Postcards from Kansas

I'll be heading home on Tuesday. I grew up here and have been back to visit many times, but with the mother gone this is the first time I've said that I really have no idea when I'll be back. She died back in October and we came out to bury her ashes on Saturday in the cemetery next to my father and near many extended family members. It was a cool and wet for most of the weekend, but Saturday was beautiful. 

We did it our own way, very personal and informal, a send-off that my mother would have appreciated.

This was a rather severe storm and we were under a tornado watch for a while, but the worst of it missed us.

Flamingos at Rolling Hills Zoo near Salina.

This is Rock City, near Minneapolis, Kansas. It's a rather interesting and unique geologic formation.

When we flew in to Wichita, the choice of rental cars available was a Dodge something or this Ford Mustang. You can see what I chose. In just a few days I had multiple unsolicited compliments from complete strangers on my car. That hasn’t happened once in all my years of driving my van.  

Yucca in bloom at Indian Rock park in Salina.

One of my favorite Kansas wildflowers.

This is a t-shirt from Wichita Brewing Company. The beer and food are both quite good.

The image is of John Brown from a mural in the capitol building in Topeka.

In the original, John Brown holds a bible in one out-stretched hand and a gun

in the other. That is, unfortunately, very emblematic of Kansas still. The beers are a big improvement.

Paula, Kate, and Kim in front, me and Clay in back.

Postcards from home

Clay and I are away in Kansas. I'll be returning on Tuesday while he will be heading to New York. Going away and leaving the dogs is always difficult, even when I  know they are in good hands. It is always nice to receive some pictures.

Serena, Della, Maya, and Arby are at home with out house sitter.

A one year old golden who may be coming to us, and Green Dogs when we return.

A one year old boxer boy who will be our newest foster when we return.

It's nice that the Danes are sharing a bed so that Maya could have one to herself.

Lucky is settling in at her new foster home very quickly.

Chester and Duvel are both former fosters. Duvel is one of Della's pups. They belong to the

neighbors who are fostering Lucky,

It took Lucky just a couple of days to get to where she was after a couple of weeks with us.

Lucky has a very interested adopter so she will probably have a new home shortly after we

return, if not before.

Lucky was wanting to play with other dogs, and it looks like she's doing that in her new foster home.

The new guy

Yes, we are going away in just a couple days, not the right time to take in a new dog, I know. But this guy is really low maintenance. 

About a week ago Clay and I had a day off together and we went out to this place in Louisa county that I had been wanting to check out. I had seen their posts on Facebook in local yard sale groups and such, and it looked like they had a variety of concrete critters for sale. It's just in someone's yard, an older couple, they make some of the smaller pieces themselves and they buy and resell the larger ones. There was a giant flamingo that looked like some pre-historic bird, completely out of scale with the more life-sized pink ones in our flamingo garden. There were some foxes that actually looked pretty good, in two or three different poses, but not a lot that I was actually interested in, except for this guy. 

After the boxwoods were cut back in front of the house there is now a large, open pathway between them. I actually put my container garden there one year, in linear form. My current plan is to have a series of water features the middle of the open space. There's a water garden in a half barrel at one end, then a bird bath with a solar fountain, and now this guy. There's still room for two or three more and I'm hoping to add something new each year. 

This guy is perfect for us, he's substantial enough that he won't get knocked over and he's just the right height for the Danes to drink from. 

The guy in back lives near the sellers and we hired him to deliver it.

Neighbors Paul and Will and Paul's tractor were helpful in getting

it off the truck and moved into position.

Callie and Lucky checking it out.

Callie loves running water.

I expect that Serena will be a big user of the drinking fountain.

Della checked him out and then sampled the water.

It's perfect height for the Danes.

The ghost of Gypsy past

Clay and I were sitting in the office Saturday afternoon, talking after he had come home from work. I noticed a dog tag laying on the floor near his foot and asked him to pick it up. We often find stray tags around the house or around the yard, particularly from dogs who play hard with others. Sometimes the ring just gets caught on something and they pull off. The tag found by Clay's foot this day was unusual, however, because it was from Gypsy.

Gypsy, Queen of the Universe, Queen Bitch. She's been gone for about 10 years now, which makes finding a tag with her name on it laying in the middle of the room a bit of a mystery. 

