Goodbye, Bonny–Notes to My Departed Dog

I lost my soulmate, my 15 year old Bearded Collie, Bonny, about 6 weeks ago. I have wanted to write a tribute, something that would be worthy of her indomitable spirit and her zest for life, but all my attempts have fallen short.  I decided to write some notes to Bonny. Hopefully she will feel the love and know how much she is missed. She was never critical of my writing, never critical of anything at all.

Bonny, I still look for you on my quiet walks through the woods. Could you be just over the bank, wading in the creek as you were wont to do?  You always were one to sneak off when my mind was diverted, and it takes me a moment to remember and realize that you won’t be coming back this time.

Is there a creek where you are? Are there deer to chase? Buzzards to bark at? You so loved to chase the buzzards. You’d run like the wind beneath them, lifting your front feet into the air as if to say, “Please, oh please, I want to fly with you. Your long ears would be flapping like the wings you wished you had.

Is Cayce there with you? I hope that you have found her and that you are romping in the fields as you used to do. I remember how it broke your heart when she passed away. Mayzie is also broken hearted and misses you so. She knew that you were very ill, and somehow, she understood that when we took you away and you didn’t come home with us, that you had gone to a better place. She is not the goofy puppy (even at 7 years old) that she was. She seems to have lost the sparkle in her eyes. Please tell her to be happy.

I’ve tried to spoil her and make her feel special. She actually has learned to catch a Frisbee. Can you believe it? Now that she’s not under your shadow, she finally got the confidence to claim the Frisbee as her own. But I think we have created a monster. She wants someone to throw the Frisbee all day long.

I know that another pup can never fill the void that you left in my heart, but we got a new puppy a few weeks ago. I can’t help but compare her to you when you were a pup. You were a willful imp, but you were the most endearing dog one could ever hope to have. God, I miss you so.

Mayzie is struggling to keep her sanity with our young Baylie. She has infinite patience with the pouncing and hair pulling, which you, as you remember, did not have. I’m hoping that in time they will grow to be good friends, just like you and Mayzie eventually were.

You were the most beautiful dog on the planet. Never have I seen a more gorgeous dog. You were a high maintenance blonde. Everything was about you. You doted on attention, and never met a stranger. You had the greatest gift of all. You made everyone smile. I am smiling through my tears.

I loved to stare into your eyes, infinite pools of green. I could feel how much you loved me. I hope that you know how special you were to me. I can hardly bear to look at your photo. It brings so much pain to know that I can’t stroke your ears and play with your golden hair.
Do you visit us? Are you able to come back to our world from yours? I often sit still and try to feel your spirit. I’m not sure how to know if you are with me? Can you give me a sign?
They’re calling for snow tonight. Not much, just an inch or so. Do you get any snow there? You were always so happy when you could run and play in the snow, until your feet turned into snowballs, and you’d beg to be carried… all 52 pounds of you.

I remember all the good times we had at the beach. It was your favorite place to be in the world. Even as you aged, you always became a puppy when we walked in the sand on the beach. I am so glad we had one last trip to the beach before you left us. It’s hard to believe that it was only two months before your death that you were prancing along the shore and riding on the prow of the little john boat as we putted around the marshes and inlets.

You were not a ditzy blonde, you were a rugged and brave defender of your territory. You remember tangling with the raccoon and getting bitten on the nose? You scared me to death. There was so much blood everywhere, I thought you had been ripped apart. A face washing revealed only two small punctures on your nose. And the time you grabbed the possum from under the fir tree and shook him till he died. Only to find him mysteriously gone 10 minutes later. That’s why they call it “playing possum”. You even chased a bear out of the yard after he broke into our chicken coop. And the worst of all was the night you took on the skunk. At 2:00 am. AND, Mayzie got sprayed, too. What a night.
Life was never dull with you, Bonny. You were pretty as a cover girl, but a farm dog at heart. You loved helping with the chores. I miss having you ride at my feet in the Kubota RTV. Mayzie still claims the front seat, so we’re training Baylie, the pup, to ride in your place on the floor.

I think even the llamas miss having you around.

Goodbye, Bonny. I hope to be reunited with you someday over that Rainbow Bridge. In the meantime, I will still look for your sign that you are looking over us. I love you.

Post Note:Thank you Bonny, I got your sign. Shortly after putting the finishing touches to my notes to you, I put the puppy, Baylie, to bed in her crate. We keep the crate in our walk-in closet, and when I settle her down for the night, I lay a faux mink throw in front of the cage and lie down with my fingers through the wire. She nuzzles up to my fingers, and when she has dropped off to sleep, I sneak into my own bed. Mayzie is jealous of the extra attention that I’m giving the puppy, and she generally sulks on her settee at the foot of the bed. Last night, as I lay on my mink blanket, I felt a warm nuzzle at my ankles. Mayzie came and lay down in the doorway of the closet and put her head on my feet. Maybe Mayzie was being empathetic and sensed my grief and was coming to comfort me. I’d like to believe that you came to Mayzie, and through her, gave me the sign I needed, to let me know that you were with me and all was well. Bonny, love, be at peace.

