Sables Under the Tree

 

It should have been a peaceful scene with the lighted Christmas tree, a fire blazing merrily in the fireplace, a comfy recliner with a plush blanket.  Add 80 pounds of supercharged collies and an elderly sheltie who just wants to get out of the way and serenity became Rocking Around the Christmas Tree, or more accurately, Rocking the Christmas Tree. 

Sophie is two, but sometimes thinks she is still a small puppy.  Three-month-old Scout thinks he’s a grown-up dog but is all puppy.  Their favorite game, other than WWE wrestling, is a combination of tug-of-war and keep away.  Often it morphs into all three.

Right now their favorite toy is a square plastic container they confiscated from the kitchen.    When they both managed to get hold of it at the same time, it became a prize they both were determined to have.  Scout was zooming around the couch, sometimes with the toy and sometimes in pursuit of the toy. Sofie tried to head him off at the pass and made a grab for the prize.  Frosty the Snowman got in the act too.  Frosty is a motion activated figure that sits at the end of the sofa table.  When motion is detected, he sings his signature song and dances to the beat.  The first few times he burst into song, Scout stopped dead in his tracks and stared at him.  After several times, I considered getting up and turning him off, but I was awfully comfortable under my blanket.  Sometimes I couldn’t hear Frosty anyway, with the barking of two crazed collies.

Every now and then, Sophie came over to my chair and looked up at me, like, “Did you see that?”  Then Scout discovered that he could jump up into my lap and almost tipped my chair over.  It was at this point that Phoebe, the senior dog, took refuge behind the Christmas tree, turning it almost a quarter turn around.  Another turn or two and I will have to consider putting more decorations on the back side of the tree.  (She turned it back around when she emerged later that evening.)  Maybe I need a fence.

If they could write a letter to Santa, they would ask for lots of treats, sticks and bubble wrap.  Luckily I order enough from Amazon to get a steady supply of bubble wrap and the high winds we are having provide ample sticks.  The bubble wrap makes a fine tug-of-war subject and has the added fun of those popping noises.  It’s a race to see how quickly they can flatten every section. 

Maybe this obsession is why they aren’t afraid of fireworks.  They probably think they are just exceptionally large and noisy air pillows.  For me, they are my best present.  The words of “Santa Baby, slip a sable under the tree, for me” echo in my head this time of year.  I’ve never had a sable like the one in the song, nor have a I wanted one.  No fur coat can warm me like a sable and white collie snuggled next to me nor warm my heart like the antics of my collies, even when they are driving me crazy.

Sometimes I feel like I am running a daycare for a roomful of toddlers on a sugar high.  Sophie and Scout don’t need sugar for a rush.  Just living seems to be enough for them.  The simplest things, like a red plastic container, a cardboard box or a sheet of bubble wrap send them into ecstasy.  They don’t care about the calendar – to them every night is Christmas Eve and every morning is Christmas.   Scout is still at the age where multiple potty trips are necessary during the night.  In theory, he is the only furry creature in the house that needs those trips, but according to the other three dogs, he cannot be allowed out alone.  However much I insist that the trips could be very quick, they insist that a patrol of the immediate area (and sometimes beyond) is necessary.  No matter how quiet the night or how peaceful things seem, they bound out the door, taking off in all directions on high alert.  You just never know what might be out there.  I envy their enthusiasm, but even more, I envy their ability to return to bed fifteen minutes later and immediately fall asleep. 

It’s a special gift dogs and cats have that should have been given to humans.  One minute there can be all manner of mayhem taking place and within seconds, all is quiet and sleeping dogs lie scattered like empty packages on Christmas morning.  Now, that is a peaceful scene. Their soft snores accompany the noises I make as I toss and turn, trying to return to my own slumber.

 

 

 

 Merry Christmas from all of us at Maple Shade Farm – I wish everyone could have a sable under their own tree!

 

 

Still Hanging On

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a pair of walnuts that were still hanging on to a high branch on a tree outside my window.  Shortly afterward, one walnut fell.  Today, weeks later, that one lonely walnut is still clinging to the branch.  It’s a sad sight to me, for some reason.  If I could reach it, I might be tempted to knock it down and get it over with.

I know people like that walnut, clinging desperately to old ways and old ideas, and I have the same compulsion sometimes to give them a whack, perhaps knocking some of their old ideas out of them.

The community my family settled in and has lived in for almost 200 years was fortunate enough to be offered electricity in the 1920s, almost two decades before Rural Electrification brought that modern convenience to the rest of this county.  Knowing what I know about my great-grandfather, I’m sure he was one of the first to sign up.  He was a progressive man.

