Wordless Wednesday: A Great Big Dog

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The Happy Bulldog

We don't know this big guy's name!

When we were in New Hampshire in October, we met this marigold-eating bulldog. When he visited, he ate every single marigold in the garden! When they were gone, he began eating the acorns. That was when we all decided he had had enough, and banished him in the house. But before he went in, he did this little dance. See his left front leg in the air? He was a happy dog that day!

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Happy Birthday, Little Ironman!

I was editing photos today from July 20, and I came across photos of Ironman and Catgirl. Ironman had chosen and planted nasturtium seeds earlier in the season and they had grown big and beautiful. Ironman and I thought we needed photographs of his first attempt at planting flowers. The photographs were great. The coincidence is that today, October 14th, is Ironman’s fifth birthday! Happy birthday! I hope your memories of this past summer are as rich as mine are! Your nasturtiums (below) were gorgeous and next year we will plant many more!

Earlier that day, Ironman’s sister, Catgirl, had dressed up her dog, Willow, in a Barbie cape and a headband. Willow was too busy with her bone to care about her costume! I love this photograph of this lovely young girl. I am looking forward to the birthday party tomorrow night!

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Monster

This is Monster. She is a rescued Boston Terrier. She was so abused in her old home that she can only use three legs. But now in her forever home, she is running and playing. And ruling the house. She is the boss of four other dogs — two of them are very large bull dogs. And the bull dogs listen to every single thing Monster tells them to do! She is a beautiful and expressive dog, who is blessed, as we all are, with her forever family.

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Scout's Obsession

Scout watches the chickens.

Scout spent the summer on the couch on the sun porch watching the chickens. She became obsessed with watching them, and would even run to the living room windows to follow them as they walked around the house. Daughter Amelia was concerned about her dog's behavior, but it hasn't done any harm to Scout. We tried prohibiting her from the couch and that didn't work. No dogs are on the sun porch now because of the rennovations. The sun porch is here, but it is partially demolished and is being rebuilt. New French doors have been installed to go into the new living room. But with a wall gone on the porch, there is free access to the outdoors and these dogs can't be let loose (or they will disappear up the mountain). Scout is once again calm and behaving normally. The chickens are spending their days in the woods now so they seldom come around the house. Catgirl took this photograph with the Olympus Tough 8000. She also took the photo of her brother, Ironman, below. Got to love little boys!

Funny face!

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Give To A Shelter Instead!

Photo by Andrew via iPhone

Andrew had to go to an American Psychological Association convention in San Diego awhile back and sent me this photo of the cat and dog room service menu in his hotel room. People! Why don't you just bring your own Iams and give the rest to a shelter? C'mon already! Frontier Animal Society in Orleans needs your support!
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Pansies for the FOURTH Time

The pansy pot after Sophie Dog dug them up. Again.

Well, Sophie Dog dug up the pansies again. It happened during the weekend of our wedding, May 29. We thought Daisy Dog had done it. Or the chickens, or a raccoon or skunk. But after some detective work, we learned it was our dog. I was pretty upset. This was the third time she dug them up and we thought we had her tie far enough from the pansies to keep them safe. But we were wrong and Sophie Dog outwitted us.  The sad story of the pansies is told in these posts. I did get to the nursery for more pansies, but they only had six white ones, which we bought. Amelia replanted them and she also moved the dogs into the back of the house. Hopefully our pansies will survive the summer now!

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Little Photographers

Catgirl's new puzzle

The kids took more photos of each other last week. They are beginning to get the knack of pointing, framing and shooting!

Ironman finishes setting the table for supper

Catgirl hugs Sophie Dog

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Another Fisher Cat Story

On the Saturday night of the women's retreat, Amy and Nate went out for the evening. The chickens always put themselves to bed, but the days are longer, and they hadn't retired to the coop before the kids left for the evening. Now this has happened before, and the kids have always gotten back fairly early. But this night was different.

