Greenstorm's Journal

It's easy to forget what takes thinking. Right now, with all the snow outside, I don't have a lot of ability to do outside and thoughtlessly wheelbarrow things. Even snowblowing, which I try to do every 6" of snow, requires a fair bit of strategizing about where, exactly, the piles of snow will go and how to get them there (it can throw roughly 15' and obviously not through solid objects). Being in the house, I decided to tidy it a bit, and then the skillcult apple seed sale loomed and some scionwood became available elsewhere so I worked on making some decisions about which of those I wanted for next year.

Tidying the house is A LOT of thinking work. And not just tidying, but "should I get rid of this?" and "what things should go together in an area, which things should go into outside storage, and where should things go while they're waiting to leave the house or go into those areas?"

I made my seed order, made inroads on the house, and yesterday and today can't stay awake or think or follow a book. It's been awhile since I had to repeat audiobook spots four or five times, and I'm back to that.

So I guess I need to take it in smaller bites, though I'm not sure how.

There's about eighteen inches of snow out there right now, most of which fell in the last five days. It's good insulation against the -20.

All would be well except that Solly has realized going in the house keeps her from chasing deer away, which is her reason for existing (see: guardian dog). She's escaped from the house and will only come near me when we're nowhere near the house and I've shown her that my hands are totally empty of collars and leashes (she can get out of a collar in about twelve hours, so there's no grabbing her by a collar). She's sleeping in the chicken coop at the bottom of the garden, which is a nice 6x6' building full of straw, so she's nice and warm and dry. It's right where the deer come over the fence. I've been taking her food& medication out there in a bowl (which she stays away from me, since my hands aren't demonstrably empty, but will eat the food if I step back). I'm not chasing her, since she's not supposed to be walking at all.

I've given some thought to putting her in the small fenced garden & greenhouse with the geese. It's a smaller space, but I'm not sure how they'd all feel about such close proximity. She's allowed to stand and lie down, gentle range of motion is fine, but mostly rest. So we need to come to an accommodation we can both tolerate.

It's funny, Solly is such a ridiculous sweetie I'd forgotten just how intense these dogs can be when something gets into their guardian button. This is a dog who loves to lie on the couch or on my lap on her back with her paws in the air, but she's smart enough to connect the dots between going inside for a bit and being kept there for longer than she wants, and being inside and not being able to chase the deer away, and she's fully willing to deprive herself of all those things PLUS food in order to keep those deer away (she won't even let me feed her near the house in case it's a trap). Plus walking hurts her. The pain meds are making a difference but that just makes her do more mobile stuff.

I should be problem solving that but I snowblew her a path around the chicken coop so she doesn't have to drag her legs through the deep snow and I'm letting her chill until my mind is online again. I could catch her in the chicken coop by closing the door, but after a couple days of walking her to pee and otherwise leaving her in there she'd just have the door off. This afternoon I talk to the vet who might be able to do surgery "locally" (only 2 hours away) and then to possible funding sources.

The tornjaks in the province are all sold, so I don't need to make any immediate decisions on puppies regardless. It looks like there might have been some drama in the (quite small) breed group?

Whiskey is headbutting me for snuggles so I should go. I want my legs to work soon so I can get some water. I'm thirsty and the relative humidity is like 13%.

Someone may be able to fund Solly's surgery. It's not for sure yet by any means, and I haven't spoken to the surgeon yet even to know if it's possible, but. There's maybe a little hope.

The issue is a couple CCL tear, which is to say, both her back knees are shot. The surgery is very expensive. There may be a possibility to do just one knee, which would in effect leave her a tripod but able to get around.

The meds are starting to kick in and she's moving more easily, which is both good and bad of course. Good because it means she has less pain. Bad because it's bad for her knees to move around more.

Bad because I realize just how much heart she has.

Avallu would die for me and will even listen to me most of the time. Thea takes her guardianship of the house and especially the front approach more seriously than I have taken anything in my life, with patient persistence. Both are made of heart, of that kind of huge persistence of spirit which makes them seem larger than life and certainly more than human.

Solly is newer. Not new, but newer. If it takes me several years to fully settle into a relationship with anyone, it's fair to say that I'm still sort of navigating my way with Solly as she grows and now through her injury.

