SAINTS

deb and angelina came out today, i forgot they were coming so i worked thru lunch and got off early so i could stock up the barn, clean the stalls and get the dogs out for a run all before the big storm hits.

the barn is done (and spotlessly clean) the dogs are run and brushed and happy, there are peanut butter cookies gracing the counter (only briefly), all thx to deb and angelina…. kathy had the house all done and the laundry caught up, ted moved the phone, the white board and hung the picture of the dog within my beloved peter….. and eva has finished the rabbits.

my goodness, i feel like a lady of leisure, i think i will do my laundry for a change tonight.

what i learned today…

A. the world is full of goodness and good people.

B. the barn animals think i won’t run over them with my van.

C. spritely likes me enough to gently lick my hands.

D. petunia doesn’t like her house messed with (but tunie, it is so very clean!)

E. and the lower field is dangerous in a windstorm, but the dogs don’t care. (we heard a tree go down just a few feet behind us.)

thx guys, good day at saints and i just caught the tail end!!!!

1.land-lubbers will not have much success in telling ship captains how to pilot their own ships.

2. if you can’t see the forest for the trees, it would be safer to go work in an open field.

3. just because someone tells you something over and over and over again, doesn’t mean that they know what they are talking about.

4. pots like to call the kettles black.

5.replacing insight with outsight makes vision irrelevant and hindsight can give you foresight if you are smart enough to look back.

6. deb makes the best peanut butter cookies in the world.

 

 

It is the middle of the night and here I sit trying to understand what demons Isaac fights.  Tonight a behaviour I thought idiosyncratic became a full-fledged obsession as he desperately tried to escape the one sound that seems to terrify him – the sound of someone coughing.

From the first week he came to me last August, I had noticed that he would bolt upright and run for the back door, even out of a deep sleep, if I coughed. I thought little of it, assuming perhaps the sound of someone clearing their throat was a part of his previous life in which it heralded the arrival home of someone he loved.

Not so.  He is terrified of the sound of a cough.  Or of my cough. And I have the flu.  And when I get sick, I get a cough.  A bad one.

At first, Isaac was just pacing after I went to bed.  I thought he was restless because I had been at work for nine hours today – the longest I have ever left him – and then I came home and crawled into bed, so he got little fresh air and exercise. 

But when the first bout of coughing started, he bolted.  Straight to the back door.  Pawing to get out.  So I let him out, but then he wouldn’t come in.  Treats didn’t work.  The leash didn’t work.  So, with the philosophy of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” I donned my bathrobe and gumboots and wandered the yard with him at 2 AM.

And that’s when I noticed – every time I coughed, he ran from me. 

I finally lured him back into the house with the highly-prized liver brownies.  As I sipped ginger tea, he lay beside me.  And then I coughed again.  And he panicked.  He not only ran to the back door but immediately started tearing at the molding with his teeth in a frantic attempt to escape. 

We have repeated the routine three times now – every time I cough, he bolts to the door and starts eating his way out. I’m hesitant to just leave him outside because (a) there are still bears around and coyotes and other dangers and (b) I realized yesterday that he could, if he wished,  push his way through the bungy-corded gate to the back pasture and from there he could escape.  And I haven’t had time to fix that problem to my satisfaction.

So here I sit, wide awake, fretting about a dog who won’t stay inside with me, checking him every five minutes, and frightening him still more when I cough again.

It’s going to be a long night.  It’s going to be a long week.  And I leave for work in four hours, so I’m just praying that I can get him inside and that he won’t eat his way out of the house while I am gone. 

I don’t know what a coughing human once did to him, but whatever it was it haunts him still.

 4:07 AM – and I just realized this means he definitely does have some hearing.  He had me convinced he was a totally deaf dog when in fact he was choosing to ignore me!

why is it that Mabel, ok I’m assuming Mabel, it might be Oliver or Peekaboo, but for the sake of probably we will say Mabel, why is it that she insists on peeing on the bed for me to find right when i want to climb into it? why?? it wasn’t there this afternoon. so some time in the past oh 7 hours right there in the middle of the bed seemed like a good place to pee. now that i have found something resembling blankets i am going to climb into it and hope there are no more pees cause there’s only one clean blanket left!