Author: Elaine

Rion

I made a strategic error when I got home last night:  I was so tired myself I didn’t wake Rion and play with him for a while.  He had been sleeping on Jack quietly, so I took him outside and then put him in his crate, and went to sleep myself not long after.  Rion must have been tired his first night here, because last night he woke me every sixty to ninety minutes after midnight. Then I compounded the error by giving him one of his new toys, and Rion evidently decided “Wow:  this place rocks at night.”  On the other hand, watching him pounce and kill his little plush hippo toy was worth the price of admission.

Rion seems totally at home now. Like any properly adjusted puppy, he views everything as a potential toy.  The puppy toys I brought home yesterday are nice, but nothing beats a human being.  The Collie has potential too:  if he could just figure out how to get her to cooperate.

We have the house set up in zones.  The small puppy proof zone is the master bathroom.  The associated bedroom is puppy safe:  he could damage stuff, but is unlikely to get hurt doing so.  The remainder of the ground floor on this side of the French doors should be puppy safe after today, except for my office.  We are not even going to attempt to puppy safe the area on the other side of the French doors.  He still cries when he doesn’t have Jack or me in sight, but is more apt to wander off exploring on his own for a while before realizing he can’t see us.

The biggest surprise is how cheerful Rion is about going outside.  I am sure he doesn’t understand “walkies” yet, but he is enthusiastic about following me to the mudroom door.  This morning he was frolicking about in 14F and seemed quite comfortable, at least for the five minutes I was willing to keep him outside.  So far walkies consist of going the length of the dog run to the gate to the horse field.

He can now jump down from the bed, and is quite indignant that he can’t get back up under his own steam. I started brushing him with a puppy brush, but it wasn’t doing the job, so I’ve been using a tiny wire brush which he thinks is a game. 

Miniature Schnauzer

Rion, our Miniature Schnauzer puppy spent a relatively quiet night. I, on the other hand, was too jazzed to sleep more than a few hours. Although he is really too small, he somehow manages to get up the stairs out of our sunken living room. He flows up them, rather than climbing them. I am trying to avoid the temptation to carry him everywhere: he needs the exercise, even though he is very cuddly when I lift him. I also need to get him some smaller toys: all our existing dog toys are bigger than he is. So are my Crocs, though he is perfectly willing to try to chew on them, especially if my feet are in them. He seems to have the appropriate instincts about not soiling in his crate, and let me know emphatically that he needed out about 11:30 pm last night. So far, the one thing that seems to worry him is doors slamming. He must not have heard that noise where he lived with his litter mates.

Orion

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Orion (Rion for short) was born on October 20 and joined our family at 6 pm this evening, more or less. He came from Pikes Peak Humane Society, where he and his litter mates were born to a Miniature Schnauzer in foster care. He is currently sleeping in a crate on my bed two feet from me. Lody, unaware that he is not just passing through, seems to like him. I would say that his arrival was unpremeditated, except that when you are checking out under year old dogs on the website every few days it is inevitable that sooner or later you are going to end up with a young dog. I just thought it was going to be one of those dogs who had reached the adolescent ugly “you mean we have to train it?” stage. It has been eighteen years since we’ve had a baby anything around. And yes, there are eyes in that face.

Jack and Lody

Yesterday, Jack commented that our elderly Collie, Lody, no longer seemed to hear him call when he was ready to leave the horse field after feeding horses in the morning.  While we feed, we allow Lody to wander around the horse field.  Trust me, you don’t want to know why she likes to accompany us.

I responded that she still seems to hear me, though I have to pitch my voice a little higher than my normal speaking tone.  I suggested he try pitching his voice higher when he wanted Lody’s attention. 

So this morning, I heard Jack coo in a squeaky falsetto:  “Lody wanna go feed horses?”  It must have worked, because then I heard Jack coo “Good girl, good girl!” in the same high tone. I don’t think I had ever heard Jack’s falsetto before, though in theory I guess I knew he had one.

It was scary.

Book Burro

I haven’t shilled for the Book Burro Firefox extension recently. Once you install Book Burro, it pops up a little window in the upper left hand side of your window when it detects that you are looking at a book on the web. (I notice it most often when I am looking at Amazon Books. After you tell Book Burro your zip code in the preferences, it will use World Cat to find the closest copy of that book in a public library. If the closest library happens to be your library, you can click on the link and it will allow you to place a hold on the book. (Of course, this assumes that your library is using SIRSI, or some other system World Cat understands.) For bibliophiles who are trying not to spend all their money on books, this is very useful.

Bitter Cold

The high today was 10F. Days like this make me even more grateful for having electricity (to heat the stock tank) and a cold water hydrant in our small barn. It was brutal taking care of horses without either during the blizzards of 1997-1998. We installed electricity to the barn a year or so later, and kept running hoses out to fill the stock tank in the barn for another winter or so. That changed the day I went to water horses one morning when it was significantly below freezing, and I discovered that Jack had not drained the hose properly when he topped off the spa. (It took several hoses to get to the barn from the house hydrant.) Since we had discussed The Proper Draining of Hoses on several previous occasions, I told him I felt it was only fair that he water the horses until such time as we had water to the barn. I think he found the plumbing contractor within a week, and we had water to the barn within two weeks.

On days like this, it helps a lot. Keeping stock watered properly during extended cold snaps is brutal without running water and stock tank heaters.