Mayzie and the new pup, Baylie

Yikes! The Geese are Back

Honk-Garonk-Honk-Honk-Garonk. Yikes! The Canada geese are back. It’s early in the season for them to be scoping out nesting sites, but the winter has been so mild here that they are probably confused. I saw 2 geese spiraling in for a landing on our pond, but then heard a ruckus. I had just stepped outside with my Goldendoodle puppy, Baylie, so we took a stroll down to the pond to see what was going on. Apparently there was already one pair swimming around when the 2nd pair came in for a landing, so a quarrel ensued. The pup and I headed on down, she, apprehensive about all the strange noises, I, hoping to shoo them away.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the geese—-when they are anywhere but on our pond. Three years ago, we had a pair build a nest on our island in the pond. We were pretty excited about it at the time. I did a lot of research on the mating behaviors of Canada Geese, and I started my first blog to chronicle the growth of the little family. If you are interested in reading more about our goose encounters, here is a link to my Twin Creeks Gooses blog. (It is in typical blog format, so to read it chronologically, you need to start at the bottom and read up)

Goose on nest

I have a lot of respect and admiration for the geese. I particularly enjoyed this article

Lessons We Learn From Geese
Author Unknown

Fact 1: As each goose flaps its wings it creates an “uplift” for the birds that follow. By flying in a chevron or “V” formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.
Lesson: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

Fact 2: When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it.
Lesson: If we have as much sense as a goose we stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to accept their help and give our help to others.

Fact 3: When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position.
Lesson: It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each other’s skills, capabilities and unique arrangements of gifts, talents or resources.

Fact 4: The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.
Lesson: We need to make sure honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement the production is much greater. The power of encouragement (to stand by one’s heart or core values and encourage the heart and core of others) is the quality of honking we seek.

Fact 5: When a goose gets sick, wounded, or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again. Then, they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock.
Lesson: If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong.

One other fact not mentioned here, is that geese poop—a lot. I read somewhere that an adult goose can poop upwards of 1 ½ pounds per day. Most of it went into the pond, and the spring following the hatching of 3 goslings, our pond was beset with algae. We spent all summer treating the water and scooping algae around the banks. As much as we enjoyed our feathered tenants, we vowed that we would do what we could to humanely discourage them from coming back the following year.

We don’t have a particularly favorable location for geese, thankfully. The pond is small, ½ acre, and is nestled in a forested area, with trees surrounding the pond. The geese seem to like it because it is protected and there is a small island, but they have a really steep ascent to get airborne and clear the tops of the trees. Geese are heavy birds, and seem to need a fairly long, clear runway to get aloft. So we don’t have visitors during most of the year. The geese only come in at nesting time.

Out with the kids

The following spring, starting in late February, a couple of pair of geese would make daily stopovers, scoping out the suitability of the digs. We didn’t want to make them feel welcome. We had good success that first year with a pair of coyote decoys. When the decoys lost their effectiveness, we used a pen laser to flash a beam across their bodies. I read about this online when I was doing research on goose deterrents. Golf courses and small airfields are using powerful laser pointers to move geese off of the property. It does work, but we have to be within 100 feet with our pointer to be effective.

Well, we’ve got one coyote in place. We are still trying to locate the furry tail and ground stake for our 2nd Wiley Coyote. Now that the geese have arrived, we have incentive to clean the garage and find that missing tail.

Wordless Wednesday

Too Cute for Words

Mayzie the bearded collie with her new baby sister, Baylie the Goldendoodle

Wagon Tails

Spot

Remember the fun we had as children taking a ride in a little red wagon? Reminiscent of those treasured times, I’m introducing a new line of needle felted animals. Each unique little animal is taking a joy ride in a precious 3 1/2 inch x 2 1/2 inch rustic metal wagon and the series is called the “Wagon Tails”. Each animal is lovingly felted of 100 percent natural fibers, to include llama, alpaca, wool, and mohair. I have these cute little animals for sale on my Etsy shop. To view the current listings and prices, please visit my shop at tcllamas Etsy Shop.

Barney Bear

Baylie the Goldendoodle

Ice Art

More Ice Art. How interesting the way the ice crystals form on the surface of the pond. Mother Nature is quite the Artiste

Wordless Wednesday

Darned Pesky Bear!

Ice Thrice

Thanksgiving morning we awoke to a white hoarfrost decorating the landscape like an iced Thanksgiving cake. There was a sheet of ice that had formed on top of the patio table and when DH removed it, he discovered that it lent an interesting effect to the world as view through it. Here are three photos that are taken through the “ice camera filter”. They resemble a bad attempt at using photoshop, but they are untouched photographs.

