For a change here’s a farm story about the
May. 8th, 2017 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2pSWnA8:
For a change here’s a farm story about the faithful farm hound, who is a rescue black lab mix named Dini (short for Houdini).
She was a rescue from a humane society in Illinois, basically feral, so poorly-socialized she was terrified of humans, the indoors, the concept of being enclosed anywhere, etcetera. But they’ve had her six or seven years now, and she’s gotten to the point where not only will she come indoors, but she’ll actually be in a room with, and be unbothered by, strange adult men, who used to terrify her.
She is very strongly bonded to Farmsister, though, and loves her and wants to be with her constantly, and follows her from room to room when indoors, and when outdoors, follows her and lies beside her while she works. (She likes other people fine, and will go for walks with anyone who asks, and sometimes likes to run alongside the chore truck on its rounds and such, but primarily, she loves to be near Farmsister.)
Today was gorgeous and sunny, and we have two or three solid days of rain coming up. This meant that everyone was frantic to get work outdoors done today; the livestock peeps were trying to get the broilers out on pasture because it was too hot in the brooder for them, and the vegetable peeps were frantically transplanting everything they could because two days of rain are PERFECT CONDITIONS for baby transplants, and also it’ll take several dry days for the field to be able to be driven on again so it’s now or not for a long time, and a lot of the seedlings are about to be Too Big.
So, in the afternoon, I watched Farmbaby, and Farmsister went way up the hill to the farthest beds, inaccessible when muddy, to transplant cabbages. Lateish in the afternoon, Farmbaby wanted to play outside, and this was fine, we ran around the barnyard and had ourselves a nice time, until she slipped and fell and “bonxted” her knee. (Bonked. It’s the only phoneme Farmbaby really has a consistent baby-talk problem with anymore– a hard central consonant and the past tense. She’s also not great on Ls and Rs yet, so her favorite thing in the herb garden, sorrel, is incomprehensible to the uninitiated, but. Otherwise she really talks like she’s four or five, not three-and-a-quarter.)
She reflexively insisted she was okay, but as I gathered her up, she began to wail that she wanted her mommy. Which is an old reflex, but. Well, I said, pointing, Mom’s up the hill, all the way up there. I could tell by then, by the way she was moving, that she indeed was not injured physically. She turned to look, and I looked as well, and sure enough, there in the distance, up on the hill, ant-like in size, were several people, and there was the black spot of Dini, sprawled out next to the white-tank-top-and-straw-hat of Farmsister.
Farmbaby refused any comfort I could give her and insisted we had to go see her mother. Her sobs had never actually produced any tears and at this point she was a little distracted so they were a great deal less convincing, but clearly, she was committed enough to this emotional direction that we were going to have to stay the course for the forseeable, so I said okay, let’s go, and we set off for the road that goes up next to the fields. (I just measured on Google Maps; it’s a solid eighth of a mile walk, and the elevation goes up a good hundred feet too. It’s not nothing.)
Literally seconds later, the dog comes bounding out from between the hoop-houses and runs up to us, all concerned.
Farmsister said she’d been working and had noticed the dog perk up, then suddenly take off running down the hill, and she knows the dog’s body language pretty well and said she was clearly looking at a person, and from her attitude it was someone she knew. It was only after the dog had gone out of sight that she herself heard Farmbaby shrieking. She’d already noticed us down there, had seen I was with her, so she wasn’t too worried, but clearly, and obviously, the dog was.
Dini satisfied herself pretty immediately that Farmbaby was okay, but still greeted her with a great deal of tail-wagging and solicitous concern. She and the child are not the greatest of friends; at three, Farmbaby still does rather an unpleasant amount of pinching and pulling and shoving, and Dini’s table manners are too good for Farmbaby to really make up for it in food rewards. But, obviously, Dini has extended her protection of Farmsister to the child; she clearly understands how puppies work.
Anyway, Dini proceeded to escort us up the hill, and I managed to talk this up enough that it totally distracted Farmbaby so she completely forgot that we had been making this trip in loud emotional distress. (We got distracted, so Dini got bored and went and waded in the creek, which utterly charmed Farmbaby, to my somewhat-terror– this is not the cute little creek that runs through the property, but rather the actual river that borders it, the full-on Quackenkill, which is thigh-deep, 20 feet wide, and has just gone over a 15-foot waterfall a quarter-mile back so it’s pretty fast-running just there. Sure, the dog can go in it, but I am NOT taking a child in there, especially not in April.) But we did have a lovely walk alongside the creek, watching the dog frolicking etcetera.
Until, like half an hour later, when we reached the top of the hill and she saw her mother and remembered to dredge up some good shrieking wails to show her how she’d “bonxted” her knee. Her mother awarded her the small-child equivalent of an Oscar for her performance, by dutifully carrying her back down the hill to the greenhouse (which was where she was going anyway), black dog escort in tow.
