Greenstorm's Journal

I had to take Avallu in to the emergency vet last weekend.

It's difficult here. There are basically no vets. There's a daytime emergency vet 2 - 2.5 hours away and no nighttime emergency vets. There are no farm animal vets, except some which do horses.

So if a dog or cat is not doing well I need to make the call early enough that they don't die in the 20 minutes of "first you need to pay for a virtual vet to diagnose and certify an emergency" and "then you need to load the animal and drive them into the vet".

I'll spare you the details but Avallu is ok. It was maybe a slipped disc and a UTI compounding each other? But I was afraid. He loves me so much and wants to do what I ask, but he was in a lot of pain. Loading him was rough.

The vets were great with him, though, and very good with my "he's dog reactive and person selective". They were polite to him and he was polite to them despite his pain, and they were adept at blocking all other dogs from his sight.

They were very busy, though. I ended up sitting in the car for six hours in 2.5AQI 200-300,mostly around the top end. That is where there's enough smoke it's hard to see the end of the street, and ash accumulates on the car in a visibly speckled layer over six hours. I'd left without a mask so by the end not just my throat, sinuses, and eyes were burning but also the skin on my face.

I'd also left in "shoot the neighbour's home, better cover up when I step outside to look at the morning" booty shorts, without putting on real pants. They show the bottom of my tattoo, which I think invited a young woman to give me a card and invite me to her church.

Oh well.

Pup is feeling better on painkillers, though he's noticably whiny when they wear off. He's moving though, and able to lie down, even on hard surfaces. He's also taking his pills well when they're encased in duck confit.

It's been a long time since I felt that level of adrenaline in my body. Over time, living here on my own, I've been allowing the barriers that keep me functional to wear down. I'll let feelings make me stop, let them alter my behaviour. Maybe I'll hug something. Maybe I'll cry. Maybe I'll go be curious about something. That all seems to be at the expense of calm, quick, measured behaviour in an emergency, though. I am not ready to lose Avallu and it took me a bit to get myself together when it became apparent there was a problem.

Money played into that too, but that's a different post.

Anyhow, pup is home and very loved and is not in big danger.

I've always known that birth comes only out of death
Rebirth
After dark times.
So much of my life has
Felt like
Been
Dying. So many moments
I walked into death
And out the other side
Into what lay beyond. New.
Newly born.

Never before have I asked,
If I'm on a machine
Bring my dog to me to kiss me one last time
And turn it
off.

Never before have I asked,
Let my stuffed animal,
The only object which has stayed all my life,
Let her be with me at the
end.

There's no immediacy
Not the pain I always walked into
Born young and young again
Just the obscuring swirl
Of muddied waters
That drop their silt so far out at sea
I may never see them clear.

I seem to have ended up calling in sick this whole week due to my complete inability to be a human. I don't think I stayed on my feet for more than 2 hours consecutively without a nap, and really most of what I did was animal management.

Today for the first time in a couple weeks I've actually cooked a meal (roast duck and potatoes) and made myself tea (I'd just been taking oral electrolytes and water; it's been hot and without them I get dizzy-er). It's cooled down, that might be helping, or maybe taking the space has helped.

Either way I got my cedars (thuja plicata) and some Threshold-seed apples planted in the far field last night, along with weeping irrigation hoses to keep them watered. I also got cucumber seeds planted on another irrigation hose this morning, and snipped some of the aspen branches to clear my fava and garlic bed that the aspens were felled on -- the favas are flowering underneath there -- and to clear space for some potatoes.

What with spending a couple hours a couple times a week hand-watering the tomatoes and apples I'm not inclined to plant too much more without some form of irrigation.

The tomatoes are looking nice, though.

We had a stressful day, I don't remember if it was yesterday or the day before. It's been super windy here and the wind blew the door to the carport/basement open (it had shifted so the latch didn't catch right) while Solly was out. I was up gardening in the back field, planting those apple trees, and I heard dog-commotion and she came streaking into the back with Avallu in pursuit. When she was cornered she turned and barksnarled at Avallu.

In hindsight, processing what was happening, he was at that point not actively attacking her and hadn't (no blood and keeping his distance) but was instead just telling her to go away, and she was defending a little. I could potentially have ridden it out as part of an intro and agressively acted normal.

Instead, I grabbed his collar. This escalated it for him, and he was growling and pulling hard to try and get at her. He and I were equally matched, I could not pull him anywhere and he couldn't pull me anywhere, and neither of us were going along with the other. Solly didn't immediately run away but instead watched me from about ten feet away, which was not helpful since I couldn't get Avallu anywhere and he wasn't going anywhere on his own. Eventually she ran home, and once she was out of sight he settled and I was able to get him into the basement.

