Yukon-Ho

“You need to hook that dog up to a sled, and let it pull you along!” I’ve heard that a lot, particularly over the last few months when snow has been plentiful on the ground. The suggestion has usually come from the neighbors I’ve passed while my youngest dog Sasha, has been taking me for my exercise. 3 years old and with husky blood rampaging through her veins, she races back and forth along the length of the extend-a-leash with an energy level I’ll never see again.

She’s always enthusiastic when it comes to running, but more so in the winter months when every few days brings a fresh blanket of snow. This is her element and in her mind she’s racing across the tundra, running with her pack. When she’s not racing at full belt, she digs in her back legs and hauls with astonishing force. Then something will catch her attention on the other side of the street and away she goes to check that out. I wonder if I’m setting myself up for future arthritis in the elbow, because every few seconds I get a jolt up my arm as 50lbs of fast moving fur, bone and muscle hits the end of the line.

All our previous dogs have understood the “heel” command and while they may have let their enthusiasm get the better of them at times, they were regularly complimented on their obedience. Not Sasha. She understands the commands perfectly and when it’s in her interest, will obey with a precision that would make a border collie blush. However, like most northern breeds, if she doesn’t see the advantage in obeying, it’s hardly worth giving the command.

When we took her to training classes at the local Humane Society, from which I might add, she graduated with honors, we quickly learned that this was not food-oriented animal. Per the instructors, our fellow classmates were busy rewarding their dogs with slices of hot dogs. Sasha would take a couple, mostly I think to keep us happy, but after that would either do what we wanted, or not, there was no telling which. “Try microwaving them” said the instructors, “that enhances the smell”. Sure enough, it did, my fingers smelt of hot dogs for hours after each lesson, but Sasha still didn’t eat them.

In the 2 years she’s shared her life with us, we’ve only found one food to which she reacts. Marshmallows. Unhealthy, nutrient free, not found in any pet store, pure sugar, marshmallows, she loves them. We discovered this on a visit to a friend’s house, where Sasha, always the free spirit, decided the fence was no obstacle to her wanderlust and in moments had pushed her way underneath it and was off. Fortunately our friends live on 5-acres of property and the neighbors are used to dogs roaming free. However, it was time to leave, so the question of course, was how to induce her in.

Our friends had no hot dogs, microwaved or otherwise. No dog biscuits, no liver treats, nothing that would bring even a normal dog back to the fold. All we could find was a bag of marshmallows. I can’t believe Sasha could smell the marshmallows, or even hear the rustling of the bag, but she was back to the doorstep in a heartbeat, sitting in front of Dear Wife and wagging her tail fit to burst. Eat your heart out Oscar Meyer, ours is a Stay-Puft dog.

Other than marshmallows, it’s not entirely clear where she gets her energy. It can’t be from the dog food she eats because as she’s repeatedly shown, this is something she can take or leave depending upon her mood. To make matters worse, she has the most delicate of stomachs, which means that even the slightest variation from the routine requires days of work with the carpet cleaner. After months of trial and error, we finally got her settled onto a premium, very expensive brand of dog food and things were going swimmingly when the manufacturers changed the formula and once more I was treated to the joys of standing calf deep in snow multiple times through the night while she made the most disgusting noises and smells on the far end of the leash.

Nonetheless, energy she has, in abundance and one of my biggest challenges in life is finding the time to work it out of her. Quite often I’ll drive the car around our neighborhood at 10-12 miles an hour holding the leash out of the window while Sasha trots along happily besides. We usually do between 3 & 5 miles and for most of that, Sasha is straining at the leash wanting to go faster. Even when her initial energy rush has burned off and she settles into the pace, she still has a huge grin on her face. Once we’re done with that, I hook her up to her regular leash and take her for another couple of miles round the neighborhood, walking this time, just to cool off.

