I Think I Need One Of Those Assault Thingies...

Just kidding.

But around here the war is escalating.  You might say that Nature is in surge mode.  Last night, when my husband let him out to scare any deer that might be feasting on what's left of our plants, Wolfie was attacked by something in the yard.  From the description--low to the ground, a bit smaller than Bisou--I think it's a fisher.  Speaking of Bisou, it's a good thing she was asleep upstairs with me at the time.  Usually she's right on Wolfie's heels, sallying forth into the outer darkness.

Anyway, poor Wolfie yelped, and the critter scurried, and Wolfie came limping into the house.  There was no bleeding, no particularly tender spot that we could find, but he could not put weight on one of his hind legs.  It's amazing how miserable a solid black dog can look.  And there's something about a big dog in distress that makes you feel particularly helpless.  You can't pick him up and put him on a comfy pillow.  You can't exactly cuddle him.

I gave him a couple of baby aspirins in a teaspoon of peanut butter.  He could not climb up to the bedroom, and whimpered so pitifully at the bottom of the steps that I decided to sleep downstairs, to keep him company.  But he couldn't settle.  He was desperate to lie down but in too much pain to do so.  I gave him two more baby aspirins and he finally lay down and went to sleep.  Then of course I worried that I had overdosed him, and kept putting my hand on him to feel his breath.

Thanks goodness for Penelope Lively's How It All Began, a witty and wise novel that you all would love.  I read for a couple of hours and then turned off the light.  But the minute I closed my eyes I remembered that it was supposed to snow heavily today.  If Wolfie was still in distress in the morning, how would we get him to the vet?  I fell asleep, but Wolfie woke up and put his head on my knee.  It occurred to me in my stupor that this meant that he was still alive.  Then I did some coughing (which I've been doing for a month now, along with everybody else) and slept for about a minute, and Wolfie put his head on my knee again....

This morning it is in fact snowing hard.  Wolfie seems a bit better, and ate his normal breakfast.  But I don't relish the prospect of having to take him and Bisou out on leashes every night.

This cloud is not, however, without a silver lining.  Fishers are the only predator known to kill porcupines.

Attack In The Night

Something bit a chunk off Lexi's ear last night.  My dowager German Shepherd, Lexi, is long of tooth, hard of ear and dim of eye, but she can still outrun me.

Around eight yesterday evening, the dogs began agitating to be let out.  I normally make them wait until nine, but this time I relented.  It wasn't until a while after I'd let them back inside that I noticed Lexi's ear, which was missing a half-inch-long, u-shaped piece right next to the tip.

I checked her over, but she seemed fine, and was busy licking the drops of blood that spattered the floor and walls every time she moved.  I cleaned the wound with a wet paper towel, set up one of the big dog crates and put her in it, to contain the bleeding.  I did my best to ignore the hurt looks she was giving me (she had house-trained herself as a puppy, and after her first week with us, thirteen years ago, I never crated her again) while I tried to reconstruct what had happened.

True, the dogs had seemed eager to go out earlier than usual, but they often do this, since they know that I will give them a treat when they come back.  Also, the weather had turned windy and brisk, which always makes them jumpy.  They usually run barking out of the house and across the grass and disappear into the woods, until they hear the warning beep of the invisible fence.  Had they barked longer or more furiously this time, I would have noticed.  Even allowing for the ear  being less sensitive than other parts of the anatomy, you'd think Lexi would have yelped when whatever it was bit her, and I would have heard it.  And so would Wolfie and Bisou.

And if they had, surely they would have gone over to investigate, and there would have been a confrontation with the critter.  If there was a critter.

Other than rabbits in winter, turtles in spring, and the black bear who made a historic visit several years ago, nothing much comes out of the woods and into our yard.  The deer, turkeys and foxes stick to the front field, where they know the dogs aren't likely to be.

