On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning Everybody,
And yet another day of history. I hope you find this morning feature a respite from the storm, as I do. A rock of peace in a maelstrom of crap is a good thing.
Have a great day!
I’ve mentioned that we got two new puppies this fall. Born last February, they are 2 of a litter of 9 born on our friend’s goat dairy farm nearby. Our friends are retired now, have been keeping and breeding dairy goats for decades, and monetize their goats by selling offspring. They keep meticulous records and people come hundreds of miles to pick up a baby goat. Not so for the dogs!
The “sire” is half Great Pyrenees and half Lab. Mom looks like an Australian Cattle Dog, but is a WV country mutt so no telling her actual genetic background.
The puppies are nearly twins, black sleek coat, tall and rangy with a white blaze on CooCoo’s breast and speckled front legs and belly on BooBoo, the girl. BooBoo spends most nights outside, appears to not care a bit about rain and cold in spite of her sleek short coat, loves to prowl the ghostly hillsides late at night. CooCoo would rather sack out in our bedroom on one of the many dog beds, he is pretty much the image of a lazy hound.
Another dog is our white Lab mix Alice, who was a little plump before Puppies happened, but is now mostly muscle. Still big, though. And one picture of the late great Happy Dog, whom we lost last January. Happy came from our Vet clinic, which runs an underground adoption agency for hard to place dogs. Happy came to them from a client who rescued her off a chain at 3 am, and had a roaring infection of heartworm. She spent 9 months in their kennel recovering, and the next 10 or 12 years Happily running on our wooded hillsides.
After we suddenly lost Happy, we were keeping an eye out for another pup to keep Alice company. We have close neighbors with dogs, but that isn’t quite the same. So when Goat Dairy neighbors adopted the pregnant next door bitch, we volunteered to take one, or a couple, whatever.
These pictures are just cute pix of cute puppies, and a little dash of kitty.
Happy loved to hang with her people, and here she is hanging with me as I keep in touch with Balloon Juice and the rest of the WWW. As you can see, she is busy being very happy, which is how she got her name.
The Vet who cared for her those 9 months knew she was raring to go, a potentially hyperactive puppy who needed room to romp. She also knew we had the room, and allowed our dogs to run free and wild, so it worked out well.
This is bog ole Alice the white Lab mix, napping with kitty Spike, who is named for her sharpness. This dog bed is really popular as it’s out in the solarium with great views of the wooded hillsides, moss covered boulders, free range deer and squirrel. So there are occasional outbursts of barking, intended to mean “Let me OUT RIGHT NOW!!!”
BooBoo and CooCoo ca Choo, wrestling with all fangs deployed. They make the most amazing sounds, high pitched squeals and low growls at the same time. Watching the action, you would expect much bloodshed from the amount of open gaping maw lined with white fangs, but not so much.
All three dogs, Alice and the two twins will lay together and gnaw on each other, making those horrible noises. But still, no bloodshed, just joyous squealing and growling. All the dogs are neutered, but CooCoo still wants to mount Alice, who doesn’t care for any of that action at all, so much whirling and snarling.
Here you get a good look at BooBoo’s speckled front end, much like a Heeler hound people tell us. And CooCoo keeping sissy warm. Shiny coats on these puppies. They are adorable, and have just learned that they can jump up onto the people bed.
Now we need to teach them that they also need an invitation, not the easiest thing to communicate to very affectionate lovable puppies.
Thank Ceiling Dog we have taught them NOT to eat the shoes. It’s OK for them to carry a show around and to sleep with them, just don’t chew them up!!! That only took a couple of days, actually. They are really smart for farmyard dogs who were never inside until they came home to us. Have never messed inside, a miracle!
CooCoo and Alice, black and white, they have formed their pack, Alice is in charge, kinda, what sweet puppies they all are.
After 60+ years of living with dogs, I was amazed at how smart the two black twins are. Tell them once or twice, they have got it down. Alice was pretty much the same. She came from the big shelter in town, was 9 months old, had never been out of grass when I took her for the required first walk out back of the shelter.
Happy taught her how to climb and jump on the boulders, how to catch chipmunks, how to be a country dog. Of course, having been born and raised on a goat dairy farm, the twins didn’t need as much country dog training as Alice did. Alice came with a little pink rhinestone collar, was no doubt obtained as a tiny puppy for a little girl in an apartment, and then wound up in a crate, way too big for a city apartment.
But now she is a country dog… all three of them are.
Elizabelle
Puppers! So glad to finally see them. Lovely dogs (and cat).
Betty Cracker
Beautiful country dogs!
rikyrah
They all look beautiful ?
MagdaInBlack
Beautiful, happy dogs ?
i have good memories of all my farm dogs. Your Happy makes me think of our “Sugar,” named by my husband, because she was so sweet.
Thank you ?
Raven
Happy is the Bohdi’s sis!
columbusqueen
Country dogs really are the best.
satby
“Happy tails” is what the rescue community calls the adoption stories, so this is a happily furever tail!
eclare
What sweet pups!