This seems to keep her happy and if we do it on a regular basis, prevents her from getting too nutso in the house. However, I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of hooking her up to a dog sled and seeing what she can do. She isn’t pure husky, apparently there’s some collie in their too although if Timmy falls down the mineshaft again, he’ll be in a bad way before Sasha thinks about fetching help. However, most of the best sled dogs aren’t pure husky either, they’re mixed breeds like her. Apparently someone once ran the Iditarod with a team of poodles, and completed a good portion of it too. Also, there is a Colorado musher who runs local races with a team of Irish Setters which must be just plain surreal.

To get us started, Dear Wife came home from a garage sale with a child’s plastic sled the other day. Unfortunately the only harness we have is designed to prevent the dog from pulling so there’s not much point in attempting to teach her with that. However, a couple of experimental hauls along the street, with no weight in the sled showed that she has no problem understanding the commands. A friend of a friend knows some real dog mushers and she’s agreed to ask them if they have an old harness they’d be willing to give us. So if the next time you’re watching the Iditarod, look to see if there’s a happy looking husky-collie mix dragging a red plastic sled. You never know, it might be us.

Of Mice and Men

I’ve been thinking about mice recently. As you’ve probably heard, Mickey Mouse has been in the news on account of his bosses, The Disney Corporation being in the middle of fending off a hostile takeover bid. However, his troubles mean little to me. I’ve never been a huge Mickey Mouse fan myself, seeing him as more of a corporate logo rather than a cartoon character per se. That and the fact that my humor tends more towards the darker, more cynical style of Warner Bros. In fact Wile E. Coyote’s life so parallels mine, I’ve often wondered if we weren’t separated at birth.

No, the reason I’ve been thinking about mice is the recent discovery that we’re sharing our house with a herd of them. If you remember, a couple of weeks ago I was recounting the multitude of creatures, which had chosen to join us in our home. Wasps, squirrels, flying beasties and other assorted wildlife moved in around the same time as we did. They were summarily dealt with and, at least as far as we were aware, there were no other squatters on the premises.

However, the other night while watching TV, we heard what could only be described as a scratching sound coming from behind the fire. A full-scale investigation whilst lying on my stomach with a flashlight revealed absolutely nothing. The scratching continued unfortunately, which led me to believe that once again, we were not alone. My initial conclusion that after several weeks of sub zero temperatures, the squirrels had decided, quite sensibly, to winter indoors.

We have a half cellar beneath our house, home to the well pump, a few soggy pieces of insulation and several spiders. I haven’t been down there in over a year and quite frankly, am in no rush to change that. The entrance is currently buried in snow and accessing it would require more effort than I’m interested in attempting right now. Cold weather notwithstanding, I’m in no particular rush to come face to face with something unidentified in the dark. So, job number 352 on an ever-increasing list of unpleasant jobs to do around the house got neatly filed away in the “If I don’t think about it, it will go away file.”

That is, until Dear Wife was rummaging around in the cabinet under the sink and discovered unmistakable evidence that we had mice. Mice droppings are fairly recognizable and a small hole in the floor near one of the pipes explained how they were getting in and out. Now it’s an old house, with numerous nooks and crannies, located on an acre of pine forest so it’s no real surprise that rodents have found their way in. If anything, it’s a wonder we haven’t seen them before. That said, animal lovers though we are, we don’t want mice living under our bathroom sink. In case I was in any doubt about this fact, Dear Wife reminded me in a very loud, unnaturally high-pitched voice.

The following night, we were discussing our plans to resolve the matter and during the conversation I opened the cabinet and began sorting through the odds and ends we had stored there. I’d barely got started when I was treated once more to the ear-splitting sound of my wife in the early stages of a hysteria attack. It was some moments before she could form sentence coherent enough to communicate what I had missed. In a plastic bowl, which had been living under the sink for some time, sat a small, rather cute, and very much alive, mouse. He wasn’t wearing red shorts, or suspenders but a mouse he quite definitely was. And Dear Wife wasn’t willing to have him in our bathroom cabinet or anywhere else close by. That much was clear.

