Greenstorm's Journal

One of the strangest things about any deliberate bond with an animal is the choice to change the rest of your life. Its like jumping into a hole you can never climb out of, something with an unseen bottom. As much as any training and general pack bonding molds them, it also demands accommodation from you from whoever they are, and you can't know that until you're already inside it.

Obviously things with Robs are changing day to day, segment of the day to segment of the day. His first day he was just overwhelmed. Then his main concern mostly has been how to get what he wants; when I'm an impediment or an object to be manipulated he tried to figure out how to do it. When we're out in the big world of the farm he's still mostly like that, but in the mornings when he's more settled and sometimes during walks or training he's starting to also want affection for its own sake.

What he does not have is me as an object of attention or focus when other things are going on. If you don't have a dog, an example is: when something weird happens that my pups don't know how to deal with, they generally look at me first with a quick glance to see how I'm handling it and what I want. When they start doing this, modeling behaviour, like calm around cats, becomes a lot easier. This attention can be trained in. With Avallu it was already trained, Solly has always been ultra people-centered and had it innately, and with Thea I trained it in when she was very young.

It's weird for me to think of a dog being so old, is he seven months? Sept 15? Oct 15? And not having the kind of bond with his owner where he's watching to check what they're like. A good dog (?) will read mood and make decisions about how to ask for something, and sometimes whether to ask for something, based on that. It's like offering snuggles vs play when they want to interact, depending on whether I'm sad or energetic. Reading the room is also a great and important livestock guardian dog skill for moving around animals withotu spooking them. He is awful at that right now: the geese clear his quarter of the field when we're on walks on leash. So do the cats.

Robs has very very quickly learned to offer "sit" when he wants something, and though we're still generalizing it out into more situations it was my solution to him jumping up as a main or first communication tool. If I were able-bodied I'd be easier with teaching him to pay attention because just acting ultra weird is the most fun way for them. At the moment what I probably need to be doing is just treating him when he looks at me in response to his name or when we're on leash at all.

He is very very food motivated.

Orlando the cat looks like he's being adopted by the neighbours. I strategically sent them two videos of him asking to be petted and nuzzling my hand through the bars of the crate. They're the ones who named him Orlando, since they've been feeding him on their deck, but I guess he hasn't been willing to go in.

They'll be a good home for him; they have the money to handle the vetting he needs. Speaking of vetting, I was worried about that swollen front paw and in consultation with the vet (this is why I was videoing him) he's going in today. I need to remember to ask the vet about crystals too; he's peeing for sure but in smaller bits than I'd expect, and he was definitely dehydrated when he came in. That symptom of smaller clumps of pee but multiple of them in the litter box is familiar to me from Hazard and his pee troubles. And I do know that stress can cause inflammation of the bladder in male cats even without crystals. So, having someone who can pay his vet bills is a relief.

He is a complete snugglebug. When I open the cage and sit next to it I think his first plan was to escape, but he had to go past me to do that. When he gets close to me I pet him and he gets distracted from escaping, instead trying to absorb as much love into his poor tiny body as possible. If I stroke him from head to tail he does both elevator-head and elevator-butt to get the most he can out of it. He's very happy in my lap, especially if I support him with an arm so he doesn't have to put weight on that front paw.

The way I understand it, feral cats born feral don't do this. Only cats who are socialized young can quickly re-bond to humans. That means he was dumped, or left.

I'm also still fascinated by his cheeks. I've only ever been around younger intact male cats, I guess, and even Whiskey when I got him had huge muscles but not these tomcat cheeks. They are huge pads of what I understand to be fat on the back and side curve of his jaw. They're really firm, maybe the texture of an actual testicle, definitely firmer than breasts, and just these big ovoid things under the skin. They aren't so much visible, though they do make his whole head look bigger, but they're very palpable and he loves beign scratched around them.

His fur has gone from dry straw feeling and falling out freely to starting to almost be soft in the areas he can easily reach to lick, like his lower back. I know that dry-straw feeling from when Siri first came, and I'm very happy for it to be retreating.

He'll meow at me when he sees me, asking for affection. I gave him a shrimp tube treat to get the video for the vet -- the shrimp is the stinkiest one so they love it most -- and he adored it.

The plan is for him to go home to the neighbours on Saturday.

Also on Saturday, the plan is for me to go to Prince George and pick up my tornjak pup. Until he's happily in my custody I won't write out the story, but he's about seven months old, he's bred in Penticton or Princeton (I cannot keep them straight) and I've been in touch with his breeder previously and almost got someone from his litter last winter but ended up passing, then this boy showed up on kijiji. They wouldn't mention the breeder but since there are only like 4 people who breed tornjaks in any given year in north america it wasn't hard to track her down, and then she had pictures and video that matched this same dog from when he was a baby. So I didn't need to get into it with the owner over it, I can just take him, get his vax records from the breeder, I have his parentage from her, and we're good.