When she first came she took over my personal guardianship from Avallu. He's taken more shifts lately and I thought it was just because his surgery made him feel better, but I know now that she has been in pain. When I'm on the property I'm never out of sight of one of them. When I start the truck Thea barks out the front gate to announce to the neighbourhood that they better be careful and back off when I come through.

I can already feel I'm not going to describe this right. I keep veering into comparison, but Solly is herself. She is a giant white fluffy mass of joy and love. Even in pain. She's a guardian dog, don't get me wrong: we've trained back the growl that was trained out of her and she has very specific feelings about when cats should be near her, for example. She gets the zoomies and plays with Thea, the two of them cantering around. But she especially loves people.

When she first came she thought she was a lapdog and although she's scared of getting up on the couch because it causes so much pain, she still wants to be in physical contact a lot. When I'm outside she'll come up to me -- she's always observing, and learning when I'll have time to stop and pay attention and when I won't -- and put her chin on my hand. She hates her collar and leash, but she could be led almost anywhere by gently rubbing her under the chin, during which time she'll stare up with adoring eyes and follow and follow.

She's extremely smart, to the point where she can learn something from one repetition, but she can also re-learn if what she picked up the first time wasn't right. She's a little less stubborn than the other two, not because she doesn't have her own opinions on things, but because she's better at assessing a situation and integrating both the realities of the situation and her own priorities into one course of action. It means that she's... I almost want to say not trainable because she picks things up so far.

And she just adores human contact. If I bend down when I'm outside with any hint that I'm not super busy or super hauling things she comes up and asks for a snuggle. Avallu bum-leans to snuggle, keeping his face to the world guarding, and Thea rolls onto her back for belly rubs at a moment's notice, but Solly wants as much leaning, snuggling, licking, sniffing contact as possible. It's astonishing to me that I was able to train her not to jump up on folks because what she wants is that full contact so much -- but she's content, even before the injury, to wait until I come down to her since she's learned that not just me, but everyone, would rather a dog who's close to six feet on her hind legs didn't jump up.

Instead, even more than Thea, she has perfected the melted, adoring stare.

And then when something comes she can't handle, like the herd of deer that were charging her (while she was having serious pain walking) she comes into partnership with me or the other dogs seamlessly. She'd hold ground and protect me when I bent to make snowballs, and advance the couple feet each snowball bought us, adjusting to what I was doing. She soon learned that they couldn't charge her through the fence, so she spent more time patrolling at the right times of day to warn them off before they came over.

I don't know. We'll see what happens. She's just... she's a very good girl.

Let me tell you a story. It'll start out dark but end up better, I promise.

It begins with a big issue in the North-- the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. I live near what's called the Highway of Tears, Highway 16, where hundreds of women have gone missing and been reported to police but never really followed up and found.

The highway is basically required to get to services -- anything from medical to a welfare cheque -- but for a decade had pretty much no public transportation at all after Greyhound pulled out and before a raggedy string of municipal busses got put in very inconveniently. To access services you still need to sleep in downtown Prince George for a couple days if you don't have hotel money or relatives. So you can imagine a lot of people hitchhike, not on a lark, but under duress. Attend a funeral? Hitchhike. Visit family? Hitchhike. Get your government checque? Hitchhike.

Between that and the legacy of residential schools it's a very dangerous place, especially for people who society views as disposable. This is the same area where the police (RCMP) keep getting investigated for killing indigenous people but... well, let's just say that the most recent acquittal the indigenous guy died less than an hour after being hit, kicked, pepper sprayed, and punched by a bunch of police but it was ruled accidental and nothing to do with the police.

Anyhow, First Nations aren't thrilled about any of this, and there's a tradition of hanging red dresses by the highway to represent people who should still be here but who are missing. Additionally there are various kinds of demonstrations. Right now there's a gentleman walking from Takla Landing to Burns Lake to... raise awareness? Heal himself? Make a statement? about this. People from town are joining in-- not all indigenous, but that's beside the point.

He'll be walking along the highway by my property today. It was going to be yesterday but he's getting pretty sore after a couple hundred kms and has slowed down. My dog Solly jumps the fence, and although she's very friendly lots of people are scared of dogs so I've been keeping her indoors during the day while he's walking, just in case she decided to jump the fence and go solicit love from humans who might not welcome it.

