Category Archives: Dogs

Milestones

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We passed two important milestones on Wednesday.

I have mentioned before, probably too many times, that we have a regular Wednesday lunch of huevos rancheros at our favorite Mexican restaurant. But for at least five weeks Leah has not been able to attend. She has had a really painful time with sciatica.

I had heard of sciatica but never understood how debilitating it could be. She has been taking a lot of pain pills for a long time with very limited relief. She had an epidural two weeks ago last Monday which hurt like hell and provided no relief . She has promised she will never have another one. On Tuesday she finally got a prescription for gabapentin, which is used for nerve pain. That seems to have helped, because around noon on Wednesday, she suggested that maybe we could eat at the Mexican restaurant. And so we did.

This was the best lunch we have had in a long time. Maria, the waitress who knows us best, served us. The hot sauce was the best we have ever had. I have heard TV chefs talk about chilis having a fruity flavor when prepared a certain way, but until we had this sauce, I had never tasted it. It was exactly the right combination of heat and flavor. The burrito sauce was also good. And the eggs.

So, we passed a milestone: Leah was able to get out of the house and have lunch. I don’t know whether it was a major milestone, but it certainly felt that way.

The second milestone involved a dog.

Zoe has a history of running away. I have told the story of her four-day road trip to who-knows-where, and at least a couple of other all-day affairs. On Wednesday afternoon I took Zoe and Sam into the front yard to play. I put them on about a 10-foot leash so they can get some running in. They had played for a while, and I was fairly relaxed, when they saw a squirrel near a tree at the edge of the yard. Zoe took off and jerked the leash out of my hand. She ran to the tree, and when the squirrel climbed the tree, Zoe kept going into the woods.

I called and called as she disappeared. I couldn’t run after her because I had Sam on his leash (plus arthritis in my knees), but Leah heard me calling and came out. She held Sam, and I was just getting read to hobble into the woods after Zoe when Leah said, “Here she comes!”

Yes, Zoe came back when she was called. It took a little more calling than would be ideal, but she actually came back to us.

So, we turned a corner. We passed a milestone. But I’m still going to keep her on her leash when she’s outside.

She’s lying on our living room couch in the photo. Leah is not thrilled to have her on the furniture, so she stays off until Leah goes to bed. Then she steps up to the couch and asks permission. I pat the cushion and she jumps up. Leah knows she’s doing it, but doesn’t really complain, as long as she doesn’t actually see it.

Cicada song

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It’s cicada season here in Georgia. They are everywhere in the woods. Their song is loud, droning and constant during the day. At night the crickets take up the task of constant song, and the cicadas do intermittent solos. If you are the kind of person who needs complete quiet at night, you can’t sleep with the windows open.

As for me, their sound tends to fade into the background, and I mostly don’t notice it. When I walked the dogs on Sunday, we went all the way down the mountain and then back to the top before I suddenly woke up to the sound. It was hard to believe that I didn’t notice it before. I recorded this video strictly for the sound.

The buzzing was amazingly loud. What you can’t tell from the video sound is that the buzzing seemed to circle around me. There was a constant sound all around, but overlaid on that was a louder buzz that seemed to circle around us. I don’t know whether it was real or an illusion.

The cicadas this year are almost certainly the annual type. I think, based on the images here, that ours are Southern Resonant/Great Pine Barrens Cicadas. Georgia also has 13-year and 17-year cicadas, none of which were due to emerge this year.

Cicadas spend most of their lives underground, eating away at grass and tree roots. When they emerge, they climb up a vertical surface and moult, leaving their exoskeletons behind to be picked off the bark of pine trees by little boys.

They die soon after mating. We occasionally find one in its death throes on the driveway. The dogs are fascinated by them. They nose them and then when they start buzzing, they want to eat them like crunchy little treats. Mollie the cat also sometimes brings them in, usually unharmed. Then we have to push the dogs out of the way so we can scoop them up and toss them back outside.

