Our puppy is a delightful little fellow who never misses an opportunity to teach us new things. These past couple of weeks he taught us to fetch. We didn’t even know it until recently.
Kyrill loves to play with balls. He rolls them around and chases them. They often roll under the sofa and love seat in the livingroom, and the space is too small for him to retrieve them, so he barks and we get them for him.
I became suspicious of the sheer volume. of balls that were going under the furniture. I draped blankets in front of the sofa and love seat to block balls from rolling under, and then I noticed him roll the balls under the unblocked ends of the furniture. He was doing this on purpose! This was a Terrier game!
The Cesky Facebook group told me this is typical of the breed, and they all have yardsticks close at hand to retrieve all the toys their dogs like to shove under the furniture. Who would have guessed?
What are you favorite and least favorite games to play. What have animals taught you? Who has been the most successful getting you to do what you don’t want to do?
Our puppy is an avid chewer, and we get him faux rawhide treats to satisfy his cravings. Rawhide is hard to digest, and the fake stuff is described in one site as made from “Human grade food ingredients that are nutritious, highly digestible and completely healthy for your dog”.
As I perused a new bag of chews, I noticed in rather large letters these words: Not for human consumption. These were flat and thin chews about 4 X 6 inches in size. There is certainly nothing about them that made me want to start chewing on them. Are there people who would actually think it was ok to chew on these things? Are people that ignorant? Have parents given them to their teething infants? What would make a company put something like that on their products? I just don’t know what to think!
What are some perplexing and unnecessary warnings you have seen on products? What foods do you think are not for human consumption?
Pretty quiet around the farm this week. With me back at work, I need to schedule farm work around ‘work’ work. Oh, there’s a whole list of things I haven’t gotten done yet this summer, but if I got them all done it would mean I hadn’t scheduled enough, wouldn’t it.
Cooler temps and I like that, but the crops need those GDU’s to reach maturity. We are still 117 GDU above normal for our area. And crops are looking real good so far. Except the dang deer eating the tops off my soybeans.
Nice juicy tender leaves on the top. Man. I am not fond of deer. They like this field back in a corner. No one to bother them… and they must spend hours out there grazing.
Padawan was out one day and we burned a brush pile
we cleaned up and put away some machinery, he cut grass, and I mowed the newly planted CRP to keep the weeds down
(I cut it about 6” high) Plus he learned how to replace a toilet flapper. That may have been the highlight of his day. One thing I think he has learned is that a lot of things take more muscle than he thinks. My answer to most of his issues is “Yank/hit/pull/push it harder”. I had never thought of that before; some things just take a lot of effort. Life Lesson there.
The chickens were waiting not so patiently for Kelly to feed them the other day.
Our Cesky Terrier clearly has never heard of the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that two objects cannot occupy the same space simultaneously.
Try as he might, Kyrill can’t fit two of his favorite small tennis balls in his mouth at the same time. He loves his balls and runs all over the house with them. Much of the time he looks like a soccer player, one ball in his mouth, the other getting pushed down the hall and around the room with his front paws. He seems to experiment at times with both on the floor in front of him, picking up one and trying to pick up the other, as though he thinks the rules might have changed and he can have both in mouth.
Cesky Terriers are some what different in temperament from other terriers, in that they prefer (in fact, they insist) on being with their people instead of running off and exploring. Kyrill is very conflicted when we are both outside with him, as he wants to be with both of us simultaneously, even when we are in different corners of the yard. He has, apparently, heard of the superposition principle of quantum mechanics, which essentially states that one object can exist in two places at the same time. I have no idea how that possibly could be true, but it appears to be an actual proven principle. Kyrill hasn’t figured out how to make it work for him when husband and I aren’t together in the same room.
What natural laws do you wish you could suspend? What is your experience with animal devotion or loathing?
Last Saturday we drove 70 miles to Twin Buttes, a small community on the Fort Berthold Reservation to see dear friends there at the pow wow. It didn’t go well.
