Tag Archives: dogs

My name is Baxter …

and I’m in trouble.

First off, let me say that it wasn’t my fault; not entirely, anyway.

I am eight months old and am pretty big for my age.  I came to live with these great people on this big farm with lots of space to run, other dogs to play with, or sometimes run from, depending on their mood, and a bunch of other people coming in and out at all hours.

Oh, and goats.

And a pond.

It’s a really great place to live and I’m learning things like how to sit when I’m told and to stay when I’m told. I bark at leaves and wind and really get excited when that big brown truck full of boxes comes around.

I really like it here.

Apparently this time of year is special because lots of people have come by with very loud sticks that they take into the woods and them come back out, sometimes with only the loud stick, but sometimes with a thing I’ve heard them call a “deer” or a “buck”.  They talk about “bagging one” but so far, I haven’t seen any bags, although I don’t know what a bag is or what it looks like.

The things that came out of whatever they bagged are what got me in trouble, but I reiterate that it wasn’t entirely my fault.

I distinctly heard one of my favorites of my new people tell the ones who appear to be the Alphas of the place that I was a thinker and problem solver.  I don’t think they believed her.

As it happens, I am both of those things and because of it, I found myself in a unique situation.

There is a lot of work that goes into doing whatever they do to the things that are bagged without bags and it seems that some parts are more important than others.

I, along with my new dog pals Moe, Molly and Blue (he’s the one that scares me a bit, but he doesn’t know how big I’ll grow, hehehe), sometimes get to take part in the ritual that follows the bagging by being thrown pieces of what they take out of it.

It’s pretty good stuff, I’ll have to say.  I have not been disappointed, though I did get some red stuff on me and my favorite person fussed over me like I was hurt or something.  I don’t know what all that was about, but I loved the attention and the delicious cookies she gave me after.

I’ve gotten a little off point of talking about my trouble, but here is the thing … those reddish looking pieces of something were just hanging there in what the baggers with the loud sticks called the shed and they smelled really good.

I have a keen nose and was, naturally, quite interested.

They were pretty high up, too high for me to reach even standing on my hind legs and stretching; and I can stretch a long way.  I noticed a contraption of some kind under them and as I looked at it and looked at the hanging things, I began to formulate a plan.

Since some stuff the humans took in the house and other stuff they threw to me and my pals, I figured that whatever was hanging out of our reach must be pretty darn good.

I paced a bit, back and forth around the shed and kept coming back to the contraption that I’d seen them ride in.

After a bit of consideration, I realized that I was big enough and strong enough to climb into the back of that contraption which would make me much taller than my already fairly tall self.

So I went for it.  After getting in the back of the contraption, I was able to rare up and get my powerful jaws around one of those things hanging in the shed.

It was like nothing I’d ever tasted.  I was so excited that I went back and ate them all.

As it turned out, I learned a bit later, they were “deer hams” and something the humans prize very highly when they bag one of those critters with their noisy sticks.

They were pretty angry.  I learned that word that day.  I also learned “unhappy”, “bad dog”, “for the love of God”, and some others I can’t pronounce and judging from the faces that the words came from, I probably shouldn’t repeat them anyway.

I can’t promise that I won’t do it again because they were

SO.

VERY.

GOOD.

I’m hoping they will hang more of them, but my fear is that they have learned a valuable lesson about my prowess, intelligence and problem solving super powers.

See, as it turns out, it wasn’t even remotely my fault because number one, I can’t drive and didn’t park that contraption under the prized parts and number two, at the time I didn’t know any better.

I know better now, but boy howdy, those things were delicious and hope springs eternal.

img_20161120_134427874img_20161120_141547

Dogs are man’s best friend …

up until the point when they start barking all night, every night,  just outside the window; then friend becomes past tense and nuisance takes its place.  What is it that makes dogs want to bark at air?  When I was a kid, I often heard my dad say to me and my sister that he wasn’t talking just to hear his head roar, but I have to wonder if the same is true when it comes to dogs.  Do they do it simply to ensure to themselves that they are still able to make the sound?  Or perhaps they perceive, in the black and darkened nothingness of the middle of the night, some kind of being that is unperceptible to the human eye.  Unperceptible is not, as Merriam-Webster will tell you, a real word, but in my life, at this moment, and every moment for the past few nights, it is real; I am coining it even as I write this post.

Living on a farm in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, is supposed to be a peaceful, wonderful, life-altering experience; one that allows you to get closer to nature, closer to God and just feel good about being alive.  It used to be that way for me, up until the moment when the dogs all went crazy.  I had the spotlight out last night trying to see what they were barking at, thinking that the enemy had finally infiltrated the camp and we were all destined for death.  I didn’t see anything but rocks.  So I yelled at the dogs and they stopped barking; for about five minutes.  As I tried to drift back off to sleep, the sound started up again.  This time, when I yelled at them, or mayhaps, more aptly, squalled at them, it wasn’t quite so nicely.  Again, they stopped barking for about five minutes.  I remember praying that they would not bark anymore that night, but I suppose that God had more pressing things to attend to at the moment than barking dogs.

When they started up again, I began to think of all the ways that I could murder them.  But it was dark, cold and I was still half-asleep, so the choices were limited.  I don’t own, now have I ever fired a gun, so that was out.  The cast iron skillet would have made a dent, but as I said, it was dark and cold and I was in my sleep attire, which is not suitable for dark, cold nights in the back yard chasing dogs with a cast-iron skillet.

When three AM came along and the sound of their barking woke me once again, I became desperate.  I searched my house for an adequate weapon to use upon the creatures that I had loved dearly, at least up until this moment.  I found the lids to a couple of pots and took them to the back door.  I yelled loudly words that I dare not print and banged the lids together.  The dogs, all three of them who were causing the ruckus, tucked their tail between their legs and went into the warm, hay-filled shelter that my dad makes for them each winter.  I didn’t hear another peep all night.  Needless to say, I have my pot lids close by and am ready if they start their nightly bark-fest.  I am starting to realize that while I still love dogs, it is only during daylight hours.

stuff