My Happy Place

A day at home with only the dogs for company? Can't go any place except Lowe's, or do anything other than work in the yard? Bring it on. That is my happy place, at least on a beautiful day like today. Clear sky, low humidity, a nice breeze, and a high in the 70s, it just doesn't get any better than that. If you could forget the oppressive heat and tropical humidity we had just two days ago, you could almost forget this was Virginia. 

These days are rare although there is one more on tap for tomorrow. Tomorrow is a work day so I made the most of it today. 

Nothing really remarkable was done except I worked over one of the old metal gliders that was rusting. Got it prepped and primed and almost ready for a new coat of paint. I worked here and there around the yard and garden, did a little mowing, sat on the front porch, a lot, and listened to music. Stuff got done. Important stuff.

Serena, stretching her legs.

Found this little bird's nest when I was clearing
out Virginia Creeper under the butterfly bush.

Theo drinking from one of my fountains.

I've had this little fountain for over 20 years.
It's just been non-functional yard art in recent
years, but I looked at it and decided there was
no reason it couldn't work again, and it did.

This is my shade garden getting its early morning direct sun. It doesn't last too long
here and that's perfect for these plants.

See the concrete water bowl just behind Serena's head?
I added water dishes for the dogs so they wouldn't need to
drink from my fountains, but they still do.

Tuberous begonias are so pretty, I sometimes
wonder why I plant anything else.

The front porch is my center of operations for
most of my recent outdoor work, so the dogs
join me there quite often.

Garden Tour - May 2020

I started container gardening mostly as a matter of weed control. My flower beds got taken over by weeds and I'm not really one for getting out there on my hands and knees to clean them up. The containers  do sprout some weeds, especially this year after they hadn't been planted in the prior year and had been allowed to grow full of weeds. But it's a lot easier to weed containers because the soil is loose and they don't require quite as bending and crawling around.

An unexpected benefit of gardening in containers is how easy it is to move them around. My container garden was pretty much the same for a few years but then I moved it when the boxwoods had to be cut back. I moved it again this year, but I also violated one of my own rules this year, by creating multiple garden areas instead of just one. This complicates watering somewhat, but I think it's going to be worthwhile. Here are some short videos of each garden area this year.






















The primary "new" garden is in the center of our driveway under a saucer magnolia tree. This first video is a walk around the new circular bed in the center of the driveway. I'm generally referring to it as the circular garden, for unimaginative but obvious reasons. Although it's under a tree, I was expecting this area to get more sun than it does, although all parts of it get at least some direct sun at different parts of the day. This year will be sort of an experiment to see what combination of things grows well under there.

The second planting area has been in existence; it's the smaller circular bed that holds a three-tiered iron plant stand. I'm calling it the water garden this year because I've put all my water features in or around it and I've added at least one new one. They are all working well so far although I had to replace a pump yesterday because some critter chewed through an electrical cord.

The third one I'm referring to as the formal garden because it's a symmetrical arrangement of planters and other elements at the end of the double row of boxwoods in front of the house. The concrete architectural elements in the center are very heavy and tricky to position, so I did not want to move them. Besides they look nice where they are. I added a number of things to it this year and have made it so it looks nice from both sides. It became the new home for those two long wooden box planters that I moved here from Kansas a long time ago. My father made them, they've been around as long as I can remember, maybe as long as I've been around. I remember him telling me that they were made of redwood, which is a very durable wood.

I laid the stones creating this semi-circular bed out in the front yard when we first bought the house and moved here 20 years ago. I planted burning bush on the back side it and they have really grown. I probably should consider whacking them back this year but I hate trimmed bushes. In the early years I planted this full of zinnias and it was a spectacular sight coming down the road. But then the weed problem set in, bind weed in particular, and I gave up the fight and stopped planting in this bed. This year I've filled it with containers and my pink flamingos. It is the flamingo garden.

Finally, there is the little spot I call the shade garden. It's not new. It's really just a collection of planters on the back side of a maple tree where I've had good success with shade loving plants.

That's the end, although it's really just the beginning of the growing season. I got started earlier than usual this year because of the virus and because we had some really warm weather in early spring. That came back to bite me on the butt with some late freezes, but I'm still glad I got a start on it. I'm catching up on a lot of yard maintenance this year and have been enjoying it. Staying at home isn't all bad at this time of year.

Actually I have a vegetable garden this year too -- five straw bales planted with tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini. It's very experimental but I'll take some pictures of it later if it turns out well.

