Jasper and the company

Tales from the Backyard…I hate training dogs, but if you know my dogs, as some of you do, they are well mannered (for the most part).  Jasper fit it that category also.  During dinner time his place was to be in the kitchen while we ate in the dining room.  He would lay on the kitchen floor, with just the tips of his toes into the dining room, I guess so he could feel he was not totally left out and wait for us to finish so he could enter.  We had company for dinner one evening and as we were eating and I was expressing my thoughts during the conversation, I noticed in the corner of my eye, Jasper trying to sneak past as my back was turned, the excitement of the evening to great for him I guess.  Without raising my voice or stopping to correct him, I just added “your place is in the kitchen”, to the middle of whatever it was I was saying.  He turned and went back and lay back down in his spot.  The company just shook their heads in disbelief saying, “I can’t believe he just did that”.  They do what’s expected of them, and he was a great dog.

The Woodduck

Tales from the Backyard…  One of the favorite things we used to do as a family was to drive through Carlos Avery Wildlife Sanctuary and look for wildlife in the evenings.  It had Deer, Bear, Pheasants, Grouse and thousands of ducks.  One day as we were driving my dad stopped the car and said “there’s a Wood duck in that tree.  I was 4 or 5 at the time.  After much coaching as to where it was, I finally saw it and after watching for awhile, shouted, “It’s not a wood duck. I just saw it move”.

Spats

Tales from the Backyard…While on the road (working a different park than where I was stationed) I got a kitten, a black Maine Coon with white face, chest and paws, we called her Spats.  She was one of those once in a lifetime cats that was aloof but friendly, all the neighbors knew her.  She would sit outside and watch for people coming up the sidewalk and run out to greet them.  She always came when called and when I was traveling, her favorite spot was around the steering column in the instrument pocket.  One day she disappeared and the whole neighborhood was on watch, but after 2 weeks we gave up hope, thinking someone else probably wanted her more.  Then one morning on my way to work I found her on our walk, trying to crawl home, totally emaciated.  She must have gotten trapped someplace and couldn’t get out.  She died in my arms bringing her inside the house.  But she didn’t leave us; she moved with us to Staten Island and often still jumps on the bed like she used to at our Newburyport home.  The first time was when I went to bed early and I thought Tush, our new cat, jumped up and walked across the bed over to my feet, then began walking up my leg.  When he got to my hip, I reached down and said, “Hi Tush”, but there was nothing there, only empty space with footmarks in the blanket.  She doesn’t come that often anymore, maybe because of the dogs, but I know she is still around.

Powder skiing

Tales from the Backyard…  Skiing at Crater Lake was by far the most fun.  In four feet of the light fluff, the skis would be airborne and you had no control other than bending your knees the direction you wanted to go.  We just had a 5’ snowfall so my skiing buddy and I wanted to do a short but really steep slope we had not done before.  It was a hike into and out of but hopefully would be worth it.  We got to the top and cheered as we went off.  Five feet of free powder up to my neck and no ski control and soon I fell over.  Totally immersed in the fluff I had no idea which was up or down or sideways.  I could breathe if I did so slowly.  Untangling my feet was next, done.  Now what?   My thought was if I began do summersaults, it being so steep, eventually I should pop back to the surface.  It worked, but too soon for me to grasp what was happening and over I went again.  The next time I was ready and popped back on the skis and had an excellent finish to the bottom.  My friend said, “Where did you go, I looked around and no-one was there”.  Life is what you make it.

Talking dogs

Tales from the Backyard…You may have noticed that in my stories my dogs talk.  They don’t really; it’s just my literary license to interpret what it is they would be saying if they could speak.  But any dog owner knows that they do talk, maybe not in human speak, but through their mannerisms or whines or barks; dog speak.  For instance, I feed all my dogs out of one dish, Cady likes to eat late in the evening and sometimes the bowl is empty.  She will come to wherever I am and give low whine growl, telling me the dish is empty again.  Chip, when he needs to go out, or come in, will go to the door and scrap it with his paw, one time and wait.  When any of my dogs want to come back in the house they give one short bark.  I have to laugh at dog physiologists who say a dog can learn 270 words.  We speak sentences to our dogs as we did to our child.  We don’t say come or sit or stay or eat to our children, well, maybe when very frustrated we would say “EAT”!!!  I think our dogs probably may not know 270, but close to it, sentences.  If I am walking and the dogs are going in a wrong direction, I just say “this way guys” and they turn and come.  All dogs know how to communicate in dog language and all owners listen, except for Thai.  If my dogs as a group want to go out, they send Thai to me and he will put his feet in my lap and say  ”awooot”, and I respond by saying “okay”, it always brings a smile to my face, then he will run to find the nearest toy and race off to the back door, the other two already there.  I will open it and he will race to the porch screen door (we have one of those flimsy ones with magnets in it so they can go in and out at will) and if its daylight, scope the back yard for squirrels and if he tenses, I will give him the okay and off he goes, otherwise he will just sit on the top step and watch for hours.  Life is short and too fun not to enjoy it, this is all there is folks.  (Sorry Anne)  

