I am an urbanite. I grew up in urban areas, was college educated, even snagging a masters degree along the way. I am comfortable in shopping malls, coffee houses and all the kindred places. I am not sure how I ended up living in the country on a rolling prairie in North Texas. I really can’t say why I am living in a not so big trailer which is swaying in the strong gusts of wind blowing across the land. But it all started with our beloved female American German Shepherd, Kata.

Kata loved balls, or rather, chasing balls. In the working dog community it would be said that she was prey driven. We found this out when we enrolled her as a tiny puppy in obedience classes in a public park with baseball fields. When the ball fields were in action, Kata was totally zeroed in on the movement of the ball. Obedience was not on her mind at all, but we struggled through several levels of classes. Since so many folks are scared of German Shepherds, we felt that Kata needed good obedience.

German Shepherds have an image: Rin Tin Tin, police dogs, combat dogs, service dogs and search and rescue dogs. We, too, had this image and nothing about Kata, our German Shepherd, led us to believe otherwise. During the last level obedience class we met a man active in search and rescue in a group training at DFW airport in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Before we knew what we were doing my husband, Ron, was taking classes to be certified as a Search and Rescue Tech and then training Kata with the search and rescue (SAR) group.

After a while, a new recruit, Nils, a young bio medical graduate student, showed up in the group, with his male German Shepherd. Ron and Nils became friends and the two dogs best buds. Ron and Nils were dissatisfied with the training they were receiving from the SAR group, and eventually Nils found a couple in Jacksboro, Texas, who with their SAR group, T.A.S.K., were well known for their training of SAR dogs.

SAR dogs are divided into three categories: scent specific trailing dogs, air scent dogs and cadaver or human remains detection (HDR) dogs. Bloodhounds are the best known of the scent specific dogs or trailing dogs which work on long lines. Air scent dogs, sometimes known as disaster dogs, are the best known of all the SAR dogs and usually work off leash. The third category is cadaver or HRD dogs, which are specialist air scent dogs, also working off leash.

Over the next few months, Ron drove up to Jacksboro, about a 140 mile round trip, once a week for training, finally learning the right way to handle Kata. Since he was getting up and driving there before dawn, I started going as I worried about him driving alone. Finally, in May 2003, Kata was certified. Sadly, two months later she died, leaving us much too early at age 2 ½ due to complications from an immune system deficiency. Shortly after this devastating event, our SAR instructors, Carl and his wife, called us saying that they had two German Shepherd sisters from Louisiana who had come for evaluation as search dogs. The sisters were from working lines, unlike Kata who had show lines, and they were of German extraction, not American German Shepherd heritage. The instructors were particularly taken by the all black, three and half month old puppy, which was the puppy we choose, naming her Greta aus Tofteinhund. Greta was trained as a scent specific trailing dog and was certified in February 2004, one day before turning nine months, an extremely young age for any dog to be certified.

August 2004

In August 2004, we got another puppy, Vodin von Draggahaus, a black and red German Shepherd, also with working lines with a Czechoslovakian born father and a mother of German extraction. Vodin, like Greta, is a high drive dog with a lot of focus, which is needed for a SAR dog. She is being trained for Human Remains Detection.

We were getting tired of driving up to Jack County and were thinking of buying some land and building a house in Jack County. Carl and his wife wanted land to build a canine training center. Soon we were looking for adjacent land to buy. It seems that everyone in Jack County knows and likes Carl, a native son and a big bear of a man with a grin that spreads across his face like a summer sunrise. He is a park ranger at the Fort Richardson State Parks as well as the law enforcement officer for the park.

Carl’s popularity was a boon for us because we were able to get very good land that the owner probably would have not sold to anyone else. In addition, Carl’s knowledge of Jack County, good water sources, good soil, and the intricacies pertaining to buying land, at least kept us, ignorant as we were, from making serious mistakes as we probably would have on our own. Finally, in August 2004, after at long last getting the surveyor out and completing negotiations, the land was ours, all 91 acres.

The idea was to buy the land and put a trailer on it until we could build the house. We planned to spend weekends at the trailer while building the house. Of course, we forgot some important steps to turning raw land into a ranch. Actually we didn’t even know there were steps. But Carl was there to tell us, or rather Ron, who might or might not get the news to me in a timely fashion. There is the matter of the fences, taking down and building them (the latter done by professionals); the matter of a water well, which has to be within the homestead; the matter of the building of the entrance gate (done by professionals); the acid washing thereof, followed by painting and a myriad of other items. Carl guided us through this as the dollars went wafting out of our pockets.

We went blithely off to view used trailers in Mansfield, climbing through dozens of un-air conditioned trailers in the Texas August heat. Finally, on the second visit, we ignorantly selected a 29 foot fifth wheel trailer. A fifth wheel trailer attaches to a device in the bed of a pickup and is therefore more stable than trailers towed by a trailer hitch. Hence, fifth wheels tend to be more popular and easier to resell than other types of trailers. But even with the newly acquired information about trailers, we sure didn’t know what we were doing or what awaited us. We made arrangements for a man to tow the trailer to the ranch with us guiding the way. Carl prepared a trailer pad next to the well on his property, dug a septic tank and prepared for water and electricity to the trailer. Up we rolled, pickup and trailer following behind, ready for our first night on the ranch. But since our land was still raw land with no well, the trailer was actually put on Carl’s land where there was a well and hence water, a vital necessity of course.

The two men we know in the Jack County area are Carl and Milton, a deputy sheriff in Jack County who runs the narcotics dog, a German Shepherd. The most outstanding characteristic of the two men is their ability to repair things. I am good at maintaining a list of good repairmen to come and make repairs. That doesn't work in rural Jack Co. The result is we are total greenhorns in repairs as in so many other areas. We have gone from being a success in the world of boardrooms to being regular screw-ups here. Change is good but this a major learning curve.

Our first days in the trailer were prone to mini-disasters. Lesson One: I didn't know one couldn't have the air conditioner on in the trailer and run the microwave. Net result: blown fuses-it is sure dark out there in the country. Lesson Two: Charmin Bathroom tissue is bad news in the pipes leading to the "black water" tank on a trailer. One must to use the cheap, falls apart stuff. Net result: find a handy mesquite bush. I was packed and ready to go home when a partial repair finally got the thing working somewhat, just in time since the next morning the ranch was brim full of dog handlers and their cadaver dogs. Ain't no mesquite big enough to provide cover in that situation. This problem continued for several days until big burly Carl came to our rescue using his strength to seal the commode and create a vacuum to blow out the obstruction. Lesson Three: Cows can be bad news electrically. We came back to trailer to find that the power is on battery (thank goodness for the battery..."very dark in the country"). We thought another fuse blew. After much more hair pulling, we discovered a cow had pulled out the plug from the trailer to the power source. Lesson Four (non-painful): Cows are opinionated and very vocal. When we got the new side and back fence, cutting off the neighbor's cows from our lush native grasses, lordy, were they put out! We have never heard such mooing and bellowing. Lesson Five: Bulldozer breaks down and parks itself outside the trailer. The bulldozer (hired to dig mesquite) that had a major breakdown is still parked outside the trailer along with racks of steel pipes, rolls of barbed wire...well, you get the picture, as the owner tries to make repairs. Last I heard the owner was going to cut off an outside cover to put in the new part and weld it back together. Lesson Six: Losing keys is stupid. When we got a combination lock for our new $1000 gate I lost or threw in the trash the key used to change the combination. Result: Pawing through trash sitting on the steps of trailer with the dogs inside. Puppy Vodin decided that my library book tasted pretty good...saved the book from total destruction, but it is well decorated with puppy teeth marks.

Our first days were marked by our first encounters with livestock and wildlife, the latter at a distance thank goodness. Every evening, the cows liked to bed down around the trailer and every evening when we took the dogs out, we would have to shoo the cows away for the dogs to do their thing. Then, late in the evening, we would hear the coyotes yelping nearby, falling silent as they passed the trailer, and then starting up again when they reached the trees. Carl had told us of spotting a very large male coyote a couple of times at the ranch. One night, out with the dogs, Ron heard what sounded like a woman screaming, most probably a wildcat. I am glad to have missed that.

In the middle of this is the fall T.A.S.K. (The Alliance for Search K9s) seminar, which is why the ranch was full of air scent dogs and their handlers the day of the commode problems. The most memorable day during seminar occurred at 2 a.m. when a massive thunderstorm rolled in. The trailer is made for highway travel and has suitable springs, but it does shimmy and shake when anyone walks it. And when a thunderstorm and its winds arrive the trailer adds rattles and rolls to its shimmy and shakes. It didn’t take much imagination to see the trailer heaving up and rolling on its side. Greta hunkered down under the dinette table. The storm woke little Vodin in a dog crate by the dinette table. I lay on the floor by the crate to calm her. Ron pulled on pants and shirt just in case. I was already dressed. It was pretty scary, but finally the storm passed. A trailer, unlike a house, doesn’t put much between the occupants and the storm. We should have noted that the cows didn’t bed down near the trailer that night. Apparently that they knew the storm was coming and stayed down in the trees. You would think that they could have let these greenhorns know what was coming.

Ron pulled down a goodly part of a barbed wire fence only to have Carl decide it would be best to bulldoze the old fence. The other dozer (the broken one) only got a tiny part of the mesquite up. The dogs don't much care for being locked up with me “dog sitting” since we have no fenced yard.

The architect of our house is a very nice person but must have dollar signs dancing in her head. And I am wondering if this house with a view is really a high rise condo.

Remember a few years ago when it was popular for bunches of men got together to get in touch with their "inner core" and did the “primal scream thingy”? Well, now I understand it. Four cows managed to sneak back onto our land and we found them while we walking with our dogs. I should mention that cows are rather large, but as I had been shooing them away from the trailer before we got the new fences up so I was fearless (and probably stupid). Both dogs were familiar and somewhat fascinated by cows before this. Greta was on her E-collar (electronic collar) and Vodin on a leash. Vodin started barking being a major vocal dog. Greta just danced right up to them. The largest cow started lumbering toward Greta in a rather aggressive manner. We retrieved Greta before the cow charged and decided to herd the four cows to the back gate, back to where they belong. I took a big breath and let her rip at full voice, "Shoo Cow!!" Lordy, that felt so good! We spend our urban lives corralling our selves and now I could let completely go. I think Ron took a step back when I “let her rip”, but he joined right in and the chase was on. Down the fence line we went, dodging the old barbed wire and uprooted trees where the new fence was put in. Rather quickly, we herd the cows near the back gate. But the cows got to the gate before we did and they aren't completely dumb. As we stumbled after them, the cows thought, "Hmmmm, lets go that away and get away from these screaming idiots." Ron and Greta went left to box them in at the gate, while I threw Vodin over a roll of old barbed wire and followed them. The cows were getting away. Ron handed me Greta's collar remote control and took off after the cattle. Greta obviously didn’t think that was a great idea, but I had her collar remote and she reluctantly stayed with me as Ron cut off the cows' escape. Greta, Vodin and I kept the cows from making another escape back along the fence and finally, they are herded through the gate where a cow on the other side had been observing the goings on with great interest and probably great perplexity. Ron then asked me what the heck I was hollering to the cows. "Shoo cows," I said, but I think it degraded to "Moo cows" at the end. Heavens, that was great fun!

The following Saturday, the new bulldozer guy showed up to find out what we wanted done. The previous bulldozer guy had been able to clear only enough for us to basically see where we wanted the house to be built. His bulldozer, a scarred yellow veteran of years of bulldozing, still decorates a corner of our junkyard. The new bulldozer guy, who rather looks like a bulldozer, has great pride in his line of work and spent two hours regaling Ron with stories about his many years hauling truck loads in Alaska as well other assorted adventures before he returned to his native Jack County. At one point I joined the conversation in time to hear him say that he doesn’t bulldoze cactus clumps, waving one arm toward a nearby growth of cactus. If bulldozed, he said, all the spines fly up in the air, falling down on the dozer and its now benighted operator, not a desirable situation. Besides, he added, rats and mice live in the cactus clumps and there is always a rat snake also living there. I cast a worried, but now knowledgeable glance at the offending cactus clump, growing so quietly near the trailer. The new dozer guy won’t get to our job until after Thanksgiving. The inference is that he does such a good job that he is booked. I have visions of his bulldozer—big, shiny, and tough. I wonder if that is true?

The lessons keep coming. This weekend, we had plans to paint the front gate. Carl told us we needed to acid wash the gate first, wait 24 hours and paint. That way the paint would last much longer. And in case we didn’t believe him he showed us two gates, one that hadn’t been acid washed and one that had. The evidence was more than clear. On Friday, we got acid wash at Jacksboro’s Nash Hardware since our local Lowe’s in suburban Keller has never heard of acid wash. We brought a pump sprayer with us and early Saturday, we quickly applied the acid wash. Hey! This fence stuff will be a snap. Later that day Carl told us about painting mitts which supposedly worked well on gates, what with all the pipe shapes and all. So off we went again to Nash Hardware, where we loaded up with seal brown metal paint, painting mitts and turpentine. Back at the ranch, changing clothes to paint, we notice clouds coming up in the west, but apparently moving to the north. The question was, should we go ahead and paint or not? Is it o.k. to wait over 24 hours after applying the acid wash? Finally, we decided to paint. By now, this lesson was probably self-evident: don’t paint when there is even the slighted chance of moisture. We had just finished painting the bars on one side and were starting on the gate itself, when a sprinkling of rain stopped us just as effectively as a torrent of rain.

We also discover that while painting mitts may be the way to go for painting fences, wet paint can and did get through the thin plastic lining, and now our hands are gross with brown paint worked into every crease and our nail cuticles. Ugh. Wishing to spare the Suburban any accidental spillage as it bumped its way back to the trailer, I decided to take the opened paint can and the little paint buckets and walk back to the trailer. Half way there, I encountered two cows or what I thought were two cows. Emboldened by previous success, I approach them with my “Shoo Cow,” only to realize that one “cow” was a bull. Well…onward I went, now watching the cow and bull rather intensely, still yodeling “Shoo cow” and not watching my feet. Sure enough, I tripped on a partially bulldozed mesquite branch lying on the ground, but still attached to the ground. Paint can, and buckets and I went flying, but there was a bull there, so I popped right up, paint can and buckets in hand. This strange behavior on my part was, from the cow’s and bull’s point of view, reason to depart the scene, which they promptly did. Unfortunately, I still had not learned my lesson and soon it had to be repeated.

Once cleaned of the paint with liberal doses of turpentine, Ron and I, with Greta wearing her electronic collar, went off to remove the cow and bull to their rightful pasturage. Puppy Vodin was at the SAR instructor’s to begin her imprinting for cadaver work. Greta spotted the cow as we entered the woods and went into herding mode. While Greta is not experienced in herding, it was obvious that she thought it is very interesting. However, the cow was on her left. Greta had not spotted the bull on her right. We didn’t want to send the cow into panic flight and we didn’t want Greta blindsided if the bull decided to move on her. Ron has some cow herding experience from time spent on his grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ farms as a child, and he began to call Greta to him. Obviously Greta felt obeying Ron wasn’t nearly as much fun, but finally she returned. Later, we found that Greta’s e-collar needed charging, and she wasn’t feeling the reminder nicks to return to Ron’s side. By now, the cow was spooked and the bull followed her lead as she ran off away from the back gate with Ron in hot pursuit. That left Greta and me waiting near the back gate. Finally, when Ron didn’t return, we started making our way out of the woods, back up the hill to open ground. Greta would trot off seeking Ron, with me trying to keep up, constantly calling her back. I was busy trying to keep an eye on her, and once again had to learn how important it was to watch where I step. Not looking, I stepped on part of a cactus on the ground resulting in cactus spines in my right leg. Now I was pulling the visible spines out, calling Greta and struggling to keep up with her. Something was still stabbing my shin and when we cleared the woods and I got Greta back to my side, I pulled up my pants leg to discover another cactus spine…nasty things. We met up with Ron to discover that the cow and bull had taken the back route by the water tank and disappeared.

The next weekend, we were better prepared to paint, right? Only Carl tells us that he has several gates to paint and not to worry, he has a paint sprayer and will spray our two gates. Sounds good. Certainly any logical person would agree, but it was a beautiful Saturday and by 1:00 p.m. I wanted to go out and paint; feeling after all that painting is sort of a Zen thing, perfect thing for a beautiful day.

I digress here to mention that we had to pick up puppy Vodin from the SAR instructor’s earlier in the week. The instructors are going through one of those tumultuous times we all suffer once in awhile. They have a premature grandson in a Fort Worth hospital and the father/son has had a wreck and totaled his car, so one of the instructors is chauffeuring him to and from the hospital as well as visiting the baby. Then the baby develops a staph infection and had to go back on a respirator. With all the turmoil, there isn’t any time to train Vodin.

Back at the ranch, we loaded both dogs in the Suburban and bounced down to the front gate, backing the vehicle up so the dogs could see us while we are painting. We needed to touch up the part we painted the previous weekend and paint the rest. The fence part is no problem but the gate…well, it became a marathon. The gate is made up of galvanize steel the diameter of a straw in a square pattern, seemly thousand of squares before I finish. I went through two cheap paint brushes and time was speeding by. Ron went off herding a stray cow and I painted on. He came back just in time, painted the last fence part as the insect and birds started making night sounds and the light began to faint. Together, we finished in the nick of time as dusk fell.