Normally Solly jumps the fence several times a day and runs towards the forested area by the vacant cabin on my neighbour's land. He likes wildlife there, and there are a bunch of animals that hang out there-- lynx and bears sometimes, definitely foxes too, that sort of thing. I've been less concerned about this than I might because she normally chases into that forested area then comes back within twenty minutes or so, doesn't go towards th road or the highway, and it's much easier to keep predators away from the space when you can cross the fence so I've had the least predator losses ever so far.

But, Solly was in yesterday, so she wasn't jumping the fence to chase away predators. A goose had died (suspiciously close to an electrical cable, I checked it and didn't see chew marks but he wasn't touched though there were some signs of a seizure. He also wasn't super young, so) and I left picking him up and dealing with the body till later.

Well, when I went back later to get him, after Solly was inside, something had eaten the easy meat off the body. There was a pie of feathers where this had originally been done, and then the body had been pulled up against he fence where more feathers were scattered. As I went to pick him up I noticed... a small orange cat that came up, I meowed at it, it meowed back fearlessly and started ravenously chewing on the body through the fence.

He was not my cat, nor a known neighbour's cat, and his fur looked a little rough, like he'd been eating very cheap cat food or something. We meowed at each other a little, then I went and got him some kitten food because he looked Very Hungry and I had some kitten food in the house, which, high calories, he seemed like he could use.

Well, he was still there when I came back and wolfed down about half a cup of kitten kibble in just a few minutes. Solly came to take a look and was very polite (he was still on the other side of a 2" x 4" grid wire fence) and some other cats came around too and the cat alternated between wolfing down food, prring as I petted him through the fence, and hissing/growling at my dog and cats, mostly doing all three at once.

He kept meowing and purring when he had eaten all the food, so I went back and got another half cup, then another quarter cup after that. I probably sat there for an hour, petting him, petting my cats and dogs as they came around, observing interactions, and trying to figure out what to do. He was clearly a male and probably fixed from what I could see, ultra friendly, had an ear tattoo. But he was also very very thin -- I could feel the knobs on his vertebrae, and his pelvis bones -- his ears were abraded or sunburnt, and his claws were a combination of razor sharp and dirty/broken. Basically, he didn't look like he'd been home in a bit.

I wanted to pick him up and bring him into the house because of those predators in the field he was in, and so I could be sure to feed him more, but I couldn't get through or over the fence while holding a cat. So I figured I'd feed him at the same time every day there, and then Tucker and I could capture him in a couple days, when Tucker comes up for solstice.

Well, the cat finally slowed down eating, I finally got up and went to feed the pigs and shut the ducks in for the night... and on my way past I noticed him clinbing up over the fence onto my property. I went to take a look and saw him curled up under the quail shed.

Now, I have baby birds in the quail shed, it's secure. There's a space full of straw under it. Something in the last several days to weeks has been shredding the lumber wrap around it, which just gets whatever is outside into some plywood but it's been noticable that something was trying to get in, and something Solly doesn't completely freak out about. So I'm thinking, ok, this cat has maybe been living under here a bit, that'll make it easier to feed him and catch him.

As I walk up to him he pops right out and lets me pick him up. I carry him into the downstairs bedroom, set him up with some food, water, and a litter box, and he demands love and food for awhile.

I've posted his picture and as much of the tattoo as I can read on the town fb groups, emailed the neighbour (it's not hers), and called the vet with the tattoo number (the last digit is a bit faded though). I've done a bit of reading on tattoos, he may be 5-6 years old from Windermere? The vet hasn't called me back yet. No one on FB has claimed him yet.

He's drunk 3 cups of water in less than 24 hours, eaten a ton of food (I'm giving him small meals) and peed in the litter box nicely though he's not pooping yet (I think he was pretty empty). He snuggles and purrs whenever I go into the room. My cats are pretty ok with him being in that room, though Little Bear is unsurprisingly curious.

So that's the story of how I have a stray cat in my bedroom, how Solly is an effective predator control that the farm notices when she's kept inside, and how institutional cruelty and neglect lead to bad situations but people are struggling to right them.

Also holy man, what are people on when they say cats are aloof? I can't walk three steps without getting mobbed by cats who want love, and this strange cat who doesn't know me was no different. I guess there's very strong selective pressure for it, though I wonder what effect neutering has on that?