It was the work of a few minutes to carry the bowl outside and set him free near our neighbors’ horse barn. However, the decision had been made and the mice had to go. The next challenge was to determine how this should be done. Now, as I said, we’re animal lovers and would never deliberately harm one. As much as possible, we shop responsibly, ensuring no animals are harmed in the manufacturing of the products we buy. While my stint as a vegetarian only lasted a few years, I still feel somewhat guilty about reverting to meat-eating and in this area too, we try to be responsible in our purchases. And we donate more money than we can really afford to animal charities. So, it was important to both of us that this was handled as humanely as possible.

Dear Wife went shopping and came home with something called a “Glue Board”. It’s essentially a piece of sticky cardboard, which you place near the skirting board, or somewhere the mice are known to travel. The idea is, said mice will then stick to the glue board until such time when the homeowner removes them to a different location and releases them unharmed, to begin a new life in someone else’s house. Sounds fine and the system worked great right up to the point where I read the instructions for releasing the trapped rodent.

I’m not going to describe the process here other than to explain that it involves heavy-duty industrial rubber gloves, a 5-gallon bucket, vegetable or mineral oil and “a blunt object”. Not only is the process decidedly icky, there’s also the thorny problem that any animals caught overnight would have to wait until I returned from work, many hours later before they’d have any hope of release. Even though this method may not kill them, it’s hardly humane.

So, animal lovers or not, we agreed this should be handled the traditional way, with a good old-fashioned mousetrap. The expression “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door”, is often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, although we’re now told he never said it. Misquote or no, there may still be some truth in the saying. Once I’d figured out exactly how the mechanism worked, painfully smacking my thumb knuckles several times in the process, I had it baited with cheese and in place for the night’s hunting. So far, it’s been out for 3 nights and we’re running at a success rate of 100%. Which only leads to the question – just how many are in there? We’ll keep using the trap until I start finding it empty for a few days in a row.

One thing’s for certain. The first time I hear “It’s a small world after all” coming from beneath the bathroom sink, I’m calling in the professionals.

Getting there is half the fun

Recently I was asked if I had any travel disaster stories. My initial reaction was “yes, loads” but when it came down to it, I realized I’ve had many negative experiences, but none which truly stand out as being terrible. More like minor setbacks than true disasters and with the rosy-tinted benefit of hindsight, most of them were rather fun.

However, if I’d to choose one trip I’d least like to repeat, it would have to be when we moved here from Arizona. That was just plain ugly.

I’d been working in Colorado for a couple of months, while Dear Wife stayed in Phoenix, to handle the house sale. When it was time to move, I flew down on Friday night, anticipating that DW would have all our worldly goods and possessions packed and ready to go. We were scheduled to close on our new house, first thing Tuesday morning so intended to load up and get a couple of hundred miles under our belts by Saturday night. Of course, it didn’t work out that way. She’s something of a pack rat and after 18 years in the house, had found the task somewhat overwhelming so had barely got started. We worked through the night but by the time our helpers arrived on Saturday morning, had still hardly scratched the surface. Leaving them to continue, we went out to collect the hire truck I’d reserved earlier in the week.

Which wasn’t ready. “Nope, sorry, nothing available” said the clerk; making it quite clear he couldn’t care less. So, back home and a session with the Yellow Pages before finding a truck 50 miles across town. It was lunchtime by the time we got back so already we were seriously behind schedule. Next task was to collect the horse trailer, which had been in storage. One of the tires was blown. Not just flat, but completely exploded. Reflecting that on balance, it was better to have happened now than on the road, we decided it would be as well to replace all 4 of them. That neatly filled the rest of the afternoon so the planned Saturday evening departure was a complete write off.

