Terror In The Yard

We’ve been experiencing a bit of weirdness with Dorothy over the past few weeks.  To recap first:  I had problems with Dorothy during her first year getting her to walk.  A walk was not her idea of a good time, when she was a puppy.  But then we moved to a house with a yard, and Dorothy fell in love.  She liked nothing better than to spend hours in her yard, chewing sticks, herding her balls, exploring the perimeter, etc.  Once the summer would get really hot, she didn’t want to stay out there long, but the minute things would cool off she’d go out there again, a happy yard dogge.

Until about two or three weeks ago, when all of a sudden she didn’t want to go off of our little deck and down into the yard.  And in fact she would put on all four brakes and do everything she could not to be pulled or pushed into the yard.  When she absolutely could not avoid it any longer, she would go down to the bottom of the steps and do her business about a half inch from the steps, turn around, and run up and bark to be let in.

What had happened to Dorothy in the yard?  At first I thought maybe she had a run-in of sorts with our resident woodchuck.  But that didn’t really seem possible to me since after three years, they have their routines down pat.  If Dorothy is sunbathing on the deck and the woodchuck comes out for a snack, Dorothy will just watch her and won’t even feel the need to go down and check things out.  So a woodchuck run-in although possible, seems improbable (plus she didn’t have any wounds or scratches or anything like that, so it would be more an issue of hurt feelings.)

My second guess was that maybe Dorothy got stung by a bee while out in the yard?  I don’t have any evidence to prove this – she has no sores or bites or anything like that other than her usual rashy bits.  But I still think this might be it. 

Then the other day, Owen and I filled up a little pool we had gotten for Dorothy to use on very hot days, and while tugging and pulling her down the steps and over to the pool, I realized she was walking as close to the house as she could get and seemed in particular to try to be keeping away from another blow-up pool we had for Owen.  We had dragged that pool over to the side of the yard near the deck steps when we weren’t using it, and maybe it moved in the wind once when Dorothy was passing it?  Sean did notice that it was near a bush where bees seem to live, so it could be both a pool and a bee sting scenario.

Anyway, we  moved the “scary” pool (as opposed to Dorothy’s private pool, which she treats as a walk-in water dish), and Dorothy does seem a bit more willing to at least go down and do her business a little farther off than a half inch from the steps.  But I’m  still not 100% sure what is going on.  Perhaps there’s a rabid animal nearby?  Could a dog sense that? 

At any rate, I’m hoping Dorothy’s cowardly lion phase ends soon!

Updated to add:  We threw the "scary" pool out and Dorothy seems more inclined to go out in the yard now, and when she does go, she doesn't glue herself to the side of the house like she had been doing.  So, progress!  However, she does tend to "disappear" to a new spot under this decorative grass-like plant where she has also moved her stick stash.  See below!

The Mosquito Buffet Is Closed

We have had many days with weather in the sixties as of late, which means that we can finally spend time outside without becoming a mosquito buffet.  It seems very freeing.  No smelly bug spray that doesn’t really work, and no looking down to find mosquitoes polka-dotting my legs.

When it stopped raining this past weekend I went outside with Owen and Dorothy and enjoyed watching the birds and occasionally pulling a weed while keeping an eye on Owen and his antics.  We have a little faded slide thingie that neighbors down the street passed on to us, and Owen enjoys climbing up it and sliding down while informing me that I am too big for the slide.  Yes Owen, I am indeed. 

He also can spend a very long time puttering about the yard, gathering sticks, and throwing pebbles in bushes and generally doing a good job of keeping himself entertained.  And of course the whole time he is doing so he is also making a running commentary that is often quite amusing.

And Dorothy loves nothing better than to be out in her yard with people on a cool day!  She takes a few big sticks and brings them under our largest tree and lies down and chews them.  

Every once in awhile she will bring a stick over to us to show us that she is a dog with a big stick.  She also likes to whip around and thwack us in the ankles with them.  And then she’ll return happily to underneath her tree.

We’re still trying to keep her from doing too much running and jumping, as she will get limpy after a session in the yard in which she is too active.  