The other achievement of the weekend was Ron’s. The deputy sheriff we know offered us the use of a small dog pen and Carl offered his 3/4 ton truck for Ron to drive to Graham to get the dog pen. Driving the 3/4 ton was a new experience for Ron, who was also able to wrestle the dog pen on the truck bed by himself and ratchet it down. Successfully returning, Ron was able to decipher the ratchet system to disengage it. Later using Carl’s 4 X 4 All Terrain Vehicle (ATV), Ron went down to the barn and chained up a wood platform that Carl offered and dragged it back to the trailer to put the dog pen on. The whole business was a total success for Ron. He is turning out to be pretty handy, if I must say so.

Ron continued the training for Vodin that the SAR instructors had started, hiding the search items for her in our personal junkyard, an advantage in training a cadaver dog providing lots of hiding places. Carl dropped by and helped, saying that Vodin has a great nose and is very intelligent. That last part I already knew. Vodin may well be the most intelligent Shepherd we have had. She is doing so well in the training that the instructor only buried a few items. No problem for Vodin; she went right to them.

Sunday morning, I took the dogs to our front gate to check the paint job. Unfortunately, the path is blocked by a rather large herd of cattle, two bulls, cows and calves. I bulled my way through (no pun intended) but coming back they aren’t so intimidated by us and a confrontation ensued as one cow decided that Greta was a threat to her calf. My by now patented “Shoo Cow!” was notably ineffective and the cow is definitely lowering her head in an aggressive manner toward Greta. So I had a heart to heart conversation with the cow, or rather mother to mother. I told her that I understood her position. but Greta was my baby and if she made a move toward Greta I would jump on her back and tear her carotid artery out with my bare teeth if necessary. And I meant every word. Did you know cows really don’t understand English? Finally, I got Greta to back up to me. Vodin was on a long line, a twenty foot lease. I had Vodin close to me, so I took the excess leash, twirling it over my head like a lasso and advanced on the herd, screaming “Shoo cow.” Momma cow finally took the hint and the whole group lumbered off far enough for us to pass.

Later, we started home early, visiting briefly with Carl who was welding on a new gate for the man who had sold us the land. We didn’t know what the near future held for him or we would have stayed close to him instead of going back to Keller.

The next weekend, we decided not to stay in the trailer as the forecast was night temperatures in the thirties but we had to go up anyway for Ron to meet Milton, who would guide Ron in winterizing the trailer in case temperatures dropped to freezing. But first, we drove to Mineral Wells to visit Carl who was in the hospital for what turned out to be a brown recluse spider bite on his right hand. Carl had been cleaning out his barn so that he could work in the barn during the winter. While pulling out a pile of old newspapers, he also pulled out a nest of small brown spiders and apparently, one spider got in his glove. His hand and eventually arm swelled to about twice normal size and by Wednesday he was a reluctant hospital patient receiving antibiotics via IV.

We went by this barn when we came in the gates going to the trailer. So we have a barn with brown recluse spiders on one side of the trailer and a cactus clump with mice, rats and rat snakes on the other side of it. Should I mention that the stars are beautiful on a clear night? I have to keep perspective here or I will run to my suburban home, jump in bed and pull up the covers. But instead I hope to learn my lessons well. So, I instructed Ron to go jump up and down on the bed in the trailer. Surely that will discourage brown recluse spiders, right? At least the snakes should be abed for the winter. At least I hope so. On one occasion, Vodin indicated snake smell right after we set up with the trailer. Then once, Greta indicated snake smell. I am glad I had both dogs snake proofed before we came up here. I will take them for a refresher course next year. We know of one search dog bitten by a rattler in San Antonio in tall grass. We hope to avoid that.

While Milton helped Ron with winterization, I decided to take the dogs for a walk since they had been in their cages for several hours. I put the e-collar on Greta, checking to make sure I knew which button, the “nick” button, to push in case she wants to take off to visit Milton. I wrestle the dogs out the trailer door. Sure enough, Greta spotted Milton and Ron by looking under the trailer and made her move. I pushed the button. Greta yelped and made a huge mid air half twist. Oh, *#*#* I had hit the “constant” button, much stronger than the “nick” button. I spent the first half of the walk profusely apologizing to Greta. We walked down to the front gate where I discovered we had indeed, as we suspected when we had eyed the gate driving by on the main road, missed painting a couple of parts of the gate. That part had been in shadow at the end of the painting session. Understandable, but our inefficiency is discouraging, causing me to heave another huge sigh. I seemed to be heaving a lot of sighs recently. The perfectionist in me has taken a few hits. Greta spent part of the walk trying to scare up any yellow butterflies (her favorite) to chase, but she couldn’t even scare up a dragonfly. The wildlife is bedded down for the cold snap.

Of course, since we didn’t stay in the trailer, but returned to Keller, we had a call out at 9:30 Saturday night when three teenagers went missing in Mineral Wells State Park. The teens were found before the dogs were deployed, and we got home about 1:30 a.m. I understand that our Suburban got on Channel 5 News, but I never even saw the news vans, much less the cameras. It is a bit scary that the television folks can take pictures from so far away. If we had been staying at the trailer, it would have been only a twenty minute drive. Ah, well, we were warmer in Keller anyway.

In December, we finally took our grandkids to Jacksboro where they hung around while we trained the SAR dogs. Then they went out to the ranch with us and over to a neighboring place where we were selecting the cows we were buying. Six year old Abbie seemed to especially enjoy the dog training since she loves dogs. She went from dog crate to dog crate, talking to and petting each dog, carefully dividing her time between each in a fair and equitable manner. Ten year old Alex seemed to like the cattle selection process, hanging out with Granddad Ron and Carl.

We now have twenty-two cows and eight calves! Some of these are same cows on which I practiced “scream therapy,” but now we own them. Alas! No more scream therapy as we want them to be fat and content. We also seem to have trouble holding on to at least one since we are missing a calf, but finally we have cows. Actually, we have all Momma cows or Momma cows-to-be, a lot of calves and one bull. Having cows means getting to learn a whole new set of knowledge. Cows eat range cubes which warm their stomachs so that they will eat the dry grass during the winter. I wonder why this is so? They also need salt blocks, sulfur blocks and heavens knows what else. We have bought hay and the afore mentioned cubes in large quantities.

When Ron, daughter Leigh and I arrived at the ranch the weekend before Christmas, the cattle came a-running. They associate vehicles with food. I don’t think they thought very well of us when they discovered we weren’t the meal wagon and they wandered away. Ron, Leigh and I tried herd the cattle toward a front pen where we wanted to feed cattle cubes to them. Timing seems an issue in herding cattle and now I can see why shepherds had dogs. I was wishing I had a horse. The four wheeler, which Ron and daughter Leigh used to retrieve some calves left in a lower pasture, was way too noisy, but I would be happy to use it versus hoofing it on foot like I was doing. Then Carl, who had been working on another chore, came over in his pickup, tooted the horn and the cattle trotted merrily after him to the cattle cubes which he had scattered behind the barn. That is what I like, cattle trained to respond to pickup horn, much, much easier.

The big bulldozer, which turned out to be a very big, traditional yellow Caterpillar, finally came and tore up all the mesquite in the pasture/field where we will build the house. The bulldozer dug big holes in the ground, which then had to be smoothed over, and we now had no grass in that entire area. So we have to have someone come in and seed winter rye, which the cattle supposedly love anyway. Carl said that it will look like a golf green. Nice thought but in the end it just looked like a rough, grassy field, not a putting green.

January 2005

We now know what happened to our missing calf. It appears that it was killed by a feral dog or hybrid wolfdog. Carl found the carcass of the calf and, without going into graphic detail, the pattern was not that of a coyote kill. This animal has been spotted a couple of times. Last fall it was just sunning itself as big as you please in broad daylight, obviously not in the least bothered by the presence of humans nearby. Carl was in his pickup at the ranch with one of his sons in the passenger seat when he spotted it out his son’s window. “Give me my gun,” he told his son. “Why?” his son replied. “I want to shot that big coyote,” he said. At that time the man thought it was just a very big coyote. “Shoot it through my window!?” his son asked. Realizing that shooting past his son’s head was not a good idea, he passed on that opportunity, a decision heartily endorsed by his son. Our friend spotted the animal at least once more and describes it as a 125 lb. hybrid dog. His wife, who spent part of her childhood living in the country, thinks it is more likely a feral dog, whose dog ancestors were dumped in the country generations ago. Later we learn that a neighbor has lost five calves in the past year to like incidents.

Hopefully, we may be able to take care of this problem animal. As it happens, a friend in a town near Dallas is part of some hunting contest. He and his buddy will sign in for the contest in his town early this coming Saturday, then drive to Jack County and spend all night hunting on two ranches, including ours. I am told that this is something they do all the time. As for me, I am perfectly terrified thinking about being out there in the dark hunting a 125 pound bundle of confident animal with a mouth full of sharp teeth, which obviously does not fear humans and is capable of bringing down a calf, albeit a smallish one. That thought sends a shudder right through me. I guess I am not as tough as I would like to think.

Least one feel sorry of the feral dog, or hybrid wolf dog, consider that this animal is almost twice as big as our big German Shepherd, Greta, and perfectly capable of taking down our dogs and, in the right circumstances, capable of attacking us, considering that it is not fearful of humans. If it anything, I am angry at the people who dump dogs.

Last Saturday we worked our search and rescue dogs at the ranch and one participant wore her handgun, loaded with hollow point ammunition. If she spotted the animal and shot it, she wanted to make sure it was down and wouldn’t suffer. She obviously took this very seriously. All I can say, is I do too.

We aren’t “gun people”. I have only fired one weapon, a rifle, and that was when I was about 4 years old. My grandfather put the rifle to his shoulder and I pulled the trigger. That was also the only time I ever touched a gun. Ron has a bit more experience, having had a 22 rifle as a boy, using it while visiting on his grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ farms in Collin County, north of Dallas. Now I am feeling vulnerable without that knowledge of guns. We need to get ourselves to a firing range. After we move in the house maybe we can stack some hay bales, attach a target and practice (and maybe scare off some toothy critters). A friend has offered the use of his guns until we decide what to buy. Maybe a shotgun is in order as not much precision needed to hit the target with a shotgun, considering the scatter effect of the shotgun. I only hope I don’t blow off some important part of my body on this learning curve; not a good time to be clumsy.

Unfortunately, the hunters didn’t get the feral dog/wolf dog. Nevertheless, I heard that the hunters went away happy. They did get a bobcat which may explain the scream that Ron heard late one night last fall outside the trailer. Early Texas settlers reported hearing screams that sounded like a woman, but were probably bobcats or panthers. There is even a creek east of Austin called Screaming Woman Creek. Creepy. I am glad I didn’t hear the scream.

I am told the country just east of us is pretty rough isolated country and it is probably from where the feral dog/wolf dog is coming into our land. I think that area needs a nice housing development…er…nope, that is what we are trying to get away from, right? Nooo, a housing development sounds just about right to this city girl. Oh, the conflicting feelings!

On Monday, we went to the ranch and marked off the approximate location of the house so that the water well digging man can come out and drill. Unfortunately, he has not returned our calls. I wonder how long the wait list is for getting the well dug? The previous week we met with the power company representative and decided how to run the electricity to the house site. This means Ron now has to call our absentee neighbor, who lives in Lubbock, and get an easement. Nothing is simple. We also decided to run the road from the front gate to the house along the western fence. It is the highest point and in the past a bunch of rock had been pushed there when this was a cotton field. These factors mean less likelihood of vehicles getting stuck in wet conditions, a possibility even with a white rock road. Therefore, no sweeping drive, but a decision made with practicality in mind.

I have received a lot of grief over selecting the pasture for the house location. Most folks would, at the very least, put the house at the tree line or even back in the trees where there are a couple of nice clearings. That way, these folks say, looking questioningly at me, we would be better protected from the weather. I, however, was reared in West Texas and like wide open spaces. I jokingly say that this way I can see anyone or anything coming and no trees can come crashing down on us in storms. Plus with the pasture location, there are a couple of valley views. But for me the best part is seeing the clouds. In West Texas, the prettiest thing is the sky, and here I will have an unrestricted view. Of course, seeing what sort of critters are inhabiting the property with us, I might be wise to keep one eye on the ground and surrounding area.

The pasture area is cleared of all the mesquite and has more grass than I first realized. It is ready for the grass man who is in truth a baling guy, looking for additional winter income. He seems willing to go to the right places to learn the best way to protect our existing dormant and bulldozer-disturbed grasses, while smoothing the ground (very rough right now) and sowing rye grass for the cows. He will be doing that next week. An interesting fact is that coastal grass will support one cow for each 1 or 2 acres while it takes 12 to 13 acres of native grasses, like bluestem, to support one cow. It is hardly a wonder that there is so much coastal grass around. On the negative side, coastal grass has to be fertilized…more money out the pocket. On the positive side the coastal grass will be a revenue stream since it can be baled two or three times a season, depending on the weather, and later sold. If we fence off some ten acres we can graze all our cattle on the coastal there, leaving the rest for baling.

At this point, however, all the places one’s money can be spent are amazing: bulldozers, fences, haul out the old wire and pieces of wood missed by the bulldozers, grass guys, well men and so on. But we do have important improvements now and it has increased the value of the land. If it only had a house!

The grass guy has returned to the ranch and decides that there are still too many mesquite branches and roots for him to do a proper job. We send out our pick-up crew again and this time the grass guy is happy enough to start sowing the winter rye. He does point out, however, that more debris from clearing the mesquite still needs to be removed. As it is right now, he can’t use his small baler next summer to bale the square bales, but would have to use the baler for the large round bales. So we need to go on branch/root pick up excursions before baling time rolls around. Ron jokes that he doesn’t want to have anyone walking on his nice smooth “golf course” to-be. Hmmm, if things don’t work out, maybe we can turn it into a golf course. After all, we are only about a hour northwest of Fort Worth. There’s that city girl thinking again!

The cows want the rye grass NOW! When we went by the ranch to check on the rye grass, we went in to drop something at the trailer. As we were leaving, a hungry cow spotted us, let out a loud bellow and a number of the other cows came at a run, faster than I had ever seen them move. It is a race to the gate. Now I know that I don’t know anything about cows, except that they are much bigger than me, and that I don’t want to get in a wrestling match with them at the gate, so I am saying “Hurry, Ron. They are gaining on us!” Not that Ron should care as it is me who gets to open and close the gates. Fortunately, our Suburban is faster than a hungry cow and I slam the gate closed just as the first cow arrives. I couldn’t help it…I gloated in the cow’s face…”Ah ha! I beat you!” It was surely false bravado, but the cow being on the other side of the barbed wire, so I got away with it.

At last the well fellow is ready to drill, so, of course, it rained. Made sense to me; kind of like washing your car. However, if one isn’t familiar with the country, I should say that to drive out to the actual house site when it is wet is to probably stay at the house site because any non-4 wheel drive vehicle driven in there would be stuck. It would have been nice to lay down a gravel road, but if upon drilling there is no water at that location, then the house won’t be there and we would have a road to nowhere. So we will wait until next week and keep our fingers crossed, hoping that the weather cooperates and things dry out enough for the drilling rig to get in.

Still rather damp, even after a late lunch in a warm restaurant, we drove back home and buried our noses in sporting goods catalogues, looking for better gear for cold wet conditions, thinking that we will continue to be out in the weather at the ranch. Now there is a dreadful thought. I remember reading about early Texas circuit preachers who died of exposure while riding horseback from church to church…probably a lesson there. Yet there is something really nice about getting dry after being wet, about getting warm after being cold. Makes one really, really appreciate central heating and hot water.

February 2005

The first two weeks of February are tough for us as it keeps raining, not continuously but enough so that the ground at the ranch never dries out enough for the drilling of the water well. The drilling rig weighs megatonnage and in wet conditions is in dire danger of getting stuck. So it rains and we wait for it to dry out enough for drilling, but then it rains again. I start to have visions of hot dry August days.

This situation is problematic in that the best time to build this house would be right after the first cold snap, eliminating the bringing in of various bugs during the framing of the house. The water well could have been dug in September while it was still plenty warm and dry. As it worked out however, we bought the land in August, and after fencing and clearing the pasture we are now into the beginning of Springtime in Texas, although another cold snap is likely. Then five months to build the house (used to only take three months) and we would have had a completed house in March. Then we could have put our current house on the market at the beginning of the best selling season, March to July.

But that isn’t how it worked out, which is really irritating to me since I really knew all this and blithely went ahead on my merry way. Age brings knowledge and experience but that is entirely useless without common sense. However, there is the pressure to get on with the project since we sure aren’t getting any younger last we checked.

Finally, on a Saturday, the driller goes out to the ranch to check on the drilling possibilities and almost gets stuck. But lucky for us, he sees the big yellow Caterpillar tractor that the tree/mesquite clearing man left parked near our front gate. The driller wants to know whose tractor it is and Ron tells him. The driller knows him and realizes that the tractor guy could pull his drilling rig out if it got stuck. In another week it was dry enough that the driller is willing to try to drill.

Ron goes to the ranch to oversee the operation. The drilling rig does get stuck and the tractor guy does pull it out. The drilling starts….water, but not enough. The driller tells Ron to drill down near Carl’s existing well but Ron hates to do that. The driller tells his drilling stories, finally convincing Ron and Carl that the existing well will not be harmed by the drilling of the new well.

