A Constant Companion

I've yet to have a day too long that Stoic doesn't want to spend every second of it with me.

The only time he appears agitated is when the kids go out to do chores or play in the yard and fail to take him with them.

Stoic's First Hospital Visit

We don't interact with patients for the first few visits.  I want Stoic to get the opportunity to sniff the place and grow comfortable with it before we throw in the additional factor of fawning young people.

Stoic did great.  He didn't pee on anything.  He only suspected that one conference room was occupied by a monster of some sort.  He listened intently as the hospital staff talked to him of expectations.

Another visit or two and we'll start interacting with patients.

Stoic and His Girl

Stoic is bonding more to his girl every day, and she to him.

Winter is Coming

It has been a wonderfully mild spring so we are already moving the firewood forward and cutting/splitting fresh oak that it can start to cure.

With every piece of wood moved, Stoic searches for rodents.

When we take a break, Stoic climbs the pile for a better view and  remains on alert.

Stoic: Therapy Dog

The paperwork is in and Stoic is ready to start making Therapy Dog visits.

Grace Adopts a Terrier

It was my original intention to rehab Stoic and then try to find him an appropriate home, but my daughter intervened.  Her brothers have had the experience of being raised, in part, by Maybelle "the Nanny dog."

After Gracie was born, they were slow to give up "their" dog.  To this day she sleeps in their room even if she needs help jumping into the bed of whoever is sleeping in the bottom bunk.  So Gracie has lived with dogs but never really had a dog.

She chooses Stoic, and he's pretty chill with that.

Fortunate for me she will still let me take him on some therapy dog gigs when the time arrives.

Fortunate for us all, she wants to help when we go out hunting rats or other vermin.

My Sparta and the She-Child's Stoic

Driving Home

Dude, turn up the heat

Stoic has a unique way of communicating the fact he thinks it is past time I turn up the heat.
Maybelle, always willing to help her short-coated friends.

Kurgo upgrades a harness

After trying a number of harness my favorite for heavy tracking use also happens to be the cheapest: Kurgo's True Fit Smart Dog harness.

Fancier harnesses with any material other than nylon webbing look  great but begin to fray after just a few hours of use in the brush blood tracking takes us into.  Until such time as I feel flush enough to buy a nice leather harness, it is hard to see why we would need anything other than the simple Kurgo.

Stoic will start spending more time doing some blood track training so I went to Amazon to pick up a second copy of the harness so that I could have one fitted for each terrier.  I thought I was ordering a clone to my first harness but thanks to my own inattentiveness, I got something better: the Kurgo True-Fit Enhanced Strength harness.

The only thing I did not care for on the original harness was the plastic clasps.  They are practical and hold up well but I preferred the metal nesting buckles I had seen on other Kurgo harnesses.  Imagine my surprise when the new harness arrived, made with those metal nesting buckles as well as additional stitching along the back strap.

Both harnesses exceed expectations at less than $20.  Measure (your dog) twice, buy once.

Stoic goes to ground (almost)

We have some stairs going up along side a retaining wall.  Made of treated lumber, the underneath side is a popular retreat for prey animals of any kind.  This weekend the dogs chased a rabbit underneath before loosing it.

I wasn't quick enough on the phone to get an image of Stoic going in, but he worked the makeshift burrow for a while.

New Year's Day Walk

I've taken the canines on a New Year's Day walk for years now.  Same day, same place, about the same time.

Twice Musket has caught a raccoon on the flat and sent him to meet his little raccoon god.  It's only happened twice, both on New Year's Day.  Statistics are funny like that.

My middle child joined me for the first time this morning.  No raccoon were spotted today.  No mammals were seen at all to be exact, but I don't think he was disappointed.  There was still there was a lot to see to those knowing where to look.  Specifically, there was a lot of raptor sign out there.

First lessons in reading sign

Snow angels: of death.

There were so many I was asking myself, are we at peak raptor?

Sapiens have been here.

Stoic the Pill Eater

About two weeks ago Stoic tested positive for exposure to Lyme's and Anaplasmosis.

Given his origin and providence were unknown, I should have done the test earlier, but we did get it done and the course of treatment is a rather long but inexpensive course of Doxacycline.

The first morning I tried to force the medication down as I've done with every other dog I've known for over thirty-years.  He coughed them up but instead of spitting them out, he chewed them up and swallowed.

Since then it became obvious, there was an easier way to get this dog to take his antibiotics.

 

Cutting Bait on Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve I try to take a walk into downtown Minneapolis.  We see the sites.  We try to make some homeless guys smile.

The wind was strong.  The dogs were acting special. I was overtired.  I needed a toilet.  Most of all it wasn't fun, and the dogs could tell.  I'd planned eight to twelve miles, but after four, we cut bait and went home.  We didn't spend time with any homeless guys.  We just exchanged a few words with passing joggers from the gentrified apartments nearby.

One of the most valuable lessons I've learned about training dogs: when to stop and call it a day.  When it is no longer a game, you're not doing anyone any good.  It is time to get a cinnamon roll and coffee, and set back for the car.  Go home. Drink a beer.  Write a blog post.

I did snap a few shots in front of the future home of the Minnesota Vikings and on our way home we came across another instance of "things (presumably) abandoned by a homeless guy."

Can you tell I was trying to eat a roll?

"Show me 'disinterested.'"

"Look at me."

"Think deep thoughts"

"Let me see 'furtive.'"

Apparently abandoned: bike, books, and a few clothes.

Stoic: Therapy Dog

There are still some hoops to jump through before his first visit but Stoic passed his therapy dog test Wednesday evening.

He pretty much sat back and impassively watched all that was going on.

Praise for a Dumped Dog

About once every three or four years rats attempt to colonize our chicken coop.  I was aware of it this summer and I have been working the terriers on it every few weeks to keep the numbers down.

When the ground freezes and the air gets cold, I will be able to positively identify which holes are occupied.  I can take down some fence, knowing the chickens will come back that night and we will go out and eradicate the colony.

First I'll pump in Carbon Monoxide and the terriers will hopefully kill every rat that bolts.
Then we'll pump in water, the frozen ground will help hold it momentarily and the dogs will kill any laggards that make a run for it.

Then I will move the chicken feed to another part of the chicken yard and leave secured rat poison in its place.  Fences will go back up and they are enough to keep the terriers out of the chicken yard.

Until then, however, we have to manage the population and keep them from trying to break into the house.  I have partitioned the chicken yard so the terriers can get to the rats but the chickens can not get out of their yard.

 The terriers had worked at it but Musket moves slow in his late middle age and Sparta often runs past the rat in her excitement.

Stoic "the Vast" is a mutt who showed up on our front door and at three years old he is our prime rat killer.  Sparta or Musket will flush them as Stoic sits back, watches, and nails them as they escape.  Sparta marks any scent, old or fresh, Stoic follows the fresh scent.  The newcomer mutt is teaching the purposefully bred terrier.

I let him out this morning and he brought me back a gift.

Stoic "the Vast," yep, that is blood on his collar.