This is precisely what she is not supposed to do:

She went on a neighborhood watch walk the other day and some policemen drove by, and then stopped when they saw her neighborhood watch bandanna so that they could meet their newest deputy!  They gave Dorothy much admiration, and she was very, very proud.  She has yet to report any suspicious activity, but that doesn’t mean she is not looking for it!

We Deserve It

We’ve had great weather on the weekends lately – sunny and in the sixties, which is my idea of perfect, and after the winter we had, I do think we deserve this nice goldilocks climate.  It is also so much easier to tire out a toddler when said toddler can spend hours outside (although really, he tends to run more in the supermarket or Target; outside he likes to focus on sticks or pebbles and just sort of moseys about).

But it is nice these days, which are still pre-mosquito, to have the back yard as an option in which Owen can mosey and I can follow behind as he does so.  Often while we are being aimless, Sean is busy doing yard and garden work.  He was moving some of the many flowers in our front yard to our back, and Owen came up to him and started a frenzy of greeting:  he kept saying, Hi Dada! Hi Dada! over and over, and even when Sean repeatedly said hi back, the repetition continued.  Finally we realized his “Hi Dada” really meant, “What are you doing?”  And so when we told him what Sean was doing, he said “Yes” as if he had known all along, and then a few seconds later wanted us to tell him all over again.  Asking and hearing the same answer seems to be how Owen processes information these days.

Owen and I played a lot of peekaboo:

In addition to hiding behind a skinny tree, he also stood in the middle of the yard and covered his eyes with his hands, and then cackled wildly when I would ask where Owen was.  That never gets old, apparently.

Dorothy often gets barked at by two little dogs who live next door, and she generally ignores them and does not bark back, although now Owen will imitate the sound of the two little dogs guarding their perimeter.  Dorothy did bark at me to try to get me to play with her and the large stick she had found, and eventually Owen started imitating this too.  So now when we all go outside, the two neighbor dogs start to shriek, Dorothy will bark at her stick, and Owen will start answering Dorothy with a Woo(f) Woo(f).

It’s not a quiet place, our yard.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane....

This is a view from our sunroom screen door which leads out to a mini deck, which in turn has steps down to Dorothy's yard.

That same screen door now looks like this:

One of us, whose name begins with a "D" and ends with an "orothy," ran through the screen door the other day while in a hurry to get to her beloved dad.

Her beloved dad was Not Pleased, as it now adds one more expense plus chore to his to-do list!

Dorothy thinking, but Dad needed me....

DARRRR-FFY!

One of our new next door neighbors often has her three year-old granddaughter visiting or staying with her, and she has become quite enamored with Miss Dorothy.  Being three, when she calls Dorothy's name loudly, she says Darfy instead of Dorothy.  So if we step out on the porch and Savannah is out in the yard next door, we will hear, "DARRRRR-FY!" and then Darfy and Savannah will greet each other like they didn't just see each other the day before.

I daresay Savannah is one of the things Dorothy puts in the "pro" column when she considers her city life and her suburban life.  Perhaps tied for the top of the "pro" list along with Living With Beloved Dad, is undoubtedly our backyard.  Dorothy LOVES the yard.  So much so that we find ourselves spelling y-a-r-d, because if we say "yard", Dorothy will run and stand by the back door and cry to be let out in it.  Once in the yard, Dorothy will run like a demon, all fast-moving muscle, and try to engage her dad in a game of frisbee.  She zooms and jumps (and eats grass, sigh) and has the best time ever.  She doesn't even seem to mind the clouds of mosquitoes which keep me in the sun porch watching the action from behind a screened window.  (It's October, will the mosquitoes ever die?!)

And then when she comes back in, Dorothy usually has to collapse and pant and gain her equilibrium.  Here she is after such a venture:

Do they think I don't know what y-a-r-d- spells?!

Dorothy's New Domain

Last Friday we closed on our house!  It's a beautiful house, but one of the things I like the most about it is that it has a fenced-in yard for Dorothy, so I will no longer have to take her on five drags per day.  I certainly still plan on walking the beast, whether she likes it or not, but I think two or three of her daily outings will take place here:

I'm also told that there is a family of squirrels who live in our trees and jump from branch to branch like monkeys.  Grass to lie in!  Squirrels to stalk!  I'm pretty sure Dorothy has found her Kansas.