I'm not sure what his name will be yet, his litter name was Roko and tornjaks are translated from the croatian by fb etc as "tower"s so he may get a mountain name. It probably should be pretty different from Solly and Thea but tbh everyone comes to every name, even the cats, so. It shouldn't be either Shass, Pope, or Baker because those are silly names, though those are the mountains I'm most familiar with, and I just don't want to call him Rocky even though everything seems like it should line up that way. Who knows, maybe he will be a Rocky. Cascade shortens to Cass which is the right sound to distinguish itself from the others and continues Siri's tradition of confusing people as to gender. It'll work itself out. Osilinka? Mesilinka? He'll tell me.

Sticking to names because although I don't know him he's... well, his face markings look like Avallu's. He has that same asymmetric mask, smaller on one side, though he doesn't have the freckles. His back markings are very different and his energy is EXTREMELY different. Avallu always had this intense gravitas, even when he was playing, but this boy is a lot like Solly from what I can tell, just a silly bouncy kid. I think he'll probably fit into the group better than Avallu did; Thea was always grabbing Avallu's tail to try and make him play and these days she keeps enticing the willing-but-obedient-to-the-leash Solly when we're out on walks, doing that straight-front-legged gallop in big circles to show how much fun she is. Although I'm sure she'll get tired of the puppy, I think Thea will be glad to have him.

I will be glad to have him but every time I look at his face I love Avallu so much and miss him so much. I know this is part of the process. My plan had been to get someone who looked very different; tornjak markings are pretty variable. But here we are, and I will live with Avallu's ghost more than I might have otherwise, and I'm grateful always that we had each other.

Doubtless I will also be very distracted by managing: a dog who needs four fairly low-energy walks a day; a puppy who's not yet poultry safe and because of Solly's injury probably can't just fully use the dog door even if I exclude poultry totally from the front (a couple ducks have snuck through and the muscovies fly everywhere; and planting an entire garden. Though pup can help me plant the garden, it's mostly pretty fenced off and he can wander around and destroy things while I plant them back.

Maybe Cascade after all?

At least I'll be distracted from missing the gentleman cat, who is so absolutely loving. I will definitely miss him. And I'm definitely glad about where he's going.

I have a really good vet.

My animals are actually spread across two vets at the same pracrice, and both are great. As far as I can tell, they charge only a token markup on Siri's meds, and they're happy with me doing home testing to avoid both a trip in and the cost of his diabetes bloodwork twice a year (he goes in for normal senior cat bloodwork once a year). They go out of their way to help the community with things like vax trips, which is a four-t-five hour round trip for them and not a ton of money. They're fully accessible through text and are happy to give advice on things like torn nails free. They actively love my cats.

And when I took Solly in yesterday, after explaining the reason she's been limping, she took a look at my face and said, "she's on pain control now and I know this is a lot to take onboard, so if you like I can call you next week and we can go over this again when you've had some time to think about it"

Solly herself behaved excellently in the car and at the vet's, though when I left her alone to get xrays she was pretty scared. But as soon as we got home she took off like a shot in the -15 snowy dark and I couldn't find her. I assume she's inside the fence and you;d think I could follow her tracks, but no. And it was a long day, and I was kind of woozy from the one-two-three shot of finding my truck battery stone dead in the morning and running around in sandals in the snow trying to start it, the drive to and from the vet which is after all five hours round trip, and the heavy emotion of the vet's visit. The last thing we all need is me dropping in the coldening night, unable to get up. So I went inside with the idea that I'll find her in the morning.

She'll need to stay inside now except for controlled walks.

With five senior animals in the house -- Thea, Avallu, Whiskey, Hazard, and Siri -- I was not expecting to need to make life or death decisions about Solly anytime soon. But here we are.

Compounding everything, Solly won't be able to work. The other two dogs are in semi-retirement, and with the birds I really do need someone who can work in the summer. In the winter they get mostly shut up and it's easier for the pups to patrol. Solly was a superb worker. There's a tornjak pup, like Avallu, available in BC. I do not want a new dog. Getting Solly a partner had been interesting to me but if she isn't going to survive more than a year or two and she is going to transition to almost fully inside I want to mourn. But. The work needs to be done. Or do I transition to the idea that in three to five years I just... don't have outside animals anymore? The dogs pass, I get rid of everyone except a couple cats, I hand mow a couple of acres and have a garden?