We did sleep for about 4 hours Saturday night and on Sunday (most of) the friends showed up once more for an unscheduled continuance of the process. I never realized just how much stuff we owned and even after leaving a phenomenal amount for the new house owners, it was something of a squeeze when we finally pulled shut the door of the truck. Almost exactly 24 hours behind schedule we waved goodbye to our old life and set off towards that night’s target of Flagstaff, which is almost entirely uphill. With a top speed of around 45-50 miles an hour it was almost midnight when we pulled in.

Up bright and early the next morning and our first challenge was that the moving truck keys were nowhere to be seen. We hunted all over the room, in our pickup truck, the horse trailer and the ground around, before eventually finding them in the ignition. A good job nobody else had found them first. We made pretty good time over the next stretch of the journey and at Santa Fe, decided we had time to pull in and eat a proper lunch. Now Santa Fe is a beautiful town and quite rightly, is a Mecca for tourists from all over the world. So nice in fact, you can’t leave.

We now know that the while I25 does indeed head north after passing Santa Fe, it’s quite definitely an east-west route close to town. Which meant that there was no way to access it from the northern end of the city as we were trying to do. Or at least we would have tried to do if we’d been able to get out of city center. Built in a different age, Santa Fe’s streets are narrow and nowadays, thoroughly traffic choked. No place to be trying to maneuver a 24-foot moving truck when you’re so tired you can barely see. After about 12 circuits of the main plaza and multiple tours of the city’s residential districts (some of the gardens really are spectacular by the way, and you can fully appreciate them when you’re up high) I finally blocked traffic for 20 minutes or so while a friendly native explained the facts of life. After an initial misunderstanding, where I thought I was debating the village idiot (“You want to go south” “No, I want to go north!”) we finally got back on the freeway by going south, just like the man said.

One of our dogs was still in Colorado; DW had the eldest with her, while the youngest was with me in the moving truck. I’m told house moves are just as stressful for animals as they are for humans and in addition, we’d only adopted her a few weeks before I left for Colorado. She hadn’t seen me for weeks, didn’t know me all that well in the first place and now after all these strangers had emptied her house, I’d loaded her into this strange vehicle and was keeping her trapped for hours at a stretch. Perhaps not surprisingly, she began shedding hair at an astonishing rate. So much so that I spent large parts of the journey trying to de-fur my eyes, nose and mouth.

At around 3am we pulled into Pueblo and spent the next 45 minutes searching for a cheap place to stay, where we’d be able to bring the dogs inside without needing a room inspection before checkout. We finally paid $80 for 2 hours sleep and a hot shower and it was worth every penny. Breakfast was eaten at the wheel and after negotiating Denver’s rush hour traffic for the first time and grinding our way up the hill, we finally pulled up outside the realtor’s office with 40 minutes to spare. Only to find the office locked up and empty because the realtor had moved. Fortunately the office next door explained they’d simply moved across the road and we were still able to arrive on time. We looked like death, but we were on time.

Frankly, I have no idea what I signed that morning although should we ever have a child, I don’t believe it will belong to us. I also think I might be married to the village chief’s daughter. However, we must have done something right because after several hours, we were handed the keys to our new home and only a few hours after that, spent the first night, blissfully asleep. Under grubby blankets on the living room floor.

There’s no place like home.

Our Wild Life in the Mountains

Although our home is rather small by today’s standards, we share it with a number of different critters, 3 dogs and 3 Siamese Fighting fish, to be exact. In addition however, a number of other forms of wildlife have chosen to share their lives with us.

Shortly after moving in we became aware that we were not alone and that the scampering noises we heard so frequently, weren’t from squirrels on the roof, as we had hoped, but in the roof. A whole family herd of them, trotting around on the plaster ceiling. Also, mild though the weather was, we were astonished at the number of wasps in the house. Nobody likes being stung by a wasp but Dear Wife suffers from extreme allergic reactions so it simply wasn’t an option for her. The first local serviceman to visit our house was the Pest Control Guy.

