The New Dog

Yesterday, on Independence Day, I dropped in over at the Rock'n S Ranch to pick up a dog. They had not been able to agree on a name for her, so she did not answer to anything. She does understand sit and lay.

Getting her into the car was a challenge! The only times she had been in a car were to go to the vet and to move to a new home. She did not want either of these, so it took more than a few minutes to get her to climb in on her own. Once in, she settled down immediately and lay on the back seat for the trip back to our ranch.

Back on the ranch, I opened the car door to let her out. As soon as I closed the door, she saw Houdini. He is big. At 120 pounds, the vet said he was underweight. She took one look at him and dived under the truck. If she had a tail, I would bet that it would have been between her legs!

I saw her this morning, seated next to the barn compound fence, and greeted her by petting her and scratching behind her ears.

This evening, she was missing. As I did my walk-around, I found where the fence had been torn from one posts. It was at the end of one roll of fence material and the beginning of another. I rigged a patch and continued my walk-around. She, however, was nowhere to be found. I hope she will turn up in the morning.

Thanksgiving

Today is the day we give thanks for all we have, even that silly herd dog of ours who got his shoulder all torn up and required surgery to clean it out.  Thank you, Dr. Beane, for the work you did and for keeping the price reasonable!

Of course, the real fun is to take this outside dog and keep all one hundred pounds of him in the house in order to keep the wound clean while it heals.  He is not housebroken and dislikes being indoors. Because we typically only see the dogs at feeding time, we were not aware of his injury until many hours after it occurred.  Dr. Beane could not close the wound up and put in a drain to prevent the buildup of fluids.  We have to keep it clean and administer antibiotics.