Finally water, not as good as the existing well, but good enough. The location of the well necessitates a change in layout of the homestead and Ron labors hard on laying out how he wants the lines to run.

The other thing that happened in February was that we went to get gun training so that we could get our licenses for carrying concealed weapons. It isn’t so much that we want to carry concealed guns, we just want some gun training and we might as well have the concealed gun licenses. It was our thought that we might need the gun training on the ranch. Ron had much more experience with guns than I did. I had only handled a rife that one time with my grandfather. At the shooting range the instructors had to load my gun for me since I had no idea how to do it, but I fired away at the target. Afterwards we returned to the classroom. The head instructors started chiding the all men students (I was the only woman in the class), telling them that they didn’t do so well, that the best shooter was the woman in the class. Huh?! There was only one woman…me. Well, the hand and eye coordination came through again. One is either born with it or one is not. It is the same thing that made me such a good golfer. I never can say I did anything but be born with it and be slightly embarrassed.

April 2005

I haven’t written anything for a long time, way too busy as things really heated up. We knew the selling season for houses started in March and I worked last part of February getting the house ready. This meant touch up painting, new carpet in the main living area, getting the windows cleaned, taking down almost all the family photographs and taking the contents of a couple of closets to a storage unit so the closets would look extra roomy. Too many family photos keep folks from visualizing the house as potentially their home. The realtor came and confirmed what I thought, that it would take a couple of months or so to sell the house and another month to six weeks to close. This fit our scenario, and would mean we would have to live in the trailer at the ranch for three or so months. We put our house in Keller on the market in early March and much to our surprise sold to the first people who looked at it and the buyers wanted to close by April 5th. All this was way too fast for me!

The first indication that the buyers would be trouble appeared after the mechanical inspection. During the mechanical inspection the house is usually inspected for problems that might need repair and includes inspection, of the heating and cooling systems, hot water heaters, sprinklers, roof and the like. When the mechanical inspection report came back, there were minor repairs. It seems that every house has something, but these buyers decided that the carpet upstairs needed replacing and wanted us to replace it or give them $6,000! The house was on the market for three days and they decide to make unbelievable demands to help them redecorate the house to their liking. The response to the buyers and their realtor was “no”.

We have bought and sold fourteen houses, so we have been down this road many times and have had a couple of bad buyers in that bunch. I could tell these buyers were going to be a problem. They backed down from their demands and we went ahead and made the few repairs. But it seems, according to our realtor, who I think was in denial about these folks, that the buyers had consulted with a real estate attorney (a friend or relative?) who had the expected viewpoint that the other fellow, or seller in this case, was trying to do you, or the buyer in this case, wrong. The problem was that we weren’t, but they decided to act as if we were.

So, while I had my doubts about this sale ever going through, we went ahead and had a garage sale with ourselves and two daughters. Despite a rainy day, it went amazingly well, thanks to everyone but me. Cleaning out upper cabinets, I climbed up on a two-step stepladder. For whatever reason coming down, I decided that I was on the bottom step, but I was very, seriously wrong and I stepped down from two steps up, jamming my left knee. This is my bad knee, so to speak, having a lot of osteoarthritis in it. So I am limping around.

Shortly before moving, we sent the wardrobe belonging to Ron’s grandparents to our oldest daughter’s along with the television cabinet from upstairs. Our youngest daughter will eventually take the wardrobe, but doesn’t have room right now. We have taken that wardrobe everywhere we have gone for 38 years. When we were given it, we were living in Childress, Texas, near the Texas Panhandle. The little rent house had a two step entry and we couldn’t get it up the step. We had to wait until a friend came home from work to help.

We couldn’t have gotten the wardrobe and television cabinet down from upstairs without the help of some very good men, namely our personal trainer for the past four plus years, Jon, and the world’s best son-in-law, Lee. We have imposed upon Jon and even on one of his friends over the years to get exercise equipment up and down from the upstairs room. The staircase has two turns making moving anything longer than four feet very difficult to move.

The same evening Joe, the webmaster for my Internet webpage, came over and set up our new laptop for us to use in the trailer, since our PCs are much too big. It dawns on me that I know the nicest men, including these three, and suddenly I feel so darn blessed.

All of my many plants, from large ficus trees to the smallest potted plant, were farmed out to daughters since none could go in storage and there was no room in a trailer. I had to reassure both daughters that I would still love them if any of the plants died while in their care. They are plants and they do die.

By now things were looking spare. The whole upstairs room was empty except for pictures now stacked against the walls. But we weren’t finished. We sent off two small wingback chairs and the one remaining sofa to be re-upholstered. Now the house was nearly empty, or so it seemed.

Moving out was a royal pain because we had to pack on Saturday, “camp out” on Sunday and then finally moves out on Monday. The buyers refused to move the closing to Tuesday so we wouldn’t have this problem. As I said, they worked hard at being difficult, but actually they were saving their most despicable behavior for the day we moved out.

Monday morning at 7:45 I had just finished dressing and was heading for the garage to throw some trash out. The movers were due in a little over an hour, just enough time for me to eat breakfast and take care of the final little details. I met Ron coming in the garage door, with a strange look on his face: “The buyers and their agent are here to look at the house.” I was aghast. Why in the world would a buyer show up without even the common courtesy of calling ahead to walk through the house? Even now, after a lapse of a couple of weeks, I can’t figure it out. They were due at their closing at 8:00, so obviously they were going to be late for that. But what did they think was happening or going to happen that they needed to see the house? Were they expecting us to steal the door knobs (available cheaply, I might add, at the neighborhood Lowe’s hardware store) or dig up shrubs to take with us? It was beyond my comprehension, but I remember a man telling me once that his and my problem was that we didn’t think like the “bad guys” and apparently he was right. In this case, I think the buyers were the “bad guys,” their minds worked in devious ways and they expected everyone else to have the same “criminal” turn of mind.

I was instantly furious when Ron told me that they were there, seized my purse and went a hidden corner of the back yard with the dogs. If I had seen them, I would have called the whole thing off right there, to our detriment at that point. I knew Ron would keep his cool; he has amazing self control beyond what an average human should be expected to have. And it was called on when the buyer remarked that we should be moved out in a couple of hours! Ron replied that that would be extremely unlikely in his experience. As it was, the buyers refused to release the money until once again they had walked through the house at 3 p. m. This time I knew they were coming. I took my car and left and didn’t come back until Ron called me telling me they were gone.

The funny thing was that since the buyers were expecting devious or negative things from us, we didn’t do some positive things that would have benefited them. I had planned on having our maids clean the house and having a carpet cleaning company clean the carpets. When it was obvious that the buyers had an attitude problem, I nixed the carpet cleaners. The maids were still scheduled, but when the buyers insisted on coming back at 3:00, it meant that we had to do all the cleaning while our belongings were being moved out, so I cancelled the maids. I can guarantee that the maids would have done a better job than then “hurry up and clean” we did. I guess the buyers didn’t expect anything good, so indeed they didn’t get anything good. You get what you expect.

So, we were off to the country. It has been three weeks, and we are still getting used to things. Ron is suffering withdrawal from his big office. Our big German Shepherd, Greta, is irritated with the little one, Vodin, since Greta can’t go lie in the back yard when she needs a break from the puppy antics. And I am suffering withdrawal from Super Target. I am embarrassed to confess that I was more influenced by popular culture than I thought, but my hat is off to a business like Target that can hook a non-shopper like me.

Ron thought he would automatically be off the board of Fort Worth’s John Peter Smith Hospital, no longer being a resident of Tarrant County. But he was informed by the legal eagles there that he was on the board until the County Commissioner who appointed him appoints someone else. And a big consulting job is coming up, if all their financing gets in place. So it is understandable that Ron is missing his big office. There is so little closet space in the trailer that he was only able to bring a sport coat, pants and two shirts for any business related activities. He stashed a suit and more shirts at youngest daughter’s, who luckily lives near Love Field in Dallas out of which he might be flying for the consulting job. But for now, Ron’s “office” is a wobbly dinette table in the trailer. He shares his seat with the big plastic bin filled with the dogs’ food. Ron and I have to share the laptop computer.

Before we moved here, we were walking the 45 or so acres we had cleared of mesquite and making piles of mesquite debris that had been left in the first sweep. Carl lent us a very old Suburban with one of his numerous flat trailers. I can’t help as much as I would like with my hurt leg, but Ron makes pretty short work of the piles. I can help toss the debris in the pit where it will be burned. In fact, I really enjoy it, have always liked physical activity and right now will take anything that resembles physical activity. That first day we picked up and dumped three full trailers.

Between trips to Fort Worth for various reasons, we explore shopping opportunities in Weatherford, about an hour away, and continue clearing the field.

Then we sprung a leak in the trailer. When we had plumbing problems in houses, and they were rare, we called a plumber. Who in the world do you call when you have a leak in the plumbing of a trailer, a trailer parked out in the middle of nowhere? Our cattle partner, our all around do-it-yourselfer, was off in South Dakota at a dog training seminar. Meanwhile, the dripping leak was using up the paper towels Ron had set out. Chris, a fellow SAR team member from San Antonio, was here to take care of the SAR instructors’ dogs and the day of the leak he was out here at the ranch to gather some pipes and other material from the “junkyard” right outside our trailer. Frustrated by our vain attempts to deal with the leak, I asked Chris if he would take a look at it. Looking at this leak meant one had to be a contortionist as things are packed into the small spaces of this trailer. Half in and half out of the door with his head almost on the floor, Chris worked and worked, trying to bypass the pump for drawing water from the onboard fresh water tank. We don’t use this tank since we are hooked up directly to the water well, and thus we could hopefully bypass what looked to be the source of the leak, namely the water passing through the pump. But on this day, there was to be no repair and with the sun sinking in the west and the clock nudging toward 9 p.m., we had to get reservations at the local motel, quickly pack and depart the scene.

The next day, Ron and Chris made the trek south to the Azle area just north of Fort Worth to the nearest Lowe’s where thankfully they were able to get a part that for the most part fixed the leak, not completely fixed it, but enough so a paper towel would catch the errant drip. I was thinking that there would be a business for someone who went around and fixed trailers in the field, so to speak. We have a major problem in that this is a fifth wheel trailer which requires a pickup with a special attachment in the bed of the pickup to pull this trailer. We have neither that special attachment nor the pickup.

Other problems pop up with the trailer. The water levels (galley water and gray water), or sewer (black water) level lights don’t always indicate accurately, so that in the middle of a shower one finds oneself suddenly standing in water, effectively ending that shower. By design, the black water would be better off if we were taking the trailer on the highway, where the whole trailer would, to a certain extent sway back and forth, churning the water and cleaning off the sides of the tank. But of course, the trailer isn’t on the road and that creates problems.

Even our discovery of new storage space had a bad turn. I had noticed that the bed mattress rested on what appeared to be a piece of raw plywood. Over the weeks, this fact worked on my mind as it didn’t make any sense. The bed as a whole appeared to rest on a platform, one step up from the rest of the bedroom, the bedroom itself being two steps up from the living room/kitchen. All this is what I would expect in a fifth wheel trailer, but why the platform? Suddenly, I went over to the bed and pulled up on the plywood. Much to my surprise, it and the mattress rose, revealing storage space under the bed, a lot of storage space. Wonderful! Storage was extremely limited and this space was badly needed. When Ron came in, I told him to pull the board and mattress up and he did, pulling it completely open, which I had not done. Then the confounded springs locked in place and wouldn’t release to let the board and mattress back down! After tugging and pushing and pulling we gave up and unscrewed the springs. After all, sleeping in the bed is way more important than easily accessible storage.

This past week, a SAR team member showed up at training and gave us a phone book covering Jacksboro, Graham and other nearby areas. We have numerous little phone books and while we certainly appreciated her kindness and thoughtfulness, we thought this one was destined to be thrown away. Before tossing it however, Ron went through it and under RVs, saw a mobile RV repair fellow, just the business I had envisioned. I quickly called and the fellow will come this coming Saturday. Hopefully, he will be the answer to our trailer woes.

The fellow cannot, however, make the “daggum” trailer any bigger. Ron calls the trailer “the cell,” and I understand perfectly. For just two people, or for a long weekend, it would be fine. But for two people and two big dogs--no thank you. Poor Ron gets major grouchy when trying to get any work done on his various consulting projects. Just typing on the computer on the wiggly dinette table is irritating. There is zero room for any work. The typist shares the seat with that aforementioned large plastic container of dog food, while the other dinette seat has two file boxes. Even Greta gets grumpy in our confined space. We were definitely wrong in getting this size trailer. We didn’t have to be so conservative in our spending, but we didn’t think we would be spending months in the trailer. There is hope that the people renting the little house on Carl’s property will move out June 1st, and we could move in. If not, we will have to do something, especially since construction on our house is at a snail’s pace.

We have been living out here for five weeks. It took a week to do all the final closing things so that construction could start. In the ensuing four weeks, all that has been done is running electricity to the building site and the pouring of the foundation of the guest house. Oh yes, and two dump truck loads of dirt dumped for the main house.

I confess I cried when I saw the framework going up on the guest house. I was beginning to think it would never happen. The guest house is just two bedrooms with a bathroom in the middle and a little kitchenette with a sink, microwave and mini-refrigerator, but from here, looking up the hill it looks huge.

We penned up the five larger calves along with three young cows that didn’t have any calves. This would wean the calves before being taken to market and the three cows were supposed to aid in the transaction, but we forgot to consult with the mother cows. For two days and two nights, the air resounded with anguished mooing, finally fainting to pitiful lowing. Finally, all the mothers drifted away and didn’t come to visit their calves, except for “Brownie” who came every day to see her brown calf. I suppose part of this was the weaning process, but I prefer to think it was more. I hung on the corral fence for a while observing the goings on. I quickly noticed that the three cows in with the calves had definite personalities. There was a black cow I named “Black Dahlia,” who is extremely curious, coming over to me and sniffing. She also bodily pushed all the other cows around. There was a red and white cow I named “Daisy,” who is so laid back that she didn’t care what was going on. The funny thing was that she was the one who found and got to eat more of the cattle cubes that had just been put out. The two others seemed more affected by the cows gathered outside the corral mooing up a storm. The third cow, all red, didn’t seem to have too much personality.

Everyday, we go up to the house site, snapping photographs, willing the house to be built. We never expected to be living in the fifth wheel for months on end. Now, approaching the two month mark, it is obvious that living in the trailer is going to be difficult. In essence, we have four Type A personalities living in a tiny space. Sitting on the bed in the bedroom/bathroom, I realized that the whole area wasn’t as big as our master bathroom in Keller. It was a pretty big bathroom, but still….

The dogs are acting as though they are beginning to get on each other’s nerves. On one occasion, out running in the pasture with Ron walking with them they got in an all out fight, which Ron had to physically break up. I caught our older dog, Greta, doing a half snarl at Vodin, the baby. Vodin is casting uneasy peeks at Greta. Now, with unseasonable heat, they have had to stay inside and Vodin does sprints up and down the short length of the trailer. There is constant jostling over who gets the sofa or if the two dogs will share. The heat, plus daily tension seems to be getting to little Vodin who has thrown up twice. We have been advised to give her antacids. German Shepherds are notorious for their sensitive stomachs, so it might just be the heat, as on both occasions Vodin had been out in it for a while. But I suspect the forced proximity is a factor. We have been told to expect some friction between them as Vodin approaches her first birthday, which is next week, when Greta will rescind the “I will let you get away with that since you are a puppy” license. It is most unfortunate that this time is falling into the same period that we are spending in the trailer.

Here it is in the latter part of May and it is so hot that the trailer air conditioner can’t keep up. We brought a small fan last week. I wanted a box fan, but honestly couldn’t figure out where to put it. Now I may go buy it and put it in the middle of the (small) floor. But the new fan has helped keep the dogs cooler. On Saturday, from about noon until 7 p.m., Ron and I were in minimum clothing, wishing the dogs could do the same. The air conditioner roared constantly without let up. Slowly the temperature rose on our thermometer, eventually topping out at eighty-seven, making it a wee bit warm in here. The air conditioner still roared on, with few breaks, even as the night grew late, so loud that we had to turn the television way up. And then, we couldn’t hear each other speak. I am sure sensitive eared Greta thinks she was in Purgatory. Sunday, we needed a break and took off to the Jacksboro Inn for a respite from the heat. Things are really bad when the Jacksboro Inn is considered a respite, but that one room has more square feet than the trailer and it has an air conditioner that can freeze one’s toes right off. Delightful! The Jacksboro Inn is a completely deteriorating, tacky, dirty motel, but it has square footage and air conditioning, two things we don’t have at the moment.

Early Sunday morning, Ron spotted a new little red bull calf. All the calves and cows were up near the trailer when Ron saw a calf lying down, but couldn’t see if it had an ear tag. When we corralled the older calves we had ear tagged the six young calves and castrated the bull calves. Ron walked right up to the little calf and reached down and touched it. Scared the poor thing to death; it jumped up and ran away! Mother cow was watching, but I guess she is familiar enough with Ron not to get too excited.

Seven calves were among the cattle we purchased. Right after the purchase one calf was killed, probably by the feral dog. Later the two oldest calves were sold first, then the last five. Now we have seven new baby calves. One is a gray heifer calf with a white face that I call “Gray Ghost”. I recently heard that this color calf is considered very desirable. She is certainly a beautiful calf. The funniest colored calf is one that Ron calls “Skunk” because he is all black except for white socks on his back legs and white on the very tip of his tail.