 Most of the other neighbors in our little bend of the river also were glad to get what must have seemed like a miracle.  But two farms adjoining our property were left out.  Their owners were afraid of the electric lines that would have to cross their land.  I’m not sure exactly what they were afraid of, but it may have been fear that somehow electricity would leak out of the lines and kill them or their livestock. 

Anyway, for whatever reason, the power company had to run the lines a different way to avoid their property.  They totally bypassed the first mile of road frontage and built the lines across my great-uncle’s farm, down the road to the next three farms and an offshoot down our road.  So, even now, the power lines run in a slightly weird way, through the woods and across a big open pasture instead of along the road.

Of course, as anyone could have predicted, when the other farmers in the neighborhood had electricity for a while, the two fearful neighbors noticed it didn’t kill anyone, so they wanted it too.  I suspect their wives may have had something to do with it, after they saw the modern new kitchens with electric refrigerators and stoves and lights that didn’t smoke up the curtains and smell up the room.  So, the power company came back at some point and ran lines off the poles that went to our place, across the holler that runs from the main road to the river bottom, and delivered electricity to those two farms.  Those lines stand as a testament today to men who hung on, like my walnut, to old ways.   And every time I hear someone bemoan modern life and talk about the “good old days” so longingly, I think about those two farmers who, if they had their way, would have been stuck in the good old days with oil lamps and no refrigeration.  Even worse, no air conditioning and no electric blankets.

Sometimes the old ways do turn out to be the best.  Take walnuts, like the one that is clinging so desperately to the tree.  For decades, we have cracked walnuts on the top of our old cistern, using a rock.  It does tend to smash the nuts along with the shells and it occasionally causes a smashed finger for the careless rock wielder.   

But as a simple, low-tech method, it works well.  Once, several years ago, someone gave my mama a nutcracker that was supposed to let you bust open even the hardest nuts with a simple turn of the handle.  As I recall, it was a contraption sort of like a vise grip mounted on a piece of wood, with a metal handle.  I was eager to try it, having suffered several smashed fingers from the old way.  Mama was skeptical.  Turns out, she was right.  For one thing, it was a two-person job – one to hold down the wood part and the other to try to turn the handle.  Almost immediately, the metal part broke away from the wood part.  It was back to the rock on the cistern top, which I still use to this day. 

  I think the nutcracker dimmed my faith in modern technology.  I look through the catalogs with a skeptical eye now at the new, improved gadgets guaranteed to make even the simplest tasks easier and quicker.  Did you know that you can buy a deluxe kit for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows for the low price of $79.95?  A metal stick with interchangeable tips in a special carrying case?  It’s even dishwasher safe.  We have always used a stick.  Simple and disposable and you don’t need the carrying case.  Maybe I should start selling a super deluxe kit which includes several sticks in a sack.  I could sell it for $59.95 and label it as an organic, environmentally friendly marshmallow roasting kit.  I could even give people a choice in the kind of sticks - maple, oak, walnut, or elm.  The dogs love to collect sticks.  I could make a fortune.

Afterword: We had a bunch of tornadoes and thunderstorms over the weekend, after I had written this.  The storm was too much for the lone walnut and it was on the ground when I got up the next morning.  Sometimes it takes a storm to force us to let go.  That’s a philosophical discussion for another day.

Adventures of Scout and Sophie

 

Who can resist this face?

  I can pinpoint the moment when I realized I had lost control of the new puppy.  I had let him out and left him to play in the yard for a little while.  This is the yard I thought was fairly secure, as long as the gates were fastened.  About fifteen minutes later, my phone rang.  It was Clay, who lives next door.  “Do you know where your puppy is?” he asked in the voice he uses when he tries to sound official.  "I am with Puppy Protective Services and we don’t think you are supervising your puppy adequately.”

 

I looked out the window.  There was Scout romping with Sophie in Clay’s yard.  I called several times and rang the “treat bell.”  Sophie flew home, ready for the treat she knew she would get when the bell rings.  Scout came about a third of the way and was distracted by a clump of grass he had to investigate right then, treat or no treat.  Or maybe he just needed to rest.  It’s a long way for little puppy legs, with a hill in the middle of the trip.  I called again and finally turned to Sophie.  “Where is Scout?” I asked her.  She turned to look, then galloped back to where the prodigal puppy was chewing on a stick.  I guess she realized the treats were not going to appear until everyone was in place.  I don’t know what she said to him, but the next time I called, they both came running, Sophie with her dignified grace and Scout with his enthusiastic bounce.  The treat bell is a stroke of genius I had recently, when I ran across an old school bell in a drawer.  The dogs had already learned to line up, sit, and take turns getting a treat. It didn’t take long to incorporate the bell as a signal to line up; it’s time for treats.   Scout learned on his first day here to take his place in the lineup and wait his turn.