Truce

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Zoe has a strong prey drive. She is also very playful. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether she’s chasing Mollie or trying to play. In Leah’s eyes, it tends towards chasing, but I think there’s a strong element of play. Play that involves chasing, but still, play.

I caught them in the room we call our office Sunday afternoon. Mollie likes to lie in a chair in the sun, and Zoe likes to lie on the floor next to the air conditioning vent.

They were completely at ease. Neither was paying any attention to the other.

There was such a great difference in brightness that it was almost impossible to get a decent exposure for both at the same time.

Looking out for me

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Zoe escaped from me a few days ago as I was taking the dogs out for their morning walk. She saw/heard/smelled something, or thought she did, and bolted down across the yard and into the woods, with me calling. She apparently cannot run and hear at the same time.

I check the Fouche Gap/Texas Valley Facebook group when something like this happens, and during the time they were gone, there was one sighting down in Texas Valley. Later the same person saw both dogs near her yard, so I drove down to look. No luck. Then, even later, the same person posted that she saw them running back up the mountain, tongues dragging the ground. Zoe’s leash was also dragging the ground.

Zoe seems to be Zeke’s spiritual successor. I could never take Zeke out off leash. Every time he saw an open door, and sometimes even an open window, he jumped for it. Zoe is not that bad. I can take her outside to the truck and not worry about her running off. If she disappears around the corner of the house, she comes back when I call her. But when something happens, she takes off.

The main difference in their wandering is that Zeke always stayed around the top of the mountain, and Zoe does not. She runs down into Texas Valley, sometimes miles away. I don’t know why, but it might have something to do with the fact that for years I took Zeke for walks around the top of the mountain, sometimes into the woods, up and down the side of the mountain, but Zoe has always been walked on Fouche Gap Road. I have never taken her into the woods at the top.

But who knows what’s going on in her mind, assuming she has one.

Just before the dogs showed up at the back door, our neighbor Deb called Leah to make sure I was OK. She knew that I always accompany the dogs, so when she saw them running without me, she was worried that something had happened to me. The next day when I took the dogs down Fouche Gap Road, an older man stopped to tell me he had been worried, too, when he saw the dogs without me. He said he started looking carefully along the road to make sure I wasn’t lying disabled somewhere.

I have been walking the dogs on Fouche Gap Road for several years at around the same time of day. I always wave at passing motorists, and they always wave back. So we kind of know each other. It’s kind of funny, but also reassuring. People were paying attention.

Fear of flies

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Zoe didn’t want to complete her walk Friday morning. She didn’t pull on her leash as she normally does. Instead, she kept close and circled around me. We had gone less than a quarter of the way to our regular turnaround when she turned around and wanted to go back home. A couple of times recently she has started out on one of her short, restroom walks and suddenly turned and started pulling back towards the house. It seems she has had an encounter with a horsefly.

My second doberman, Bella, was afraid of horseflies. She was fairly old when I got her. Her hips were bad, and she had apparently never done much walking in her previous life. That was back when I was doing some running. I didn’t want to take her with me, because she couldn’t run the whole distance. I would have to stop and walk with her back to the house.

When I tried to go for a run by myself, I left her on the deck, where she would howl and cry until I relented and let her come with me. Inevitably, I had to walk her back home. The one time I saw her run, and fast, was when a horsefly came buzzing around her. She wanted nothing to do with that. Apparently a horsefly bite is worse than arthritis in the hips. She knew exactly what she was running from. One time I managed to smack a horsefly that had lit on her back. When it fell to the pavement, Bella leaned down to it, bared her front incisors, and bit the damned thing to death.

I don’t blame Bella or Zoe for running from a horsefly. I have been bitten a few times, and it’s not a pleasant experience. I assume Zoe has been bitten at some time because she recognizes the buzzing sound as something to fear. Her original home was Oklahoma, which probably has horseflies. Maybe even more than their fair share.