At 10 PM, I went out to the garage to count cats to make sure they were all in for the night. The garage was closed but I heard loud chicken clucking. The chicken wasn't in the barn — which is very bad. I ran to the stairs and called out to John, who had gone to bed earlier. Then I grabbed a flashlight, a very poor flashlight, and ran outside. I knew that it would be a couple of minutes before John would be able to get the rifle and get outside to get the raccoons and I wanted to stop any more massacres.

The panicky, clucking chicken was in the driveway in front of the garage door, under the outside light which was on. She was pacing back and forth as if waiting for the garage doors to open so she could get into the house. I ran up to the barn. My plan was to shine the flashlight into the barn and holler, which would hopefully slow down or stop the raccoons.

I shined the inadequate light into the open barn from where I stood outside and an unholy scream broke out. I began to scream. At the same moment, John came out the garage door with the rifle. I stumbled towards the house as John came towards me. He hollered at me for screaming and scaring the animal in the barn. I got back to the garage and waited with the chicken.

She was still clucking wildly and pacing in front of the garage doors. Occasionally she would stop her clucking, cock her head and listen to a scream that we heard on the mountainside. As soon as the scream would end, she would throw herself into the air and try to get into the garage through the sealed garage door windows. She left the imprint of her wings and feathers on the dusty glass of the windows.

John returned and said it was not a raccoon that had been in the barn — it was a fisher cat. He said I had been very foolish to go to the barn unarmed when I knew that was trouble in there. There could have been a bear or bobcat in that barn. Or a raccoon. But this time it was a fisher and I had put myself in danger with what I had thoughtlessly done. John was furious with me. I realized that he was right and apologized.

The screaming on the mountain from the angry fisher cat continued for awhile and faded away. But the chicken was not calming down or going to her roost. We opened the garage door and the noise scared the chicken into the barn, where we managed to herd her into the coop. All this time, the cats, who could have gone outside through the garage, and the dogs, who always bark at excitement outside and could have jumped through the screens on the window, were completely quiet and stayed in. They recognized the cry of a fisher cat and were not going to antagonize it further.

It was midnight before the chickens were in bed for the night and John and I could return inside. The kids got home around 1 AM, when I told them the whole story. Thankfully, the repairs to the chicken coop that Nate had made had held and everyone was safe.

Since that time two weeks ago, John has seen the fisher cat prowling the land at night. The raccoons tried to get into the coop one more time. I heard wild clucking again one night. By the time everyone got out to the coop, there were no threats to the chickens in the barn. But there was a lot of blood on the chicken wire over the window. The raccoons had tried to chew through the wire and gotten badly cut.

We are in the process of dismantling the falling down barn and building a big, secure coop.

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Best Laid Plans: Moose Tracks

Route 16, which goes by the house, has been repaved. It's been a long process. On May 17, the crew finally had laid the new shoulders of blue stone. They had expensive machinery pounding the stone in the shoulder in a solid, hard mass. This isn't the soft, sandy shoulders of the old road. And then overnight . . . a big, old moose came out of the bog, walked down the road on the new shoulder for almost a quarter of a mile before it crossed the road to the mountain. The shoulder there is permanently holey now. So much for the hard work of that crew.

On the same day, Amelia and I took all three dogs for a walk. I have Willow, so you don't see her. Here is Amelia with Scout and Sophie. Our house is way, way back (that white speck), and the mountain is Barton Mountain, the middle hump. Barton Mountain has three humps: big, medium (in the middle) and small. From where we live, the mountain does not look like a mountain. But that is because we are only about 800 feet (244 m) from the summit, which is at 2, 235 feet (681 m).

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Snow, Oil, Dogs and Cellar Holes

On May 10, Ironman had the camera again and took photos of our oil delivery. We’ve never had to have a delivery in May, but it snowed the first two weeks of the month and we ran out of firewood. We should be set with oil now for a couple of years.