When Ron and our cattle partner finally finished the cross fence the cows were fenced out of the cleared pasture area. Surprisingly I found that I missed them, but the pasture needed time to grow grass and the house builders needed to not have cows around the construction. And I would do anything to accommodate the builders and get out of this tiny trailer, even bartering off my first born child…sorry Ruth!

The first week in June, our kind-hearted cattle partner helped the elderly couple who sold us our cattle to move their remaining cattle from their leased land, which adjoins our land. To do so he opened our back gate and herded the cattle onto our land intending to move them across to the cattle pens, and in due course, into the cattle trailer. Unfortunately, they were not able to get three cows and a yearling black bull into the pen for loading and removal. The bad part of this, as far as I was concerned, was that two cows, a black one and a red one, had horns. That had been my only demand when buying the cattle…no horns. This was not only for our protection, but for the safety of our dogs.

So we had cattle about again, not our gentle cattle, but the semi-wild types with horns. After much hard work and several days, the black bull and the black cow with horns were penned up. The red cow with horns escaped that attempt to pen her and in the process tore down part of the new cross fence, but she was able to make her escape, joining our herd in the lower area. I don’t think she was warmly welcomed since the other cows, even the little calves, started head butting her. Eventually, the red cow warily followed our cattle into the pen where we feed the range or cattle cubes. Using a rope tied to the gate, Carl was able to stay away from the pen’s gate and the wary red cow and to pull the gate shut behind her. Off she went to the cow trailer with the previously penned bull and another cow. When at last she was loaded in the trailer, the red cow was so wild that she started throwing her head around violently, and in the process, tore off one of her horns, flinging blood all over the place.

Now we have one remaining itinerant cow, a fifteen year old black cow that seems to be a personal affront to our cattle partner, Carl. One night, stocked up with essentials which included plenty of Diet Coke, Carl patiently waited in his half ton truck for the black cow to go near the pen, but it was for naught as the cow was too wild and wily and escaped his patient plan.

One day I had the dogs outside near dusk, by the trailer where they were playing in the warm evening when suddenly the black cow appeared from around a tall clump of mesquite. This scared the living daylights out of me and I screamed for the dogs to come. I quickly crammed them into the dog pen outside the trailer. Every dollar and hour we spent on obedience training was well worth it in that moment. Of course, my terrified tone of voice probably also helped! Either Greta or Vodin would have taken that cow on and come out the worse for the encounter. Our dogs don’t really understand the dangers of these huge cows.

Dummy me, for some reason I suddenly felt sorry for the cow and walked over toward her, talking softly. I stopped well short of her, remembering well that she was wild. She stood watching me until I stopped, then turned and went back toward the cross fence where our cattle were grazing on the other side. Perhaps she was lonesome for her now departed herd. I don’t know but I had no illusions about becoming buddies with her, I just felt a bit sorry for her at that moment. I am not knowledgeable about this, but it looked like her udder had fallen, which may mean that she is going to be calving soon. On the other hand, do fifteen year old cows have calves or are they too old? What do I know! Ron says that a cow that old can still have calves, so I guess we will see since she may be a semi-permanent resident of our upper pasture.

Last week was a bad week. For one thing, we had another water leak. The word “leak” may be understating the situation. I was sitting in my chair reading at about 1:30 in the morning, when suddenly, from behind, I heard a loud pop followed immediately by the sound of gushing water. I woke poor Ron, turn on the outside light, grabbed a flashlight, and we went outside to see water pouring out of the back of the trailer. There was nothing to do but turn off the entire water supply to the trailer. No bath for me that night or the next morning for Ron. Ron called the trailer repair guy, who hopes to get out that night after work, but he already has one job waiting for him. We manage the next day with pails of water hauled in from the hose outside for the commode and the kitchen sink, just like our pioneer ancestors…not a situation of theirs that I had craved to emulate. Since the water sometimes has a rotten egg smell we haven’t been drinking the water, although it tested safe, and thus we have plenty of bottled drinking water for ourselves and the dogs. But no baths and Ron and I wear hats all day and look a bit shabby. Sure enough the trailer repair guy doesn’t make it out and we go off to our home away from home, the Jacksboro Inn.

Actually, things have improved a bit at the Jacksboro Inn. There are new owners, Indians instead of Vietnamese, and the new owner declared to Ron that the place was filthy and that there was going to be new carpet, fresh paint, new air conditioners, televisions and whatnot. Sure enough, the room had new carpeting, which sadly made the battered furniture look worse. I know the room was painted because there was spray paint residue on the bathroom mirror and regular masking tape was still wrapped around the bathroom ceiling globe shaped light. Note that that was regular masking tape. I know because worrying about the tape getting hot and burning, I tried to remove it while balancing on the edge of the bathtub. Painting masking tape comes off easily; regular masking tape left on for even a short time, refuses to yield to determined tugging, especially after being heated by the light. I feel a wee bad for worrying considering the improved conditions.

The next night the repair guy came and fixed our problem leak in thirty minutes. Again, as with the other leak, the main problem is a less than ideal connector aided by the high pressure from the well. Unfortunately, we had already booked the room at the Jacksboro Inn, so we stayed there another night. I sure like bathtubs, even their shabby ones, over our dribbling little shower in the trailer.

The other thing that made the week particularly bad was that our little German Shepherd, Vodin, was sick. We boarded the dogs on Memorial Day when we went to Dallas to see our daughters, son-in-law and grandchildren for the holiday. When we picked up the dogs the next day, we stopped at a park to let them out and Ron saw that Vodin’s urine was blood red. Before this we had noticed that she was squatting more than once for urination and Ron had wondered about a bladder infection, but twice we took her temperature but it was normal. I won’t tell you what Vodin thought about the temperature taking process, but she was slight miffed at us. We had a vet in Fort Worth, where we had day boarded the dogs on Fridays, look her over. Nothing was found. Finally, we decided that perhaps Vodin was territory marking. I had noticed increased panting, but finally decided it was the close quarters with our big Shepherd. She had even vomited some ten days previously and a vet suggested giving her anti-acids. The normal temperatures had thrown us off. But finally, to our profound relief, she gets well.

We took Vodin to the vet in Jacksboro, whose expertise we feel less than confident about and we were not reassured when it turned out that his x-ray machine was broken. The blood work was clear and the urine sample was sent off; we haven’t heard about them. Vodin’s belly was shaved for an ultrasound which showed nothing. So for now, she is on a strong antibiotic but we don’t know why this has happened. She does seem a lot better and her urine looks clear. There is less panting, indicating less pain and the multiple squatting has decreased in number and length.

This first weekend in June, we are very weather wary. Living in a trailer will make one that way. The past two nights, we kept the computer on with the weather radar up on the screen and the Suburban pointed in the direction of the barn for a quick get away. It is a bit scary watching the big red colored storm drift northeast toward us. It barely missed us, hitting a bit west. Jacksboro got a big rain; we got a light shower, just enough to spot up the newly washed Suburban. Tonight I heard thunder and saw lightening earlier. Helping Carl off load hay rolls after 10 p.m., Ron saw quite a bit of lightening. Right now, hearing sensitive Greta is under the dinette table below me, a good indication that a storm is near, but she isn’t shaking, so it isn’t too bad. Carl tells us we need to get a scanner tuned into the local Fire Department weather stations, especially Young County Fire Department. Since most storms come from a westerly direction and Young County is west of here, this would, in effect, give us an early warning system.

Saturday night, we stood outside at the back of the Suburban watching the clouds backlit by the dying sun, trying to decide when and if to seek shelter in the barn, since if the storm came, there was a forecast of possible hail. Suddenly, there was a crunching sound making us think a dog was demolishing something in the trailer where we had left them. But lo and behold, it was the house framing guy and a helper in his pickup coming up our gravel road to set up his saw so that he could start framing the main house. Here was our missing framer whose very existence I had come to doubt, rolling up at 8:30 at night in the middle of a possible imminent storm. Strange, to say the least, but at the rate things are going, I shouldn’t be surprised as nothing here has much resembled anything in my previous experiences.

When the second storm rolled in Sunday night, it wasn’t the gentle shower of the previous night, but a pelting rain with some thunder. As I worked on the laptop earlier in the evening, big dog, Greta, took up residence under the dinette table. She had apparently heard the distant thunder, beyond what we could hear. By the time the storm came through about 4:30 a.m., Greta was trying to wedge herself in the tiny space between my side of the bed and the trailer wall. Since this involved much turning and scrunching, the noise woke us up. Overly warm, and feeling the need to keep Greta calm, I turned and put my head at the foot of the bed and one hand on Greta’s back. The next morning Ron said that Greta moved onto the bed lying on my feet with her head on his shoulder. Sound sleeper that I am, I never knew it.

June 20, 2005

The house framer has a rather strange approach to framing our main house. He and his “crew” have been working for two weeks and aren’t making a lot of progress. I guess it is partly the “crew,” which seems very small, consisting of one or two persons, but the main reason, as far as I am concerned, is that he is only working 6 to 7 hours a day and taking off Fridays. I knew that this house building wouldn’t be like having a suburban house built, what with those specialized big crews rolling in regularly, but please! Finally, on Sunday we found out what was going on, thanks to living in a small town area. After training dogs early Sunday morning due to the hot day, we went for breakfast at the best breakfast place in town and lo and behold, there is our disappearing framer, by himself, also eating breakfast. As it was, I don’t think we would have recognized him, but another person with us did and as we left Ron stayed to badger the framer, finding out that the framer is working another job as well as ours. When it gets hot he leaves our framing job and goes to the other job which is indoors. He is also working at the indoor job on Fridays, for what reason I don’t know. He certainly isn’t pleasing us at all; I hope his other customers are happier than we are.

Last week we had another storm move through the area, a very unusual storm. The forecast was for potential nickel sized hail, so after dinner we took ourselves and the Suburban down to the barn where, since there is no door on the north side, we had a perfect view of the incoming storm. It was an exceedingly slow moving storm, taking almost three hours to pass and in those hours it put out an exceptional lightening show which we got to watch, but no rain to speak of. Later we heard that to the west there was a straight line wind that blew apart a barn. And we had been parked in a barn. I guess we dodged a bullet that night and only hope we continue to have that kind of luck.

This week we have had the agony of selecting the exterior paint for the guest house and main house and for us it was truly agony. Earlier, we had had to select the cultured stone, which actually is cement that looks like stone. As bad as that selection process was, it was simple as there were few choices. With the paint, there are millions of shades. These choices are difficult as we will have to live with our selections and we had no idea what we are doing; we have no idea what these selections will look like, much less how they will look with each other. We have heard of folks pulling off the stones or bricks and/or repainting when they didn’t like the results, but I know us, we won’t do that, frugal as we are, so these are indeed the final selections and we will live with them.

Daughters Ruth and Leigh, son-in-law Lee and granddaughter Abbie stopped by Sunday, Father’s Day, after dropping grandson Alex at camp. Their immediate reaction to the color we selected was totally negative. They insisted there was purple in the color, which we didn’t see at all, but we couldn’t ignore their opinions. More agony!

Plus seeing where we are living, through their eyes, made us a bit miserable. We admit that the RV is tiny, that it is parked in the middle of a junk pile, that the gate through which they entered was rusty and creaky, that the cattle feeder (bought second hand by Carl) is dented and rusty, that the pasture we so painstakingly cleared is now turning brown in the summer heat and that the house site is a messy construction site. It is hard, even for us, to see how we want it to be in the future. But we are here, we have committed and hard headed as we are, we will see it through. I only hope we aren’t in a major drought, as our vision may be a long time a-coming.

Poor daughter Leigh, our resident architect, who gets all our befuddled calls, gets another one via cell phone even before reaching Dallas. Yes, it was us calling about the exterior color. She tells us to just leave it alone and we decide to do that at least until this morning when Ron talks to the builder, who as it turns out, also doesn’t like the color. Ron has to go to Weatherford to take the Suburban in another attempt to repair a strange problem and after all morning at the dealership, has to go scour places for color samples. The number of colors and shades is mind numbing. We pick another one, drive up to the construction site where the builder is also just driving up. We discover that the new color is almost like the original color, so much for all Ron’s effort. Strangely, as the builder said, the original color is beginning to grow on all three of us and we decide to let it be.

August 2005

Last night, when we went up to the house back porch, we saw a big trailer truck and bulldozer by our front gate. Someone had come in the gate and offloaded the dozer. Obviously, it was the EOG oil/gas people who are in the process of doing seismic studies, with our permission, but specifically excluded from that agreement was any bulldozing.

So, I got up at 6 a.m. this morning after going to bed at 1:30. I stashed Greta in the back of the Suburban and hauled dog and myself to the front gate sporting the TASK logos on the door which say in part, “Supporting Law Enforcement.” I waited patiently, having a good book, relatively cool temperatures, all the phone numbers of the news desks of all four major TV channels and a cold drink. Ron is thinking I might have a long wait. I didn't think so, although that was a possibility and a bridge to be crossed. As it was, I was right and about 8:30, they came

"That yours?” I ask, gesturing at the trailer truck and bulldozer. "I guess so," was the guarded response from the driver of the pickup. I informed him that I wanted the Caterpillar off our land right now. The situation deteriorated from there.

I brought out our copy of the agreement and pointed out, “no bulldozing allowed”.

Rolling a big dozer across the pasture is part of bulldozing I say. And the tractor tracks are destructive to the pasture we paid dearly to clear then planted with grasses and painstakingly sprayed for mesquite. And if they disagreed, I will be happy to take them to court.

The driver, the bad ass, disagrees. I say we can work it out in court. By now, his shorts are all twisted. He storms that he doesn't have time for this and stomps off to call for help, so I call Ron (a call merits a call, right?) and let him know what is going on. Then I make friends with the other guy who is actually the bulldozer driver and is from Synder out in West Texas near my childhood stomping grounds of Midland.

I did get the big black dog out at one point when the driver was on the phone. The bulldozer guy was a bit leery, but I told him that she is a sweetheart, of course she really is. Speaking German to the big dog seemed a bit intimidating also. Of course, that was my intent. After all, these folks are EOG, formerly Enron Oil and Gas, and we know how Enron behaved.

Ron calls me and says the oil company rep is calling him and saying that I am threatening lawsuits. Ron, knowing me, replies that that sounds about right. I am talking trespass; Ron is talking violation of contract. Either way, the oil company folks have a problem, me.

In the end, the bulldozer was loaded back on the tractor truck and moved out to the road. My favorite part of the whole "conversation" was when the oil company pickup driver said they had to drive across our property because the adjoining land owner, an absentee owner whose fences are falling down and whose land is heavily covered with mesquite, has his gates locked. I replied, "Cut the locks. That is what you said you would do to our locks if we didn't cooperate with you. You said you had every right to do so. So do so." He just looked confounded and said nothing.

Our cattle partner finally came out from Jacksboro to help Ron keep an eye on the bulldozer driver making sure he stayed in the correct places on the properties. In all, it turned out well that I went out and went nose to nose early in the morning. Otherwise, they would have driven the dozer destructively across the most delicate part of our big pasture when there were plenty of other ways for them to get where they wanted to go.

Truthfully, I had a blast. It must be the Scot-Irish part of my heritage. But I was getting ready to duck if the pickup truck driver gave vent to what he was obviously thinking. Oh lordy, I could read his mind and he was calling me all kinds of names! So be it. I got what I wanted—no bulldozer. So there!

11 September 2005

Things are looking up a mite. The poor builder is working like a dog to get us into the guest house this coming week. We took a patio table and four chairs that we had bought before all such were sold out and were storing in the barn, up to the guest house. Now poor Ron finally had enough space to work on a report for his latest consulting gig.

I have taken to going up to the house bright and early to greet whoever shows up. The builder is usually off getting supplies and whatnot and I decided to be the authoritative presence. I am trying for three things. One is simply my presence..."I am watching you and will know what you are or are not doing." Two is sweeping up the construction area...."I care about the house being constructed and want you to care too." Three is simply keeping the site clean and hopefully discouraging the insects from finding it an attractive place to live. So I have sweated up a storm and cleared the house of 90% of debris. Liking “neat and clean”, this is something I like to do anyway, despite a blister on my hand from all the sweeping.

For five months now I have had a "crisis and my response" situation over and over. I am not disappointed in my coping ability, but am disappointed in the emotional process that I seem to have to go through before coming up with rational responses. In the last one, earlier this week I swore to poor besieged spouse that if we weren't in the guest house by October 1st, I was literally out of here and I sincerely meant it. I ruined our 42nd anniversary with my pronouncement. We celebrated the anniversary at a Residence Inn in Fort Worth, where we simply sat and stared at a television with clear reception and multiple channels, a clean room with good AC, Internet connection...and a wonderful bathtub. Rather sad but also rather funny.

19 September 2005

We moved into the guest house at last with several days to spare before I was “out of here.” Things are better in regard to space (twice the square footage), the shower (it is huge!) and water (tastes pure and clean with the fancy water system plus the reverse osmosis system) but there is no storage space. We made this worse getting the stuff we had stored in self storage back in suburban Keller and by picking up the house plants we had stashed at our daughters’ homes. The chairs and table we needed of course, but we also had a number of boxes plus two full golf bags and two full sized personal computers, which seem like real space hogs after using the laptop. We have had a sofa and two small wing back chairs at an upholstery shop in Dallas since before we left Keller. Alas, by adding these pieces in a week or so it will make it seem like we are living in a storage shed. But anything is better than living in the “Dog Kennel” as we called the fifth wheel trailer. And the bed, oh the wonderful new bed! No lumps or bumps like the bed in the trailer; I slept like a baby. Cooking in the kitchenette, well, it is difficult. The grill we got to cook on is now parked on top of the refrigerator we rented and stuck in the entry of the guest house. There is barely room to put it on the counter in the kitchenette. The kitchenette just has a tiny sink and a mini refrigerator and cabinets.

