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Aug. 28th, 2026 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormLast night Robs was in his area in the front yard, fenced a couple days ago, found a way out, and killed four young ducks, probably by pouncing and licking them to death. There were no visible wounds, the fourth had a broken back and was still alive at first. Then he chased Demon fast.
Between that, the fly in the house that he chased for a solid hour, and general behaviour I'm starting to think he's just not going to be a fit. His chase drive is too strong. That's specifically what LGDs don't do; they defend, and I'm ok at dealing with resource guarding, but they don't chase. Solly is scared of him, and he chases her when she runs. He's fine with the geese except the limping one, who he maybe thinks of as injured (she technically is but it's chronic) and he'll chase her.
Instead of reducing my workload and making us all more safe, he makes anything smaller than himself less safe. I'd been managing him by keeping him in a small run and otherwise supervising him, in the hopes that a larger fenced space would let him have more things of interest going on and thus calm him down a bit. After all, making their world smaller and less interesting just makes it harder for them to be calm when they come out (-ish). But even with space to do more usual dog things, digging holes and chewing branches and lying on his back and wiggling across the grass and watching cars and birds pass, he doesn't seem to be improving. I think he'd be a great pig guardian, but maybe he'd kill the piglets too. He's actually really good with the adult pigs. I should probably try neutering him before I make any decisions but oof. I have so many thousands of dollars in that dog at this point and I think he just wants to be a people dog and not a property or animal dog. And I'm not a people. I'll sleep on it a couple days anyhow.
Anyhow Josh found the baby muscovies last night, we buried them under a Viking apple tree we planted, and I've started thinking seriously about returning Robs to his breeder. Josh has stayed an extra afternoon to finish enclosing a muscovy run I started... last year? but wasn't stable enough to do the roof. Between the week's worth of canning and the gutpunch of emotion last night I couldn't even sit up will 10am this morning. I'd hoped Josh wouldn't have to see the parts where I can't move, how much of a struggle it was to just roll over to say good morning to him, but here we are.
And, after a week of hot weather while Josh was here, the rain has started again. Good, because we've had a bunch of lightning strikes in the area and things had dried out; the soil we planted the apple tree in wasn't part of an existing garden and was very dry. But bad because I can smell fall coming.
This was always my favourite time at work, the fieldwork push at the end of the year. Soon the creeks will be steaming in the chilly mornings, already it's cold when I get up but I'm not layering on gear to be shed as I start through the bush. This year there will be no pulling up into logging camp smelling like leaves and old cruise vest at the end of the day, no wandering down the trailer camp hallways in bama socks to see what is in the buffet trays for dinner. I won't be completely swallowed up by the landscape, by my measurements, by the early-thinning leaves of the shrub layer that help me figure out where to put my feet. I won't be enthralled by my first or my hundredth sight of hydnelllum peckii (it never gets old). I won't bless wool for letting my sweat through in the afternoon but keeping me warm in those sharp mornings, nor will I doff my headscarf once the frosts take down the bugs. I won't stand on the moss and drink lukewarm sugary tea from my water bottle in a private sphere of silence and clean humic air. I won't spend long leisurely hours in a truck with a single other person, speaking sometimes and quiet at others, bound my the companionship of a shared purpose and freed by the many hours needed to cross all that forested space. I won't trade stories that, underneath, always betray awareness and wonder of the living world. I won't strategically pack the raincoat into my vest every single day to prevent it raining. I won't eventually pull into my own driveway, late at night and tired, light my woodstove, and shake needles and leaves and bugs out of sweat-stiffened clothing before I toss it into the laundry.
Fall is coming up here, and it's when I most miss my work. Just a hint of the scent of turning conifers in the air and all the memories waft out of my skin, waft out of the body that created them, and fill the air around me so thickly I hardly remember that this year my memories will all be bed, cats, and some couple thousand square feet of fenced-in garden.
Between that, the fly in the house that he chased for a solid hour, and general behaviour I'm starting to think he's just not going to be a fit. His chase drive is too strong. That's specifically what LGDs don't do; they defend, and I'm ok at dealing with resource guarding, but they don't chase. Solly is scared of him, and he chases her when she runs. He's fine with the geese except the limping one, who he maybe thinks of as injured (she technically is but it's chronic) and he'll chase her.
Instead of reducing my workload and making us all more safe, he makes anything smaller than himself less safe. I'd been managing him by keeping him in a small run and otherwise supervising him, in the hopes that a larger fenced space would let him have more things of interest going on and thus calm him down a bit. After all, making their world smaller and less interesting just makes it harder for them to be calm when they come out (-ish). But even with space to do more usual dog things, digging holes and chewing branches and lying on his back and wiggling across the grass and watching cars and birds pass, he doesn't seem to be improving. I think he'd be a great pig guardian, but maybe he'd kill the piglets too. He's actually really good with the adult pigs. I should probably try neutering him before I make any decisions but oof. I have so many thousands of dollars in that dog at this point and I think he just wants to be a people dog and not a property or animal dog. And I'm not a people. I'll sleep on it a couple days anyhow.
Anyhow Josh found the baby muscovies last night, we buried them under a Viking apple tree we planted, and I've started thinking seriously about returning Robs to his breeder. Josh has stayed an extra afternoon to finish enclosing a muscovy run I started... last year? but wasn't stable enough to do the roof. Between the week's worth of canning and the gutpunch of emotion last night I couldn't even sit up will 10am this morning. I'd hoped Josh wouldn't have to see the parts where I can't move, how much of a struggle it was to just roll over to say good morning to him, but here we are.
And, after a week of hot weather while Josh was here, the rain has started again. Good, because we've had a bunch of lightning strikes in the area and things had dried out; the soil we planted the apple tree in wasn't part of an existing garden and was very dry. But bad because I can smell fall coming.
This was always my favourite time at work, the fieldwork push at the end of the year. Soon the creeks will be steaming in the chilly mornings, already it's cold when I get up but I'm not layering on gear to be shed as I start through the bush. This year there will be no pulling up into logging camp smelling like leaves and old cruise vest at the end of the day, no wandering down the trailer camp hallways in bama socks to see what is in the buffet trays for dinner. I won't be completely swallowed up by the landscape, by my measurements, by the early-thinning leaves of the shrub layer that help me figure out where to put my feet. I won't be enthralled by my first or my hundredth sight of hydnelllum peckii (it never gets old). I won't bless wool for letting my sweat through in the afternoon but keeping me warm in those sharp mornings, nor will I doff my headscarf once the frosts take down the bugs. I won't stand on the moss and drink lukewarm sugary tea from my water bottle in a private sphere of silence and clean humic air. I won't spend long leisurely hours in a truck with a single other person, speaking sometimes and quiet at others, bound my the companionship of a shared purpose and freed by the many hours needed to cross all that forested space. I won't trade stories that, underneath, always betray awareness and wonder of the living world. I won't strategically pack the raincoat into my vest every single day to prevent it raining. I won't eventually pull into my own driveway, late at night and tired, light my woodstove, and shake needles and leaves and bugs out of sweat-stiffened clothing before I toss it into the laundry.
Fall is coming up here, and it's when I most miss my work. Just a hint of the scent of turning conifers in the air and all the memories waft out of my skin, waft out of the body that created them, and fill the air around me so thickly I hardly remember that this year my memories will all be bed, cats, and some couple thousand square feet of fenced-in garden.
