Meet The Girl - A Formal Introduction

I found our first dog. My husband picked the name. I had called the dog a not-so-nice word in Japanese and my husband thought it was the perfect name. 

I picked this pup from the litter. So I made the mistake of telling my Darling Adventure Man (DAM) that he could name her. 

I will NEVER do that again. From now on, if we ever get another animal. HE can PICK it. I will name it. 

So. With no furthure ado. 

Meet Jessica... 

Jessica Rabbit, that is. 

Oh yes. My husband named our sweet puppy after a cartoon pinup. (Can you hear my eyes rolling!?)

Luckily (for him) we call her Jessy. 

Much more appropriate for life on a ranch. 

Still, they are both cartoon caricatures. But both are redheads. As is the dog. But I digress. 

We've had Jessy 10 weeks now. My mother-in-law asked for an updated picture and this is what I shared.  

The first two were the day we brought her home at 7 weeks. She was so sad. The other two were yesterday at 17 weeks! 

Now another fun comparison is what I went through to get these four shots:

VS. this:

So now you know. She isn't really bad, she's just drawn this was. 

**wink!**

Photo credit to funpop.com for the two redheads, and to DAM for the other ones. 

The End and New Beginnings

It was May 15, 2013. This is the first time I've been able to write about it. I've thought a lot about it. I've told people about it. But for some reason, I needed time before I could share it here on the blog. 

I watched my husband leave for the school bus with the children in tow. As he left the yard he bent and said one last good bye to our old dog, Baka. He snapped this picture. 

I loaded up the two little kids and got them in their car seats then loaded Baka in the front seat next to me. 

The seizers had started coming so fast that he didn't have time to recover. He was unaware of where he was or who we were. He had paced the small fenced area for three days without rest. Each time he did try and go to sleep he would have another seizer and the cycle would start all over again. It was time. 

He paniced in the car. He usually loves the car. He was eager to meet the "new" people at the vet. He usually panics in the vet.  

We buried him under a tree in the back yard. I planted bleeding hearts over him. 

He was 14 years old. 

I didn't realize how much of my daily life was spent making sure Baka was ok. Anyone who has delt with epilepsy knows. It was harder to not have him there than I thought. I wanted another dog. 

It was in July that I learned that a neighbor had puppies. Golden retrievers. Exactly what we wanted. We had looked and looked in the local shelters all over Montana. But the shelters around here have fewer dogs than we expected. We knew we wanted breed that would be great with strangers. This is a guest ranch after all. 

Jessy came home just a week later. The last week in July. A crazy week for us because we were running back and forth from town with kids in summer theatre camp plus we had company. 

   

As I told my daughter after we first picked her out, she doesn't fill the hole that Baka left in our hearts. She just helps our hearts fill with more love. 

Now if we can just get her potty trained! And to quit jumping on us, Knocking Bunny down, Biting, Oh those teeth are sharp! 

None Shall Pass… Or "You Gotta Pay a Toll Mama!"

We have a sign at the front of our pastrue. 

It says to watch for our children and horses. 

 

This is way.

Then they seemed to decide that I needed to pay a toll.

So they stopped me and asked for payment in full to use the driveway...

When Sam couldn't get it from me, they had to send in reinforcements. 

 Hopefully just love and attention is enough. 

I don't keep grass in my car, and I'm not about to share my groceries with them!

The neighbor's cattle seem to have the same attitude. 

A Kiss to Remember

I said it yesterday. Not all the bulls are tough. 

Some of them just want to be loved. 

This fella really just wanted a kiss. 

O is for Owl

Once we built our dream home in Utah.

It was on a large lot at the end of a cul de sac that backed up to a pasture that belonged to a neighbor not in our development.

We put a lot of sweat equity into the building of the house. After work, Adventure Man would go do the wiring. He would sometimes work late into the night, using only a headlamp to see his way.

Over the course of his work, Adventure Man noticed a car that would come each night and sit at the end of the street. The driver would sit in his car with a spotting scope. My husband felt there was something creepy about the situation and decided to investigate.

