The Greening

The grass is all greened up and growing fast. The trees are now showing young green leaves, still growing, but changing the tint and hue of the woods from winter's browns to bright spring green. Tuesday I did three miles with Maya, Trooper, and Serena, followed by another three miles with Serena and Smokey.

The dogwoods follow closely behind the redbuds.

Serena was always out front, although she has the least idea
of where we are going and where the trails will take us.
I'm working on teaching her "right" and "left" verbal commands
but so far it works better to just pull her back a bit and indicate
with the leash which way I want to go.

We were in an unusually tight formation here,
I'm not sure why.

They get a very broad group view of the woods.

Three miles was at least one more than Trooper needed,
but we took it slow and he enjoyed it.

A welcome stop at Sparky's Watering Hole.

Serena standing guard while Smokey drinks.

We came out of the woods just in time for some of that
evening sunshine that is so pretty on fur.

I'm beginning to wonder if Smokey will ever lose that
little divot that Theo gave him on his forehead.

Without Maya's moderating influence, Serena pulled a lot
more on the second three miles, and Smokey was happy
to match her strength and speed. But towards the end I was
slowing down so I let them burn some energy pulling me.

Three Dogs on a Blustery Day

All the moisture from last summer, fall, and
winter is giving us a good crop of wildflowers
this spring. Unfortunately, a bumper crop of
ticks is also expected. 

Today was the first day that I implemented my new Smokey Management Plan. He stayed outside by himself last night and he was rather desperate for company this morning. I brought him inside after feeding him and left him downstairs with Cash. Cash is a senior dog who has no interest in playing, especially with Smokey. Smoke found other stuff to get into, which meant pulling stuff down from the counter, table tops, etc. He ate a candle.

He was too distracting being downstairs for me to be very productive at work upstairs. I finally got him out to the AC yard (he hates going out there for some reason), and gave him a couple trazadone to take the edge off.

Early afternoon I took the two girls, Maya and Serena, plus Smokey out for a hike. It was a perfect day, sunny, cool, breezy. Actually the wind was more than merely breezy and that always raises the level of stupid in dogs and horses. Maya isn't affected by the stupid, of course, but Smokey certainly is and Serena wanted to jump and leap, seemingly in several directions at once. Still, it was nice weather for hiking and the dogs settled down after the first half mile or so.

We just went about 3.5 miles, but working three dogs on three leashes, it felt like more.

My Smokey Management Plan may need a few adjustments. I think I'll leave him out longer in the morning to work off some of the energy, then take him for a walk, and then bring him indoors for some afternoon normalization.

They won't show up unless you enlarge the picture, but large
swaths of our front yard is covered in wildflowers. I won't
cut the grass here until they are done.

When there's three dogs on the walk, Maya
will often bring up the rear. This makes it
easier on me because I know she's there and
I don't have to worry about her getting
tangled up with the others.

She will move up front when she wants to, but
she doesn't need to be up there like the others.
Three dogs in front can get crowded when the
trail narrows and it complicates my job.

The redbud trees are in bloom in the woods now.

Welcoming TJ back home

I'm always a bit uncertain whether to publish a post like this. Some people may find it morbid, but it's my blog and my pack, and really I don't find it morbid at all.

Last week I picked up TJ's ashes after having him cremated, and last night he joined the pack in the cabinet we call the columbarium. The cremains are returned in a nice wooden box with the dog's name engraved on it, and for some dogs I've simply left them in that box, generally adding the collar and tags that the dog wore. But we also collect suitable vessels, either boxes or pottery, for this purpose. We like to buy them, it gives something to look for at craft sales, and it gives variety to the columbarium.

I transferred both TJ's and Vince's ashes to pottery we had purchased but not yet used. Vince's came from Montana, I believe, and I think we got TJ's at Tamarack, a local craft marketing operation at a rest stop in West Virginia.

Once I move the ashes to a piece of pottery
I'm left with the question of what to do with
the nice, personalized wooden boxes.

There's enough in there that I don't always remember which belongs to which dog. I opened a couple today; there's always a tags or a collar that identifies the dog and I re-lived some very pleasant memories of a number of dogs that way. I wasn't sure which box was Gypsy's, although I had a guess and I was right. Sure enough, the first thing I saw upon opening it was the crown key chain on her collar, because Gypsy was Queen of the Universe. Cabell and Bremo are in matching boxes, which seemed appropriate for those two boys. There are fosters in there too, who never made it out of foster care. And there's our cats too; we aren't just about dogs.

TJ's urn in the middle. I think that's Jeremy's on the right.

Actually, looking over the shelves is looking back on and re-living the past 25 or so years of my life. Each pot, box, or urn came about by a sad moment, but to me they don't represent a loss, they represent a life. There's far more good and happy memories associated with each life than the moment of loss.

This is TJ's urn, with his collar and tags.

Center section of the columbarium. There is
also a beautiful pot sitting on top that didn't
fit inside.