The German Shepard

Tales from the backyard…Somehow I ended up with a young German Sheppard, I don’t remember how, but think she was given to me as a runaway or as often happens, someone just dropped her along side of the road.  I had a friend at work that had lost his dog of 17 years so I asked if he might be interested in taking her.  I said she had been well trained and was smart as a whip.  He lived on a small hobby dairy farm south of Mora MN on the Snake River and I used to fish behind his house.  He said to bring her up on Saturday and he would take a look, so I did.   He and the dog bonded instantly and he said he would give her a try.  He then went into the house and got some butter and put it on her feet.  I said “what’s that for” and he responded that it would keep her from running away again.  On Monday at work I asked how the dog was doing and he said “the first night when it was time to bring in the cows for milking, I said to the dog ‘let’s bring in the cows’ and then we went into the pasture.  Watching me, she knew she was suppose to heard the cows to the barn and did so with little coaching.  The next morning when it was time to round up the cows again, I said ‘let’s get the cows’, she ran out and brought them back, all by herself”.  He also said that he had never let a dog sleep in the house before, but this one was so special he made a bed for her in the kitchen.  Maybe he was getting older and from the little time I had her, she was great company.

Picking up Thai

Tales from the Backyard…Every year our oil company sends out a calendar with pictures of puppies on it.  On one particular years cover there were 5 little puppies, all brown and silver, with their little feet over a log and just their heads and noses sticking out.  My wife said, “How Cute, I could have one of those”, wrong thing to say.  I went on line and found that these particular pups were St. Usuge Spaniels and one of the rarest hunting breeds in the world.  I searched and found a breeder in East St. Louis and he would only sell to a hunter, Dah.   We hit it off and when I went to pick up the pup in early April he only charged me $200, rather than the $1,200 he was charging.  (I did this on the sly, my wife not knowing a thing).  I continued west to see my brother and his wife in New Mexico and I remember the first night after picking Thai up (not his name yet) I had stopped and got the camper all set up and started to feed the dogs.  Since Thai was only 12 weeks old, I had special food for him and set it down right in front of him, first.  Wrong thing to do, I should have known better, Chip just walked over and grabbed him by the back of his neck and threw him about 15 feet.  I thought whoops.

Finding the wooden leg

Tales from the Backyard…  My grandparents lived about 120 miles away in the little town of Exland, in Wisconsin and one Christmas we were going to visit.  My dad had just bought a new car but didn't take the extra speed into consideration so we left at 4:00am as usual.  We arrived at 6:45 and they were still in bed and not happy.  I remember my grandpa stoking up the old pot bellied stove and a little later it began hopping around as he had stuffed it to full and left the draft wide open.  It just began to woof, woof, woof, and my dad and him trying to get it back under control.  It could easily have knocked down the stovepipe and burned the apartment down.  They lived upstairs of a large garage and the rooms were massive.  Us kids slept in the back portion with broken windows and I remember waking in the morning with snow on my feather tic, probably why I still sleep with the windows open whatever season.  The thing I remember most was when my grandpa called for me to sit on his knee, a real treat from such a stern man, and finding something solid around his knee asked what that was.  He pulled up his pants to show me his wooden leg and I jumped down running into the kitchen yelling “grampa has a wooden leg, grampa has a wooden leg”, as if no one knew.  They all laughed.  I recently visited the old town and it has been obliterated from the map, not a building standing, only the sign along the road and the cemetery.

Shrimping accident

Tales from the Backyard…  Generally, Salt water is heavier than fresh water, but when the fresh water is laden with glacier till, the reverse is true.  In Alaska, no-one learns to swim, the water is just too cold, so when a couple of friends went out Shrimping one night and one fell overboard and with water temp in the low 40’s, he was doomed.  When one drowns at the mouth of a glacial stream, he sinks to the stratification layer in between the fresh and salt water and is never seen again and that’s exactly what happened. But that’s the life he wanted to live and he did it to the fullest.  RIP my friend.

The Killer Whales

Tales from the Backyard…  One day while in Alaska, I went down to the marina to check on my boat and saw the dock master watching something through his binoculars, so I asked what was going on.  He said that there was a pod of killer Whales across the bay, so I ran down to my boat to go out and watch.  At that time I was having trouble with the starter and had to start it by hand, but it starts easy so off I went.  I didn't want to get to close so I stopped a couple hundred yards away and watched these magnificent creatures lazily swimming along the shore.  This was the first time this had occurred since I was up there and it was so neat to be able to witness it.  After a while they went down and didn't come back to the surface and then all of a sudden they blew right next to the boat and scared the crap out of me.  I should have known they were as curious as I, but to have six or seven swimming around me and bigger than the boat was more than I could take, so I ran astern and pulled the cowling off the motor and began pulling on the starter rope.  I pulled and pulled in a frantic haste trying to get the engine going but it wouldn't start.  Then they just swam away.  It was then I realized I hadn't turned on the ignition key.