My big worry is this set introductions back. It was clearly a traumatic event for both of them, the opposite of getting them to associate each other with non-stressful moments. I've never had to hold Avallu back like that before, he kept cutting off his breathing lunging forward and I may have somewhat pulled my arms just holding him in place. And Solly has definitely become very wary of Avallu.

That evening they both accepted treats where they could see each other, though, with just a little barking and not really at each other. So, um, either Avallu is biding his time until he can really hurt her since he knows now I'll step in when he is warning her away, or else he's accepted that she has a place in the front there.

It's interesting to watch all the guarding behaviour going on. Solly is pooping along the fence, her shoulder to the fence, at regular intervals - excellent guardian instincts. She's also noticed the neighbour big white dogs and was barking at them last night. Thea has a lot more emotional intelligence than I do, and has been doing a ton of things to ease the tension: she is almost always between Solly and Avallu despite the fact that they have a door between them always, so she's either guarding the basement door and warning Solly away from it when Avallu is inside, or guarding the front deck and putting herself in front of Avallu to divert him away from the area when Solly is inside. She's also physically disciplined both of them for going too close to the other, she grabbed Avallu's tail and tried to hold him back when he was chasing Solly, and most amusingly when Avallu barks at Solly (and lately when Solly barks) she'll go to the fence and bark in a completely different direction, as if to distract either of them.

It's also super interesting to see the maremma behaviours. I'm not certain if Solly is done teething or not, but both she and Thea are/were very mouthy. Given how significant a bite from Solly can be, I'm redirecting her to a stick. She just likes putting her mouth around my arm, not chewing, but holding very gently, and so I'll give her a stick and she'll prance around with it or take it to chew up every time she does so. It seems to be working: she's picking up more sticks and putting my arm in her mouth less. It did backfire when I was gardening and holding my measuring stick for apple-tree-planting, since she wanted *my* stick and kept dropping the ones I gave her to try and grab it, but one can't forsee everything. I figure I accept responsibility for extra dog time and attention if I'm letting them in the garden.

Every guardian dog does the "pyr paw" which is sort of a single-foot paw when they want attention or are getting affection. I've minimized it a great deal with Thea and Avallu over the years. I probably need to teach Solly something like "shake a paw" to put it on a command. I *definitely* need to teach her not to jump up on me, which she does much less when she's just playing now but in the morning when she has a lot of energy, and especially before she's run some, it really comes out. She's still getting better at her sit-for-attention but as one might expect it'll take her ten-month-old brain a little bit to get it hardwired in there. More than a couple days, anyhow. She's moderately both food and attention-motivated, which is interesting. Thea is ultra attention motivated, and Avallu is ultra food-motivated and I guess significantly pleasing-motivated? I suspect Solly would be very play-motivated if I could figure out how to reward her with some moments of play. I don't want to teach her tug-of-war or keep-away with a stick, and I run so slowly compared to her that there's no way for that to be fun.

Hoping to do a little more planting today and take another nap. Best-case scenario I can eat the meal I cooked, since it smells wonderful and I did not enjoy the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I ate earlier.

I've been brushing Avallu some every evening, just taking out a basketball-sized amount of hair or so every night. He's starting to blow his coat, gently and not spectacularly. He's very happy when I go find him every night and bring him in for brushing.

Tonight I took off his collar and brushed under it. He was super super happy, tilting his neck to help me get the spots I was missing and then lying down with his head along my leg and closing his eyes and sighing happily as I very gently worked through the under-collar fur with a brush. For the most part his coat is very non-matting but that neck spot, under his ears, and the very backs of his feathers can get really dense and also really matted. I was just quietly brushing him, he was slowly falling asleep making little happy sounds, the house was quiet. Everything was exactly right with the world.

After having brushed out tonight's basketball-sized amount of hair from mostly that narrow band around his neck (and having spent lots of time petting him and snuggling) I went to put his collar on and even with all the hair removal it barely fit. I had to carefully part and de-poof quite a bit of his fur to get it on.

I hate to think that he's halfway through his life now, or more. The bond increases with all of them every year.

Well, that's been a week.

Socialized in-person with someone who's not a partner for the first time since last fall.

Got a job offer if I am willing to split my time between anywhere (remote work) and Fort Nelson (way further away than I am now) with lots of $$$ but also lots of time and effort attached.

Heavy emotional stuff of varying kinds with Josh and Tucker as we move out of covid-normal and into whatever lies beyond.

Dog/neighbourhood issues. Being called by random lawyers asking about my past employment. Chasing a mama pig around for hours.