Bonny the Bearded Collie

View of pond

Mayzie

Thanksgiving Turkey on the Skids

I’ve never been big on cooking Thanksgiving Dinner.  Number 1, I’m not overly fond of Turkey. I mean, it’s great for the Thanksgiving meal, but then you’re left with all that leftover Turkey that you have to creatively use up over the next few days. I’ve always been a dark meat person myself, but the leg is extremely fraught with tendons and tiny bones. And the thigh just goes too fast. Then you’re left with that dry, stringy breast meat that you have to smother with gravy in order to chew and swallow. As I said, I’m just not a big fan of it.

When we first married, Tim was a 2^nd lieutenant in the USAF, and our first assignment was 1800 miles from our home. So it was impossible to go home for Thanksgiving. But as most young families in Tim’s squadron were in the same situation, someone would volunteer to prepare the Thanksgiving Dinner and invite 2 to 3 other couples over to join.

So in that manner, I managed to skate through the first 5 years of our marriage without ever having to do battle with a turkey. I had reached 28 years of age, and had never cooked a turkey. But having recently moved to Oklahoma and made a new bunch of friends, I decided I would like to try my hand at hosting my own Thanksgiving Dinner.

We invited friends for a mid afternoon meal. The menu was a given. I would cook all the traditional dishes that I had growing up for Thanksgiving Dinner.  Having grown up in the South, all foods came fried or in the form of a casserole dish.  Imagine our glee when we discovered Fried Turkey, many years later.

One of our favorite traditional Thanksgiving dishes was the Million Dollar Squash Casserole. It was made with yellow crooked neck squash, sour cream, mushroom soup and Pepperidge Farm Cornbread Dressing Mix.  So what started out as a healthy, nutritional vegetable was transformed into a calorie and fat laden “heart attack on a plate”.  But, after all, what is Thanksgiving Dinner, if not a day for over indulgence.

I grew up in the lower part of SC where rice is the staple starch rather than the potato, so we always had rice with giblet gravy, and the requisite sweet potato soufflé (casserole) and my Grandmother’s recipe for cornbread dressing, pumpkin pie, pecan pie and of course the turkey. Now, I knew how to make everything else, I was not concerned with any of the side dishes; however, I knew absolutely nothing about a turkey. So I consulted my cook books that I had received as wedding gifts and opted for one of the new fangled turkeys that had the pop up doneness indicators.

It seemed relatively straight forward.  Baste the turkey-put it in the oven at the correct temperature- cook for about 4 hours. Dinner was planned for mid afternoon, so I put the turkey in at the appropriate time, allowing for the resting time before carving, and began preparing the delectable squash casserole.

The squash that I was familiar with from my childhood is a yellow goose necked squash with a smooth, thin skin that when sliced and boiled will puree by simply mashing with a fork. The squash I found in the grocery in OK looked similar, but not exactly the same. It didn’t have a crooked neck, and the skin was rough and bumpy. But it was what they had, so I went with it. After boiling, I tried to mash it, but the skin was tough and would not break up. I put it in the mixing bowl and ran at high speed—still lumpy. So I elevated to the next level of maceration, and put the squash in the blender.  This would definitely take care of it. But, as there was not a lot of liquid in the squash, it didn’t swirl well, and the squash escaped the blades by clinging desperately to the sides of the pitcher while the blades whirred ineffectively in the center.  So in an attempt to force the squash back into the center of the blender, I used the handle of a large fork to poke along the sides of the pitcher, and inadvertently proved a law of physics.

Newton’s law of motion. an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

When the blades came in contact with the fork, the blades came to a screeching halt, but the squash, which was in motion at a gazillion revolutions per second, continued at the same velocity, but changed direction to a vertical trajectory and stopped abruptly when it made contact with my ceiling.

Around about that time, my husband, Tim, came into the kitchen in an attempt to be helpful. He peeked in at the turkey and then examined the control panel on the front of the oven. We had just recently moved into our rental condo, and it had really glitzy appliances. It even came with a trash compactor, which was quite sophisticated for a young, impoverished, Air Force couple like ourselves.

The oven had lots of buttons, but no user’s manual, so I had never used any of the advanced settings. I heard Tim idly comment on the functionality of some of the controls, but I ignored him as I continued to scrub squash off the ceiling.

Preparations went on with no further incidents until about 3 hours later when I opened the oven door to check on the turkey. The oven was stone cold. The turkey was raw. Dinner guests were due to arrive any minute. Tim will deny it even to this day, 40 years later, but when he was marveling over all the buttons on the oven, he pushed the button for timed bake and put the oven on pause. Effectively, dinner was on pause.