The kitten I ended up with is firmly integrated into the home and is growing up. He is Very Smart-- he learns super quickly from experience, and more than any other animal I've known he is able to attach actions and consequences in a less-general way. For instance, he understands that mugs might be hot so he approaches all my mugs cautiously after one unfortunate paw incident, but is unconcerned about water bottles. He knows not to attack bare feet but needs to learn not to attack each different pattern of socked feet, and when I'm putting on pants the dangling leg of the pants is fair game until my foot comes out the bottom. He knows when jumping on me not to use his claws, and is learning that per different pair of pants too. That said, the skin on my hands and arms hasn't been fully intact for awhile even while he has learned to mostly keep his claws in when playing. However he's a bit of a bully and isn't great at reading the room around the other cats. He's especially obsessed with Hazard, and will jump onto hazard's back with his arms around the older cat's neck and just hang on like a little black cape. Also, he has never been completely successfully photographed.

His primary mode is flitting from cover to cover like Things in the backdrop of a horror movie, or alternatively curling up with his paws around my neck and his head under my chin, sleeping and purring. Kittens, right?

Solly was disappearing for a day or a day and a half at a time and returning for food for the last little while. This concerned me for obvious reasons and I built more fencing, blocked holes in the fence-- and then the neighbour who has his own two LGDs tracked me down and let me know he saw her get hit by a car on Friday and had been trying to track me down and tell me. Now, when he told me she was in the fence and doing fine. I've been in the habit of doing a quick body-check when I haven't seen her in a day, just running my hands over all her limbs and spine and belly to check for injuries because who knows what could happen to her out there, and she'd always and continues to be fine.

The weather has been really mild and I'd made her a dog house in case that's why she was disappearing, but she didn't use it. After learning she'd been hit I let her come in the house and she stuck in there all day when allowed. She's still acting very afraid of Avallu even though Avallu politely ignores her now, though who knows what they get up to when I'm not around. Ideally she'd feel comfortable using the downstairs dog door but that's where Avallu sleeps, so it seems unlikely. At this point I'm letting her in through the front door to the upstairs, and it looks like she wants to be a velcro/house dog. If she could just let herself in and out I'd be fine with that, though I'll need to work on resource guarding around the cats. Like Avallu used to, she guards snuggles with me. I've also made her a second dog house that she seems to like better - at least, she slept in it last night. I'm not leaving her in at night until the upstairs is better set up, too.

She's been playing with the next door dogs when she escapes and I suspect she'd like a similar-aged companion. Four dogs at once is A Lot, but it does make sense to keep in age-similar pairs. Nothing is happening on that front while I still have pigs and a scary financial situation though.

Avallu seems to be doing well. He's staying outside more and is more active so it looks like the antibiotics worked to clear up his UTI. His x-rays showed a bit of arthritis in his back and he tends to want me to let him in and out instead of using the dog door, so I'm wondering if he does have a bit of pain and I need to talk to the vet about that. HE's not young anymore.

Thea is a little food-guardy around Solly, and I suspect would like more solid routine around food. They all get fancy fresh meat when the grocery store has extra in my expiry-day pickups and that semi-rhythm seems to upset her. We're getting into the time of year when they all need lots of extra calories, so I can start supplementing with fatty pork belly and that will likely help. I also want to renovate the A frame she chose for a doghouse so she has more visual range and more protection in it.

The other cats all still are very snuggly and also miffed at Bear. I don't blame them, since his primary cat interaction mode is attacking, and he initiates most interactions by attacking from stealth. Whiskey and Bear have been sleeping on my bed until I build a door to my bedroom, and Whiskey is very happy with that but even more happy when I work from home and sit in just exactly this one spot at this one time with my computer. Hazard wants me to carry him around whenever the kitten is nearby so he can't be attacked. Demon has taken it on himself to play with the kitten a lot of the time, which means he's often socialled out, but he very much appreciates quiet petting if he's protected from the kitten.

It's still extremely warm out, at least for this time of year, just hovering around freezing this week. We've had maybe 4" of snow total and it's mostly either melted or subsided into ice sheets. There's no insulation on the ground if the temperature drops quickly so I expect there'll be burst pipes in town all over this year-- unless we don't actually get those low temperatures. The ground has just finally got cold enough to begin freezing duck and goose feathers to the ice sheet overnight so they get left in the ice when the birds get up in the morning. I'm unsure if they'll go indoors or not.

