This was what greeted me last Monday morning when I got up a little earlier than normal.
A few minutes later it was lighter, but the sun was still below the horizon.
I would get up early every morning for sunrises like this.
I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving today, if you celebrate. We are having Thanksgiving with my aunt, the last surviving member my father’s generation.
A few days ago Leah and I heard a loud thump that sounded like it came from our hall bathroom. I went in to check, but found nothing to account for the noise. Later I went outside and found this bird lying in the driveway, close to the house.
It seems to be a sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus), a type I was not familiar with. It was lying close to the window in one of our bedrooms, the one we use for an office. The bedroom is next to the bathroom, which explains why we thought the sound came from the bathroom.
It’s easy to understand how this happened. With very little light inside the room, the window makes a good mirror. The hawk undoubtedly thought it was flying through an opening rather than a hard surface.
The sharp-shinned hawk is the smallest hawk in the US and Canada. It summers in the far north of Alaska and Canada and winters as far south as Panama. It’s a little hard to figure from the maps of distributions, but it seems that they are around our area during non-breeding parts of the year, but apparently are so secretive that they are rarely seen.
They are the most strong sexually dimorphic of North American raptors. The males average under two-thirds the mass of females.
Our house is on top of the ridge of Lavender Mountain within a mixed hardwood and pine forest, which is their preferred habitat.
The name comes from the sharp, laterally compressed keel on the leading edge of the legs.
We see other types of hawks pretty often, but I had never before seen a sharp-shinned hawk. It’s unfortunate that my first sighting is of a dead bird, and one killed by our house at that.
And dogs
And cats
I got back from my trip to Colorado last week. I had two fairly long days of driving, splitting the almost 1400 miles in two equal parts. This was the view to the west at sunset on my first day on the road.
This was the view to the east the morning of the second day on the road.
Zoe was a great traveler. She stood, sat or lay in the back seat and never made a peep. Or a poop. Now that’s she’s home, she seems pretty comfortable on Leah’s side of the bed.
We don’t allow her on the furniture, but sometimes she jumps up if we’re not looking.
The main question was how the cats would react to her, and her to the cats. As it turns out, not particularly well. Zoe has a very strong prey drive, and cats look a lot like a dog’s natural prey. Zoe focuses intently on the cats as they walk around the house, and she chases if one of them runs. That’s usually Mollie. Mollie has taken to hiding under the sofa. She has hissed and swatted at Zoe a few times, but Zoe is oblivious. I think the two will eventually come to some kind of understanding. At least that’s what I tell myself.
The only other cat that comes inside is Sylvester, and Sylvester has his own story now. He disappeared Monday and didn’t show again until Tuesday afternoon. Leah was convinced he had been killed by a coyote as our gray cat, Smokey, was, but it seems he escaped by the skin of his teeth. Or maybe the cornea of his eye.
Sylvester’s left eye was completely covered with pus and mucus. We took him to the vet, who cleaned the eye and found a dent in the cornea. The vet also found a wound on the top of his head. She thought some kind of animal had bitten Sylvester on the face. It might have been a coyote, in which case Sylvester has used up yet another of his allotted nine lives. I’m not sure how many he has left.
So now Sylvester has to wear the cone of shame for a couple of weeks, until his eye heals.
He may end up completely healed, or he may end up with a scar right in the center of his cornea. In the meantime, he gets two eye drops once a day. Doing it has not been terrible for anyone involved, an unexpected blessing.
Sylvester’s vet visit was the third vet visit since I got back home. The first visit was when I took Zoe in for an ear check, which found a yeast infection. So she gets eight drops of medication in each ear for 10 days.
The second vet visit was Sam, who injured his dewclaw while playing with Zoe. Sam’s dewclaw was a bloody mess. The vet yanked off the outer part of the nail, which Sam did not like.
This is how they play.
Poor Sam used to be a runner, but Zoe’s legs are just too long. Zoe stays ahead, but I think she holds back a little, enough to keep Sam almost within reach. Occasionally when Zoe has to make a sharp turn at the edge of the grassy area, Sam can cut the corner, and then Zoe really has to pour it on to stay ahead of him.
When they stop, they lie down on their backs head-to-head, and continue to gnaw at each other’s cheeks.
Zoe is much taller and heavier than Sam. I was a little worried that she would play too hard for him, but he seems to take it in stride. They aren’t the buddies that Sam and Zeke were, but maybe they’ll get there.
The shelter where I got Zoe said she is a German Shepherd-Doberman Pinscher mix. I was not sure at first, but at some angles her head looks just like a Doberman. Her coloring is obviously German Shepherd. This is a nice coincidence, since I like Dobermans and Leah likes German Shepards.
I have already posted a photo of my friends’ dog Elroy, who looks a lot like Zeke, but here’s another.
Elroy did not like Zoe, pretty much the same way he did not like Zeke. I kind of understand that, since Zoe’s manners are somewhat lacking.