Luna and the three pups

Someone had asked in a comment about the gender of the two sets of puppies. Three of the six month old Troopers are male, just one is female. The gender balance flips the other way with the three new born puppies, two of which are female and only one is male.

Bruno and the four Troopers are all pretty friendly. Luna is pretty comfortable in her space, but she's not yet comfortable with us. I feed her four times a day, a mixture of canned and dry food. Going into the kennel is not a problem. She stays in the shed, barring entry, and watches as I bring in the food and place it in the feeder. She prefers a minimum amount of eye contact. Sometimes she does her ferocious bark, sometimes she will even advance on me, but she's not really serious about that, just trying to encourage me to leave her and the puppies alone. I can back her off by telling her to stop or raising my hand and saying "no."

Getting into the see the puppies is a bit complicated and the two Danes actually help here. If they come over to the kennel, Luna will come out and bark at them, giving me a chance to pop into the shed and pull the door closed behind me. Then I can change the blanket in the puppies' wading pool and take the opportunity to pick them up and hold them a bit.

This evening I went out and just sat in the outdoor space for a while. Luna was laying on her bed next to the puppies, keeping an eye on the open doorway. She would occasionally get up and come to the door to check me out. No barking, just watching. She didn't leave the shed but did put her front legs down on the top step. She knows I bring the food and she doesn't want to hurt me, but she makes it clear that her puppies are off limits.

It makes me realize how lucky we were with Della. We had her a few weeks before she gave birth. She trusted Clay and I completely with her puppies from the very beginning. She gave birth to the first one in the crate in my office. I picked up the pup and carried it to the whelping pool in the guest room. Della followed right along but she was fine with me holding her puppy. We were able to weigh each one several times a day. Della would keep an eye on what we were doing but she was fine. I'm not sure Luna will ever be that comfortable with us handling the pups, at least for a while, so we will have to close her out and slip inside to handle her pups the way we did the 12 pack.

Luna saying "back off, Jack."

The Trooper Dogs

This is "the girl." She's the most vocal, most
out-going, most everything. She will need
someone who can handle a female shepherd.

Everyone seems to be settling in pretty well. The shepherds are quiet at night, thank goodness, and they seem happy.

This pretty boy is one of two that we can't
really tell apart so we are calling them
"the twins." They have classic shepherd looks
and markings, small but very attractive.

Speaking of settling in, Romeo latched on to his new dad as soon as I left. He's taking a little longer to adopt his new mom, but he has jumped into her lap so I'd say they are making very good progress.

Here are some pictures I took of the four Troopers during evening feed. They all seem very happy and why wouldn't they be? It's a great time of year to be a dog with a nice outdoor space, green grass, plenty of water, shade, and food that comes twice a day. They know nothing of toys, but they have each other as playmates. They may be happy, and they are, but they need to move on to the next step soon, getting into a foster home where they can learn the finer points of dogging among humans.

One of the twins eating.

If they ate at all in their former home, they
ate together so they have no problems sharing
food bowls. We put out five for four dogs.
They have very short attention spans so eating
is often done in short spurts.

The girl is front left, the twins are the two on the right, the one in the center is "Lefty."

Lefty has a black stripe that runs down his front left leg and
he also has black toes. He is the most shy of the four.

That's Bruno (Doggie Daddy) on the left. You can see that
errant patch of light colored fur sticking out below his eye.

One of the twins, very pretty look.

That's the girl doing the meerkat imitation. She watches everything, reacts to everything, and
has something to say about everything.

Working out routines

Doggie Daddy's original name was Bruno and he knows it and responds to it, so we're going to continue calling him Bruno. The Troopers are beginning to respond to their collective name, but mostly they just respond if someone is out there who seems to be addressing them.

Yesterday we figured out a couple of things that needed to be done differently. Doggie Daddy is a food hog and wouldn't let the Troopers eat. Even after he had his fill, they were afraid to go near the dishes that still had food. So, this morning we brought a big crate over and put Bruno into that. We gave him food in there too, but he didn't eat it. The four Trooper dogs shared five bowls between them spread out some distance apart on the grass. The pups didn't really spread out, however, they tended to eat two or three at a time from a single bowl and then moved on to the next. That worked even better for the evening feed because they knew a bit about the routine. At one point all four Troopers were eating from a single bowl. Bruno ate all his food in his crate in the evening too, so I think we have a workable routine now.