But I am working on working things out, new routines and all that, one more time. I am tired, tired of this “camping out” stuff. And I wasn’t particularly a happy camper loading the self storage stuff on the U-Haul in Keller. That type of activity was fun, interesting, even somewhat exciting forty years ago, but not anymore.

What was funny was the delivery of the new mattress and box springs and the delivery of the rental refrigerator. The bed was coming from Dallas and the driver found the road by our ranch with directions from Ron, but drove right past us. The refrigerator people from Weatherford called me for directions, but they managed to miss us too. However, by that time I was outside the guest house and saw them merrily driving rapidly past, despite my waving my arms and jumping up and down, much to the amusement of one of the men working on the main house. The refrigerator folks got back first and were unloading, when back came the mattress folks. Both had taken a long drive down our road, something I have yet to do myself.

We actually have a fairly busy gravel road here, what with oil company vehicles and various ranch vehicles. Recently, I turned off the highway onto our road only to find a small SUV stopped smack dab in the middle of the gravel road. A woman, the driver as it turned out, was out of her car with her head stuck in the back seat for some reason. Meanwhile, coming toward the highway is one of the oil company big trucks. Finally, the front seat passenger must have told the woman that it was suddenly becoming congested on the road, as she poked her head out of the back seat, took a look at me and jumped back in the driver’s seat. She pulled over to the extreme side to let the truck pass staying there until I passed and then she disappeared. I suppose she thought it was a quiet county road and pulled in to look for something, only to discover that it was as bad as a city street!

Recently when our young decorator drove out here from Dallas, I stood in the middle of our road so she wouldn’t miss the gate. And I didn’t get hit by an oil truck or a farm truck. I knew the decorator was almost here because Ron, on his way northwest to Jacksboro, passed her distinctive car coming southeast our way and called to tell me she was almost there.

It could be considered expensive to have a decorator, but actually it is a money saver. Even after too many moves to count, decorators have put things together for us in ways we never thought about and had had resources we never considered. We have even had a decorator hang pictures for us in three houses, which made our lives much happier. Of course, that was a decorator we had had for almost twenty years. We have really missed him as a decorator and friend since he has died. Now we have a youngster decorator or maybe we are just getting old and everyone is younger.

So now we live in a construction zone. This may prove interesting.

October 10, 2005

It got busy around here. I was helping get ready for the semiannual SAR seminar which T.A.S.K. holds in October (the other is in March). Dogs and their handlers come from all across the U. S. to little old Jacksboro, air scent, HRD (human remains detection) and trailing. Then the day before the seminar started, right after the evening opening dinner, we had a good sized storm roar through, dropping temperatures 30 degrees and apparently knocking our temporary satellite dish for our Internet off line. We have been without Internet connection ever since. We were so busy however, that we didn't notice until Thursday and didn't have time to call until Saturday when, of course, there was no one to answer.

The cold, rainy, windy weather on Wednesday discouraged the community service people who were supposed to be laying training trails for the dog teams at the seminar. I felt sorry for the all breed trailing group and liking the instructor, stupidly volunteered to be their trail layer. I have laid hundred of trails for dog teams but that morning I sat out in the bitter cold and, although mostly sheltered from the rain, mused long and hard about old time circuit ministers who died of exposure while riding their circuits. By the last of the four hours, my teeth were chattering and I was shaking with chills. That last hour was the worst.

I called Ron on my cell phone and asked if he was doing anything. "No," he first replied. "Can you bring me...?” "Just a minute," he interrupted. "I have to go. Can I call you back?" "Sure," I replied. All I wanted was a pair of gloves from the truck. Guess who forgot to call me back? Yep, my "former" husband. Took him a day or so to live that one down!

He sort of made up for it by nabbing the only available community service person for the afternoon shift. I gave that poor soul a ski hat, hand and foot warmers and a tarp and asked that she return the items to the front desk. If she hadn't returned the stuff, I still would have considered it a more than fair trade to keep from going back out there.

The next day, there were only a couple of community service people (serving probation) and so out I went again. This time, I had a chair and a plastic tarp to wrap myself in while I watched the vapor rise off a lake and fishermen fish the shoreline. It was too windy and cold to read the newspaper I had brought. Every 15 or 20 minutes along came a dog to jump on me with muddy paws. By that afternoon, I decided that anyone who did this all day needed to be brain dead or have an I. Q, of less than 50. It will be a long, long time before I am willing to lay a training trail, especially for nine dogs at one sitting. Four dogs? Maybe I will do it in 3 or 4 months. Nine dogs? Never again. And the dogs are all sweethearts. Love them dearly. But why the handlers have them jump on the "victims" is beyond me. Ours is trained to sit down. I think it is the law enforcement/bloodhound mentality legacy...chasing the bad guys. But can you imagine one of these big dogs (and most are from the bigger breeds) jumping on an elderly person?

Stupid Accident

While getting the house ready to sell last March, I jammed my knee. I had thought that I was on the bottom step of a step ladder, but I was two steps up when I stepped down. Result was a jammed knee. Yet much to my surprise, the knee was finally getting much better with the six months of swelling gone.

Then, on Saturday evening I took the dogs outside for their evening run. They were on a full out run, side by side. chasing each other and running straight at me. I honestly never thought that they would hit me; I thought they would swerve and miss me. Nope, they hit me full force in my bad knee (m times v = mv; don't know why this equation kept popping up in my mind!). I went over like a tree, snapping my head back on the ground. And I knew it was bad in regard to my knee; it started to swell immediately.

Oh, I was a sad case, crying and moaning with little Vodin licking my face and Greta warily watching. I finally staggered up and back inside where Ron had never heard my frantic cries for him (well built guest house!).

Yet, the knee is rapidly improving. But I can now bear weight on the knee with only a moderate limp. I did get some whiplash resulting in a painful neck and hoarseness. I still have headaches from whiplash, but the neck is not as sore. This is much better improvement than I had thought possible, but I will have it all checked out at orthopedist's. I feel really, really stupid as this was a completely avoidable accident.

Fortunately, the dogs weren't hurt, which is somewhat a surprise as I am a big "tree" to run into. I will have to think about why they ran into me; it seems kind of stupid on their part. Ron told me that they have almost run into him, but he stepped aside. A woman told me that her German Shepherd loved running into them. Strange behavior is all I can say. But I am lucky it was just hard ground that I bounced my head on. Concrete would have been much, much worse!

It is worth noting that out here at the ranch, the dogs can run full out, which they could not do in suburbia which, of course, means that they can knock me flat down. However, since we are on a ranch, I am unlikely to hit concrete. So I guess that works.

November 26, 2005

Thanksgiving Ron got a warm fuzzy for returning a little bull calf to his momma. He and his cattle partner had put up three calves for market and we went down to water them this evening. Ron noticed one cow, Gertie, hanging around the pen with the calves and thanks to his record keeping, he knew Gertie's calf was only two months old. The calf was big at birth and thus had looked the age of the other calves going to market, but was only two months old and not weaned as it turned out. After playing cowboy in the calves' corral, momma and calf were reunited. Thus, Ron got the justly due warm fuzzy. Separating the mothers and their calves is the hard part of the cattle business. I guess the big ranches never notice, but when living down in the trailer I noticed mommas bawling around the calves' pen. So sad.

November 27, 2005

I had a bit of a scary day today. I had gone to Graham, west of Jacksboro, to a wedding shower when Ron, newly signed up as a volunteer fireman, was called out to a fire, a fire very close to our ranch, just west and upwind. The weather today was very strange with high winds gusting up to 40+ miles an hour which by afternoon had colored the sky a mix of gray and beige, probably dirt and sand. What with the drought conditions here and the wind, I wasn't surprised by the call out. Plus there is talk that there may be a pyromaniac at work around here.

Ron had to take our German Shepherds with him to the fire as he couldn't leave them in the guest house alone. He wanted me to come get them when I was coming back to the ranch, so he called and told me that Suburban was parked in a field off the highway, just south of the Y intersection on the road to Mineral Wells, not far from the ranch. When I left Graham he indicated that it seemed that they had the fire under control, but by the time I got to the Y intersection near here, I really started to get upset as I could see the flames off to the right of the road. I called a friend and said "Excuse my language but this was a f___ big fire." I spotted the Suburban quickly and jumped out to get Greta and Vodin.

The Suburban was in a field behind a ranch gate which I approached with the expectation that it was unlocked. But the gate was locked. I panicked. Smoke was pouring over the Suburban where the dogs were and I feared any change in wind direction could bring the fire. I grabbed the Suburban keys, tucked them in my bra (having no pockets) and climbed the gate like a nineteen year old. Running to the Suburban, I got Greta leashed up, ran back to the gate, tied her to the gate, climbed over, untied Greta and pulled her through the gate rails, which fortunately were wide enough for her to get through, and then stuck her in my car. Then I repeated the process with little Vodin and got the hell out of Dodge. As I got back to the Y intersection, I saw cattle pressed up against the fence trying to get out of the smoke and cattle on the ranch across the road from our ranch were heading east out of the smoke. But the smoke was going a bit north of us and it seemed we would be alright at the ranch. Nevertheless, I wasn't a happy camper at all.

Ron was a sight when he finally got home about 8:30. His face was totally black. Ugh. Even after a shower, I had to wash his eyes out and he had to clean nose and ears. Dirty work. He said that the gate at the field was unlocked, but I pulled at the padlock hard and I saw no give. He said I needed to just turn the padlock and that up close I should have seen the gap indicating it was unlocked. Perhaps I was too panicked over that dammed gate keeping me from my babies, but it sure felt locked to me.

“Jeezuz Mary ‘n Joeephus!
Complaints! Complaints! Complaints :-)
Without the occasional near calamity, how bored would you be?
Admit it!
Case closed! :-)
Greta and Vodin KNEW the gate was unlocked….
On the way back home they were probably talking about it…
“Did you zee the olt girl clear der vence?”
“Mit much sorprize ut ur agility”
“Ve must do it again zoon.”
“Yah!”
“Yah!”

Early 2006

The remainder of 2005 and early 2006 were tough. We moved into the house the week after Christmas. It should have been good, and in a way it was, but we had so much moving damage that it put a real damper on things. It wasn’t until late March that the final piece of damaged furniture was finally repaired. And due to difficulties with distance, we still don’t have all the decorating done.

A most unusual event occurred one brilliantly sunlit afternoon when we drove out of our cattle partner’s gate. A flock of bluebirds flew across our path with one dazzling red cardinal in their midst. A truly amazing sight. I don’t ever remember seeing a flock of bluebirds, or even a single bluebird, much less a whole flock highlighted by the bright red of a cardinal, all caught in the crystal clear afternoon sun.

We had a glimpse of more sinister wildlife one afternoon soon after. It was rainy and foggy following a weekend of rain. Behind our house, quite a way back, are trees. Toward the fence on the west side of land, the pasture edges in on the trees, creating a U-shaped indentation. The pasture at this point had a lot of tall dead and dried out broomweed.

This particular afternoon, Ron happened to look out and caught movement in this U-shaped area. An animal, the color of a coyote, but as big as Greta, our seventy-four pound German Shepherd, appeared to be stalking another animal that was moving west to east across the U-shaped area of the pasture. The size of this animal, obviously, drew our rapt attention. If it was a coyote it was much bigger than any coyote we had yet seen. If not a coyote, well that may mean that it was a timber wolf, which is a type of gray wolf I understand or, or likely, a Mexican wolf, another type of gray wolf. We needed a pair of binoculars to find out, but we don’t have any. However, in January 2005, there was a feral dog/hybrid wolf dog spotted. Maybe this was the animal.

Slowly, patiently, the animal stalked its prey, west to east. This animal was easily seen above the broom weed but the potential prey was obviously much shorter and not visible. Suddenly, when the stalker was halfway across the U-shape area, there was a flurry of movement on the eastern edge of the pasture and a large cat-like animal ran out of the pasture and scurried up a tree at the edge of the trees. It appeared to be a bobcat, but darker and maybe with a long tail. I don’t know if this is the usual stalker/prey scenario. The stalker gave up, turned and returned westward across the pasture, no longer in stalker mode, seemingly by its stride, disappointed in its failed quest. But maybe that was just my urban mentality. Perhaps it was just reconciled. After all, what percent of stalks result in success?

March 8, 2006 became one of those days when things all go wrong. Actually, it started the day before when the main gate at the road wouldn’t close. But on Wednesday, Ron had to leave his business meeting in Fort Worth early to help get stuff for the Search and Rescue March Seminar and transport the items back to Jacksboro. This distressed him and hence me.

Later, I picked droppings from the dogs’ kennel run and realized that it needed mowing, which I mentioned to Ron when he finally made it home. Mowing meant moving another piece of equipment off the DR mower. We did that, but Ron first went off to Weed Eat the dense corners of the dog run and then just kept going along the back of the house, along the back porch. Then, what I had feared for quite awhile finally happened. The Weedeater threw up a stone and it hit the kitchen door. Our door was double paned safety glass with a star design. The outer glass broke into a thousand pieces. Vodin was standing by the door and jumped a foot. I started screaming at Ron, fearful that it could happen to another door as he worked his way across the yard. He, of course, couldn’t hear me. I ran outside, screaming at the top of my lungs. He never heard me, but he finally saw me and stopped. Despite my frenzy I noticed men beyond the guesthouse outside the fence...wonder what they thought about my screaming?! I quickly told Ron about the broken door and the strange men.

Ron went to check the exterior of the kitchen door which continued to make ominous cracking noises and to see who the men were. I went inside to call the builder. Ron had already called him about the gate, but had to leave him a message. I lucked out and the builder answered my call. In a semi-hysterical voice, I asked him to bring some plywood to cover the door. Meanwhile, the door continued its ominous cracking and I envisioned the glass completely giving way, leaving us with a door with a big hole, open to all the neighboring wildlife, coyotes, bobcats, etc.

Eventually, the door was taped outside, not my first choice due to the weather forecast of severe thunderstorms that coming evening, but it was a double pane door and only the outer panel had cracked, so it seemed all right—and was all right. Watching the builder tape the door I realized that the majority of our windows are protected from similar accidents. We have windows that open from either the bottom or the top and as a result, the windows have full length screens, a marvelous protection device for errant stones.

The strange men turned out to be the anticipated seismic crew. However, we were supposed to have had 48 hours noticed of their coming on our land, which they didn’t do. Plus, a stake was put up just east of the house and Ron’s fear was that it was to mark a seismic blast site. Supposedly it isn’t, but that needs to be watched carefully. Ron’s talking to the seismic crew and another fellow who drove out was, in all an almost two hour endeavor.

Meanwhile, because of the SAR March Seminar we had three of the seminar instructors staying in our guesthouse. The first, a woman, was brought out to the ranch by a TASK (The Alliance of Search Canines) official. They borrowed our Polaris Ranger so she could see the ranch. Immediately after they left the two men instructors staying at the guesthouse showed up. It was like Grand Central Station around here. Finally, all the instructors and TASK people loaded up to leave and wouldn’t you know, the front gate decided to close as they approached it. Ron and the builder ran down to the gate and finally managed to disengage and open it. That was the end of that day of chaos. But more was to come.

The next day started out O.K. except that Ron had to leave a little sooner than he planned, when the woman instructor staying in the guesthouse needed a ride to the first day of the SAR seminar. She had no transportation having flown into DFW airport, where a TASK official picked her up. Only Vodin was enrolled in the seminar, so I kept our dog Greta with me, planning to bring her into the seminar a little later to avoid spending so much time in the crate in the Suburban while Ron and Vodin went to training. Vodin was enrolled in the Human Remains Detection classes. Greta was along for the ride.

As for me, I was supposed to leave at 10 o’clock for Fort Worth for a two day meditation retreat. But there were to be a few unexpected delays along the way. I toddled off to Jacksboro, getting the mail from our post office box and a newspaper for Ron (no newspaper delivery at the ranch) and showed up at the SAR seminar about 9:00. I hung around for a while and then got ready to leave for Fort Worth.

Months ago, Ron had warned me about locking my car by using the interior locks as I got out of the car. But I always put my keys in my pocket before using the lock, located on the door and after having done this for years, didn’t worry about it.

This day, I had two sets of keys, one for the Suburban so I could put Greta dog in it and one set for my car. Ready to go, I decided to go to the restroom before setting out on the hour and a half drive to Fort Worth. I followed my usual procedure for locking the car, but the keys in my pockets were for the Suburban, not my car. Totally disgusted with myself, I realized that I have to drive back out to the ranch and get Ron’s keys for my car—and without my driver’s license which is in my purse on the floor of my car—along with my spare key to my car.

So off I went and retrieved the keys. I had asked a TASK official to tell Ron, who was involved in a training session, but he didn’t get the message and after the session, he discovered the Suburban gone and was, of course, clueless, plus I didn’t answer my cell phone, which is in my purse in the locked car.