Two days in the field for work, one with pretty strong wind and some snow/sleet.

The wheat is up, a good 3" tall and growing fast. Cabbages/brussels sprouts are in the garden. The melon and squash transplants really want outside, the squash and the tomatoes are enormous and happy. I put down a turnip/clover mix in the parts of the winter pig field that I'm not going to plant with corn, squash, or tomatoes.

It rained hard for several days and any road that's not paved is very sketchy. Some work folks have sunk in up to their axles in places.

Got plumbers, chimney people, and hopefully roofers coming next week.

Butcher is coming on the 19th to do as many pigs as we can get done in a day, so I also have another freezer coming and I need to clean out the carport to have somewhere to put it.

Yesterday I felt pretty emotionally terrible but spending today in the sun counting little trees for work has helped a lot.

The crows have ripped open a garbage bag full of pig ribs and my front porch looks like a horror movie. I guess that's where I start this evening when I get home.

Oh, and there was a wolf outside the fence yesterday morning.

Thea was barking insistently in a weird spot, so I went outside and she was outside of the fence running back and forth the length of the house barking-- calling me. Once I was out we proceeded towards the back fence and behind the chicken coop (where I saw the lynx the first time, that spot is problematic in how it's fenced) was a...

...coyote? Right colouring, canine ears, but...

...it was big, head taller than the edge of the coop, was it a huge german shepherd, it was way bigger than any neighbourhood dogs...

...oh, those squinty eyes and cheek puffs are pretty distinctive, that's a wolf...

...which is outside the fence but not running away from me, thank goodness Thea is barking hard at it but keeping a little distance...

...oh, there it goes, and Thea taken off after it. Poor Avallu is crying and barking and really, really wants to go after it but he can't jump the fence like Thea did to follow.

Thea patrolled the back there for good half hour, she kept coming in and then jumping the fence back out again. I fixed the low spot in the fence eventually, they calmed down, I gave them breakfast, and the wolf was not back this morning. That's the first time I've seen one here, though I know they follow the river a kilometer away.

I was honestly expecting an early-riser bear come to get the brownies and margarine I still had from the power failure at the local store.

Very glad Thea got me instead of engaging first. She is a smart girl.

I wonder if all this wildlife is because of the fires a couple years ago, the rodent population would have spiked and might be on the decline now. It was a very, very mild winter too-- more pregnancies? More kits to be born, so more hungry mothers?

That was a disaster.

My neighbour was supposed to come over today and look at where I thought the waterline from my well might be. Avallu had been defensive towards him previously, possibly because he's been next door a lot with a big dog of his own, so I broke out the leash and hot dogs.

In the story that follows I'm second-guessing my actions a lot but I'll try and say it as straight as I can. I'm really struggling right now.

I gave the neighbour hot dogs and he was tossing hot dogs over the fence towards them, which is how I always start introductions. Then I had the neighbour come in the gate and toss hot dogs. Avallu seemed to be good, lying down on command, and I turned around to latch the gate with the leash still in my hand. At that point Avallu leapt at the neighbour and bit his arm.

I thought he'd just grabbed the neigbour's sleeve, and the neighbour said fairly calmly "he's got me" so I hauled Avallu into the house, locked him in, and came back. At this point the neighbour was on the outside of the gate, locking it behind him.

I don't remember this next part well, but I said something, and he said he had to go home and fix his arm and took his jacket off-- and Avallu had taken a chunk out of his arm. I said something like "he actually got you, got you" and I think screamed a tiny bit. The neighbour nodded, he was pretty calm, and there was a little back and forth. It went something like:

Him: nothing against you, but if that dog comes on my property he's dead
Me: I fully understand, I'm so so sorry.
(something here I don't remember)
Him: If a kid were to come by and put his hand on the fence it could go badly
Me: (something about how obviously it's not important right now, but he had let other people in and this hadn't happened before)
(something)

At some point, I think before I knew how bad the bite was, I'd said something like if he was willing to stand far from the fence and take treats to try to desensitize Avallu I'd appreciate it but understand if not, and he said something like he was afraid he wasn't interested in that.

He left, and I completely fell apart. I called the local kennel -- I'm worried about finding a good dog trainer in this area, but they'll be the ones who know who to talk to maybe. Then I called the emergency counseling line through work's plan and got myself less hysterical - she was a really good one-off counselor, I'll tell you that.

I'm equally terrified at the idea of Avallu hurting someone, Avallu hurting someone else now that I know he'll actually bite, Avallu being hurt/put down, and trying to repair the relationship with my neighbour.