Then the 4 year old took the camera into the room that John is renovating and got this shot of the cellar hole. The boulder is part of the original 1900 stone foundation. It is a granite boulder that was quarried on Barton Mountain in our quarry.

These are some old farm implements that were tossed into the cellar hole. There were treasures and trash under the floor — some of it was over 100 years old.

Ironman’s self-portrait.

Scout (left) and Willow napping on the couch on the sun porch.

To see a naughty photo of Scout that Ironman took, click here. I won’t post the photo on the blog.

Ironman’s 6 year old sister, Catgirl. Ironman is on the right.

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Pansies for the Third Time

We've had to plant pansies in my ancient pot by the front stoop three times now. The crazed beagles dug them up two times. The dogs' leads have now been moved so they can't dig up the pansies anymore. (Crazed beagles can't be allowed to run free. I did that once during a blizzard, thinking that even crazed beagles wouldn't stay out long. Wrong. They were out for two hours, disappearing into the whiteout. I saw them chase the plow, and they finally came home and brought back some dead moose or deer bones from the woods. They were so proud.)

So Ironman and I went to the nursery. He picked out his pansy colors and then his sister's pansy colors and I picked out mine. We planted 36 pansy plants in the cast iron pot and they are doing fine. Even after two weeks of snow they are doing fine! And that is good because pansies are one of my favorites.

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Two Dogs

Amelia took this photo with my camera after John and I came back photographing bitterns, partridge, ducks and the waterfalls in town. It was a beautiful, warm day, a perfect spring day. Two of the dogs, Willow on the left and Scout on the right, were watching all of us from the sun porch window. Scout has her tongue out in this photo. John and I then mucked through the beaver bog and learned some interesting things about the beaver across the road (which will be in upcoming posts). That was Sunday. Monday was warm, also. Tuesday and today? Snow. All day. Over one foot deep. The trees in our woods were bent over so that I worried we would have more storm damage. We lost Internet for nearly the whole day. But it's going to be warm this coming weekend! The dogs (and cats and chickens) will be willing to go outside again!

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Two New Meeyauws

My daughter Amelia loves Nate. Nate has two children. Catgirl, above, is 6. Ironman, below, is 4. John and I have a lot of fun with them. We go to the library, do chores, read bedtime stories, go shopping and cook together. I gave them the Olympus camera the other day, taught them how to use it, and let them go at it. These are all of their photos!
Below, Ironman took a photo of Nate as he came home with Catgirl from school.

Below: Buddy napping in the sun.

Below: Willow on the left, Scout in the far background. And Sophie on the right.
And below is my favorite photograph! Ironman took a photo of John as he was brush hogging. John played monster for the camera, which caused Ironman to scream with delight. The kids love John — talking to him constantly and climbing on him whenever he sits.
In the future, you'll be hearing out our adventures with Catgirl and Ironman!

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The Granddogs

The new granddog, WillowScout Sophie

I haven't taken photos of these dogs in over a year. I have four granddogs. The fourth, Daisy, can be seen here. I have a new granddog now — Willow! She is a lady but a barker. Scout is the perfect dog: calm, secure and serene. And Sophie? Well, there is no describing her. She has behavioral problems. All three dogs belong to Nate and Amy.

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Daisy

See? I can do better than I did with Daisy's other photos.

      Daisy's Set

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Jack the Amazing Jumping Dog

Daughter Amelia was walking Jack the Amazing Jumping Dog in the field when I arrived at Frontier Animal Society on Sunday. They came over to say hello. And here is Jack (above) enthusiastically greeting me. I've never seen a dog jump so high!

Amy gave Jack a command and he was able to stop his jumping and pose beautifully so that I could say hello.

I love Jack's response to my hello!

Jack couldn't contain himself and began jumping again. He is being re-trained by Amy, who is Frontier's dog trainer, so that his behaviors are acceptable for a new home. Good luck, Jack! Someone as full of life and love as you deserves your own family! (Love your boots, Jack!)

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