We did once glimpse a fisher running parallel to the house, just inside the woods, and the fisher is my prime suspect.  A coyote or a fox would have taken a bigger chunk.  But even if Lexi had gone after the fisher, he could have outrun her.  Perhaps she accidentally bumped into him.  But you'd think she would have smelled him--or does a dog's sense of smell also fade as she ages?

A friend thinks that maybe it was a shrew--a tiny but fierce animal with (depending on the species) a poisonous bite capable of killing a mouse and cause pain to a larger animal.  Again, though, shrews are supposed to be quite musky, so you'd think that might have warned Lexi off.

At bedtime, not wanting Wolfie and Bisou to encounter the mystery attacker, I went outside with them, kept them close, and quickly brought them inside.  As for Lexi, I knew that if I let her out she would disappear into the woods and wouldn't hear me calling, so I didn't let her out.  I trusted that her excellent sense of house hygiene would hold through the night, and it did.

Things get dicey when a dog who is still relatively fleet of foot goes almost blind and mostly deaf.  Right now it's dark outside.  I let the dogs out a few minutes ago, and Wolfie and Bisou came back when I called them.  As for Lexi, she's still out there, staying away from shrews and fishers, I hope.  Wolfie is keeping vigil by the back door, looking out for her.

Last winter, to keep her safe, I tried attaching Lexi to a light chain that ran on a line suspended above the yard.  But she was miserable.  One of her few remaining pleasures, aside from eating, consists of ambling  around on her own outside, sniffing stuff and thinking old-dog thoughts.
 
A gerontologist told me recently that, in nursing homes, the policy has shifted from safety at all costs to one that tolerates a certain degree of risk in favor of allowing the very old to retain some feeling of self-determination.  That is how I hope to be treated some day, and it's how I'm treating my old dog right now.

Wolfie Earns His Kibble

(Please note:  Blogger is still not allowing me to respond to your comments, but I do read them faithfully--and respond to them in my heart.)

Drove to Philadelphia last weekend, to attend the mother of all birthday parties.  We saw bare ground for the first time since December, and on Saturday ate lunch in an open porch, without coats, hats, mittens or even sweaters, in the proximity of a hydrangea bush loaded with buds.

We saw a lot of bare ground as we drove back north in a downpour, but in New York state, there was still  snow on the ground.  The Hudson, which on Friday had been frozen solid, was a soupy mess of ice and water.  In the meadows, as the warm air came in contact with the cold ground, the snow appeared to evaporate into a thick white fog.   We crossed into Vermont, and I heard a pinging on the windshield:  an ice storm had come out to welcome us.

We unloaded the car at the house, glanced at the backyard where for the first time in months a corner of the fish pond was visible, and rushed to fetch the dogs from their B&B before the roads got worse.  On the way back, as we turned right by the big dairy farm, the Holsteins cozy in their barn, munching their eternal silage, the car slid gently all the way across the road---hardly a heart-stopping moment, since we were the only moving vehicle in the landscape.  By the time we got to the house, the corner of the fish pond had disappeared again.

This morning I let the dogs out while I shoveled a short path for them through two feet of new snow, but all they wanted was to get back inside. They didn't like crashing through the ice-crusted snow.  They didn't like having buckets of the stuff thrown in their faces by the howling wind.  They are winter-weary too. 

A few minutes later, standing at the kitchen window, we saw a weasel or a fisher (neither is good news) running through the woods in the direction of the chicken house.  Wolfie figured out that we were looking at a critter, and started barking.  I took him to the back door, said "go scare it!" and let him out.  In two seconds he was in the woods, and the weasel/fisher was running for his life.  Fortunately for the w/f, Wolfie stopped at the invisible fence, where he did some marking, to ensure the critter wouldn't be tempted to come back (no pasaran!).

I called him inside and went upstairs to my meditation spot.  I unrolled the yoga mat, put down the cushion, sat down in sukhasana.  Wolfie lay himself down with his back tight against my legs, and went to sleep.