Our friend, Linda, was back home and ill. Her husband was there in his camper, so we could hang out with him and his extended family. Unbeknownst to us, Puppy had ingested a whole bunch of grape vine bark from our deck before we left, and hurled in the van on the way to the pow wow. He was terrified of the drumming, even though we were in the campground and fairly far from the arbor where the drums and dancing were. The dancers in their regalia frightened him. (He is Czech, you know and was expecting polkas.) There were lots of clumps of mowed and dried foxtail grass where our friend had his camper, and Puppy started to devour them in an attempt to hurl up the remaining grape vine bark. The grass stuck in his fur and in his throat, and he coughed and gagged, and he was not receptive to the attentions of our friend’s great nieces and nephews who wanted to pet him. He continued to hurl grape bark and foxtail grass for a couple of days after we got home. I am still combing fox tail burrs out of his fur.
What frightened you as a child? What frightens you now? What kind of dancing to you like?
When we got our first Welsh Terrier in 1990, the breeder, who lived in Mankato, was dismayed to find out we were both psychologists, since psychologists, in her experience, were not good at being consistent and structured with their dogs. They allowed too many misbehaviors and were too concerned with the dogs’ feelings.
We now are on our fourth terrier, and I must admit the Mankato breeder has a point. I wonder why it took me 30 years to admit she was right. It has also made me realize that I have too high expectations for the parents I work with to be consistent and structured with their children, and that I can do a better job in helping them do that, rather than roll my eyes over their failed attempts at positive reinforcement. This training stuff is hard!
Terriers are all heart and intellect. Punishment doesn’t work with them. They also need clear rules and limits. Children are the same. One of the first things I noticed with our new dog was our inconsistent message to him about shoes. Husband has a pair of gardening shoes he dislikes, and has allowed our new puppy to chew, shake, and toss them. Now, we both are well trained in behavior theory, and know that it is impossible for our dog to discriminate between shoes we like and shoes we don’t like. This has led to Kyrill raiding our closets for any shoes he can find. All we can do is keep the closet doors shut and praise him when he drops the shoes he has stolen. It is hard to be positive in those situations, rather than angry.
It is often hard to explain to parents how important it is to praise their children where they are rather than punish them for what they fail to do. For example, if the most positive thing you can say to your child is “Thank you for not using the F word at breakfast” then that is where you are. It is hard for for me to praise the dog when he drops something I treasure, rather than yelling at him for stealing it in the first place.
This is the first dog we have had when we weren’t actively parenting children. I think that has made me more aware of what I am doing, rather than doing what was expedient to get things done at home. Live and learn, I guess. We all have feet of clay.
What do you preach but don’t practice? What is hard for you to admit? What new things do you want to learn?
Weather warmed up this week, then to cooled off one day, then the humidity spiked again. Cooler next week. Jeepers, roller coaster of weather. They say if you don’t like the weather, to just wait a minute.
I did get the oats cut on Monday. I had to run into a local parts store and buy a new battery for it. The old one was just 2 years old, but it didn’t have any “oomph” for starting. Tried jumping it a couple different way and times and when that didn’t work, I gave up and got a new battery. I figured I don’t need the best battery in here; it only runs a couple days in the summer. Well, all the batteries were $179 plus the core deposit and refund, plus tax and I paid $195. Dang. But it started and I cut the oats. Had no issues, It seemed to cut pretty well, even the downed stuff. Whew! That old machine always makes me anxious. It’s almost as old as me and makes more noises than I do.
Got the oats harvested on Thursday. One neighbor, who usually takes a wagon load, wants it all this year. Which is fine, except having not worked all summer, that oat check is what gets me through the last hump before I start back at the college. And we probably won’t exchange cash here, we’ll just keep track of the total and figure the difference this fall after they harvest my beans and corn. The oats didn’t yield as well as I had hoped and test weight was lower than my usual too. It was planted a little later than usual, the weather was maybe too hot at the wrong times for it. Plus we had mix up with the fertilizer this spring so it’s hard to say why it didn’t do so well this year. There isn’t much oats grown anymore so it’s hard to find out how the neighbors oats did. (I don’t have any neighbors growing oats.)