For a change here’s a farm story about the faithful farm hound, who is a rescue black lab mix named Dini (short for Houdini).
She was a rescue from a humane society in Illinois, basically feral, so poorly-socialized she was terrified of humans, the indoors, the concept of being enclosed anywhere, etcetera. But they’ve had her six or seven years now, and she’s gotten to the point where not only will she come indoors, but she’ll actually be in a room with, and be unbothered by, strange adult men, who used to terrify her.
She is very strongly bonded to Farmsister, though, and loves her and wants to be with her constantly, and follows her from room to room when indoors, and when outdoors, follows her and lies beside her while she works. (She likes other people fine, and will go for walks with anyone who asks, and sometimes likes to run alongside the chore truck on its rounds and such, but primarily, she loves to be near Farmsister.)
Today was gorgeous and sunny, and we have two or three solid days of rain coming up. This meant that everyone was frantic to get work outdoors done today; the livestock peeps were trying to get the broilers out on pasture because it was too hot in the brooder for them, and the vegetable peeps were frantically transplanting everything they could because two days of rain are PERFECT CONDITIONS for baby transplants, and also it’ll take several dry days for the field to be able to be driven on again so it’s now or not for a long time, and a lot of the seedlings are about to be Too Big.
So, in the afternoon, I watched Farmbaby, and Farmsister went way up the hill to the farthest beds, inaccessible when muddy, to transplant cabbages. Lateish in the afternoon, Farmbaby wanted to play outside, and this was fine, we ran around the barnyard and had ourselves a nice time, until she slipped and fell and “bonxted” her knee. (Bonked. It’s the only phoneme Farmbaby really has a consistent baby-talk problem with anymore– a hard central consonant and the past tense. She’s also not great on Ls and Rs yet, so her favorite thing in the herb garden, sorrel, is incomprehensible to the uninitiated, but. Otherwise she really talks like she’s four or five, not three-and-a-quarter.)
She reflexively insisted she was okay, but as I gathered her up, she began to wail that she wanted her mommy. Which is an old reflex, but. Well, I said, pointing, Mom’s up the hill, all the way up there. I could tell by then, by the way she was moving, that she indeed was not injured physically. She turned to look, and I looked as well, and sure enough, there in the distance, up on the hill, ant-like in size, were several people, and there was the black spot of Dini, sprawled out next to the white-tank-top-and-straw-hat of Farmsister.
Farmbaby refused any comfort I could give her and insisted we had to go see her mother. Her sobs had never actually produced any tears and at this point she was a little distracted so they were a great deal less convincing, but clearly, she was committed enough to this emotional direction that we were going to have to stay the course for the forseeable, so I said okay, let’s go, and we set off for the road that goes up next to the fields. (I just measured on Google Maps; it’s a solid eighth of a mile walk, and the elevation goes up a good hundred feet too. It’s not nothing.)
Literally seconds later, the dog comes bounding out from between the hoop-houses and runs up to us, all concerned.
Farmsister said she’d been working and had noticed the dog perk up, then suddenly take off running down the hill, and she knows the dog’s body language pretty well and said she was clearly looking at a person, and from her attitude it was someone she knew. It was only after the dog had gone out of sight that she herself heard Farmbaby shrieking. She’d already noticed us down there, had seen I was with her, so she wasn’t too worried, but clearly, and obviously, the dog was.
Dini satisfied herself pretty immediately that Farmbaby was okay, but still greeted her with a great deal of tail-wagging and solicitous concern. She and the child are not the greatest of friends; at three, Farmbaby still does rather an unpleasant amount of pinching and pulling and shoving, and Dini’s table manners are too good for Farmbaby to really make up for it in food rewards. But, obviously, Dini has extended her protection of Farmsister to the child; she clearly understands how puppies work.
Anyway, Dini proceeded to escort us up the hill, and I managed to talk this up enough that it totally distracted Farmbaby so she completely forgot that we had been making this trip in loud emotional distress. (We got distracted, so Dini got bored and went and waded in the creek, which utterly charmed Farmbaby, to my somewhat-terror– this is not the cute little creek that runs through the property, but rather the actual river that borders it, the full-on Quackenkill, which is thigh-deep, 20 feet wide, and has just gone over a 15-foot waterfall a quarter-mile back so it’s pretty fast-running just there. Sure, the dog can go in it, but I am NOT taking a child in there, especially not in April.) But we did have a lovely walk alongside the creek, watching the dog frolicking etcetera.
Until, like half an hour later, when we reached the top of the hill and she saw her mother and remembered to dredge up some good shrieking wails to show her how she’d “bonxted” her knee. Her mother awarded her the small-child equivalent of an Oscar for her performance, by dutifully carrying her back down the hill to the greenhouse (which was where she was going anyway), black dog escort in tow.