Elroy is pretty old now and has a really hard time getting around. He can’t take NSAIDs, the standard arthritis medication, but his mom and dad are going to try something new. I hope it works, because I really like old Elroy.
I told Elroy that he is to be there the next time I visit.
Oh, and fall arrived while I was in Denver. Here is some proof.
I see oak, which is mainly yellowish brown, some hickory, which is bright yellow, and maple, which is orange or red. There is even a green leaf.
My driving trip to visit friends in Denver was the first I have made in a while without a dog. Zeke was a good traveling companion, and I miss him. Since he died I have taken the seat cover off the back seat, for the first time since I bought the truck. Of course I didn’t bring any of the paraphernalia needed for traveling with a dog. And I had no intention of getting a dog any time soon.
So, all of my friends, who are also dog lovers, suggested that we visit the Dumb Friends League of Denver, a no-kill rescue shelter, to check out the dogs. They had been looking at the online pictures and selected a few to view. I agreed to go see the dogs on Thursday, but I had to constantly remind them: I was going to look at dogs, not for a dog.
The Dumb Friends’ facility in Denver is impressive. It is modern. Each dog has its own large enclosure with glass front so the dogs don’t have to listen to the constant barking of other dogs. As in most pounds and shelters, most of the dogs were pit bulls or pit mixes. Some lay listlessly. Some stared hopefully at passersby. We looked at a couple of medium-sized, non-pit dogs, but neither was really my type.
On Friday we went south from Denver and happened to stop at the Dumb Friends Castle Rock branch, where they had recently taken in a dog they thought was a German Shepherd-Doberman Pinscher mix. Now, it just happens that Leah’s favorite breed is thea German Shepherd, and my favorite breed is the Doberman. But still, I was not at all convinced that I wanted another dog, no matter how appealing it might be.
We signed in and asked to look at this particular dog. They brought her into a visiting room, and we all checked each other out for a while. We took her outside to let her run around in an exterior enclosure. Then we went back inside and I said I wanted to adopt her.
Her name is Zoe. The Denver Dumb Friends had transported her from a shelter in Oklahoma, where, apparently, the general population takes about as much care of their dogs and cats as they do in Georgia, which is not much. The Denver shelter people knew nothing about her history, only that the Oklahoma shelter had given her a rabies vaccination. One of their vets examined her and found her to be in good shape. They found a scar that indicated she has been spayed.
They thought she was a Shepherd/Dobie mix, but didn’t really know. The German Shepherd part is obvious in her head and coloration. The Dobie part is not so obvious.
She has been with us for about 24 hours as I write this. In that time she has shown herself to be a very good dog. She gets along with everyone she meets. She is interested in other dogs, but not overly so. She has met Elroy, the elderly dog that looks so much like Zeke. Elroy is not amused with her presence here, but Zoe has been carefully avoiding him whenever she can.
She asks to go out to relieve herself, which is a big deal. She actually stepped into the bathtub to get a bath — all the dogs we looked at had a peculiar, unpleasant shelter smell. She did not like the bath, but she tolerated it.
The only real problem so far is that she has a very strong prey drive, so she is very interested in small animals that run. And, unfortunately, that category includes cats.
She is constantly in motion, walking around the house, checking out everything and everyone, looking for food, avoiding Elroy, so it has been hard to get a good photo that is not blurred. We took her for two good walks on Saturday, which apparently tired her enough that she actually plunked herself down for a while.
This is the best way to show her size at this point.
She is about 80 pounds, and long and lean. She may be part Doberman. The tail looks Dobermanish, a hard judgement to make given that undocked Doberman tails are so rare. One woman who saw her on one of our walks said she looked like a German Shepherd/ Doberman mix, so maybe she is.
It is possible that she is a little over a year old, as the shelter says, but it is also possible she is a little older. It is also possible that she is a little younger, which means she may not have reached her full growth.
Her manners are not good. She tends to want to eat food out of your hand just as you are placing that food into your mouth. She pulls too much on the leash. But these are things that she can learn about as she lives with us.
She slept by my bed Friday night in a bed we made from a foam pad and a fleece throw. She was calm, and slept the night through, only stirring to circle and lie down again, as dogs usually do.
At this point she usually comes by to check on me on her rounds, and seems concerned when I close the door into the bathroom, so even at this early stage she seems to understand that we are going to be a pair.
I bought her a good collar and two types of leashes. She has a food bowl and a water bowl for the almost 1400-mile trip back to Georgia. I have told Leah that I will not be coming home alone, and she seems OK with that. She is a little worried about how Zoe and Mollie will get along, but I think we can convince Zoe that Mollie is part of the pack.
The shelter named her Zoe, so we could change her name if we wanted to. I was concerned that Leah wouldn’t want to name her Zoe, since that was the name of the cat she had when we got married, and who disappeared in the night a few years ago. But she seems OK with that name, so I guess we’ll keep it.
I’m looking forward to some things. I hope Zoe and Sam become friends and can sleep and play together like Sam and Zeke did. I hope that Zoe becomes a part of our family. So far she seems like a very good dog.