When Avallu was feeling so bad I took down the original dog bed (crib mattress) I got for Thea that has gone unused. He slept on it and seemed to feel less painful on it, but now that the fire is on downstairs the cats have taken it over. He's far too polite to ask even a single cat to move off it, so he whimpers and settles down on the concrete. Combine that with pottery stuff and I'm making a pottery bench to replace my downstairs table, with the goal of enough room underneath for a second dog bed. I'm also making up cat beds that might be more appealing to them, potentially to put on the wall to give myself more floor space. I've also put up one shelf for pottery and need to put up a bunch more. There's no reason not to display this stuff. So, doing a bunch of rearranging down there ideally to increase both functionality for me and liveability for the animals.

I also finally started cutting out my winter sewing, which has been a challenge with one kitten, one Very Large dog, and three cats in the room. I basically made it work by putting up a gate to keep Solly in the kitchen, feeding the cats, and dumping Bear outside on the deck that doesn't have any way to the ground. By the time he had figured out how to climb down and gone around in through the dog door I'd cut out two and a half pairs of pants.

I take so much comfort in these loved ones, even when literally the entire floor and hall is covered in bodies and it's challenging to move around.

Had some great social days at the pottery studio, answering questions at the open house, and I met someone at the community studio who's equally obsessed with wheel throwing who I can actually talk to about it, so that's nice, but it doesn't feel the same kind of safe and interesting and loving that my pack does.

Might as well update about the animal situation.

Solly and Thea are working great as a team all night. I put them in the front at night (the grain is all there) and Avallu in the back with the geese, Thea I put in the back during the day with Avallu so she can go in and eat and I can keep Solly mostly on her puppy food.

Avallu is getting more ok with Solly, but after two incidents where he was pretty sure she belonged only on the porch we need a little more than current levels of ok. In the evenings we often do cheese o clock, where they all see each other through the fence and get lots of cheese. I think they may have got too much cheese, so I may need a lower-fat alternative for some of these evenings. Avallu is doing well listening to commands even when Solly is in close proximity, but he's also very respectful of the fence. Solly is very wary of Avallu after the last couple incidents but has a seemingly limitless well of optimism and is coming around with enough cheese again.

I've definitely made some mistakes during this intro but I suspect everyone can be convinced to forgive me.

The geese are sleeping right up close to Avallu many nights and spending more time than usual up by the house. I can tell when there are no bears around because they go into the orchard. They've taken care of this spring's goslings well and those are now fully feathered. The orchard is pretty well mown at this point and the geese are starting to gorge on grain to fatten up for fall, they've gone from roughly a quarter bucket of grain per day for the 31 of them to closer to a whole bucket.

I have an ancona drake swap lined up for later this year, so he can cover this last two year's ducklings.

Incubator full of chicks should hatch while I'm gone. Things will be set up for mom to just plunk them into the quail shed under lights. These are mostly chanteclers but with a half dozen silkies. If I'm going to do silkies I might as well do seramas, which are the sweetest chickens on earth, but there are none to be had up here. Also Clyde the new rooster (his previous family got him as Bonnie and when he started to crow had to part with him) is doing well. He's a brahma, so he should get very big, but right now he's young and pigeon-sized with ENORMOUS FLUFFY feet. He's also smart, social, and I like him a great deal. I have not yet evicted the previous rooster from the bottom coop and put him in yet, I'm planning to do that when the chicks are a bit older, so right now he's sleeping under the truck canopy at night and hanging with the muscovies during the day. His crow is growing in adorably; I guess I have a thing for adolescent rooster crows.

The three boars have been shedding, I can scratch them with a rake and all the curly wool comes off and leaves growing-in guard hairs. I think they should move to the back to guard that entrance, though really Baby and Hooligan are the better defenders against bears. Did I mention Hooligan kinda bit me when I was stealing her babies? She didn't break skin or even bruise me, but she put her teeth on me in warning after I'd ignored her barking and other warnings. She is 100% a perfect temperament in this regard: she lets me play with her newborn babies if I'm not harassing them, catching them, and making them scream and she loves being scratched behind the ears but she can gauge situations in which it's appropriate to defend and does so with careful escalation. I'm just very impressed with Ossabaws in general, but also her in particular.