I've been blessed with many dogs who share some or most or Gypsy's devotion to me. Maya, certainly, and more recently Della, and most recently the two foster girls, Callie and Lucky. Sometimes it feels like too much of a good thing. It's always tough for me to leave home and I've been fretting a lot lately about what to do with Lucky when we go away this Wednesday. 

If you want to take this as a sign from the great beyond, there's still a question about what it means. Gypsy always thought I needed a different hobby. She really didn't approve of all these foster dogs and she definitely didn't approve of female dogs who might try to come between her and me. But Gypsy was devoted to me and supported me even if she thought what I was doing was crazy. Gypsy always had my back.

 

Gypsy

After finding Gypsy's tag on the floor on Saturday, I wrote the "Some dogs" blog post which was a thinly veiled plea for help dealing with Lucky during our absence. Help arrived the next day when friends/neighbors/travel companions/former adopters offered to give it a try. I took Lucky down the street to meet them and their dogs. I think she may well like it better there than here. She will be anxious at first, but she will be safe and we won't lose the progress we've made over the last couple of weeks around here. 

Lucky

Della

Lucky under my computer desk

Maya's corner spot under my desk

Lucky and Callie

Some dogs

Some dogs are almost self-adopting. They "show well." They put themselves out there, are charming with strangers, make themselves irresistible. Those are the dogs that you can take to an adoption event and everyone wants them. I always say that I wish I could clone them and adopt those same dogs over and over. And then there are dogs like Lucky and Callie. They are happy where they are (in foster care), they don't know that they are in foster care, and they have no interest in meeting new people who might be their potential new home.

Callie is a lab, but she's not your typical happy-go-lucky lab who greets everyone with a thump of that solid tail, gives everyone a smile and a kiss, and will hop into any open vehicle in the hope that it will take them on an adventure. Callie loves me, she follows me everywhere, and wants to be glued to my left leg. I took her to meet some interested people today and she greeted them with a very ferocious and off-putting bark. Now, it doesn't take much to win Callie over, a slow introduction, a couple of treats, and she's literally eating out of your hand. But she's been very under-socialized and new people scare her initially, and she barks. That's not what most people are looking for in a lab, and it's cause for concern because she looks (and actually is) very sweet, and everyone thinks every lab is approachable and care-free. Callie is a nice dog and she will be a very good dog, but she's a bit of a project because of lack of socialization in her first year or so of life.

And then there's Lucky. She is also very attached to me, loves me dearly, and has no use for anyone else. Shepherds are often one-person dogs even when owned by a couple, but Lucky takes it a bit far. She still barks at Clay when he comes home as if he's a complete stranger. When we met a couple who were interested in her last week, she barked at them. She made friends quickly, with the woman at least, but the bark was enough to put them off. Lucky is still being weird about food too. I thought we had made a breakthrough when she started eating dog food, but that only lasted a couple of days. She's been back on her hunger strike for three days now. 

I'm going out of town on Wednesday. I can board Callie where I board Max, if necessary, I think she'll do all right, but I really don't know what to do about Lucky. I can't leave her with the house sitter and I'm afraid that she would freak out in a boarding kennel and hurt herself trying to escape. She needs to be in a home with someone who understands her special weird shepherd ways. I considered her a flight risk around here for the first couple of weeks until she finally bonded with me. She was always trying to push through a door, and when she was out she always seemed to be looking for a way out. She was strictly leash walk only for quite a while, but now she's entirely off-leash and never out of my sight. 

Both these girls are pretty easy fosters (except for Lucky's hunger strike), and they may take a while to find the right adopter. That's fine, I can hold on to them as long as it takes, but I'm up against the wall with needing to leave town and finding even a temporary appropriate placement for them.

Lucky out for a hike with Maya the other day.

Callie was great with a new dog today but she's slower to accept new people.

The incredible shrinking dog pack

We are down to seven dogs tonight. We didn't want to lose Theo, of course, but we are trying to shed fosters before going out of town next week. That means trying to move them out while not taking any in. Today Griff went to another foster home who will keep him while we are away and hopefully will adopt him. Griff is a sweet boy and I really hope it works out for him. The home features a female white deaf boxer and everyone is hoping that they will become good playmates. We have a meeting set up for Callie on Saturday and I'm hoping someone will emerge who is interested in Lucky before we leave next Wednesday.

Della was sulking last night when I got back from walking Maya and Lucky, upset that I hadn't taken her along. So this morning I told Maya and Della out for a morning walk at Pleasant Grove. There was no one around and it was very nice.