Nothing much new

There isn't too much new to talk about here. Things have been pretty quiet. I think Stella still misses Diesel (or maybe I'm just thinking of me haha separation anxiety(?). We went over to new friend Chuy's house to spend the day yesterday. Chuy's make and model are unknown but he's a puppy and he leans toward the herding, I have more energy than most dogs on the planet - variety. Stella is mostly annoyed by him but she's working on it. One day we were over there (oh yeah) to get our picture made for Coffee and a Canine. Chuy was doing exactly the same thing to Stella that she used to do to the dogs in the dog park at that age. Basically you go up to the biggest dog you can find and punch it in the side repeatedly with your nose until it chases you. Chuy did this to Stella that day a dozen times and each time, Stella told him to back off. The final time he did it, Stella taught Chuy the same lesson the horse taught Diesel. There was no real contact but he thought there was. Hysteria ensued.

Here's a shot of him in a little behind the scenes action from that day taken by my friend Beverly. We were trying to situate the dogs and he took it upon himself to drink the coffee (bad dog!). I was only pretending to drink it in the picture. Once we finished - I forgot (of course) and drank out of the cup right behind him.  blech.

We have winners!

 I think this photo was taken by my friend Kathryn Reed. This is her dog Futz. He's made an appearance here before. Rad road dog - without question. Not sure who the black dog is (UPDATE: it's Tiny and they were in New Jersey), maybe she or husband Rod would know. Old Futz is long passed but hasn't got off the road yet. I love that.

So we have two winners from the FIVE (WOW!) entries in our calendar contest..... Winner #1 is our great virtual friend, Susan Rose, photographer and fellow blogger among other things - and Winner #2 is Stalker Laura!!!! Congratulations, both of you. I wanted to send everyone who entered a calendar but that meant I'd have to order more. Thank you for playing though and thanks for dropping by occasionally. I really appreciate your comments and stories. And pictures. Send pictures anytime - or add them to Facebook - if you have or know of a great road dog.

Note to the winners: So happy you spoke up, congratulations! Go over to my main page and scroll all the way to the bottom. There's a contact link there where you can send us your mailing address privately. Your calendar will arrive shortly.

Giddyup

Stella and I have had a little bit of extra fun this last week. I know she misses her playmate - mostly because about once a day she leaps up in the air and does the play bow to me followed by some basketball-type moves. She watches my eyes and if she sees anything that resembles adventure in them, the chase is on. We race through the house for a couple of minutes then I catch her and then she doubles back and catches me. I start laughing and fall down in the floor. It's a game she and Diesel played twice a day for the last six months. A game Diesel apparently tried to play some variation of with a horse recently.

What Diesel saw in the horse's eyes however was not adventure. It was more like a sign that read: Prepare to meet your God - little man. There with the blur of horses hooves and possibly some earth rattling.

Then, according to new mom "Debbie" there was "rolling on the ground, staggering like a drunk, screeching like a girl and running for the hills". At first she thought he might have been clipped in the mouth by the horse but further investigation determined that the only thing fractured in the melee was Diesel's ego which we know from experience, can be repaired. In any case, it was high drama but he's fine. Let's hope he remembers it for a long, long time. Anybody have a dog/horse story?


Dogs and Humans, A Love Story by Lee Charles Kelley.

Goodbye and hello!

Thanks to  Coffee with a Canine for having us over for coffee and featuring Carny Dog on the blog today. Welcome to any new visitors that might happen along. Feel free to take the tour, join in and comment. We love to hear your stories too!

This is a photo of my most excellent friends Beverly and Carr having one last conversation with Diesel before he went to his new home on the real farm. They were kind enough to take Diesel in during the first week of his rescue/liberation.

 

The new calendar is here!

 ..and it is pretty swell, if I did produce the entire thing myself. I know January is almost over but if you'd like to win one, leave us a comment below and we'll employ one of those random generated number things to pick a winner, a week from tomorrow. That would be Friday, January 20th at 9am. It isn't a popularity contest so you don't have to call all your friends or anything unless of course, you just want to.

I should say a couple of other things about this 2012 calendar. There was only one dog from last year who managed to reappear. It's Eight Ball. Some of you may remember him from the Bumper Cars. This time around I dug out Eight-Ball's puppy pictures. He deserved to be in there twice. He was awesome and is sorely missed.

If anyone knows Kelli of Fred and Kelli please let her know they made it in there too.

Last update: (she said) Someone already wrote and asked me if the  calendars are for sale. I hadn't planned on selling them this year but if a person were to drop $25. in my paypal account along with a mailing address, I imagine one might end up at your house before too long. I looked around for cheaper ones this year but the ones I found really were cheaper all around. 

*Stay tuned for the Diesel report - which includes horse kicking!
(no dogs were harmed)

The girl

Here is the first day report courtesy of Diesel's new mom:
(editor's note: Maggie is Diesel's new female companion)

Did you know that Diesel buries his food?  He’s a hoarder.  He buried a dog biscuit in one of the stalls and later took a mouthful of food from a bucket and buried in the vegetable garden.

He has met two of the cats and doesn’t seem to want to bother them, they don’t seem to be worried about him either.  He has been outside with them now – I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t chase them but he was too busy checking out everything else to pay much attention to them after he gave them a good sniffing.