MazeDancer
Wonderful pup pics!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Dogs make everything better
The Pale Scot
So does BooBoo lurk in the bushes all night or hang on the porch?
And how is the tick population around there? I guess there are enough hunters to keep the deer population down.
HinTN
Wonderful story, excellent dogs.
J R in WV
@The Pale Scot:
We have WAY too many ticks, and give the pups two edibles, one for the insect parasites, a wide variety of ticks and fleas, and the other for internal parasites, the heartworms, and many others, mostly various tape worms, hookworms, etc. It seems to work well for now. We dose the cats too, esp in the summertime.
BooBoo has a dog bed nest on the back porch, by the bedroom slider and under wide eaves so out of the rain. We’ll see how she relates to a real snow storm… She likes that spot, close to us in case she needs to warn us about the monster op on the ridge, but free to jump up and run into the forest barking madly. I’m beginning to call her ButterCup at times.
Only problem with that is sometimes the indoor dogs go off with her, max volume right beside us n the bedroom, no fun for us then!
Second picture the text is wrong… it’s the same dog bed Happy was on for her picture, in the library beside my workstation in there. There’s also piles of newspapers to be recycled into mulch next spring bot for now being used as bedding by puppies, and being chewed and shredded by cats and dogs alike.
Five fur babies right now, cats Punkin and Spike are the oldest, then Alice the big white lab, then the not yet one year old black twins… our wonderful next door neighbors to the east also have a rangy tall black dog with a white blaze on his chest, if not for the different collar he is a double for CooCoo, except when they’re together Bunky is a little bigger, but CooCoo is still growing, so who knows…
J R in WV
And regarding the hunters, the deer, etc… trigger warning, everything about cute farm pups is not all sweetness and light!
Deer season here here starts the Monday before Thanksgiving and runs two weeks for gun hunters. We do have a lot of deer around the area, and so lots of hunters.
Even when a hunter makes a clean shot to drop a deer right there, they field dress their deer ion the woods, leaving, usually, the legs, internal organs perhaps excepting the liver, leaving the head, everything they don’t want to put in the freezer to eat.
And sometimes even a good shot doesn’t result in a captured deer, they can run hundreds of yards after a fatal wound. So between the field dressed deer and the runners never found, the forest is full of what we call bambi bits.
Alice puppy gives up kibble in part for several weeks, and packs on about 20 or so pounds between Thanksgiving and mid-January. She teaches the Black Twins about being farm dogs, not that they weren’t born and raised in a farmyard. So they know about bambi bits and eat all they can find. Dogs are, after all, descended from scavengers and still have all those instincts.
Depending upon the weather, eventually the remains turn… worse. There are, hm, aromas and fumes emitted by the cutest pups. Breathtaking horrible emissions that, if they could, the EPA would ban forever. Right there in the room with you! Not so bad this year, so far. A few feet on the back porch.
Worst was the time several years ago when they brought home a whole head, less the eyes — which we found on the back porch the next morning. Sorry if I harmed your impeachment morning, there was a trigger warning!
sab
@J R in WV: My Dad’s cat is blind in one eye from toxoplasmosis he got from murdering and eating squirrels. He is blind in the other eye from cataracts. If he hadn’t murdered squirrels he would still have one good eye. Just saying to your dogs about uncooked bambi bits.
sab
Also too, you have more of a managerie than we have. We have five cats (three formerly feral) and two dogs. One dog is a cheerful cocker spaniel who gets along with everyone. The other is a smallish half rottweiler who is terrified of my tuxedo cat. He is friendly to everyone except that one dog. I cannot figure out what is going on between those two, but it is intense.
stinger
Love the term “bambi bits”! I too find bones all over the yard, and not just deer bones, either. Oliver, the big one (@26 pounds), got sprayed by a skunk two years ago in January, and that was a miserable winter for all of us, as he likes to sleep on my bed. This fall he has had skunk breath once or twice, but at least it’s not on his coat. Josie the Yorkie tends to come up to me proudly with a dead mole in her mouth. Murray, thankfully, has little interest in dead critters.
J R in WV
@stinger:
Skunks! Here’s a recipe developed by environmental scientists who were researching way to control highly odorous sulfur baed compounds.
Amounts will obviously vary proportionally for really big dogs, like ours.
1 quart hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)
1/4 cup sodium bicarbonate (Arm and Hammer laundry aid works)
Good big squirt of Dawn dish washing soap. Mix gently to dissolve the Bicarb in the H2O2.
Wet the dog down and saturate with the above mix, let it stay on until it stops fizzing, like 15 minutes at least. Wash with warm water and shampoo, and repeat as needed until the stench is mostly gone. This works really well. You will need at least 3 quarts of H2O2 for two big dogs. Dollar General has all you need inexpensively.
Zelma
Loved the pet pictures. Since this is a pet thread, I wonder how we order the 2020 pet calendar. Am I missing a link to do so?