Our guests were quite amused by the tale, and we spent the afternoon drinking and playing games until the turkey finally made its grand entrance. All in all, it was a wonderful Thanksgiving. But that’s what Thanksgiving is really all about, isn’t it. Sharing the day with friends and family and giving thanks for what really matters in life: health, happiness, sharing and caring.

Llamas Can Count, You Know…

Well, at least up to two!

5 years ago we had fat llamas, a common affliction of llamas in the United States. You see, llamas originated in the Alto Plano of South America where vegetation is sparse.

Llamas on the Alto Plano
Photo courtesy of dreamstime.com

By necessity, they evolved to have a highly efficient digestive system and a genetically induced compulsion to eat whenever they see food. Then—bring them to the Southeast United States where grass grows an inch a day, and what to you get?—Fat llamas.

It does seem contrary to common logic that an animal can get fat on grass. After all, when we go on a diet, what do we eat? Salad!

So after having llamas for 5 years and allowing them to free graze on our lush pastures day in and day out, we finally realized that we had a problem and needed to take action. The average ideal weight for our llamas is about 325 pounds. They were as much as 100 pounds overweight. That’s 30% too much. Think of a 120 pound woman that gains 30% of her weight. She now weighs 160 pounds. Not a pretty sight, and more importantly, not healthy.

So our solution was to fence in a ½ acre paddock beside the barn that was wooded and had no grass. There, we could control their feed; measure out their hay and monitor their weight. We named the paddock “The South Beach”, for the popular diet craze of the time. For one full year, the llamas lived in the barn and South Beach. Each week we would weigh them and adjust their hay portions so that they maintained a weight loss of 3-4 pounds a week. Finally, success! We had fit llamas rather than fat llamas. They looked healthier and felt better. They frisked on the fields, and trotted on the trails.

But the hardest part of any diet is the afterglow; that time when your goal has been met and the diet is done. How to keep the weight off? We couldn’t just throw them back out on the pastures. In no time, they would blow up again. So we devised a maintenance plan to rotate llamas on and off the grass and limit their time on the pasture depending on their needs. As with people, llamas have different metabolisms. We have a couple of llamas that are high energy and don’t tend to gain weight, and then we have a couple that can gain weight eating air.

So the pattern soon emerged that I would let two llamas out on the grass each morning and bring them in late afternoon. The pairing changes daily and I am now quite adept at cutting out the llamas that I want to go out. I bring the llamas into the barn to eat their grain while I scatter out their measured hay in the paddock. The side door of the barn leads to the South Beach, and the front door opens to the greener pastures. I open the side door to the South Beach, and as the llamas are jockeying for position to get out the door, I use hand signals to guide a llama to the front door and release him.

Barn and the Southbeach

This is a photo of our October snow from last week. You can see the Southbeach to the right of the barn.

The llama, currently known as Prince, has figured out how to play the system. While all the other llamas dash out to the South Beach to claim a pile of hay, Prince hangs back, eternally hopeful that today will be his day. He used to hang back until he was the last llama in the barn and I had to shoo him out, but I have noticed lately that he has started counting. He knows that I am only going to let two llamas out, and he hangs behind until I have released the second llama out the front door. As soon as he sees the 2nd llama go out the front door to the pasture, he knows that’s it, and he quickly dashes into the fray so as not to be the last llama out the door to the South Beach to claim a pile of hay.

Trick or Treat–Mother Nature’s Way

The photo says it all. IT’S TOO EARLY, DAMMIT!

8 inches of the wettest, heaviest snow possible fell on October 29. Last Saturday, we enjoyed a llama hike in the Shenandoah Valley and the leaves were at their most perfect.

 

Had this snow happened 30 days from now, it would have been a non event. But the leaves on the trees were great snow collectors, causing huge, beautiful trees to break under the weight. We were very fortunate in that we didn’t have any big damage. But we were diligent. During the height of the storm, after about 6 inches had already fallen, we spent 3 hours walking around our 20 acre property, shaking the snow off all the trees that we could budge. Our  dogwoods and newly planted birches and willows were bent to the ground, but after we unburdened them of their load, they popped right back up.

Morning Coffee with Mayzie

Despite losing power for 8 hours, the snow was quite beautiful. Even as it fell, the temperatures were above freezing, so it was melting and falling at the same time.

Sublimation

Sublimation “The process of changing from a solid to a gas without passing through an intermediate liquid phase”. Quite eerie, and appropriate for the Halloween weekend, the melting snow creates a fog over the pastures.

Crop Circles in the Snow

Even with 8 inches of snow on the ground, the mowing tracks are still visible.

Serving Breakfast

Yea! Hay!

Frosted Flakes for Breakfast

I layed out flakes of hay on top of the snow since there wasn’t any grass visible. The llamas were quite non-plussed when they stepped out into the snow, but soon spyed the hay and so starts a new day.

Frost on Leaves