He approached the vehicle and said he couldn't help noticing the man's pattern and wondered what he was looking at? The man, enthusiastically shared that there was a Great-horned owl in the tree in the pasture just beyond our home and she was nesting!

Mama Owl and her nest. Her's is the large one to the right.
I'm sure who ever lived in the smaller one moved out as soon as an owl moved in next door! 

Now my husband loves birding. He eagerly shared this man's excitement for the arrival of a new family member in this tree. Then the man confided in Adventure Man his plan. He came every night to see if the chick had hatched because he planned to climb the tree and take the chick so he could raise it. He was a licensed falconer, after all.

We have a dear friend, The Cowboy, who is a falconer. Now, if you are a falconer, there are two ways that you can acquire a bird. One is by catching it. The other is by taking it from the nest when it's young. But if you do so, you need to have the land owner's permission. Plus, you need a special license for an owl.

Mama Owl

We had a friend in the Fish and Game Department and he said that no one had gotten a license for an owl. He checked the individual in question and confirmed that although he was a registered hawker, he did not have the license for an owl. He also didn't have the land owner's permission. The F and G Dept. decided to put a camera in the tree (pointed down) so if anyone did try to take the baby he could be identified.

Once things were in motions, our would be bird-napper did try and rectify himself by asking the land owner, but their response was to please not remove the owlet from the nest. Because of this, he was also not grated his permit.

I know we disrupted this man's plans, but we have never regretted stepping in. And here's why: The chick hatched, just as we were moving in. Every time we were outside the little mother would hoot at us. A soft gentle sound. Not a warning. I told my girls she was saying, "Thank You!"

The baby when he was still fluffy. I still have one of his feathers.

We got to see her care for him. We got to see her fly off at night to hunt. And we got to see her teach him to fly. Adventure Man saw his first flight. Once he was grown he was much larger than his Mama. It is a wonderful memory for our family.

Shortly after that we moved to Montana and sold that house. But we will always remember our dear Mama Owl and her sweet thank you's.

C is for Cubs

These cubs are growing and we hope we get a chance to see them again soon. As you may recall, these pictures are from last year, when they where a year old. But you can see more of the family and compare how they've grown here.  

By the end of the summer they thought they owned the place.

Hopeful, this year, they won't become such a nuisance that they have to be removed.

Photo credit to Adventure Man

Baka Chan ~ Our Little Fool, Our Dog

I found him. My dog. He was tied to a pole in front of an empty lot. He was tied with the rattiest, dirtiest rope I had ever seen and he had a little cat collar on that was so old, it would have broken off if he had pulled hard enough. He didn't though, he wasn't very big. I stopped and looked at him. He stood up on his hind legs and begged. I was in love.

Baka at 3 months

I hurried home to get Adventure Man. He was just coming home to our little apartment in the teacher's building. I told him about the little puppy and we raced back on our bikes to see. There was only one person around in the neighborhood. An O-baa San. A Grandma. She was little and bent over and she said, You should take him! He's been terrorizing the neighborhood for days. He's been thrown out! No one wants him!

That's what happens in Japan. It costs a lot of money to have a dog fixed. And they just leave them tied up in the back yard so it's easy for a stray to impregnate a dog. There are a lot of strays. When a pup shows up, they just dump it somewhere. We lived in a very rural area and this was very common, apparently.

The dog stood up again and begged at my husband. He was in love too.

We took him home. He stunk so bad we had to give him two baths. He had been living on trash and monkey poop. When he was in the bath he fought it so bad that I called him a "baka!" A fool. The Japanese equivalent of Stupid! My husband laughed. No matter how I protested, his name was final. Baka Chan. The Little Fool.

4 or 5 months

We cut a hole in the side of a Rubbermaid Storage box and made him a dog house. We walked him every morning and when we got home from school, where we taught English, and then again at night. He never barked and our neighbors didn't even know he was there until we moved back to the states.

I called him my Baby Dog. He was my first baby.