Waiting for treats

The next time I missed him, I looked out to see all the adult dogs on patrol in the big front field, where the horses graze.  There was Scout, right in the mix, running behind them, trying his best to keep up.  I’m still not sure how he is getting out of the yard.  I’ve stopped up two holes but he keeps finding more.  I know how he gets out of the house – Sophie learned long ago how to open the front storm door and he learned immediately that if he is quick enough (he usually is) he can escape before the door closes.  I’ve noticed him studying the closed door the last week or two and I’m sure he will soon get the trick of opening it by himself, even if Sophie doesn’t show him her method.

It’s been almost two years since Sophie was a puppy, but I don’t recall her being quite as much an adventurer.  Maybe it was just selective amnesia, which convinced me that another puppy was a great idea.   Maybe it’s the male in him.  Part of Scout’s job will be to patrol the farm, and he obviously thinks he’s old enough already.  Staying in the house, he thinks, is for sissies.  Or for baby dogs.  And he's a big dog already.

Sophie with Scout bouncing along beside her or slightly behind or sometimes quite a distance back has become the normal here on the farm.  Even if they aren’t together, she usually knows where he is.  “Where’s Scout?” I ask her several times a day.  She knows what I mean – she looks all around and if she does know where he is, she focuses in that direction.  If she doesn’t know, she gazes right and left, then give me a “darned if I know” look.  Life was easier, she seems to think, when she didn’t have a boisterous carbon copy of herself to keep track of.  There are benefits, however.  She has taught him to zoom (a game of mindless running in circles as fast as a dog can gallop), to play hide and seek, tug-a-war, keep away and to love sticks just as much as she does.  She acts as a chew toy, a trampoline and a wrestling partner, and she happily shares her toys with him (but not her food).  Grumpy senior citizen Phoebe even plays with him sometimes and Bear, who was not a fan at all in the beginning, is having friendly wrestling matches with him now.

Collies are smart and can be easy to train.  Collies are also independent thinkers and excel at solving problems.  Unfortunately both Sophie and Scout seems to be better thinkers than I am and I am beginning to suspect they are smarter than I am too.  They are much better at training humans than I am at training dogs!  When Scout came here to live, part of his potty-training process was a treat when he went potty in the yard.  He got a treat in the yard and another treat when we went back inside.  About the third trip to the yard, he came running back from peeing and sat in front of me for his treat.  Of course, Sophie had to have a treat also, when they came back in the house.  So now, after a few weeks of this, they have figured out that if they run back outside and wait for me to call them back in, they get a second round of treats.  I am going to have to buy larger bags of treats or get faster at closing the door.  I think part of the reason Sophie has adopted Scout as her partner so readily is that she is getting more treats than ever before. 

Puppies have to potty frequently in the first few months.  This means multiple trips outside during the day and the night.  The big dogs stay outside most of the day, but everyone stays inside at night.  One would think that they would prefer to stay snug in their bed on cold nights when Scout goes outside.  No.  When my feet hit the floor, they are all at the door, ready to venture out into the cold, dark night.  (I wish I had their enthusiasm.)  Back when I was raising colts, I perfected a semi-sleepwalking state that let me get up multiple times a night to check on pregnant mares and go immediately back to bed without being fully awake.  I thought that might work with puppy potty breaks too, but it doesn’t work the same when I have to round up four canines and entice them back inside.  Then there are all those treats to hand out because you can’t leave anyone out.  Then they all have to play musical beds for a few minutes until they settle into their spots.  Sometimes my bed is involved in the rotation and I have to push someone out of my spot.  Pushing a sixty pound collie over is not something you can do in your sleep.  They all think it’s great fun – they will be disappointed when Scout get old enough not to require multiple potty trips in the night. And it's not going to be long before he can jump on my bed.

Life is never dull here on Maple Shade Farm.  With four dogs, enough horses that I am embarrassed to say a number, several barn cats, and the wildlife that gets into the act, it’s not a lonely life!  Scout has quite a kingdom to take care of.  I think he’s going to be up for the role.