Annie the Destroyer

This is Annie. Isn't she all cute and innocent looking?

Annie doesn't like to stay in the yard when I'm not home. I have a doggie door, so it's not like I throw her out back and she can't come inside. She can be inside as much as she wants on soft doggie beds or even the sofa. But no. Annie must explore! All my neighbors have me on speed dial. It takes a village to keep this beagle contained.

At some point Annie decided to go into the crawl space under my foundation. From there, she can escape through a ventilation hole under my front porch. There are several points of access to the crawl space in the back yard. Once I realized how Annie was getting out, I covered the holes with vinyl trellis. That stuff is tough! I learned how to drill into the concrete block and set screws in. I was very proud of my handiwork. No way she could get through that!

A couple days later I came home to no beagle in the yard. I found this:

She must have worried at it for hours. You can see scratch marks in the siding. Anyway, one of my neighbors had her, and also Lola, because wherever Annie goes, Lola goes. Sam the elderly GSP is always sleeping in my living room, clueless. He's a good boy!

Next I covered the above hole with a board. A thick piece of plywood. No way she could get through that, right? All was good for the next several weeks. No escapes. And then...

She ripped the board right off the foundation. All the screws were still screwed into the concrete. Look at the top of the board! Again, that must have taken hours.

Next, I bought a couple two by fours, cut them in pieces to size, and screwed those across the opening with LONG concrete screws. That has actually worked! I can see bite and scratch marks on the boards, but she's not able to make any headway. There have been no escapes via the crawl space since.

No escapes; but that doesn't mean she's not trying. I discovered this today:

She was trying to get into that little trellis-covered opening. In the process, she tore up the siding. Now I have to find siding and paint to match. Sigh.

I found Annie on Craigslist, and this is her third home in her four years of life. I am determined that this will be her forever home. All I have to do is be smarter and more tenacious than a beagle. It's so much harder than it sounds.

She's also a digger, and has dug her way under my fences on many occasions. I've finally hit upon a solution that seems to be working. I took chicken wire and laid it flat next to the fence all the way around the yard. I pounded it into the ground using landscape staples and camping spikes. Then I lined all the fences with landscape ties pushed up right where the fence meets the ground, partially covering the chicken wire. She hasn't been able to dig anywhere I've done that. I missed a few spots, and that's where she has dug. I am feeling good now that I have found all her secret spots.

It's a good thing she's so freakin' cute!

Reboot

I see that I haven't written a post since October of last year. Apparently I lost my blogging mojo for awhile. This blog has always been centered on riding, and I had stopped riding. I had a rough winter, too, with multiple deaths from cancer in my circle, one after the other. First, I lost my awesome cousin Matthew, who was just a year older than me. He beat back cancer ten years ago, and in the fall it returned. He died over the holidays. He had just gotten his masters in theater arts and was running a theater in his hometown and really thriving. The world is a less vibrant place without him.

In late January, my elderly beagle mix Abby died suddenly of what was probably liver cancer. One day she just started hemorrhaging in her belly. I took her to the emergency vet, and putting her down was really the only option. She was almost sixteen. I got her as a one-year-old from Hearts United for Animals, one of the best no-kill shelters in the country. They specialize in long-distance adoptions, so if you're looking for a dog, you should check them out. Abby was possibly the most well-behaved dog on the planet. I still miss her.

Then, in February, a good friend of mine lost his mother to pancreatic cancer. She had been diagnosed only about twelve weeks earlier. It was very hard for him. And so, it was just a sad winter all around. I still miss Wolfgang, too.

There was happiness as well. Not long after I lost Abby, I decided to go ahead and look for a rescue beagle. This was mostly for Lola the bassador's benefit. Lola is a super playful girl, and neither Abby or Sam was much interested in playing with her. I found a beagle in Portland on CraigsList, and it was love at first sight. Her name is Annie, and she is fifty pounds of personality in a twenty-pound package. Her baying can just about pop your eardrums, and she is a Houdini at getting out of the yard. But she is a sweet little cuddlebug, and she loves to play with Lola. I'm happy I found her.

Sam the GSP is fourteen and hanging in there. He's mostly blind and mostly deaf, and his eye allergies make him miserable sometimes, but his heart and lungs are good, he's still steady on his feet, and he loves his food, his bed, his backyard, and his chin scritches.

