grass. Cleaning the gutters on the house and outbuildings, collecting for compost winter’s leftovers from the hay rings in the pastures.

Clearly, the time for rest is at an end. Coffee is to be ground and brewed, to-do lists to be finalized, and animals to be fed. The night disappears into the west. The new day is showing in the east over the ridge.

I get out of bed.

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Reading this weekend: The Edge of Extinction: travels with enduring peoples in vanishing lands by Jules Pretty. One of the better works I have read this year. The author focuses on the collapse of traditional communities and their ties to the land. 

Farewell, Tip

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With a dog you can move a herd of cattle. Or as a boy you can lose an afternoon along Contraband Bayou looking for pirate treasure with only the company of your dog. As companions and helpmates in our lives dogs are so intertwined as to often seem yet another appendage. Or, as is often said, they seem a member of the family; albeit a member who sleeps rough outside in most weather.tip

That appendage was severed this week when we had Tip put down. She was fifteen, a loyal companion and friend. Her life span covered the purchase of the farm in 1999 to this past week. She was my loyal companion by her choice and insistence, sharing every walk I’ve ever taken on this farm. If you enter her name in the search box on this blog she showed up frequently in these pages. A few of my favorite entries:  Dog Days of Summer, Tip: an aging stockdog, Two Dog Tales. But her name showed up casually in dozens of entries as befits a dog so central to our lives.

produce 002I doubt I’ll leave the porch again without pausing and waiting for her to rise up and join me.

Two Dog Tales

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It’s how you say it, not what you say

Dogs listen more to your tone than to your words. It was in the low thirties and Caleb and I had been clearing a couple hundred yards of trees and brush with the chainsaw. Hard work on a steep slope, made more fatiguing by the cold. We had been at it for several hours while Becky and Katie, our two English Shepherds stayed close by my side.

Further down that hill slope, through a screen of woods was Caleb’s house. They have a collection of what I refer to as “Yappers,” dogs of no determinable breed but all weighing fewer than twenty pounds. A Napoleon complex acted out on a canine stage, these yappers provided a background of steady barking and growling to the crisp winter morning. The house they were protecting was a good fifty yards away from where we worked.  But it was clear they saw us as a threat.

My dogs ignored them other than to give the occasional irritated glance. As we neared completion of the project, Katie (daughter of Becky) ran down the slope towards the fence line. Fearing a rumble and its aftermath I barked a sharp guttural, “KATIE!” To your average kid it would be interpreted that your dad was pissed and you better stop what you are doing. And Katie did stop. Becky on the other hand heard the tone and translated it into “GET-EM!”  She exploded into action and covered the fifty yards before the “yappers” could bark an “Oh, shit.”

She rolled through and over them in a fight I could only glimpse through the screen of woods. Caleb and I are both yelling for her to return. Caleb’s stepdad is out on the porch yelling. And it occurs to me, finally, that to Becky it probably sounds like encouragement. With us as stand-ins for Roman citizens at the Coliseum, screaming for more blood, Becky was determined to entertain. She came back up the slope looking a bit smug from the fight. I yelled at her for good measure and we finished our work.

Old Meanness

Tip, our aged stockdog, was oblivious to the fight. Stone deaf and arthritic she misses all the excitement. But she still has a growl that chills the blood of certain men in the neighborhood. Is it wrong to chuckle at the memory of her pinning Caleb’s brother-in-law on the roof of his truck? I heard a plaintive call one day and went out to find Jay on the truck roof. Tip was using her growl and her stockdog eye to keep the interloper penned until she could consult with me.

A few months ago Cindy and I walked over the hill to visit with our neighbor at his barn. Tip insists on accompanying me anywhere on the farm. But with her arthritis it takes her three times as long to make the journey. We had been talking with Lowell for about fifteen minutes when Tip finally arrived. Lowell, who likes Tip and isn’t buffaloed by her growl, said affectionately, “well, here comes Old Meanness.”

We like that moniker.

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Reading this weekend: Dirt: the erosion of civilizations by David R. Montgomery. It is a fascinating history of the geologic record and role that the loss of soil has played in the decline of civilizations, a message we would do well to take seriously.