That seems terrible. The reasonable terrible thing, like getting a desk job somewhere that thinks good social management is having ladies' nights or politely smiling through someone's kill-the-immigrants screed over dinner once a week or living in a house with nothing to do that's not either housecleaning or in a computer. Smart.

It's 3am. I cried some. Whiskey always comes when I cry, like I'd called him, and he snuggled a but but then I cried a little too much for him. I slept, woke up, pulled out the laptop. I am too old to cry, I can't see well now but I guerss I still have enough adrenaline to remember how to type, which has been going lately in normal circumstances. I expect I'll barely be able to hobble around tomorrow so I'm hoping my pup has forgiven me by then and I can get her inside. I need to rearrange downstairs so she actually fits there but that'll be a couple days.

The road gods were kind to me. Very little ice on the roads, unlike yesterday, and over half of the way the road lines or a reasonable facsimile were visible. We all made it home safe, or as safe as Solly gets to be.

It'smoments like these I realize just how much love I'm surrounded with. There is a lot to lose in my life.

My poor little girl. She's been hiding her pain really well.

"the seven “gifted” dogs—all of which were border collies—"

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-do-dogs-tilt-their-heads-new-study-offers-clues-180978980/

I hovered a moment at the top last night, during solstice. I planted more tomatoes -- there are 220 in the upper field, the wood field, now. The day before that I think, I made a deep water culture hydroponics installation on my deck which took 10 more tomatoes, and a few days before that I'd done the 14 pots on the side of the house to bring my potted tomato total to 41 or 42. I have some more to put in but not many -- plug some holes left by the frost on the 18th or whenever that was, fill in a couple edges with the extra-early reds.

I guess I plant in the evenings now. I used to do these things in the morning but mornings are most often difficult now so the evening feels like my stolen time. The tomatoes from earlier plantings are greening up well, and my gaspe corn is maybe 3" tall.

Also my dinner came from here, partly: duck-egg pasta, tossed with blanched lamb's quarters, some feta cheese, and some self-canned tomato sauce all with a squeeze of lime. Half spanakopita, and it made a great pasta salad cold for lunch today.

It's astonishing to see the difference in my indoor hydroponics/aerogarden and my outdoor pots. The indoor plants are a foot tall and putting out flower buds; the outdoor ones are maybe 6-7" tall. Very curious to see whether the outdoor hydroponics split the difference, that's pretty much why I did it. It would also be super fun to make some hydroponics boxes out of marine plywood and caulk instead of plastic bins. They'd want to be raised slightly off the deck so they didn't rot it, or maybe that volume of water would be better against the south side of the house. Maybe in a greenhouse there even...

My house is messy and dirty but I'm picking away at cleaning up after the plumbing thing still.

Oh, and also--

I'm getting a puppy. She's 10 months old, a maremma/caucasian shepherd cross with both parents in a working pack at 100 mile. Like Thea, she was got to be a sheep guardian. Like Thea, she is flunking out of guardianship at the sheep farm because she keeps escaping the fence and going up to the house to get people attention.

Guardian dogs are famous for escaping fences to wander -- one pyrenees the next town over escapes the fence to guard two herds of cows at once over a total of about 400 acres. I want my dogs to guard my property, but my house is the epicenter of the guarding area and I don't want it fenced off from the dogs, so a dog with a strong homing sense is much better for me than one that shows wandering tendencies. A very people-oriented dog is likely to be more easily trainable, too, insofar as one trains guardian dogs (only half a joke; they can only be trained to redirect somewhat, and do things within their character). Plus, a lot of guardian breeds are from lines that don't actively guard, especially caucasian shepherd/ovcharkas who are often bred either to fight and be aggressive, or just to be huge, at the expense of everything else. It's good to know her parents were both working dogs.

Even though she's 10months and not freshly weaned, this will take a lot of work. Caucasians are a handful, they're a more headstrong breed than maremmas generally. She hasn't been trained to poultry yet, though I suspect Thea will do an excellent job mentoring her there. She's already spayed, thank goodness. She's housebroken. But I'm most worried about introductions. We'll see how it goes. I need to do some reading, I'm not even sure if it's better to introduce her to both at once or one at a time. I'm concerned but also very curious - Avallu is a lover of tiny baby things for the most part, and he's a good friend to Hazard the cat. Thea is more friendly to people but I'm not sure how she'll feel about an actual dog in her domain. She definitely disciplines Avallu when he does something she doesn't approve of. I'm prepared for it to take 6 months of separation and management before they are ok being left alone together but I sure hope it takes less time than that.

Her name may or not be Solstice, since that's the day I knew I was getting her.

So that's big news.