Writing the Ride: Candace Carrabus Rice, Author

I love my dogs, I really really do. Almost as much as I love my cats, and I really really REALLY love my cats. But this is about dogs. Being doggy. Sometimes, they are SO doggy. Like when Carlo, our black Lab puppy, goes out and eats everything he can find that smells and looks nasty. Like cat poop and dead frogs.

So, yesterday, just as Rianna’s bus was pulling in and I was taking Carlo out for his latest foraging adventure, this huge commotion erupted under our front deck. Dogs on the attack. Growling, yelping, snapping, and that deep-throated snarl that is impossible to misunderstand–the one that means something is about to be killed.

I knew Emily, our chocolate Lab/Pit Bull mix, was under there as well as Lucy, who is a long-haired Doxie/Tasmanian Devil mix. Really, we don’t know what Lucy is, but she’s quick and agile and has a certain edge about her that I like. Emily, of course, is big and powerful, and has no use for wild animals invading her territory. And rarely are any stupid enough to do so.

My first thought was that Lucy’s edge had somehow set Emily off. That they’d been playing and gotten carried away as dogs sometimes do, with fatal results. I ran to the deck and stomped on it yelling, “Emily, Lucy, NO!” to no avail. This deck is close to the ground and there’s no way I could see what was going on where they were. I yelled to Rianna to grab Carlo and the phone while I ran for a shovel, all the while fearing the worst.

I started digging, but the ground is hard and full of rocks, and there was no way I could get to them fast enough. Rianna was crying, I was crying and sweating and calling to the dogs. There was no sound of Lucy. Rianna fumbled the phone a couple of times, but reached our neighbor who came tearing down the road to help in any way she could. I’d forgotten she was watching her two young granddaughters, but they came along, no strangers to dogs and the trouble they can get into, especially in a rural area, like ours.

Rianna ran to watch the kids while my neighbor ran for the hose to try and break up the fight, but I had reached under the deck and put my hand on something dead, still warm, but limp and gone. It was too late. The ruckus had subsided to Emily’s heavy breathing, but still, I could see nothing. I kept digging and calling anyway.

I saw a tail. Too dark and bristly to be Lucy, but I wasn’t sure. I sent Rianna to the back yard to call for Lucy in case she was hiding from all this under one of the other decks. It never occurred to me they might have cornered a cat, but it wasn’t a cat’s tail either, and finally, I got hold of a foot, and it was definitely not a dog or cat foot. But Emily dragged the body back before I could see more, scraping her hard tooth over my finger as she did, cutting it open.

Finally, Lucy stuck her face where I could see it, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t about to play tug of war with Emily over whatever it was, but she eventually released it, and a fat muskrat slipped into my hands. The dogs crawled from underneath the way they’d gone in, excitedly out of breath, tails wagging, tongues hanging long. They wanted their catch, but I took it to a far field where the coyotes would deal with it later.

I felt bad for the muskrat, but its death was probably quick. I’ve seen Emily deal with possums, and she doesn’t waste time. If the creature was stupid or arrogant enough to think it could get away with living under our dog’s nose, then it needed to be removed from the gene pool.

I love my dogs, I really really do. Sometimes, I could wish for them to be a little less doggy, but I understand their essential nature, especially when they live in a place that presents them with such opportunities.

It was a long, long 20 minutes or however long the episode actually lasted. When it was over, I smelled like I’ve never smelled before. Between my own adrenaline and sweat, and that of the dogs, not to mention the muskrat, well, ’nuff said. I took a long bath.

But before I went inside, I found a few of our cats sleeping on the table and chairs of the back deck, completely unconcerned with this drama that did not involve them, dreaming, perhaps, of their own catches–birds and mice and the occasional snake.

Do you have dogs? What doggy things have they done? I’d love to hear your stories.

The cows.
Good friends of ours have an organic dairy farm. I get to drop by with a couple of gallon glass jugs just about whenever I want to buy raw organic milk straight from the tank–almost straight from the cow. We drink it, and use it in our cereal and coffee, and I make yogurt from it. Delicious!

When I stop in, Tim is always up to his neck in some kind of work, if he’s not milking, which takes 8 hours of every day. That’s 4 hours two times a day. He milks over 120 head.

The mixer.
Today, he was mixing timothy and alfalfa hay together. Organic hay, of course. He uses a Bobcat to lift big round bales into a giant Kitchenaid mixer. Okay, it’s not a Kitchenaid, but that’s sort of what it looks like. The mixer chops the stiff hay stems up and mixes the two together to balance the nutritive content. He says if he didn’t do this, the cows would eat only the alfalfa, and that wouldn’t be good for them. He knows a LOT about nutrition and hay and feed and fertilizer and chemicals, and can spout percentages of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous, and calcium like I conjugate verbs.

They’ve been transitioning to organic for a few years. I asked him what the toughest part of the transition has been. He said feeding the herd. He had to start buying organic feeds — much more expensive than non-organic — but he had to still sell his milk at non-organic prices. And, you guessed it. Non-organic milk brings much lower prices than organic. Making ends meet for the last couple of years has been hard.

The hay mixer at work.
In retrospect, he said he should have sold his entire herd and bought cows that were already considered organic so that he could start selling at organic prices right away. The easy part was switching the pasture. All he had to do was start using organic fertilizer. He’s looking forward to the grass being high enough that he doesn’t have to mix hay every day. But then there will be other chores.

By the way, here’s a couple of interesting facts: milk is measured and sold by the pound. One cow produces 45-70 pounds of milk every day. Many of Tim’s cows are Jersey. Their milk has a higher cream content.

I can get more details about life on an organic dairy for anyone interested. Next time you pick up a half-gallon container of organic milk at the store, think of Tim and all those hours on his feet, reaching between the hind legs of his cows, disinfecting their bags, and attaching the milking machine to their teats.

Makes it taste even better, doesn’t it?