Meanwhile, over in the Puppy Palace, the three newborn pups seem to be doing well. The mother, Luna, still doesn't trust us around them, but she's getting better. For me to get in with the pups, we coaxed Luna outside to bark at the Danes. While that was happening, I slipped into the shed and closed the door behind me. I changed the bedding this evening but it was still essentially clean because she's cleaning up anything that comes out of them.

I'm feeding Luna four times a day now, including some canned food and warm water mixed with the dry. She's eating everything I offer up. She lays with the pups to feed them, but she's got two beds of her own right next to the wading pool where she can rest while keeping watch. She goes outside to do her business and even held it overnight last night, which I was very glad to see.

The Danes love to run the fence line with Max and Theo in the dog yard. It's their favorite game. They also do it with the Troopers and Bruno. That's a lot of shepherds and a lot of barking, which seems to equate to a lot of fun. Luna will come out and engage in the game with them too if they come over to her side, but I've noticed that they sort of leave her alone. They know she's protecting puppies and Della certainly knows what that's like, although she trusted us with hers from day 1.

The four little ones are pretty much
indistinguishable at this point. 

Luna can probably tell them apart if she needs
to, but the important thing is that she's taking
very good care of them.

Daneland has gone to the dogs - German Shepherd Dogs

After Della's puppies were adopted last summer I expanded the space to about three times its original size, incorporating what had been Sparky's kennel years ago. It's a great grassy space and we've called it Daneland as it has housed mostly Great Dane fosters since then. But now it's divided into two spaces and it's full of German Shepherd Dogs: Two adults, four six-month old pups, and three 10-day old newborn puppies.

I guess it was back at the beginning of May when I had a call from the local shelter about six shepherds that had been seized and were on a hold pending the outcome of a court case. The case apparently came out correctly and after the appeal period expired, today, they were transferred by the shelter to Promises Animal Rescue. But, there were nine transferred, not six, because the adult female had given birth at the shelter to another litter of pups. There were only three born live, but that's plenty, given the complete lack of care and prenatal nutrition the dogs had received before coming to the shelter.

So the nursing female and the three newborns have the puppy shed and a piece of Daneland, just for mom at this point. The other side of the new divider is occupied by daddy dog and the four, six-month old pups. Now, there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that everyone seems very happy to be out of the shelter and reunited living in better conditions than these dogs have ever known. The four adolescent pups immediately began running and playing with each other.

The bad news is that these dogs came from abhorrent conditions, living in a basement 24/7, never seeing the light of day or grass. The room they were confined to was completely covered in their waste, they had no appropriate place to poop or pee. When they were rescued, they were coated in it. The six month old pups had lived their since they were born so they had never known anything different. They obviously didn't get any of the early puppyhood enrichment and training that we gave Della's puppies last summer. They've never been crated, they've never been on a leash, never had a clean place to sleep, and never learned to defecate in any particular place. They were, for all intents and purposes, feral. The folks at the shelter did a remarkable job I think in the time that they were there. They were taken outdoors on leash, and given play time in a clean outdoor area. When they were in the kennel runs, however, they would still poop and pee at random and they laid in it rather than using the elevated beds that were provided. They had little human contact until the shelter too, so they still have varying levels of fear and anxiety around humans, although this was much better than I expected.

What all this means is that these dogs need time in rehab. My hope is to transfer daddy dog and the four adolescents to other foster homes who can give them one-on-one time and attention, teach them the basics, and assess when they are ready for adoption. None of them seem fear-aggressive, which is good. Daddy Dog is a resource guarder so I'll start crating him at meal times to give the others a chance to eat.

The nursing female is very protective and hasn't yet learned to trust us, so she's pretty much on her own with the three new born puppies for now. She seems to have plenty of milk and is a very good mother, as this was obviously not her first litter.

They are good looking dogs, although the years of stink still lingers with them. Daddy Dog is the most friendly and outgoing. He's also the oldest at about nine years. The female is friendly when she's away from her puppies, but her trust must be earned. The four adolescent pups are basically friendly, with varying degrees of shyness. There are three males and one female in that group. They had no names. The shelter gave them some but they don't know them of course. I'm just calling them all Trooper for now. Whoever ends up fostering them can decide what to call them.

Busy days ahead.

This is Daddy Dog. He was resource guarding the water
tank so I added a second one.

All four Trooper dogs in one shot.

Backside of the dog, obviously, but you can see the
good form this one has.

Daddy Dog has this weird little tuft of light colored hair
that grows out of his face below his left eye.