Next up then is baling the straw. I’m only expecting about 2 loads. One load for the strawberry farm up the road, and one for my customers.
I added a camera to the baler so I can keep an eye on the knotters and strings as the one string gives me more trouble. Seems like something that should be fixable, but I haven’t been able to figure out what’s out of adjustment the last several years… so I added a camera so at least I can see a missing string sooner. Caught soon enough, I can add a piece of twine and tie the string back together. Otherwise I can’t see it until it’s coming out of the baler and then it’s too late to fix. So either I pull it out by hand, or if I miss it there, the thrower knocks it apart and that makes a mess. Expect photos of this next week.
The corn is looking good. It’s way taller than Kelly now.
Interesting how many plants have 2 ears this year.
When there are plenty of resources and the plant can spare them, resources go into creating a second ear. Usually that also jeopardizes the main ear and you end up with two mediocre ears, rather than one really nice ear. Notice the kernels are all in there, and the size of the ear was determined way back when the corn was only knee high! And then each leaf node starts to create an ear, then when it reaches tasseling, just the top ones emerge and take priority. So now it’s just getting those silks fertilized by the pollen from the tassel and getting all the kernels to fully develop. Man it’s so cool!
Kelly went out to feed the chickens the other day and they all followed her down there. They sure know the routine.
Baby ducklings are doing well too. Two escaped the other day; they found a little hole in the pen and got out, but I distracted them and Kelly captured them and reunited them with momma. All is well.
WHAT CEREAL DID YOU EAT AS A KID? WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST TODAY?
They say July is corn month and August is Soybean month. Because July is the critical time in corn development, while it’s August for soybeans.
The corn has tasseled so it’s full height now, the silks are out, GDU’s, while down a bit this week with the cooler weather (which I love by the way) are 1714, 104 above normal.
I’m still mowing weeds, but I expect by the time you read this I will have finished. Or, if not exactly “finished”, given up and quit. The one area I’ve got left to mow is really rough and I will get tired of bouncing around in the cab.
All the crops are looking good, and while I was thinking I’d be cutting oats next Monday or Tuesday, looking at it Thursday shows a lot of green kernels yet so I may wait out next week yet.
The storms last Saturday knocked some oats down and in one field I saw some corn lodged on the edge of the field.
(“lodging” is basically stalk failure) Oats, As the plant is green and growing it has a lot of give. But as it matures, dries up, and turns golden, the stalk loses its flexibility, meaning it will break off in the wind. And it’s odd, how only certain parts of the fields will do that. Wind is very curious, as the songs from last week’s blog showed.
You can see from the pictures, only one part of the field went down, while the rest didn’t. And the green weeds still stand up. It’s all interesting.
We got nearly 2” of rain Saturday afternoon and then another .6” Saturday night. Kelly and I drove around in the gator checking on things after the afternoon storm. No trees down at least. And then we found a mama duck and 9 ducklings. Once again, Kelly is wrangling ducklings and I’m pointing and offering unsolicited advice.
Using a fishing net, she captured just about all the ducklings and I could get them in a box. But they’re tiny and a few escaped the net. She chased them down and we cleaned up a side pen for them. Now, just to catch mama. I remember one other year we did this; the mama could track the squeaking of the ducklings and we put up a ramp and eventually she got in there with them for a happy reunion. That wasn’t working this year and Kelly eventually captured her with the net too. Kelly and mama duck were in the pen and I was out in the gator. I heard some noises, and honking, and the doors wiggled a few times, and the mama got her head out the door once. But they’re all together now. We’ll keep them in here for a month or so. Until they’re big enough to survive outside… and we’ll see what happens.