He traced the wasps to a hole in our living room ceiling, and neatly sealed it up. The squirrels were a bit more of a challenge, but according to the Pest Control Guy, the trick is to catch the female; then the guys will mosey away on their own. A trap was set not too far from the back door and in short order we had a small and apparently female squirrel, neatly caught in the trap. Did I mention we had 3 dogs? Did I mention the trap was close to our back door? I’m not sure who was closer to being driven insane, them or us. It was a long two days before the Pest Control Guy came to take it away.

Before very long however, we learned that the theory of just catching the female is a bunch of hooey. Less than a month later our attic was once more party central for the local squirrel population and the hole, carefully sealed the last time, was now twice as big. We called a new Pest Control Guy this time and he set traps all over the place. In the roof, on the roof, in the trees, everywhere. It took about 3 days but we snagged pretty much every squirrel in the neighborhood. The hole was sealed up again and while squirrels are still frequent visitors to our trees (much to the fury of the dogs), they have yet to seek lodgings in our roof.

Other wild animals have been much more welcome. Mainly because they haven’t attempted to live in our roof. We live on an unfenced wooded acre, and while houses surround us; the neighborhood still has a very rural feel. Deer and elk are regular visitors to our yard and as long as we don’t make too big a deal out of it, are more than happy to ignore us. We need to ensure the dogs are kept under control of course, not only is it illegal for them to chase the wildlife, we don’t want to discourage the animals from coming. On the bright side, we do have our own early warning system to let us know something interesting has wandered into the yard. Although we’ve been here almost two years now, this is still a terrific novelty and we’re constantly calling each other to “Come quickly, look!”

The deer and elk are the most common visitors, but there have been others too. For a spell we had a little blond fox living nearby. He could be seen quite often, just sitting in someone’s driveway, watching the world go by. As far as I know, no coyotes have come close to the house, although we can occasionally hear a pack of them singing, late at night. If you’ve never heard coyote song, it’s a haunting, eerie and primal sound that makes you wish humanity would just leave this planet and take all their detritus with them.

Probably our most exciting visitor has been a large black bear. As it happens, it’s not really a good sign that a bear is spending time in an area inhabited by humans. If he’s come to rely on us as a food source then he’ll lose the ability to survive in the world. Also, it’s a sad fact that if there’s any conflict with a human, he’s going to end up the loser. Unfortunately, we perhaps contributed to the problem by breaking one of the cardinal rules of mountain living when we left our trashcan out one night. Maybe he was just passing through, maybe the empty pizza box attracted him, but either way, I was headed out to fetch something from the shed when I spotted two eyes shining back in my flashlight beam.

Black bears don’t usually attack humans but either way; I walked sloooowwly backwards to the house. Popular lore has it that making lots of noise will scare a bear away so I collected some pots and went back outside making enough noise to awaken the dead. I probably awakened the neighborhood at least, but the lure of our garbage was too much for the bruin and he only backed away a few paces. I figured if I at least got the trashcan away from him, that would help, so I bent sideways to pick it up. Of course, you can’t pick up something that heavy one handed unless you’re really giving it your full attention so all that happened was it slid along the ground. Making a noise…not unlike a large, angry, unidentifiable animal. The bear certainly thought so and this achieved what my percussion had not. He hightailed it out of there and our trashcan has lived in the shed ever since.

However, that was in no way the most dangerous creature we’ve had visit. That singular honor goes to a harmless, quite attractive looking dragonfly type flying beastie, which found its way through the insect screens late one night. I know it was late, because I’d been asleep for some time when Dear Wife awoke me to deal with it. Grumbling obscenities I shuffled over; caught the insect in my cupped hands and proceeded to give Dear Wife a lecture about how she didn’t have to wake me to deal with every harmless creature she saw. It was at that point it bit me. I still don’t know what the insect was as it was hard to identify after I’d beaten it to death with a shoe, but it caused my hand to swell up like a balloon for several days.

It’s dangerous up here in the mountains.