After I got back, Ron put Vodin in the Suburban—he had had no place to put her when I took the Suburban—and got in my car to talk to me about what happened. He got out and I left but only went a short way when I saw that he had left Vodin’s leash on the seat. I turned around, returned and rolled down the window and handed Ron the lease. But the window won’t roll back up. I could hear the motor of the electric window, but no window…and it was in the high 50s with a thirty mile an hour wind. Ron thought that the window was off its track. Obviously, I can’t go to Fort Worth and leave the car in the parking garage at the hotel with its window down, unless I want someone to steal it. So we called the car dealership in Weatherford. Bring it on in, they said. Ron thought that I would get sick in the cold and wind but I realized that I would be on the side opposite the wind so I went on. Would I ever make it to Fort Worth by 2 p.m. for the meditation retreat? Who knew. By now I am laughing. The powers that be sound like I shouldn’t leave Ron and truthfully, I am inclined to agree. He is my sweetheart and I hate to leave him anyway but I want and really need to learn about meditation, so I decided to play it by ear. If the car couldn’t be fixed in time, so be it. If it could, I would go on.

As it turned out the car window was fixed and despite the thunderous storm of last night and the high wind of that day, it was a gorgeous day and a very nice drive to Weatherford and later to Fort Worth. I found that my naturally curly hair thinks wind makes a very nice hairdo. I made it to the meditation retreat in plenty of time. I still missed my sweetheart and my sweetie dogs. Meditation is quite fascinating. It should help reduce the stress my perfectionist personality creates.

On a Sunday in late March 2006, we were training the search and rescue dogs and I was “it,” that is, I laid the trail. I wandered around near our back fence and finally settled in near our water tank. I was a little worried when I heard a cow mooing loudly since I was concerned that it would distract the dogs. And it did, but finally all three dogs found me. A handler told me that she saw a calf on my side of the fence with a cow on the other side of the fence. That was what all the commotion was about; momma and baby were separated by the fence. Ron went over and helped the calf back through the fence. This was the newest calf, a little bull calf, about one week old. He has a propensity for slipping through the barbed wire fences. If he grows like the other calves, he won’t be able to continue that little trick, probably much to his mother’s relief.

Horses and cattle, at least in our case, don’t mix. We have two horses pasturing on the lower acreage. They belong to a friend of our cattle partner’s son-in-law, a friend who has moved to San Antonio and who supposedly will retrieve his horses when he arranges pasturing for them. Meanwhile, we have to deal with them. Shooed off repeatedly as we tried to get the cattle penned for spraying, the horses, desiring the food in the pens, apparently hatched a plan. Suddenly, they appeared at a full gallop heading straight for the pens. We were able to abort their plan, but they scared off the little fence dunking calf that proceeded to go through the fence around the rent house by the cattle pens and when we tried to herd him back, slipped through the front yard fence ending up hiding in a mesquite thicket on our lower acreage. It took a long time to retrieve the calf. I finally had enough. During all this, there was a howling wind, so strong it was hard to hear what people were saying. O.K., my ears are probably getting a bit old along with the rest of me, but it was a howling wind. I left Ron to help find the calf and walked back up the hill to gather my beloved dogs from their kennel and get out of the cursed wind within four solid walls.

April 2006

For the very first time since we have lived here, there is a dust storm. Amazing. Yes, there has been a drought, but we have had some rain and everything has been greening up, trees are out, pasture is green, wildflowers are out and here is a dust storm with high winds. There was a dry line that passed over just a few minutes after we got home from Fort Worth this afternoon. We knew there could be unstable weather and it could develop quickly, even right overhead like the tornado a few years ago in Fort Worth, so we trucked on home and didn’t linger in Fort Worth. I went through the house opening windows since the weather was nice, sunny and mild and then I had to go around and close them. Of course, we can see for miles here or perhaps we wouldn’t know that there was a dust storm, just high winds. In the Metroplex, there was a quickly moving thunderstorm cell with small hail moving quickly through Fort Worth through Dallas. Unstable weather indeed.

The next day, in late afternoon, the wind came again and so did the dust. Our builder was here yesterday, working on a balky door, and said there are only a couple of days of this type of weather. He didn’t say that the days would be back to back. If it would only rain, everyone is saying, we could get a lot of West Texas topsoil. Except in West Texas, at least in my youth in Midland, that “topsoil” was mostly sand and we didn’t have dust storms, we had sand storms.

Ron went down to close the front gate this evening and found it blowing around, having been blown away from its stopping stone. The big trashcan was out in the pasture, blown free of its fastening cord. Now that is wind! So much for the top of a low hill as a place to build a house.

Eventually rain came, a good 1½ inches, much needed and much appreciated. Of course, the oil field trucks consider our gravel road to be a speedway which means after a rain that they create big potholes on the wet road.

And eventually a guy came all the way out from the Irving, in southwest Dallas County, to work on the road gate. Ron learned a lot from him and for now the road gate is working.

Vodin Gets“Snakebit”

We had just arrived back home from a run into Jacksboro to get the mail and a newspaper. The dogs were running around inside the compound fence, I was vacuuming dog hair out the car and Ron was working around the garage when our cattle partner drove up to the back gate with a package for me. I continued my labors, not knowing about the package, and Ron went over to talk to him, just outside the driveway gate.

I knew the dogs were “messing around” somehow, for some reason, barking a lot, but between working on the car and our cattle partner driving up I wasn’t focusing on the dogs. Finally Ron motions me over to our cattle partner’s pickup and says that he has brought me a package. At that point the dogs are really barking and Ron focuses on the dogs while I thank our cattle partner for bringing out the package. Suddenly I hear Ron say that Vodin has been bitten by a snake and her nose is bloody. Our cattle partner and I run inside the compound onto the driveway, look at the guesthouse porch and immediately I know it is a rattlesnake coiled up there. A moment before when I went out the back gate it hadn’t been there. My guess is that the dogs, especially high prey driven Vodin, had chased the snake from either the back or north side of the guesthouse onto the porch.

Carl grabs a rake, breaks the snake’s back so it can’t jump at him and then kills the snake. Meanwhile poor Vodin has started vomiting all over the entryway of the house and Ron puts Vodin in her crate in the Suburban and takes off for the vet, about 20 minutes away, probably the longest minutes of his life.

Vodin had had her second annual rattlesnake vaccine the month before. The previous year we had even taken both dogs to a snake avoidance class given for hunting dogs. I guess that was either too long ago or Vodin’s prey drive is so strong that her prey drive overrode her training.

Our cattle partner is totally mysterified that a snake would be up the hill in our compound. After all, he says, he hasn’t seen any snakes down at the barn where all the cattle feed is stored and where there has to be mice and other rodents, the prime food source for snakes. It takes me a couple of hours to figure it out but the answer is relatively simple. There is a feral cat down there at the barn. Last summer when we were living in the trailer down there we didn’t see any snakes either but sometimes we would see the wild cat. I tried to get a feral cat for the new house but didn’t get any support in my quest or much interest or help in locating any potential candidates and finally I gave up. I shouldn’t have.

I find the whole event horrifying. These dogs are not just dogs, they are our children plus being highly trained search and rescue dogs, with hundreds of hours of training. I gather up Greta and make sure she is safe in the house. Then I do get the bag of Snake Be Gone and sprinkle a goodly portion around the dogs’ kennels and run. Then I get a rake and trample every inch of the grass in the run to make sure no snake is hiding anywhere.

Poor Vodie. She has had her nose bitten twice by other dogs for having her nose where it didn’t belong. If she were human she would probably be labeled hyperactive for she never gives up on any quest and if it moves, in comes the prey drive. Vodin is the first dog in Jack County who the vet has seen who has had the rattlesnake vaccine and who then was bitten Vodin is lucky in that she was bitten on the nose, but to know Vodin is to know that she wouldn’t be avoiding the snake, she would be there nose first.

Later it appears that the rattler was a young snake and let out all its venom, not saving any back like an older more experienced snake would have done. That was unlucky for Vodin and made her much sicker. But Vodin is really lucky in that the snake missed her eye by a scant one inch. Even with vaccination that may have well meant Vodin’s death and at the least the loss of her eye. Vodin recovers much, much better than unvaccinated dogs. Her nose swells up about five times its normal size, but an unvaccinated dog would have swollen up more than that we are told. Vodin is unable to eat the night she was bitten but she eats breakfast the next day. Unvaccinated dogs may not be able to eat for several days. But poor Vodin was miserable and breathing so hard the first night that we call out the vet and take Vodin in to see him. She is the best she can be under the circumstances, the vet says. We wouldn’t have been able to sleep without bringing her in, I said. “I know,” the vet replied. Nice guy.

On Monday we take Vodin back to the vet for a checkup and I go along with Ron. Stroking our poor baby’s head I tell the vet that I am taking my babies out of here. He looks at me, puzzled and says “Out of Jack County?” Yes, I said, back to the city where there are much fewer snakes. He can’t figure why anyone would want to do that. I sure can.

Actually the snakebite was just the exclamation mark in the decision. Ron, who was supposed to be retired, now has more business than he can handle and some folks want him to join up with him to start a company. Meanwhile we are living on the road, mostly to Fort Worth, but also Dallas, Weatherford, Graham and Grapevine. And with gasoline selling at over $3.00 a gallon; need one say more.

Everyday Vodin looks better, but there for a while she looked like a bloodhound, big nosed, big jowls and drooling. Then for a couple of days she had a Roman nose and saggy neck. Finally after six days, except for the shaved area on her nose she looked pretty much like herself. I guess my problem was that I thought that vaccine kept any reaction from occurring. Obviously that was not the case. And that horrifies me.

The blasé attitudes of many people here toward their snake bitten dogs amazed me. Some never even take their dogs into a vet, a live or not live attitude. Some have had their dogs bitten multiple times. Perhaps in those cases the dogs do acquire some sort of immunity depending on whether or not they are bitten by the same sort of snake. I am afraid that if we stayed little Vodin, with that high prey drive and never give up attitude, would be one of those bitten multiple times.

May 2006

Blue Balls for the Bull?

One night, earlier this week, about 9:30 p.m. we hear bellowing outside. I thought that it sounded like a cow giving birth right outside the house fence, an unlikely event. Ron went outside and in the light of the full moon saw the bull bellowing, right outside the house fence and looking at the house. He saw Ron and started pawing the ground and increased his bellowing. Ron wasn't sure the bull wouldn't come right through the fence at him. Cows came over and nudged the bull away from the fence. I went out in time to see a cow forehead to forehead with the bull while other cows formed a rough circle around him. One cow pushed another cow away from the bull, but that cow then circled around and came back to lick the bull's side. Any idea what was going on? I should say that the grass inside the fence is looking very green (fertilized) and probably appealing and that the herd had been hanging around right outside the fence. We read up on beef cattle behavior and we know that a herd is a matriarchic society and fighting is actively discouraged, but this was a bit strange.

I e-mailed a cattle knowledgeable cousin who said:
“Think you got a horny bull. You are right about the matriarchal behavior. You have the head cow. Sometimes you see a ritualized “ranking” taking place during breeding season. It’s not unusual for the “head cow” to “butt heads” with the bull at times in a mock combat ritual. The other cows also will take part, often alternating. As one shoves one away and takes its place the cow being replaced takes a station at the bull’s side. They can’t match his strength, but they take turns wearing him down. They usually licked him and or nudged him gently to show submission and calm him. As the cows come into season he settles down a little bit and breeds them in turn, no getting so grumpy again until all are pregnant again. What y’all saw I’m pretty sure were they girls “handling a surly guy with a bad case of the “blue balls.” They moved him away from the house and a potential situation and calmed the big boy down…typical ladies handling their men-folk.

The things this city girl didn’t know! And then in mid May the wildlife shows itself again when we again encountered coyotes. It was early evening, but full daylight, and the cows were grazing down by the road fence when we saw a coyote scurrying from the woods behind the house, across the pasture by the house, heading for the road fence. The cows parted like the Red Sea with a couple of cows keeping an eye on the coyote while the other just kept grazing. The coyote was so small that we at first doubted that it was a coyote. Then a hundred yards or so behind the first coyote came a second, slightly larger, on the same path. We wondered why they were going to take a risk of passing in plain sight. We do have guns but except for firing guns at the licensing class, we have not fired them.

Early the next morning we saw two rather bold coyotes sitting just this side of our side fence, right at the edge of the trees, seemingly just staring at our house. We didn’t know if they are the same two coyotes of the previous day but we suspected that they were. Eventually they turned and loped off. I thought that it was time to get a coyote hunter out since they seemed to be getting rather bold.

An Ending?

We may be at an end to our rural adventure. I have developed health problems which require frequent trips to urban areas for treatment. This means boarding the dogs and hotel rooms for us.

So we have put the ranch up for sale.

This made our cattle partner and his wife extremely unhappy with us. I can understand in one way, since the way they wanted the land laid out means that it is difficult for them to get from one part of their land to the other without crossing our land. But that was the way they wanted it, not us. And it was not my idea to have health problems. They wanted us to sell part of our land to them to solve that problem, but that has the potential of making the rest of our land less saleable, which, obviously, would be a major problem for us. Then they threatened to turn their land into a trailer park, which again would be a problem for us. Finally, they decided to dissolve the cattle partnership. And that, indeed, hurt. We had grown fond of the cattle. They refused to allow them to be sold to a third party which would have helped, but insisted on buying all the cattle themselves. We really had no choice concerning the sale of the cattle since the land we leased for the cattle, located on the south and west of our land, was only in the name of our cattle partner. On the day of the sale, I got a bag of ranch cubes and with Ron helping, led them out the back gate, cried a few tears and said goodbye.

Fixing Fences

One would think that barbed wire fences would be fairly sturdy and perhaps in general they are. We have new fencing around most of our land, but it seems that something out here jumped over the fences and sometimes misjudged a bit, or perhaps does not have the jumping skills it thought it did. It was probably a deer. Or maybe it was a cow re-enacting the old saga of the cow over the moon. It would be a sight to see a twelve hundred pound cow clearing a fence! I understand that it does happen. But whatever the cause, the result is that the top strand of the fence was stretched and sags, requiring repair. Now it gets interesting. It does not appear that there are books or any Internet help on barbed wire fence repair. Rather how to repair a barbed wire fence is something that is taught from father to son, brother to brother or the like. And the method of repair can be very different depending on how the person was taught. Ron had seen this repair done, but did not remember how to do it, nor did we have the wire stretcher required to complete the task. Our source became the husband of the person who cuts our hair. He and his older brother are true modern day cowboys.

He came out one Sunday and within about 30 minutes had repaired two areas of sagging wire. He quickly cut the fence wire, made loops in both of the free ends, stretched the wire with the wire stretcher and put a splice in place. He said that he is sure there are other ways to tighten the wire, but this is the way his big brother taught him, and since it worked, he saw no need to try any other way. Indeed, since the fence has been fixed, someone else has told us about seeing the older folks around here simply putting a stick in the fence and twisting the wire until it was taut. Our cowboy friend also gave some helpful tips on how to handle cows. Now, while it may be too late, we now have another resource for information for ranch-hand type of work.

Saving a Little Red Calf

Customarily the cattle followed our Ranger Polaris, because all last winter they were fed range cubes from it. When the cattle were sold, they were put in the pasture on the other side of the west fence. One day, while I was in Dallas in the hospital for medical tests, the cattle heard Ron in the Ranger Polaris, while he was out killing mesquite in our big pasture, and came to the fence, hoping for range cubes. He went over to the fence to see them and noticed among them a small red calf along with a cow who appeared to be a recent mother, but who was not having anything to do with this calf. The calf was going from cow to cow trying to suckle, but each cow was kicking the calf away. Occasionally a cow would allow the calf to suckle for a few minutes and then kick or head butt the calf away. Desperate for nourishment, the calf even tried to suckle another calf. The cows became more violent in butting the calf and knocking it to the ground. Ron called our former cattle partner and told him that it appeared that there was a sick calf that he needed to come get. The cows walked off and Ron thought at that time that the calf went with them. However, late in the afternoon, when Ron was still working in the pasture, he thought he saw what looked like a calf alone standing in a clump of mesquite. He went to the fence and saw that it was the little red calf standing alone and hunched over. The calf was so weak that it could only lie down or stand hunched over in one place. He called our former cattle partner again, who was finally going to come get the calf. Ron told him where to find the calf. As it turned out, the little red calf was a twin. The vet said it was not uncommon for a mother cow to reject one twin. The little red calf has to be hand raised. I wish we could have done it ourselves.

So far we have had no takers for the ranch. It would be better for us to sell it. It would be better for us to be in Dallas close to our daughters and to be close to quality medical care for me, but if it is not to be, it is not be. So we have plans. First, we will drill another water well and redo the earthen water tank. Here water is the foremost concern. Then, we will have to decide what to do with our big pasture, whether to put it Coastal Bermuda grass which can be harvested two or three times a year and/or put some sort of limited livestock on the land. Right now we have it sowed in native grasses including big and small blue stem, which is easy to spot in the big pasture as it does have a blue cast. We will decide all this after September when the contact for selling the ranch expires.

A Water Well

To heck with selling the ranch, I want a second water well! West Texan that I am, I want a second water well for a security blanket. West Texan that I am, I want to drill a second water well during a drought to make sure that it is a good one. So in July 2006 here come the well drillers. We didn’t have to wait nearly as long as we did in February 2005 for them to show up. Our choice of the drilling spot is near the line of trees behind the house. When building the house, we read in the local newspaper about a water witcher, an elderly woman, and we had her come out and see what she could find. She indicated that water was near the tree line. It was very interesting. But the well diggers set up way right of where I wanted to drill and started before I could have my say. Sure enough, it was not a good well. Although they hit some water sand, there wasn’t much water.

