Jack's looking good

I bought one of those Garmin dog-tracking units for Jack. It has a sending collar, which he wears, and a handheld GPS unit for me to keep track of him. There are two screens on the GPS related to the dogs programmed into the unit: one shows his compass bearing, distance, and attitude (running, sitting, on point, treeing, etc.); the other shows a map with his position and movement indicated. I've programmed the local landmarks into the map, like cedars, old shop, barn, salt house, storm shelter, autogate, and the corner limits of the compound. It gives him so much more outside, active time than I could give him if I had to go along with him. We've been doing this for a couple of months now and so far he has been very good about limits. Just the other day he did fourteen miles and was never more than seventy yards from the house. The exercise is doing him a lot of good, as can be seen.

That time of year...

Yes, that time of year again. Actually some early-breeding ranchers did their roundups and brandings in April and have been long finished. But the season is well under way now and will run into June. These are the social events of the season, sans ball gowns and tuxedos! After a hard morning of work, sometimes stretching into the afternoon, there will be a fine big meal followed by some card games and lots of conversation, some of it based on fact. The calves are quickly over the trauma and everyone else has a fine, tired-making time doing a hot, dangerous job.

They don't all make it

And when you consider the odds against them, it's almost a wonder any of them do. None of them would make it without the fierce, obsessive care of the mother bird. You can't watch a tiny female defending her fledgling against a snake twenty times her size without feeling some of the awe and wonder of it all.

Flower season

The season of the prairie flowers is beginning, probably my favorite time of the year. The so-called desolation of this near-desert is becoming colorful and fragrant with an abundance of beautiful gifts. If April is really "the cruelest month" as Eliot claims (it's not), then it leads to the many kindnesses of May.

Joggers

On our way to the vets the other day we ran into these citizens. We had already seen several flocks but these joggers were on the road rather than in the meadows. The Shorthairs were leaning out the back window and as I eased past them they gave a few"let-us-out!" barks and whines but that was about it. The first turkey Emma actually flushed, a few years ago, was a real experience for her. She just stood and stared as it flew off. I'm sure she thought it was the biggest pheasant she had ever seen.

Bob

This is Bob. He lives with a friend who owns a ranch store near me. (Fifty-five miles is "near.") Today I had to run an errand to a town beyond the store and stopped in to visit and swap lies.

Like all the Rotties I have known (that were not owned by psychopaths) he is a sweet, gentle giant. His favorite thing is to follow me around in the store sniffing at my jeans so he can learn all about my dogs at home. By the time I leave the place I am usually pretty wet below the knees. But he's a fine fellow and I do not begrudge him his little pleasures and I appreciate his friendship. He watches the world go by from his special perch outside the store.

Rotties get a bad reputation, and it's undeserved. It's a fact that some people own them that shouldn't. Because of the bad rep it becomes a self-perpetuating outrage: bad people want bad dogs. But without the bad people there would BE no bad dogs. My experience with Rottweilers (and it is extensive) is that they are gentle, loving, sweet-natured critters. They are also very, very intelligent.

I don't have a Rottie anymore. Whenever I visit Bob I think about that with a tinge of regret. But I already have three good friends that I am completely happy with.

Fog

Very thick fog this morning. I love it when the atmosphere closes in on you like this. Light becomes liquid silver, sound is muffled, and everything is either close, or invisible— no longer important. You feel as if you are in a room made especially for you and the rest of the world is excluded. You are at the center of a muted reality, with heightened perceptions. Fog is a poet.

An end to the dry spell

Our long dry spell broke this week. We had a day and a half of almost steady rain. Sometimes only a slight drizzle but it came down steady and long. Jack chewed the bottom off my rain gauge so I don't know exactly how much we got. (My fault: I left it in reach when he was teething.) Inch and a half I'd guess. We've had far more in lots less time, but it was welcome any way it came. Things are greening at a mighty rate and this afternoon I mowed my front grass for the second time this season. In a normal year I wouldn't have mowed the first time yet.

Stormy weather, like the song...

One day last week a friend in town who had borrowed something from me called to say he was going to bring it back and visit for a while. After a bit I saw a storm shaping up toward town and from the looks of it I figured I'd be getting a phone call. Sure enough, about ten minutes later called. He was on his way, but not far from town, when the storm just about blew him off the road. It came on suddenly and violently, as they often do out here. He said he'd have to run for home and reschedule.

We live according to the weather out here 24/7. I doubt urban folk can completely understand how dependent we are on it and how observant of it we have to be. It can be beautiful and it can also be a killer. And it doesn't care either way.

Intruders

Actually I guess I'm the intruder. They were here first. I've noticed though s I reclaimed my front "lawn" from the prairie they seem to thrive there better than they do in wilder areas. So that's my good deed I reckon: Making the world safe for dandelions. I reckon I could do worse.

Incipience

Not to be a johnny-one-note, but I am still enjoying the bursts of new life that are everywhere here on the prairie right now. Just as for the trees and the grasses, it is the same thing for me every spring: time to get out the cameras and start walking aimlessly around looking for... well, whatever. Reassurance? Of course, It's part of the human mystery. And lucky for us, it's everywhere this time of year.

New life from old

A few years back I lost an older, mostly already dead tree to the wind. I cut up a good bit of the deadfall but didn't get around to removing the whole wreck until winter hit and then it was spring before I could get back at it. By then there were new sprigs sprouting up from it and all around it and so I left it. It wasn't in the way and gradually a little thicket grew up around it. It's in the process of renewing itself once again now.

Eliot called April "the cruelest month," because it bred lilacs out of a dead land. I can't see it that way. It seems to me that April is the bringer of new life, a promise of freshness and regeneration. April here is usually just the near-tail-end of winter, but this year it has been the harbinger month. And nothing cruel about that I can see.