A neighbor about ½ mile cross country from us said he saw two bear cubs playing on a log in his pond the other morning. Some neighbors have seen bears before, and we always assumed they were just passing through. But cubs… I don’t know, that seems like mama bear must be settled in here. Just what we need; another predator. I think it would be cool to see a bear. Long as it’s not eating the chickens. Do bears eat chickens??
CoCoRaHS – Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, And Snow network is an organization I heard about a few years ago. Cocorahs.org
Every day I report how much rain we’ve gotten. Some people report snow depth, and some people have full-fledged weather stations. I just report rain with some minor details like last Saturday’s amount in the afternoon and the evening. It is interesting to me to compare rain events in our area. There are about 14 reporting stations in the Rochester area, and three within a few miles of us. It’s interesting how the rain amounts can vary between us. I got a certificate for 250 reporting observations.
I’ve talked about the barn swallows outside our front door and the nest they’ve had for several years. Well, must be new residents this time around and they do not like us coming and going and they dive bomb us. Even at my car, 20’ from the nest they’re buzzing my head. We keep telling them “It’s us! You know us!”
ARE YOU A FALL RISK?ANY ISSUES WITH ANYTHING FALLING DOWN LATELY?
When we were working on Nonny’s library loan issue, YA discovered a shelf of jigsaw puzzles right next to the desk. The St. Louis Library system loans out puzzles! (I immediately chatted w/ someone at the Hennepin County Library to see if puzzles are in our system – sadly no.) I love the idea of borrowing puzzles from the library. I only like to do puzzles once so not only do I have to find another home for a finished puzzle, the cost starts to mount up. YA and I could easily do a puzzle a week (except for the occasional killer puzzle like the polar bear last year).
We looked through the puzzles and chose a tiger in repose in a jungle setting with lots of tropical flowers and a waterfall – and it was a glitter puzzle! Since it was a rainy afternoon, YA and Nonny and I dived right in when we got back to the condo.
I learned puzzle-doing at Nonny’s knee so we do puzzles the same: edge pieces first and then tackling the inner part. YA doesn’t care about getting the edges done first, so she just digs right in. I tend to look for shapes that fit; YA looks for color/design. Nonny and I worked on the border while YA started with the tropical flowers.
YA is intense when she is doing a puzzle. She does NOT like to stop; we did the glitter tiger in 4 hours. Nonny sat back and watched for awhile and when we got toward the end, I gave her one of the pieces so she could finish the puzzle. She resisted at first, but then gave in. A very satisfying afternoon.
Two of the friends that I usually swap puzzles with have moved so I think I need to start a new puzzle-sharing co-op or something!
I was thinking about Ben’s question about stepping up as I was doing errands yesterday morning. My mom is also giving up some of the responsibilities that she’s been shouldering (some a little unwillingly) for quite some time. It’s not going as easily as she would like.
When I drove back up into my driveway, the neighbor girls were eager to tell me that there was a cat out front. The grandparents were visiting as well and it was clear that between the two girls, the two parents and the two grandparents there wouldn’t be anyone who did anything except report the existence of this cat.
So YA and I ventured out the front door to deal with the cat. It was a big white cat w/ black and brown markings, very happy to come to me and get scritched and petted, purring quite loudly. It allowed me to pick it up and that’s when YA said she thought it belonged to one of the houses across the street. We took it over and talked to the owner through the door – apparently it’s an outdoor cat; there was food & water there on the front step. When I put the cat down, it went for the food immediately so we headed home.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been elected as official “animal wrangler” in the neighborhood. I’ve been called to deal with bats twice. Once an obviously pet rabbit was found in a yard and I got a call; signs up at the vet and around the neighborhood didn’t result in owners coming forward but luckily we found a good home pretty quickly. I’ve rescued four dogs who have been loose on the street (all four had tags so got home to their owners). And for several years there was an escape artist two doors down (Duffer) that everyone was afraid of except me, so I had to drag him home repeatedly.
I’m not sure why I somehow have been designated the animal problem solver but it seems my lot in life.