We do have at least two bears back there, one big and one small, that appear unrelated. The big one doesn't mind bear bangers, air horns, dogs, or yelling so I'm worried about what will happen come fall. Two bears in that territory is already a lot and it's only August. When bears go into their super calorie-seeking mode before winter they're less cautious and maybe it's not safe to have the pigs back there then? On the other hand the whole herd of pigs may actually be better defenders than the dogs, at least until the whole pack gels and maybe even after that.

The poor cats are withering away from lack of love and attention since I've been into the office several days the last few weeks. Also Demon is not a fan of a New Person in the house to farmsit and complains loudly when she's not around. I expect he'll come around. They continue to break down all doors into my bedroom to sleep on the bed, to my detriment.

Ducks are ducks. The anconas are in the covered area, and I want to make more covered areas for bear/lynx/raven/fox/coyote protection for the littles in future years. One broody ancona made a nest just inside the chicken house so I can barely squeak the door open and squeeze in and she will not be shifted. Everyone likes lamb's quarters weedings from the garden.

It's good? At least until the bears finish eating my neighbour's chickens and turn more attention on me.

Lotta people complaining about fireworks, but no one in our half of the province is doing fireworks -- or even parking on dry grass. The fires are slowly blowing up here, we have more 30C on the forecast, and the long-term forecast for July/Aug/Sept is 100% above average. We even have some 13C nights forecast! There's no sand coming out of my well. I am so so deeply grateful for it.

My favas are flowering, my garlic is not yet scape-ing (though other folks in the neighbourhood are), the tomatoes are starting to take off. I feel glad to have planted that extra corn the other day and figure I should be planting greens once a week or so at this point. And maybe one extra set of corn this weekend, just in case?

I have sprinklers set up for the lower garden and a lot of drip hose for the upper, though some will still need to be garden sprinkler/hand watered. I'm trying to do a little bit of that every day, rotating.

I'm waiting for some tree-friendly straps to arrive for my hammock, and I finally dug out the hardware to put my porch swing up (I'd put it away because the deck was falling off) though I haven't finalized where. This year my space really feels like it extends into the back, the now-orchard, and I want seating and places to sleep out there.

I'm in debate with myself over whether to plant larches and pines in square formations, so I can easily hang hammocks or beds from them, or in natural curves. I guess a double row would solve that?

For the first time I counted ducklings and found an extra instead of one fewer. I'd rescued a little duckling from the big turtle pond (they can't climb out on their own) and brought it to the mother who'd natural-hatched 8 ducklings a few days earlier-- and it turned out to be #9. That was nice. They have their own little water and food are inside, with the water in a paint tray so they can climb out. Hopefully they stick inside until they're a little bigger. I should also start putting rocks/floats in the ponds again.

Solly is trending towards settling down a little, maybe because I have a bit of a routine now. Thing is I'm away at work in the field so I can't take her out back every couple hours. I was expecting her to be explosively energetic but I think the routine is stabilizing for her. She's also got more used to the food I'm feeding her, her stomach has stabilized. She's quite a chewer right now, which is about right: I still have my baseboards chewed from when Thea was little. I would give her chunks of 2x10 about a foot long. I need some things like that for Solly, since I'm sure chewing up a bunch of plant pots wasn't great for her (she didn't seem to eat them though).

Walking slowly in the field seems to be good for me, but I'm making a lot of mistakes around thinking. I'm enlisting the summer students to double-check things, showing them how, and it's both a useful skill and hopefully keeps me on track. I have them all this month and the goal is to get most of the fieldwork done before those areas catch on fire. At the same time if I keep making mistakes I'll have to pull myself off and really look into something like disability. There are significant legal and safety ramifications if I make the wrong mistake. I've been enlisting the summer students to drive, so that takes a ton of pressure off my concentration, and there are two of them so they can trade off if there are issues.

Found a moose head by the side of the road in town, very fresh. Must have been first nations folks-- they're allowed to harvest whenever, and this had just been harvested. Bad time to be dumping meat in town right by the rez though: we've had a lot of bear sightings lately, and one back bear that's limping after it got into a fight with a grizzly and it's been getting skinnier.

Mornings are very very hard, wobbly and blank-minded and queasy, and nights are some weird pain and night sweats have started again (both of those seem to be mitigated by the birth control pill so I'm gonna start it again). Seems like if I stay out of the office I'm kind of ok though? Fingers crossed.

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.