It's gotta be hard being a puppy. Imagine if you will, you are 8 weeks old knowing nothing in your life but nursing to your heart's contentment, playing with your brothers and sisters and pooping and peeing wherever and whenever you want. Ah, life is good.
Next thing you know you are ripped from your mother's teat, put in a crate and you are driving down the road not knowing that you will never see your mother, brothers or sisters again. After the car ride you are given to a strange lady, a very, very strange lady.
Surely, I jest as I put human thoughts and emotions to the puppy. But puppies are very adaptable and live for the love of life. Living in the moment, for what is in front of them in the here and now.
Maisie is adapting very well to her new home. She has a new momma who she watches every move of. When Barb gets up, Maisie gets up. If Barb goes to the kitchen, Maisie goes to the kitchen, although sometimes she will just watch from wherever she is at. Heaven forbid Barb goes out of sight, then she has to get up and find her. Barb now has two dogs that follow her into the bathroom and two dogs to talk to while she is in there. A very, very strange woman, but a happy one!
How's potty training going you ask? For the most part good. We have picked up most of the rugs in the house as she seems to gravitate towards those. We have also picked up on her cues, when she puts her nose to the ground and is thinking about it we have to jump into action. If we do not watch her, there would definitely be more accidents but as it is, maybe one a day which at 10 weeks I would call a success.
At night she is in her crate which is right next to Barb. Maisie will sleep for about 3 hours, get up and whine at which point Barb will take her out and put her back into her crate for another 3 hours repeating the cycle. So far, she has not peed in her crate.
It's a lot like having a newborn baby, except you cannot put a baby in a crate... or is a crib just a bigger crate? I do not know (or remember) how working people do this, as they have to leave their pet for 8-9 hours at a time. Speaking of that, when she naps we will put her in her crate with the door open as we want her crate to be a safe space, a happy space, not something to dread. We will also purposely put her in there randomly throughout the day for 20 minutes when we go to town or just out in the yard so she gets used to it as part of her routine, hoping she does not become a screamer just because we put her in there.
As for videos, I have several. (I can just feel the excitement as Harry reads this part). As you will see, Zoey and Maisie are becoming best buds although I think Zoey will not be happy when Maisie can finally jump on the couch. Zoey now uses the couch as her "safe space" to get away from the annoying creature when needed.
Barb has been working on her hillside landscaping project. She decided to redo the drain area where we have two black drainage pipes coming out from the west side of the house.
One of my chores during the week is to make sure that not only we have enough water in the cistern, but to also make sure the critters have enough water as well. Our pond is all but dried up except for an ankle-deep spot about the 5' round. You can see the edge of it on the right side of the picture below.
The first picture shows what is left of the pond on the 28th, the second is the 31st. It changed quite a bit in just a couple of days.
We also have two water tanks; a 300 gallon one and a 100 gallon one. I also have a 250-gallon tote that I keep by the apple trees which I water 1-3 times a week depending on the week. I was on my way to the 100-gallon tank which requires going down a rocky embankment when all of a sudden, a front wheel on the tractor decided to pop off the rim which in turn caused the water tank to flip off. What a sh#tshow. So, there I was on a rocky downslope with a tire off the rim. I walked back to the house, got the Ranger, a couple of jacks, several blocks of wood, the impact and went back to see about getting the rim off the tractor.
It went a little better than expected. Once I got it off, I texted the neighbor who has a tire machine to see if he could get it back on the rim and aired up. 30 minutes later I was back in action!
All creatures great and small use these tanks....
The forecast for the week was more 90's with no precipitation called for. But living where we do, storms can pop up in a moment's notice and that is just what happened on Friday afternoon.
We were inside watching a movie, hiding from the heat when we started to hear the telltale signs of rain on our roof. Then came some minor hail, pea sized(ish). Then it started coming down a little heavier and a little heavier and then it was an absolute rain/hail monsoon! When it rains like this, the rain diverts on either side of the house with the west side becoming a river of sorts. We installed two drains on that side of the house to keep the rain moving and getting into the house.
Although we would have preferred a slow, steady soaking rain, we will take whatever we can get! For the next 30 minutes it rained/hailed over 1.5 inches. This of course started flooding things and our drains were working overtime, and from the living room I could see the pond was starting to fill up. As I watched through binoculars, I saw my camera was no longer on the edge of the water but in the middle of the water! Dang, I am going to have a hard time getting that out. A few minutes later I did not see the camera at all, so I jumped in the Ranger to see if it fell over or what. What I saw when I got down there shocked me. Just the tip of the antenna was sticking out of the water!
That's $100 camera, I am going in after it! OMG was that cold, in up to my waist and back out I was able to retrieve it.
This is a picture from the camera right before it was swallowed up by the water
Water was still pouring into the pond from two directions.
I am happy to report the camera still works! I could not believe the amount of water that was pouring in there. I did a quick calculation of how much water it would take to fill a 120'x120'x3'deep pond and the answer was 80,000 gallons! In a matter of minutes! Crazy.
Barb's new drain area, although not finished, worked awesome!
If you stuck with me this far you must be a loyal reader. I know I lost Harry after the first puppy video. The next few posts will no doubt include more dog pictures and videos, it will not be as many as today as I leave for the farm tomorrow and it will be up to Barb to take pictures. I know the other dogs don't have much for pictures in this post, but Dakota pretty much just sleeps all day and that does not make for exciting pictures, but I will leave you with this picture of our (cute?) little Zoey.
Just to give you an idea of how scary/amazing Ai is, here is the exact same picture....