One the horse front, I am currently riding a gray thoroughbred named Lee. He's a pretty boy!

His owner has to be out of town for a couple extended periods, and through a friend (Camilla) I got connected with her. So I'm working this lovely boy until the end of June. He likes me. He comes to me in the pasture and sticks his head up against me. It's nice to be riding again.

Sadly, Camilla has decided to sell Huey. She wants to jump over three feet, and Huey just can't keep his head together over the bigger fences. It's not that he can't jump them; it's more that he gets totally jacked up and takes over. But on lower fences he's super, and he can rock first level dressage. I think second level is within his reach as well. At third, it would take a lot of work to settle his flying changes.

My big news is that I have decided to become a non-directed kidney donor, meaning that my kidney will go to whomever needs it and is a good match. I was inspired by a This American Life segment on a Jewish woman who decided to donate her kidney as a mitzvah, or good deed. I also read a New York Times article on the largest kidney donation chain of all time: 30 donors and 30 recipients. I'll write a future post on what becoming a non-directed donor entails; but I have to share my exciting news -- yesterday the hospital in Seattle called to say they found a match for my kidney, and that my donation will start a chain. My surgery is tentatively set for July 10. I'm excited to think that I'll be able to help someone who is chronically ill have a much better quality of life.

Home improvement

I spent all of today putting in a raised garden bed in an untamed area on the south side of my house. Oregon summers are very cool, and I've had little success with heat-loving veggies in my small garden plot in my north yard. I can get grape tomatoes to do well, but not full-sized tomatoes or bell peppers. I think the soil stays too chilly for the roots of the heat-lovers. I'm hoping that on the south side of the house, the soil will get a lot of reflected heat and stay warmer.

This is the unappealing corner of the yard that I had to work with.

I hacked and hacked and trimmed and trimmed. I broke up some very, very hard top soil. I carted ten bags of soil, one bag of peat, and one bag of compost. And six hours later, I had my raised bed.

I also have a bunch of stuff to take to the dump. Lola supervised the entire project. She also helped out by eating the last of the ripe Marionberries that kept falling to the ground.

I saved two garter snakes during the course of the project. Both times I lifted up an old board and there was a little snake curled up, all sleepy. The first one was about eight inches long and the second only about four inches (at first I thought it was a worm, it was so small). They were both so drowsy I worried that they wouldn't wake up enough to get away from my dogs, so both times I grabbed them behind the head and re-homed them next to my pond, outside the fence. I know it's a snake-friendly area because this summer I kept surprising a garter snake swimming in the pond on warmer days.

Where I've been

I had a really rough summer, and apparently for me stress and sadness and blogging don't go together. There was Wolfgang's death, which was terribly hard, and at the same time my year-long relationship with my boyfriend was spiraling into the toilet. Add to that things at the barn not going so well, and the whole summer was really just one big pile of poo.

I decided about a month ago to stop riding Huey. I miss the big guy! I'm keeping my eyes and ears open for a similar situation, but I'm not actively pursuing anything. I am taking a break. Although I did overhear a lady at the gym talking about her rescue horse, and I asked a couple questions, and one thing led to another, and last week she invited me out to hop on him and see if he actually had the rumored dressage background he was advertised with. And he did! Lovely walk, trot, canter with nice balance into the outside rein, plus a little leg yield, and even a walk-canter transition and some shoulder in. The lady who owns him has no dressage training but is interested, and I told her she's in a great situation to learn, since this gelding has a good foundation. She is excited to get started. So that was fun.

Lola the bassador spent much of the summer escaping from my yard and visiting the neighbors. Her favorites are the lady who gives her cheese, and the two ladies down the street with the chihuahuas. At both places, she simply plants herself on the front porch until the occupant(s) let her in. Both places are nice enough to just let her hang out until I get home from work. I am both thankful and hugely embarrassed. I finally bought a whole bunch of landscape timbers and lined all the fences in the backyard. That seems to have done the trick. Lola is quite a character.

Dog shaming

Best site ever!

http://dog-shaming.com/

Lola could go on there for doing this thing that I call "escaping" and she calls "visiting."