But where to drill next is the question. Best advice of the drillers was to drill near our existing well. We knew that our former cattle partner who owns the land next to us would be upset by that, even though the water driller said there was only a 1% probability of a new well causing any problem. But then the driller remembered that they had drilled a well on the ranch across from us and about a mile up the road that was an exceptional well. So we decide to drill as close to that as possible, which was next to our front gate. We really thought it was a way long shot but boy, oh boy, were we wrong! And boy, oh boy, were we happy to be wrong! You could hear us shout all the way to Dallas! It is a great well, about three times as good a well as the old well with great tasting water. I will continue to be careful about water, after all this is an extreme drought, but I feel much, much better about our situation. It was a really great day. A new, great water well and we also have good cloud cover over the blazing July sun. Maybe I have lower standards now, but I was one happy Texas gal!

Outside in the Texas Heat

July is not a good month to work outside in Texas. We live on a gravel road about a mile from the Fort Worth to Jacksboro highway, about nine miles southeast from Jacksboro. Not sure why, but our road seems to be a place to pull off and drink a six pack. Guess that is true of most country roads. It is also a place to drop the trash from lunch or, at least, let it blow out of the back of the pickup. So the gravel road can get kinda trashy, literally. Being a strait laced sort, ultra neat type, one Sunday I took a garbage bag with me when we went to train the dogs, having noted a lot of trash on the south side on the road and planning to pick it up on the way back in to the ranch. Before it was over I was drippy, soaking wet and I had a full garbage bag, with lots of beer cans and other drink cans. But the most interesting trash was a container of French fries, which obviously had been there for quite awhile and yet was completely untouched by any form of wildlife. Not even the coyotes would touch it!

North Texas, West Texas?

Here in southeast Jack County, I thought we lived in North Central Texas or something like that. But my cousin mentioned something about those West Texas coyotes not eating those French fries and I retorted with what West Texas coyotes? Then I had second thoughts since my cousin is rather a smart fellow. Oops, what if I am wrong? As it turns out it is a wee bit murky. Texans have forever kind of divided Texas into East, South, Central, North and West and please make that East Texas and the like with capitals initial letters or we get riled. Some say it because we have the right to divide into five states, the only state with such a right. I don’t know. I just know that we have always referred to different parts of the state this way. But where does one part start and the other start? And it seems that we sort of live in one of those areas here in Jack County. But it is really not at all like the West Texas where I grew up so for me, it is North Central Texas.

There is the Eastern Cross Timbers and the Western Cross Timbers. Suffice to say that at least eastern Jack County is in the Western Cross Timbers which is rolling terrain with trees. In the pioneer days in the west part of Jack County, there were Indians, which explains why, when reading early Jack County history, there is nothing but one Indian fight after another. It seems that the Indians didn’t much care for coming through the Cross Timbers and it scrubby underbrush and stayed west. But the settlers like the Cross Timbers as they provided timber for housing and firewood and water. Consequently, history west of here was really different than east of here and so is the terrain. So we live in the Cross Timbers area of North Texas. I glad to finally know exactly where I live.

August 2006

We have definitely had a drought this year. Hopefully it won’t be a years long type drought. So today when it rained it was welcome. It wasn’t much, but what the heck, it was rain. Some sort of tropical something or other, not much, but cloudy skies, which are a blessing in and of themselves. I am probably imagining it, but it seems that the poor old drought stricken pasture looks a tiny bit green.

Gray overcast skies this afternoon. Maybe more rain?

Experiencing a drought in the country is very different than experiencing a drought in the city. In the city it is usually possible to ignore the drought, not always of course, but usually. There may be yard watering restrictions, that type of thing. With all the growth of the Dallas/Fort Worth area there have been other water problems, but still looking at a dry pasture and looking at a tree line with trees dying is different. Those pasture grasses and those trees normally take care of themselves. No water hoses or sprinklers ever kept them alive; yet those grasses and trees lived and now they are dying. That is significant. This is a really bad drought.

The Rat Snake

This weekend we made a mistake because we are city folks. We killed a pretty good sized rat snake. It was in the dog run and we had just let the dogs out into the run. Our big German Shepherd found it coiled there. Ron quickly put the dogs out the run gate, grabbed the hoe kept by the kennel door for such occasions and killed it. We didn’t know it was a rat snake. Our family was visiting and our son-in-law, who grew up in northwest Harris County on a few acres, later identified it, saying, “Poor old rat snake.” Oops. Rat snakes are beneficial to us, keeping down the mice/rate population. Without the rat snake there are mice and rats which can attract the poisonous snakes. Dumb, dumb on our part. However, we were busy going only a good snake is a dead snake. Having one’s beloved dog bitten by a rattler is also a really big factor for us. We were short sighted and not any good at distinguishing between rat snakes and rattlers. Oh, yes! The rattler on the end of the tail! Rat snakes don’t have rattlers. If we can stay calm enough to look. I confess, it isn’t probably going to happen any time soon.

Dear Sweet Little Rabbit?

With the new well we were finally able to get enough water to relieve our landscaping plants which really hadn’t managed to get a foothold being new and were hanging on by a thread. Then the grasshoppers and locusts of biblical portions came making life extremely miserable for all the landscaping. I was thinking, and indeed am still thinking, of xeriscaping or whatever it is called. It makes sense in areas prone to drought. But in the meanwhile, these poor plants were fairly on their last legs begging for water. So we were finally able to get more to them, except one raised bed in the back of the house where the drip irrigation seems to have a problem. I have been ferrying buckets of water to the dying plants there for several weeks but when the sprinkler time got increased I stopped my ferrying activities, only to discover after four days, that the plants looked worse than ever. It was then I knew that the drip line had a problem. Until I could get it fixed, I hauled the hose over and started giving the bed a good soaking. Suddenly, while pouring water on one plant, something scurried out the other side. I just caught a bare glimpse of something light tan. I have learned not ignore such things. I really wanted to. After all, I was wearing sandals. Dummy, me! Cautiously, I peered around the edge of the raised bed. There, huddled against the wall of the house, was a tiny critter, a mouse, a baby rabbit? I tapped on the window of the dining room, Greta dog went crazy, knocked over and broke a potted plant, but I got Ron’s attention. He came out, but even he wasn’t sure. I think it was a baby rabbit. It makes sense. I had noticed that something had dug holes around these particular plants and that the plants were in particular doing very poorly…and rabbits eat roots. Not that I remembered that. It took someone later saying that for little urbanite me to go, oh, yeah, I remember reading about that.

So now what happens to the sweet little baby rabbit? My attitude now is what happens, happens. I ain’t goin’ be raising wild rabbits for sure. Awhile back we had put a box out by the kennels with a misty fan we brought to keep the dogs cool if we kept them out in the kennels in the summer. Rattlesnakes changed our minds about leaving our dogs outside in the summer and we never opened the box. But the box had a couple of openings for carrying the box and a mating pair of tiny birds got in the box and built a nest. The scratching noises the birds made while building the next would fascinate the dogs when we took them past on the way to the kennel run. Later when the eggs hatched the tiny peeks really got the dogs’ attention, but we carefully ushered the dogs on past. Suddenly, the box was silent and we thought the babies had flown away. Unfortunately, we were wrong. I asked Ron to take the box apart since it was way too attractive to snakes. When he did, he discovered that the nest had fallen and the babies had died. I guess it is the way of nature, sometimes cruel.

So today, the tiny baby rabbit is still by the plant bed, now on the dining room side, huddled against the stone wall of the bed. Tomorrow we are going to a nearby town to buy cages for the plants to keep wild rabbits for eating the roots.

Ah, ha! There are two baby rabbits! And the displaced baby rabbit could hop back into the raised plant bed, which was question we had since it was so tiny. Today I went out again with a hose, and my suspicious, and watered down the plant bed and sure enough, out came a baby rabbit…and another one. Meanie me, I chased them with the hose and told them to go find other homes. One of these days I will learn not to try to talk to animals, especially cattle or wildlife. I don’t think they understand at all. So now I have to go learn about how to keep wild rabbits out of the plant beds. The learning curve for these urbanites continues.

Finally Ron went out, caught the baby rabbits in a sack, tied it up, hauled them off to the woods and released them to make it in the wild or not to make.

I have learned a lot since living on the ranch. I am indeed a confirmed urbanite. I have a photograph of my grandfather standing amidst a herd of Angus cattle up near the Texas Panhandle. But my life was far away from his, with no rural experience. My comfort zone is urban. Ron had the experience of spending summers as a child in Collin County, north of Dallas, on the farms of his grandfather and great-grandfather. He is more comfortable in rural areas than me. But even Ron missed the lessons passed down on how to repair fences and other various broken things that are taught to sons in rural areas, far away from repair men in their trucks making house calls.

What I have learned while living here is what is really important wherever I live. I have learned that I am very blessed with a husband who truly loves me and will always stand by me. We have grown so very close, with a deep abiding love, beyond our shared forty-three years together. In my darkest hours he has been there for me. I have told him that he is surely growing his angel wings. I have learned that laughter can lighten the load that life can bring, thanks to a wonderful cousin. I have learned that I have really and truly loving, caring daughters.

October 2006

We have all heard of the possible effect of a full moon on people. One day made me seriously think that might be something to it when there were serious three wrecks in Jack County in one day and they were wrecks that really made no sense. Ron went to one and spent a good amount of time prying the driver out of his car. With clear vision ahead and without even attempting to brake, the driver of the car slammed full speed into an eighteen wheeler crossing the highway in front of him. The driver’s dog, riding loose in the car was killed, but the driver of the car survived. The driver of the eighteen wheeler was uninjured.

November 2006

Ron Deserts the Ranch

An old friend with whom he worked for over thirty years called and said that he had a “gig” for him in Arkansas. A hospital that this friend’s company owned in Arkansas is in serious trouble and he asks Ron to go in and stabilize it until they can get a new CEO in place. So Ron is off to do so and is gone Monday through Friday leaving me and the dogs here alone on the ranch. I am not sure what Ron is thinking. Should I be complimented that he thinking I will be fine or should I think he should have his head examined? Time will tell. Folks in town that I tell look a little startled. Do they know something I don’t know? I am mostly content that he will be gone while the snakes are hibernating. I am not sure of my snake killing skills. And the scorpions will be heading for the attic for the winter.

Armadillos

Armadillos are the national mammal of Texas and all that, but I don’t want one in my back yard. I had the back windows open one night and the dogs started barking. I turned on the back lights and it didn’t take long to spot the armadillo since this one was on the white side color wise. The armadillo didn’t want to be there either with two big dogs barking their fool heads off. Now the wise decision would have been to shut the windows and let the fool armadillo eventually find its way out of the compound fence through one of the two gates. But no, I had to make the less than wise decision of trying to help the armadillo on its way so I could keep the windows open. If I didn’t help the armadillo along the dogs were going to come through the screens at any minute. So I grab the light weight broom on the side porch, my second mistake, and went up to the armadillo, which responded immediately by trying to dig under the chain linked fence. I tried to push the armadillo toward the nearest gate, apologizing to our national animal. Ha! Armadillos are heavier than they look. And suddenly, I remembered, hey, don’t armadillos harbor some really bad disease? Oh, yes, what is it? Hmmm, oh….leprosy….er…think I will go inside, close the windows and burn the broom. The armadillo found its own frantic way out of the yard without any more “help” from me.

A second encounter with armadillos occurs when I decide to take the dogs for a “natural” walk without leases, a mistake. I should have put on their e-collars or electronic collars. Dogs are dogs, no matter that I love them dearly. They are not children. They are dogs and will behave like dogs. These two have had obedience training but they are still dogs. So we start off walking around in the big pasture with me carrying a pole to ward off whatever might threaten the dogs, or so I thought. The idea was for the dogs to follow me, or at least range behind me. For the most part this is what they did. We had completed most of our walk and were behind the house when I spotted the armadillo. Hopefully, I thought, since I was taller, the dogs didn’t see it and by changing our path and heading more directly back to the house, I could avoid a confrontation. But I forgot a dog’s keen sense of smell and as soon as I changed the path, Greta, our big black Shepherd abruptly took off directly at the armadillo which immediately and frantically started digging itself into a hole. Our little Shepherd, Vodin, took off right behind Greta with me screaming, “No, leave it!!” to them in German. They completely ignored me, or at least Greta did. She was totally “red-eyed, and attacking the armadillo with Vodin watching her and me running to catch up. Greta never stopped. I had to grab her collar and drag her off. Indeed Greta wasn’t the least contrite as I dragged her all the way back to the house. Dogs will be dogs. And I should have had on their e-collars. My mistake.

First Ice Storm

The television news announced it in plenty of time for me to worry for days in advance. The first ice storm of the winter is coming. And Ron is in Arkansas. So I am on my own to make preparations. First worry is the well houses. The well houses are well insulated and have hanging reflective lights that are turned on when the temperatures get below freezing. But now it dawns on me, what happens if we lose electricity? No electricity, no lights in the well houses and the well heads freeze up. I worry over that like a dog over a bone. Meanwhile I decide to check our batteries. Running search and rescue dogs I thought we were in good shape. I am wrong. Many batteries are out of date. I gather all flashlights and the various types of lanterns and check their batteries and list what batteries were needed. Then I am off to the local (and only) hardware store on the square. I ask the folk there what to do about the well houses if the power goes off. An old cowboy type overhears and laughs at the stupid greenhorn and says, “Propane heaters!” The hardware folks thank him for selling things for them and we all leave happy. Except I have no idea how to operate the propane heaters.

Fortunately, Ron makes it home barely before the storm makes the roads dangerous—literally. The dogs and I are pacing the entry hall with me muttering, “Where is he? He should be here by now,” when I spot the car lights coming down the road. Ron said that sleet started hitting his windshield as soon as he turned on the highway that runs by the ranch, fifteen minutes from the ranch. That was cutting it close. I had been calling him all day, encouraging him to take the earliest possible flight, giving him the latest weather report.

Luckily the ice storm was short lived and was mostly sleet, not icy rain. There was no wind, so we didn’t lose power and we didn’t have to use the propane heaters, thank goodness. Ron got some good photographs of the winter landscape that we can use for our Christmas cards and the dogs were just happy to get back outside while he took pictures.

January 2007

Felon at the Door

Things got kind of interesting one night around here in early January 2007 when there came a banging on the front door. We don't have a doorbell, so someone has to knock, which should have reminded me as to why we don't have a doorbell. It was dark. The dogs immediately ran to the front entry barking, followed by me. Ron is off in Arkansas. I asked loudly (through the mostly glass door), "Who is it?" "I am here about the stray dogs." Ron and I had seen two good looking dogs the weekend before, apparent pets, a black lab and a golden retriever. I get the key, pretend to tell Ron that I am getting the door, grab our black Shepherd by the collar, crack the door, poke my head out along with the black Shepherd's nose, and talk briefly to the man, who introduces himself, says that he lives in the rent house over on the highway. He asks if the dogs are ours, that the dogs have chewed up his outdoor furniture. No ours, I reply. “Oh,” man says, "Guess I will ask folks on the other side of the highway." and off he goes.

Then I start to worry. There is a reason for no doorbell. No one should come on our property without us first knowing it because our gates are all locked. That means that that man had to climb over locked gates and open other closed gates. How did he get in? So I call I call the SAR instructor, former cattle partner, park ranger, peace officer (all in one) who is building a dog training center down the hill. He comes storming out, yelling trespassing, and dragging a sheriff's deputy shortly behind him. Turns out the stranger was released from prison a month or two ago for burglary and our neighbor down the hill is very concerned about items on his place, including several thousand dollars in tools. So complaints are filled out. They help me load my gun. And they go off to confront the man. I carefully carry the bomb, as known as the loaded gun, in its case to the closet and put it on a high shelf. Actually, I am a good shot. To be licensed I had to do some shooting and outshot experienced men, much to their misery when the instructor pointed out that here was this woman, who had never fired a gun before and she had out scored most of the men. Good old hand and eye coordination once again, the same thing that made me a very good golfer. One is born with it, or one is not.

Now I keep the Stay alarm on more often, following my instincts which had been telling me that someone was out there. Civilized me was telling me no way; primitive me was saying, pay attention. Civilized me opened the door. Primitive me brought the big black German Shepherd with me to the door. Think I will go with a more primitive me and not even go to the door without the gun and dog.

Second Ice Storm

I thought that this was supposed to be a mild winter. Well, it hasn't been so far or there is a new definition of “mild.” The only good thing is that the ice storms, so far, are happening on the weekends and Ron managed to get here once again to keep me company. He also got here in time to go out with the rural fire department/first responders to an ice caused wreck (eighteen wheeler) on the highway nearby, and then another one, and then another one, all nearby, all one right after another. By that time, I was contemplating hiding the keys to the Suburban. If anything happened to the Suburban on these icy rescue missions, I would be stuck at home until it was repaired since it is the only way to transport the dogs in their crates. But the driving public finally figured out that the highways were slick and got off them and all was quiet.