It has been 10+ days since our last post, thinking back I cannot remember what exactly we spent doing each day. That is why I try to take pictures; to remind me what we did.
First, let me start out by saying, thank you to all of you who showed genuine concern for my near-death experience, it warms my heart knowing you care. Then there are those like my "good" friend Dino, my daughter in law (below) and even my own son who sent me memes of people choking over the last 10 days.
It continues to be hot, most of the days were in the 90's (a couple over 100) which makes it difficult, or at least undesirable to work outside. We have been working outside from 8-10 in the morning and then finding things to do inside. Outside we have been mainly working on cutting and splitting firewood. I go out and cut/collect the firewood and stack it in the bucket of the tractor, I then deliver it to Barb and dump it at her feet where she begins to split it. As she splits it, she stacks in the bed of the Ranger. Once that is full it goes over to the woodshed where we stack it.
And I am happy to report that the woodshed is full! Plus, we have a split wagon full on top of that! The woodshed is 12' x 10' and 6-8' tall depending on if you are in the front of the back. This means there is roughly 20 face cord or 6-7 or so full cord. As some of you know, a "cord" is how wood is measured. A face cord it 4' high, 8' long and 16-18" deep. A full cord is 4' high, 4' deep and 8' long. A rough guess is that one large diameter 50' tree split and stacked is about a face cord. The value of a cord depends on where you are and what kind of wood it is. We only have pine and around here the average value of a face cord is about $100/face cord. This should last us two years.
We still have about 6 trees that need to be cut up from the windstorm we had a couple of months ago, but those are leaners and not laying on the ground which means they should not rot and I can take care of them next year.
Good to have that crossed off the list!
During the heat of the day we have been tackling less strenuous projects. I have been on an oil change kick, changing the oil in the truck, jeep, boat, tractor, log splitter, air compressor and all three generators this week.
Barb worked out in her workshop making a stand for our water tank. Each time we have to remove the water tank from the trailer it is a pain in the butt. That thing is so big and cumbersome. With this stand, which is the same height as the trailer, we can just slide in off and on!
I have also been busy printing "stuff" off the 3D printer. I printed a bunch of windows and trim for DeAnne's model barn up at the farm.
I have also printed off some euro mounts for some of our deer skulls as well as a few things for Neighbor Jim. For those of you wonder, the skulls in the garage.
Barb got the pool out for the girls to wade in while they were outside.
The trail cameras continue to entertain us with rabbits, deer and some birds. Here, the deer and the bunny are having a little chat.....
I even caught the rancher checking on his cattle!
For fun, we had a bourbon tasting which included the Stagg Tom got me......
......got together with Dan and Bonnie one night......
.....and went on a "date night" another night to Skogen Kitchen in Custer. Skogen's is known as the fancy place to eat with the average meal for two being between $200-$300. Thankfully, our son had given us a gift certificate for Christmas that covered most of it!
We started out with roasted bone marrow and beef tartar with truffle gouda, brioche and pickled red onions. A first for both of us.
For our main course, Barb had the Iberico Pork while I had the filet. I could have upgraded to the Wagyu Filet for $120, but I passed and went with the standard filet. Both meals were delicious, but Barb's pork was over the top amazing!
For dessert it was the Campfire Panna Cotta, a dark chocolate Panna Cotta topped with bruleed marshmallow on a bed of graham cracker crush on a bed of chocolate pearls revealed in in a cloud of mesquite smoke. What a great night!
We continued to receive pictures from Foster Lake of our little Maisie and her litter mates.
All this while waiting for "The Day". The day Barb would get up at 2am where I would drive her 1.5 hours to the Rapid City Airport and get on a plane. The day where she would then get on said plane, fly to Denver, wait 3 1/2 hours and get on another plane for a 3ish hour flight to Portland Oregon.
The Day where she would then meet Eric and Amy from Foster Lake Frenchie's who would drive 3 hours to Portland and drop off Maisie at the hotel Barb is staying at and Barb would "secure the package". The Day where Barb would again get up at 2am for a 5am flight back to Denver where she has another layover before she would finally fly back to Rapid City where I would be waiting. The Day where she would do all of that in a little over 24 hours.
I am happy to report that that day has come and gone and Barb did indeed secure the package. The precious cargo known as Maisie Rose. The first pictures I received were from the hotel room....
Maisie was a trooper traveling very well in her little travel bag tucked under the seat in the main cabin of the plane.
Then came the pictures from the layovers in the airport.
Both momma and baby were exhausted and slept most of the way home.
Zoey was super curious when Barb walked through the door. Dakota was mildly curious, but mostly indifferent.
Then the chaos began. Dakota still trying to ignore Maisie. It is amazing how even puppies know when to leave other dogs alone. All it takes is this little move by Dakota and Maisie moves on.
Zoey on the other hand has been spending her time protecting all her toys and trying to steal Maisie's. They have not played yet, much to Maisie's dismay, she is trying. Zoey is just trying to get between her and Barb and protect her toys. It has been less than two days, so I am sure that that will change.
The first night Barb put Maisie in her crate right next to the bed. She whined for a couple of minutes but then settled down for 3 hours when Barb got up and took her out. Then she slept for another 3 hours, then another hour before she was up for the day.
Do now it begins, the arduous task of trying to potty train a 9-week-old puppy. Trying to keep an eye on her while also living our daily lives. Some successes, some failures. It's going to be some long days and short nights while we get into a routine, but it just takes time and patience.
Stay tuned for many, many more videos and pictures in the coming weeks! In the meantime, I think I will be continuously having 3-4 bottles of bourbon within arm's reach so I can taste test to my heart's content!
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