Isn’t he pretty!?!
Today’s numbers:
Four hunters, zero birds.
Three kids, one earache.
Good thing it’s beautiful here and my dog is awesome or it might have been a bad day!
Tag Archives: dogs
Camp Birds
Hello from Kansas!
We are camping (in a giant camper with a great heater) in Prairie Dog State park. We have seen all sorts of wildlife in the park and very few people to share it with (just how I like it!), herds of deer, prairie dogs, and lots of birds.
We’ve seen some Canada Geese: 
Some Snow Geese:
And by some I mean lots of geese:
And by “lots” I mean that in the evening the flocks of ducks and geese create a ribbon of birds across the entire sky!
Also there are a few robins around:
And some Bald Eagles:
These are just the ones I was able to photograph with the kids before they froze, which didn’t take long. The high today was around 14 and the wind chills were below zero all day! The kids have been doing more exploring of the public library than the fields but the weatherman claims it’s going to get a bit warmer so hopefully we’ll be able to drag them along on a hunt or two before it’s time to go home.
In other news we have shot a few birds, but not lots. Cover for the birds is sparse this year making things tricky. Even so we’ve been eating turkey and have pheasant and quail just waiting to be cooked up for tomorrow!
Finally, just in case you were wondering, my dog is awesome…
… and very tired!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons
Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons
Here in Southern Wisconsin, we were in the midst of changing seasons from fall to winter when we landed smack in the middle of the dreaded fifth season of the year. For those of you lucky enough to have no idea what I’m talking about let me fill you in on the mud season.
Mud season has the obnoxious habit of sneaking around twice a year, first it shows up right when you are hoping for spring. It bogs down everything, get everywhere and right when you are just about ready to throttle the next person (clearly one with no dogs/kids/big yards/small farms/ducks/chickens/gravel driveway) who talks about what lovely weather we are having spring is here for good.
Then again just when we get a snowfall and are dreaming of white Christmases it rears it’s big ole muddy head again. Snow one day, sun the next and we end up with muddy slop everywhere. I love living where the seasons change but sometimes the actual changing of the seasons leaves a bit to be desired – bring on the cold!
It’s true that Trip’s feet are suspiciously clean for a mud season picture. Let me assure you that it was just a fluke and I’ve got the muddy prints all over the floor to prove it!
A New Solution
Yesterday my Mom and I had a chance to go pheasant hunting together and the culmination of a morning of mishaps was when I looked down and realized I had lost the transmitter to Trips shock collar.
Not good.
Not good at all.
My much loved, daily used controller that not only “reminds” Trip to pay attention to me but also controls the locating beeps his collar makes was lost in a swamp full of cattails.
This afternoon after dejectedly looking one last time at just how much a new transmitter would be I made one last effort to find it. I headed back to the cattails and dove in.
A quarter of the way in I was certain I was on my trail from yesterday and Trip was hunting just ahead of me.
A third of the way in I was pretty sure things looked familiar and Trip was somewhere… perhaps off to the left…
Half way through I found a very dead, very old, very stinky, six point buck and was abruptly certain I was no longer on my path from yesterday and I thankfully had no idea where my dog was.
Disheartened I quickly pushed through the wall of cattails away from the carcass looking for my old trail, (and the dog) but it was the beginning of the end. I was never able to pick up my path from yesterday or the transmitter. Trip, however, was not as far away as I thought. He found the deer and took matters into his own paws. Yes, my intelligent dog solved our problem with stink.
After that I didn’t need any fancy transmitter to know where Trip was – I could smell him.
Even when I couldn’t see him or hear him – I could smell him.
Not only did I know where Trip was but he solved his own problem at the same time. After Trip applied his “solution” my whistle blowing was over and my cries of “Come!” turned to “GO!” and he was allowed to range out as far as he wanted.
I’m pretty sure he thought he was all that and more after solving our problems…
… until I got him home and it was bath time!
Gotta Have A Story
If there is one thing I’ve learned growing up in a family of hunters it’s that if you don’t come home with something dead you’d better come home with a good story – if you can swing both so much the better.
So, yesterday afternoon when I found myself watching a pheasant and opossum having a stare down while I was out hunting with the dogs, I figured I was set. “This is going to get interesting!” I said to myself as the dogs came crashing through the cattails toward us.
And then it didn’t.
The pheasant, upon seeing me, dashed off into the cattails.
The opossum climbed a tree, a very small tree.
The dogs ignored the opossum (good dogs!) and sniffed their way after the pheasant.
Storm went on point in the cattails and I couldn’t find her.
The bird flushed – I missed.
The dogs passed by the opossum, stopped, looked up, and carried on (good dogs!).
I went to the opossum and took a quick picture.
Then we tracked down the pheasant and even though I was unaided by any sort of pointing from my dog (bad dog!) I got the bird.
Trip retrieved it, (good dog!).
Then he blasted off through the cattails and ran down another until it flushed -waaaay away from us (bad dog!).
So we looked for it, until the dogs stunk of swamp, I had cattail fuzz up my nose and we were all covered in burrs.
Then I got a phone call that I was needed at home.
I returned home to find my entire family in the field “helping” gut the buck our friend shot (nice work Jeff!).
We spent the rest of the night cleaning swamp muck and burrs off the dogs.