You are right about his obsession with the red booda ball…I had to hide it but I think he’s getting the same way about the truck now…he can’t stop looking at it anytime we are outside and he can’t wait to get back in it.

I discovered that he’s pretty good at chasing a stick and bringing it back to me but it’s only because he doesn’t realize that he can be a couple of feet away from me and I can reach the stick…it’s not like a ball where you have to get right next to him to get it…I think it was a big surprise to him that I could get the stick from him.

The fence is completely working now much to his chagrin so he’s been outside on his own while I watch from the house.  He didn’t even get shocked but he’s smart enough to know that it’s on…he can hear it snap.  He hasn’t wandered far from the barn without me but he’s exploring a little on his own.  He hasn’t gotten over the horses yet, they came up to the deck a minute ago to be petted and he was entirely put out by that.

I worked the tractor for a while and he did go a little postal about the tractor…he tried to climb up to the seat.  I had to get my piaffe whip to make him stay far enough away from the tractor to keep him safe…after a few minutes he settled down and just trotted next to it but he wouldn’t take his eyes off of it and kept barking at it.

Maggie thinks he’s Satan.

This was written Friday. Three days have passed and things have begun to settle down, word has it that all is well and that Diesel and his new mom are having fun getting to know one another. He has his own bag of tennis balls and new girl Maggie - though still reserved - may be reconsidering her options. I'm pretty sure it's a done deal. We'll have updates periodically (thanks Debbie) and a few leftover pictures from last Thursday coming before long.

Meanwhile, is Stella pathetic or what? She got to visit the farm too and run in the pasture with Diesel before we went home Friday. He gets to keep his name, by the way, which is great. She's  obviously missed him but I'm certain she'll be fine too. We've gone back to walking in some of her old favorite places  - which is way more exciting for both of us than our standard romp through the neighborhood.

The Adoption

About the time we, the three of us got pretty good at all walking together like civilized animals, Diesel hit the mother lode.

The week between Christmas and the New Year, I got two serious inquiries about him. One was a note stuck to the door from a couple of my good neighbors (yes, they do exist).  I read the note, felt a little pang of impending loss but went ahead and made the call. He got a short interview from that call from friends of a friend, who happened to be looking for a dog. I passed my contact information on to them and waited. The very next day the rescue contacted me and said someone had called asking about Diesel. I had the idea that maybe it was the same person but that wasn't the case. Again, I passed the information along and a few days went by. Then, there was a message from someone we'll call Debbie on the machine. We spent about thirty minutes talking on the telephone and  I wondered after we finished, if Debbie was a hallucination I just had or a really mean joke.

You know how when you're a kid and you get a dog and some time passes how one day you come home from school and the dog is gone and one of your parents tells you that your dog went to "live on a farm"? Some - I'd say even many of you have heard this spiel - you're shocked and sorry, you never really saw the dog go or had a chance to say goodbye but of course it's a wonderful place where the dog can run and play and chase rabbits all day and though you feel just terrible somehow you convince yourself that what your parents said is true and the dog really is going to have a nice life there? Remember that story? This happened at my house more than one time although my mother will deny it to this day, none of those dogs ever went to any farm. They were all taken to the pound or dumped off somewhere or given away. I'll never know the details but it took a lot longer than I'd like to admit to figure out that "the farm" didn't exist and my dogs weren't hanging out at the barn in some canine Nirvana.

Guess what.

There really is a farm. And our friend Diesel found it or to be more precise, the farm found him. It was the second phone call. The dream I couldn't allow myself to have as a foster mom knowing it would obliterate all future candidates, called us right up on the telephone.

Diesel and I went over to Debbie's for a visit. We had a run in the pasture. We petted the horses and had tea - with fruitcake. I know what you're thinking. It was unbelievably good though, handmade-by-a-Louisiana-woman-type good. That was Tuesday. She filled out the application for Diesel and we all traded e-mails. 

It was then I started thinking seriously about Diesel's departure and our long history together. The neighbors, the police, him galloping through my flower beds in the middle of May, every May, his predecessor Buddy - who got hit and died slowly in front of my house the night before Thanksgiving and the rage I felt when his owner asked me to take care of it, because he just couldn't deal with it right now, how Diesel showed up weeks later - the rebound puppy, me already hoping for his liberation as he refused to become the bully his owner craved but howled insufferably on the chain, terrifying some of the dog walkers, regularly evading the dogcatcher and finally, how he won us over - me and Stella and all but the wimpiest of neighbors with his sincere loyalty and good-natured affection and now that I was thinking about it everything that's really good in a dog.

All of this reflection caused a minor league meltdown in the pet food aisle at Wal-Mart. It was warped and poetic, pain and joy all ground together with a discount mortar and pestle against the backdrop of Wal-Mart. It was as my young niece Katie likes to say: epic.

We are so happy to report that as of yesterday, Diesel has his very own family. It is made up of one woman, three horses, a female dog and three cats, a creek and a never-ending supply of rabbits, mice, horse manure and neighbor dogs to run the fence with. I'm guessing if you're a dog it just doesn't get any better than that.