By the time we started having kids he was two. He was so excited to see Lulu. The first night he got up with me each time I fed her. He would sit at my feet. After a few nights of that he decided he could trust me. Or he figured someone should be getting some sleep around here; it might as well be him!

Baka at 8 years ~ He always crosses his front paws 

He looks like a pure Sheba Inu, but we'll never know. He acts like one, too. They are "cat like" and dog aggressive. They need to be well trained to be controlled. But they are incredibly loyal. If you've seen the Richard Gere movie, Hachi, then you know. That really happened, only in Japan. There is a statue of the the dog at a Tokyo train station. I think it was Tokyo, anyway. The breed was bread in Japan to hunt wild boar.

Chasing a Ground Squirrel 

They are also snow dogs with thick undercoats that shed out tuns of hair. They should be brushed everyday. Should.

enjoying the spring sunshine and the snow
~ what a life ~ 

Sometimes he would ask to go out when it was snowing and just sit and look up at the flakes coming down to rest on his fur. He loved to chase snow balls which explode in his face.

Baka is now 14 years old. He is cranky and arthritic, and deaf. A few months ago he started throwing up. He couldn't keep anything down. The vet said he had liver malfunction. He seemed to be doing OK on meds. But still vomiting a lot. Then he had a seizure. Amazingly, after the first seizure, he seemed a lot better. But the seizures are most likely do to the build up of toxins from the liver. This is a common problem with the breed.

The seizures started getting more frequent. And the last one lasted so long, and he laid there so still as I held him, I thought he might go right then and there. {By long I mean a few minutes. It feels like 15 to me!}

He saw the vet again and she wants him on a special diet.  He hasn't had another seizure, but it's only been a few days. Other than that he acts fine. As I said, old and arthritic, and sometimes it's hard to get his attention when he just stands there and stairs. I feel like I'm yelling at the rug! But he also still jumps around and enjoys being out and about. He's been a wonderful dog. And I am so glad to know that we have given him a much better life than he might have had on his own in the mountains of Japan.

Baka Chan
My Little-Old-Man Dog 

I Took My Cat For a Walk

I went out to the barn to take this picture the other day of the first day of autumn. 

I left the garage door open and the cat had been inside. He followed me out. 

When we lived at the Other Ranch he was an indoor, outdoor can. He was young and a good mouser. He was also a good ground squirrel-er and rabbit-er. My little garden grew very well for all the critters I buried there. 

But here we are right on the ranch. The guests pass our house on the way to the horses. Their kids play at the ranch park, in our backyard. So the day Adventure Man came to have me bury a decapitated rabbit that was left on our back step, he decided the cat had to stay in. (Not to mention the threat of mountain lions, coyotes, bears, and zombies.) Really it's for the good of the cat! 

But he's a Siamese cat. And he has a Siamese cry. MmmEeeeAaawww. Once I woke in the night and thought a child was crying "Mama!" It was just the cat in the hall. He makes me crazy! He walks down the hall where the hardwood floors have a great echo effect. There he tells the world what a sorry kitty he is. In fact, even as I type this he is off somewhere crying like a baby. Oh, he has food, and water…. Just no justice. 

He is allowed into the garage. Where it would be nice if he caught a mouse. Sadly, squirrels also get into the garage. Apparently he doesn't really like to eat mice. But he can't finish a squirrel! So we trap mice in traps and he leaves bloody squirrel messes for me. 

No really! Once, the whole floor was covered with blood. Like he had slit a throat and just let the animal flop around. It was like the feline mafia had just had a shake down. 

"You talk'n to me?"

"Ah, Forget 'bout it!"  

So, I walked out and the cat just followed me. Stalking a long, never getting too far from my side. It's is as if he knows it's not safe for him here. He is out of practice. He's no barn cat. He never was. He is a fat house cat who wants to sit and snuggle. Seriously, we should have named him Romeo! 

Mr. Neko 

He used to be a great hunter. But now he is old and confinded. He spends more time sleeping and eating and coughing up what he just ate. It's a hard life being an old cat.