Today the dogs are tired and on drugs to combat the beasties in the swamp water that are disagreeing with their systems and I’m left reflecting that my unexciting opossum/pheasant stare down turned into an interesting evening anyway.
After all, I got my bird and I got a story.
The Best Part About Hunting Dogs…
… is that when they come home from a week of hunting, they look like this for days.
The worst part is that four days later when they come to they come to with a bang and suddenly you have one less chicken than you should!
Who me?
Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy
These are a few of the things that made me happy this Wednesday.
Clara got an ant farm for her birthday. John thinks I’m obsessed with it. I think looking at the ants makes me happy!
My husband. Not only does he make me happy but I intended that he be featured in the MINE photo challenge. Sadly I didn’t manage to get a picture of him last week.
Decorating cakes
Oh, Diet Coke, how you make me happy. When combined with chocolate and a good book – bliss. On second thought ignore that book, that book is not making me happy!
Kids and Dogs playing outside together
Flowers from John
Beautiful fall days!
Notable absences are:
Trip – Who is with my brother in Montana happily hunting without me.
Ivy – Sadly I missed the photo of her and Clara collecting eggs together. Kids playing together while doing chores makes me happy, happy, happy!
And the Ducks -I challenge you to watch a line of duck walk around and not be just a little bit happier. I also challenge you to get within photographing distance of my ducks without panicking them out of there cute little ducky line.
Hope you also had a happy day!
Update:
In terrible mothering moments of the week I forgot to include Jane in my post. Of course she is a part of my daily happiness – she smiles lots, she giggles, she’s easy going, content and oh so easily overlooked in the chaos of the rest of the house.
On a positive note I haven’t forgotten her anywhere – yet – but I do take roll call when we get in the truck!
Got Cheeks?
We’ve got cheeks, what we are lacking is a proper functioning computer/internet.
Unfortunately my technical skills consist of arguing with the computer, turning it off and on and then swearing at it.
Even more unfortunately none of these excellent trouble shooting methods seem to be improving things.
Until I either expand my skill set or professional help is brought in the blog posting may be a bit sparse.
Wish me luck!
Here are a few quotable moments from the last few days that I haven’t shared due to our technical issues:
John: “How come every day when I get in my car there are fresh dog tracks on the windshield?”
Me speaking to Clara: “NO! You have to wipe with toilet paper, ONLY toilet paper.”
Clara: “…fortunately I left my shoes in the truck…”
Ivy: Since we love Ivy I shall decline to share what she has been saying. Suffice it to say while she has been doing great at school the transition has been rough!
Jane: ” I YIA YIA YIA YAA!”
Your Dog…
John: “Your dog.”
Me: (Thinking: Oh crap, what did he do? Kill a chicken? Chew on a chair? Steal breakfast off the table?)
John: “Your dog…”
Me (Thinking: Oh it was really bad… He killed all the ducks? Ate a recliner? Got into the office and pulled all the books off the shelf trying to get at the dove?)
John: “… has the manners of a goat.”
Me “What did he do?” (Thinking: Crap! John says goats have no manners. My dog and I are in trouble – what did he do?! He peed on John? He marked the inside of the house somewhere? He ate the cat?)
John: “Look at my car!”
Me: (Thinking: Is now the time to mention I once found him sitting on the desk with his butt on the keyboard? Probably not)
Sadly for Trip I couldn’t argue his case on this one. With the irrefutable evidence before me all I could do was agree…
My dog has the manners (and mannerisms of a goat).
Tonight my goat-dog was chewing on his tin can, I mean, peanut butter jar.
Alfresco Dining
Tonight we dined alfresco.
It was a beautiful evening and so long as I could forget about why we were dining alfresco I had an enjoyable dinner.
But it’s hard to really enjoy the moment when you know that the reason you are at the picnic table is because earlier in the day roughhousing kids broke your kitchen table. That’s right the kitchen table, and if you are like us the kitchen table is the table which leaves us with the picnic table and crossing our fingers for nice weather. Thankfully the weather was nice when I went to serve lunch, unfortunately I had used the picnic table to stand on when I painted the clothes line posts, never moved it back and it was still way in the back of the yard. As I walked all the way out there with two plates full of food I stepped in a hole that my rotten dog dug that I’ve never filled in and hit the ground with food flying. (Leaving me, as my mother pointed out, wishing I had filled in the hole long ago. My procrastination tendency and horrible lawn maintenance are long standing bad habits that I’ll tell you about some other time.) So that, and the fact that table breaker number two pooped outside next to the table, (Another long standing bad habit that I’m trying much harder to break.) convinced me to drag the picnic table back to the house. Then as I was dragging the picnic table I stepped in the same g-d-hole as before except this time instead of throwing lunch on the ground I threw myself on the ground with a picnic table on top of me.
*sigh*
So, I picked myself up, made sure all my parts still worked, thanked my lucky stars no children heard my thoughts on dog holes and picnic tables, made a mental note to fill the holes (which in case you are wondering I haven’t done yet) and got on with fixing dinner.
Fortunately the too-young-to-wreck-tables kid has an infectious giggle…
…making it far easier than one would guess to forget about a rotten day and enjoy dinner!
Now perhaps when I’m done icing and elevating my foot/ankle/leg/oh-my-goodness-don’t-ever-fall-in-a-hole-under-a-picnic-table I should be back to walking normal and I can go fill in those holes…
…perhaps.
Behind the Willows 