The Gate

Cabin fever got me and today I decided to get out and go get the mail in town, but the front gate had other things in mind for me. I approached the front gate—it didn’t open. I back all the way back down the curving gravel road to outside the compound gate, turn around, drive back inside and get hot water and return to the front gate and call Ron for advice since I never worked on the gate like he and the builder did. That gate has caused a lot of problems even in good weather. As it is Ron isn’t very good at describing the gate parts over the phone. Hmmm. I pour the hot water over potential candidate parts. No go. Ron says to take the gate apart. I call the builder for better description of that process. The builder describes it, but I discover that a hammer is necessary. Backwards up the road again. I’m freezing. The dogs are standing up in their crates. I can’t see. I yell at them to lay down. Get hammer. Return to gate. Tears of frustration. Frozen pin doesn’t want to come out but finally does and arm is released. But gate doesn’t open. When Ron left yesterday to go to Arkansas, he told me he made sure that the gate latched. At the time I thought maybe that wasn’t wise. I call him and he tells me that later he wondered if that was wise. As it was, it wasn’t, because the gate was indeed locked and the key wouldn’t turn. Backwards up the road for the third time. Hot water again, this time poured over the lock. Finally the key turns, the gate is free, I am out at last. I drape the frozen chain over the gate, unable to lock the gate from the outside.

I go to town on the completely clear and dry roads, get the mail and a newspaper and return to find the gate wide open and that I had left the garage door wide open also. I had been more frustrated than I realized. A big mistake. We could have had our Polaris Ranger, our four wheel utility vehicle, or other equipment stolen due to my mistake. The only thing I did right was turn the house alarm on.

My East Texas cousin, however thought the dogs probably had a wonderful time:

“About the gate, it might have been so frustrating it brought teats, But You KNOW the dogs were loving it ! ? Vodin: Lookingzee!

Mama has a new game! To keep us amused vile Poppa iz avay!

If I am good at anything, I am good at running down repair people, and I have a guy coming at 10 in the morning who I hope will at least fix the dadgum front gate, but even better replace it with a better working model. We shouldn’t have a gate that to get out of in freezing weather we have to pour hot water over it at best or dismantle it at worst.

Alas, awoke this morning to two inches of snow and sure enough soon heard from the gate repair guy. He says he has two feet of snow and more coming down. He isn't coming until it stops and clears. I bet that isn't until tomorrow. Yet the temperature at noon is a balmy 30 degrees which we haven't seen since last week, so there is hope.

Thursday morning

The gate is only half fixed. The gate guy finally showed up today. He turned out to be an older fellow, kinda broken down and barely able to breathe. He lives in Granbury and had 2 inches of ice at his place. He reattached the gate and got it going but when he tried to adjust the gate latch he broke a bolt off. But it isn't a real problem since he is coming back next week to completely replace the gate opener with a heavier model. Before he left he very kindly left me a can of de-icer. That should be better than pouring hot water over the opener if we get more ice. I should have figured that one out myself.

Meanwhile the gravel road by the front gate is total mud thanks to the heavy trucks servicing the gas wells down the way. The new county commissioner is on my dog list at the moment and the Suburban is covered in mud. Or it was until I put on rubber boots, raincoat, etc., and washed off enough mud to be able to drive it safely. Bit of a cold endeavor. The new young county commissioner insists by voice mail that he knows the road needs "rock" (gravel?), and in a colorful turn of phrase, plans to "that way this way" get it done, whatever the heck that means.

Friday

Now I learn that there was a pack of feral dogs out here. They took down a calf just down the hill and started eating it even before it was dead, a gross imagery if ever there was one, before the owner came on the property and discovered what had happened. Three of the dogs were killed. A friend is coming from out of town and a hunt is planned for this Sunday to kill the remaining dogs, believed to number at least three more in number. I had heard and my East Texas cousin also said that feral dogs don’t fear humans and that makes them especially dangerous to humans. I was just right down in that area the day before checking on our older well house by myself. It is little unnerving to think that the dogs might have been so close. If they are not found and killed I will have to start carrying my gun. And I am also thinking about the times that I went into the woods hiding for the search and rescue dogs to find me. It is believed that the dogs may have been living in our lower land and hunting on the huge ranch across the road.

Wednesday

The new gate opener was installed today and that event was a sociological study in itself. The older guy brought a young guy, named (of course) "Bubba," who he was instructing. But Bubba really didn't want to listen, although somewhere under that cocky veneer he knew he should. Bubba says to me, "He drives me crazy." I want to shake some sense into Bubba, but decide to stay out of what almost looks like a family squabble, although they deny that they are related. And Bubba shows up without a jacket to work in 40 something degree weather. I finally go back to the house and get another jacket, giving him Ron's Carhart jacket, which he really likes. But I have a vested interest in Bubba being nice and warm and taking his time to do a good job. In all, it was interesting. The older fellow, Bob, does have a breathing problem, namely emphysema, maybe from Agent Orange in Vietnam. If Bubba can grow up, he may be groomed to take over.

The hunt for the feral dogs was seemingly quite successful with three dogs and three coyotes killed. I saw the body of one of the dogs, just off our road, near the highway. It was a Golden Retriever. It made me cry. It is so cruel that people would take such a wonderful breed and dump it out in the country to come to such a sad end.

February 2007

The gate pulled its tricks again and again I got to freeze again. But this time I knew how to dismantle the gate quickly, locked it and off to town I went. Sadly the gate guy I used is now in the hospital not expected to live, not a surprise to me. When he was here working on the gate he was having a hard time breathing.

No one here works on other folk’s gates. Everyone only works on their own gates. Everyone repairs their own fences, fixes their own gates, etc., etc. So I run down this guy who came out last year from the Midcities, a fireman. He did a telephone consultation with me freezing out at the gate, trying to decipher the control panel. Got the gate working, but the problem is the latch and the problem is getting the gate to stay closed with the North wind blowing hard to open it. Not solved yet. At at one point the gate guy made me feel like an idiot. Finally I just said, “Please don't do that, I am out here freezing”. He apologized, after a fashion. When the pin on the gate latch jammed he even told me to go to the truck and warm up. That made a difference. For one thing, I could finally talk coherently even if I still couldn't think clearly. An hour in 20 degree wind chill and I am still cold three hours later. This is really insane.

Eventually, I find a gate and fence company in Azle down toward Fort Worth and they come and do a wonderful job replacing the gate opener with, miracle of miracles, a gate opener that actually has worked ever since.

The front gate worked great until one day when Ron and I went to gone to town. When we left the gate worked just fine. When we returned an hour later, the gate didn’t work. It didn’t take but a minute to see why not, dangling wires were hard to miss. Why there were dangling wires was harder to explain. But later the gate repair fellow later caught the culprit cow in the act when he drove up to the gate. She was merrily chewing on the wires.

It was the red and white cow, mother to the black and white bull calf. She was henceforth named “Terri”, short for terrorist since she sabotaged the front gate. The “Terri” name was courtesy of the mean wit of my East Texas cuz. It seems that the wiring, according to my East Texas cousin, my guru of rural knowledge, has glucose in it, which can, on occasion attract the curious and hungry cow.

Ron and I have to put up a sort of mini three strand fence around the gate opener to keep any other cows from munching on the wires.

August 2007

More Cows

Our land leasee put more cattle out which was very interesting to watch, certainly more interesting than television or even books since it was real life Animal Planet so to speak. Our tiny herd of three cows and its little bull calf scurried out to meet the new arrivals, only to be rudely rebuffed, to say the least. The three cows sulked back to the woods, obviously downcast. But slowly the two groups did merge. The new herd had a bull, a major new component in the group and a wandering one at the beginning. He jumped the fence at a weak part and went a’visting next door. Our former cattle partner and neighbor had to return him, much to our neighbor’s displeasure. But hey, it isn’t our bull, and hence not our problem. Now to that fence…he fixed it since otherwise his bull and the young wandering bull were “fixing” to get in a fight. So the wandering days of the bull were over and he has to content himself with nine lady cows on our land. He seems fine with that or at least no bellowing outside our house so far. Two calves have been born since the new cows have arrived but it has to be assumed that the mothers were pregnant when they arrived since it is too soon for this bull to have produced these calves. Unless he was with these cows before they arrived here. We don’t know their previous history. It is quite possible that they were together at another location before they came here considering the group’s cohesiveness. What I don’t know yet, or haven’t been able to spot, is which cow is the

head cow.

Vodin, the Cow Barker

Our youngest German Shepherd, a red and black three year old, is considered by one search and rescue instructor to be the best SAR dog we have had. She is certainly processing well as a cadaver dog, but her great joy is barking at cows, which, I might add, drives hearing sensitive Greta crazy. If a cow is in sight of the house Vodin starts barking. If it drives me crazy I bark at her and she will stop. I guess my barking at Vodin means something, I hope not too bad! I probably sound like a pure fool but it works.

Best of all for Vodin, however, is being in the yard and having the cows just outside the compound fence and getting to run up and down the fence barking at the cows. The cows may look up, the calves may act a little skittish, the bull completely ignores her and Vodin has a blast. Oh, great joy! Greta just lies down and watches. I did once see a Momma cow act protective of her calf as Vodin ran up and down. In my book that Momma cow should have been keeping her eye on Greta who was lying quietly close by eyeing her calf. One time a cow approached the fence to investigate that wild barking creature but backed off at the last moment. Wise cow.

November 2007

It Was Allergies All Along

December 2007

Greta, the Mouse Catcher

The other night Greta, our black German Shepherd, caught a mouse in the dog run. We were fairly sure that there at least occasional mice in the garage and the exterminator has put mice devices out. The dogs have indicated mice smells going in and out to the dog run however and that convinced us that there was fresh scent. Because of my allergies I don’t go out into the dog run with the dogs when I take them out for the last time before bed but wait for them at the door. When it seemed to be taking them a very long time I open the door to find Greta staring intently at something right beside the door where we store various red plastic containers of fuel. I went out the door and moved the container nearest the door and out jumped a trembling mouse. Immediately Greta grabbed it. I shouted, “Leave it!”. Startled, Greta obeyed, dropping the mouse, which I kicked out of the dog run, where Ron later found it dead. Hey, who needs a cat?!

New Calf

We have a new baby calf. Ron was pretty sure that a new calf was on the way since one of the white cows’ teats were getting large. I was real sure it was going to be soon since one day last week I was in the office and happened to look out the office window and a white cow, standing by the fence, had a dazed look on her face. She was standing by herself, not grazing, not chewing. When I next looked I could see the black legs of another cow on the other side of her. I think that cow had her head on the white cow’s side. The white cows are the biggest cows and it was hard to see the black cow. Eventually the white cow lumbered off around the front of the house still by herself. I thought that she was in labor. The other cows and the bull slowly followed and dispersed, grazing in their usual pattern toward the front gate.

The cows birth their calves in the woods and then stay in the woods for a few days, venturing out to the edge of the woods, but staying close. We have seen a variety of behavior among the mother cows, from very protective to “catch-me-if-you-can” mothers. One of the three current calves, unfortunately, has a mother whose milk dried up prematurely and who has had to fend for herself. She has managed but has grown much slower than normally.

This white momma cow, thus far, seems to be about average. She stayed close to the woods. Earlier today I noticed that she ventured quite far from the woods, making a big loop through the pasture. I also figured it was time for the calf to come out any time. And sure enough here came the calf two hours later. I can’t tell the gender yet, but it is the same color as its mother. And being the same color being that this little calf is exactly the same color as the grass is at this time of year. So here comes the tiny calf kicking up its heels, and being a bit unsteady, falls down and disappears into the grass! What camouflage! Interestingly, the back legs of the calves seem stronger than the front legs, indeed the back of the calves seem to slope downward from their hips to their front legs.

The Water Problem

Yesterday I went outside to our stand pipes to fill a water jug for the house plants and there was no water in the stand pipes. We have stand pipes all around the fence surrounding our house. These pipes are connected directly to the wells and are capped with a pump-like handle. In case of a house fire the theory is that they could be used to fight the fire. For the house plants, the water is untreated water which, of course, the house plants like better. On this day, however, I knew immediately that there was a very serious problem, namely we weren’t getting water from either of our two wells. We have a huge tank in the garage, with about a week’s worth of water. But, of course, one has to discover that water isn’t coming into that tank before it goes low and the water tank checker, Ron, has been out of town a lot. Indeed, on this day he is up in the Texas Panhandle.

I knew the problem was the wells, so I call the well drilling folks. I just get the answering machine. Too antsy to sit still, I go to town to get the mail and run errands. A couple of women I talk to have less than glowing things to say about the well drilling folks, like “Well, you know he is working for the oil field people now and you can’t get hold of him,” and “I had to call him several times and even when he fixed it he didn’t tell me.” Oh, joy, I thought. I trotted on home and called Ron and told him what was going on and then wondered why I did. After all, what could he do but worry?

In the late afternoon our builder came out to look at an outside faucet and bless him, just as I was getting ready to climb on a bench and poke my head in the big water tank in the garage, he takes over. And while he can’t solve any of the problem, by dadgum he comes real close to what the problem was and somehow I knew it and I really felt better just having some idea what was going on. Being in the dark, especially out here all by myself felt real lonesome I can tell you. He was the proverbial ray of light.

Finally, that night at 8:30 I heard from the well driller himself who said that I was calling his home not his work number, that I should have been calling the number in the phone book. However, his crew would be out in the morning. I did call using the number out of my trusty notebook, but when I checked in the phone book, it was the number I called. Our phone book is three years old so tomorrow I will check in town.

This morning the well drilling crew did show up, decided where the problem probably was and left to get the proper equipment. I went to town, borrowed a new phone book and discover the phone number in the yellow pages is the number I called. That mystery will remain unresolved. I can only hope that I won’t have to call them again, but our cows seem determined to make it otherwise.

I saw something else in town today that makes me enjoy Jack County, a real life cowboy. I was going into a convenience store to get coffee for Ron and out the cowboy came, tall, lean, hat, jeans and, yes, jiggling spurs. He headed off to his pickup which was hitched to a big trailer full of horses. Don’t see those where we will be living. I will miss that. Always warms this Texan’s heart to know that the cowboys are still here even if our family has been off the horses for two generations ourselves. A few months ago at the post office I got to heard real “Texan” spoken when two older guys greeted each other. That was enough to bring a warm smile to my face and a warm glow to my heart. It had been a long time since I heard that kind of drawl.

Back home only one man using digging equipment repaired the water problem. It seems that where the two water lines from the two wells came together sprung a leak, somehow dripped on the electric lines, and shorted them out. We had the electric line from the first well put in PVC pipe by our builder but the second well was done differently. Not that it would have prevented the water break. Personally I don’t think we should get a bill since it sure sounds like shoddy workmanship, but I bet we get one anyway.

Where the repair was made is muddy and has piles of muddy earth and cows are very, very curious. And here they come, poking their noses around, stomping their hoofs deep in the mud, threatening to undo the repair. I take the dogs out and scream at them and clap my hands at them and encourage the dogs to bark at them. Ron, who came home late last night, finally took out four concrete blocks and a piece of plywood to try to keep them from walking on the repaired area. Ron threw sticks at them; the bull was particularly unimpressed but lumbered off. Probably a fruitless hope, but we tried.

I must say one could spend countless hours just watching the cows. They are fascinating to this city girl. I was watching them this evening form and re-form groups. It looked if a member of one group would fuss with another group member and other groups would scurry over to watch or join in. There is really quite a bit of social interaction going on at all times, maybe because the cows spend a lot of time with each other unlike humans with their televisions, video games, books, etc. I also noticed that cows act like dogs in that they smell each other’s rumps and shake themselves off like dogs. Maybe that is what animals do without hands?

For what I have seen, and admittedly it has been extremely limited, mother cows can have some difficult times. Mother cows, good, bad or so-so, lose their calves abnormally at the time the calves are weaned and sold. In the normal way of cattle someone wouldn’t suddenly take the calves away and wouldn’t at the very least make the mother cows miserable from a full milk bag. Or one could argue there is more to the misery. I don’t know. I only know that when the calves are hauled off to market, especially if the calves have not previous been weaned, the mother cows set up to mooing enough to drive you crazy and continue for several days. A woman in town told me that once when she was a little girl she and some other girls were trapped in an outhouse by angry mother cows whose calves had been taken from them. Other people maybe do things other ways to prevent this entire trauma. I certainly would seriously consider it just to stop the prolonged mooing. I certainly got the message.

Texas Stereotypes

The other day I was at the vet’s picking up some monthly meds for the dogs when once again I run into another Texas stereotype. In came an upset tiny slim woman dressed in beat up boots, jeans, denim shirt, cowboy hat and such a weathered face that I wasn’t sure of her age. She carried a small animal cage with a two year old cat that had stopped eating and drinking. When I went outside to leave I saw that she had driven up in an old pickup that looked like it dated back to the 1950s. She had seemingly stepped right off of one of those cowpoke western calendars. Amazing.

All Good Things Come To An End

So our full time rural life is rapidly coming to an end. Rural living has in many, many ways been an amazing experience. It was interesting, to say the least, especially the cows. I will miss being able to see so far during the day and to see the lights of a town at night on a far horizon. I will miss being able to see both ends of a rainbow in the sky. I won’t say that I will miss the occasional little scorpion but in case anyone wonders we only saw two snakes in almost three years so they weren’t much of a factor. Jack County has also allowed me to see that the Texas of my childhood still lives and I have savored it, since sometimes I wondered if it ever existed except in my dreams. It did and it does. I know that buildings and concrete, not grasses, trees and wind, are my domain. But this rural life has been a fascinating experience and all just one and half hours from Dallas-Fort Worth.