The right section. Vince' urn is the tall one
on the second shelf from the bottom, on the
right, with collar wrapped around it.

This shows the entire cabinet. The left side still has Fiesta
in it so there is still room for expansion.

The New SMP (Smokey Management Plan)

Smokey and Cash met for the first time yesterday.
No problem at all for either of them.

I've been leaving Smokey and Max outside in the dog yard and the adjoining shed, both day and night. The weather is fine, they get along, and it's easier than bringing them in. Max has to be trapped to get a leash on him, otherwise you have to let him out of the dog yard on his own and then wait 20-30 minutes until he's tired of running around and shows up at the back door. That's very frustrating when I'm trying to go to bed. Smokey will go into his crate in the kitchen easily enough, but then he barks ferociously at all the other dogs in the house when I'm trying to get them out to the AC yard and back in so we can go to bed. He does it again first thing in the morning when Clay gets up. No one sleeps through Smokey's bark.

Maya photo-bombing the Smokey/Cash pictures. She may
get tired to me taking her picture, but she still doesn't like
me paying too much attention to other dogs without her.

Leaving them outside in the dog yard makes my life easier, but it's not helping Smokey. When he's out there with Max and Theo, the three shepherds play their stupid barking game, which is the behavior I need to train out of Smokey. Last night I brought Smokey inside again. He's really pretty good indoors. He met the new senior shepherd, Cash, and he was fine with him, although he didn't understand why Cash didn't want to play. He also didn't understand that Theo doesn't play that stupid game indoors. Cash had been using Smokey's crate in the kitchen, but Cash doesn't really need it. Smokey took it back last night but then went back into his barking behavior from inside the crate.

Serena and Smokey walked well together.

Today I did a series of three, two-mile hikes. Usually it's Maya plus one, or maybe two other dogs, but today it was Smokey who went on all three hikes. The first was Smokey and Serena, then Smokey, Maya, and Theo, and the third was Smokey and Serena again. Smokey isn't bad on the leash, I did some brushing on him when we stopped, and I hoped that six miles of walking would mellow him out tonight.

On the third walk this afternoon, I came up with a new SMP (Smokey Management Plan.)  I'm going to leave him outside at night, but probably bring Max in after evening feed. That will avoid the problems with Smokey in the crate at night and in the morning. But, I will then bring Smokey inside during the day where he can work on learning some better manners from some better behaved dogs. That breaks up the Max, Theo, Smokey cabal in the dog yard during the day. I can still put Theo and Max out there, and Trooper too on a nice day. Smokey needs to learn to do the stairs and then learn to chill in the office with Serena, Maya, and Sparky during the day. I'll take him out on walks and he'll learn some behaviors other than the stupid shepherd barking game, hopefully.

This was the first walk of the day. I didn't remember to bring
the brush along until the third walk.

Theo (right) is a good role model for Smokey, unless they
are in the dog yard together because Theo reacts to everything.

He's good about letting me brush him, which is good because
he's blowing out his entire coat.

I noticed while brushing him that Smokey is still thinner than
I think he should be. I'm worming him again and then will
add some Dyne (calorie and nutrient supplement) to his diet.

Open Window Weather

It's been a pretty nice week. We had a few 80 degree days and now a bit cooler again. It's those couple of weeks in the spring when it's actually nice to have windows open in Virginia. The nights have been nice enough that I've been leaving Smokey and Max out in the dog yard shed at night. Smokey has taken up residence in one of the cubby holes in the shed and made it his own, fending off all would-be intruders, who I think exist only in his mind. I did another brushing session on him yesterday. He really liked it. He's blowing his entire coat, shedding off the old, bad-nutrition fur and replacing it all, top coat and undercoat, with a better quality pelt.

Theo with a ball hanging casually from his
mouth, like a cool kid with a cigarette.

I am constantly reminded that Serena is really a big puppy still and she has a lot to learn. I need to keep giving her new experiences and teaching her to handle them. Today I took her along when I went to town on some errands. I had to stop by the vet's office to pick up a refill on her prescription. I thought I'd take her inside, put her on the scales, and let her have a non-traumatic visit to the vet's office. She knew where we were and refused to get out of the van. I only had a leash on her collar and didn't want to pull her out, and besides, I was laughing too much to push it. She was having none of it and refused to budge until we were back home. Then she happily jumped out of the van, and even more happily jumped back in when I took her and Maya out for a hike before dark.

This is one of Serena's jumping moves when running circles
in the pasture.

Sparky in the front yard with the dwarf flowering crab
that is coming into bloom.

Sparky very patiently sharing the big crate with Serena.
I think she's oblivious to the fact that he'd prefer to
have to himself. 

Serena refusing to leave the van at the vet's
office today.

Out on the trail, Thursday evening.

This was right after a mountain biker and
his dog went past us on the trail.

Deer were spotted here.

Serena was very keen on the deer, as is Maya.

The redbud trees are blooming.

We finished four miles just before 8:00 p.m. and it wasn't
quite dark yet. I love that.