Our crazy puppy, Ditsy Trixie, is becoming quite the favorite in our house. After a couple months of on and off disaster, Trixie has settled in and is learning the ropes around here! As a puppy, she has the attention span of a flea and the spazzy energy of a chipmunk, and no matter how worn out she is after an outing she always makes a beeline for the garbage to wreck havoc. But she has actually been learning, and is becoming quite the hiking buddy. I’m so excited. 
This morning while Dad was down in the crawlspace working on our plumbing, Trixie sneaked in and pulled a few stuffed animals out of storage – Stuffed animals that were supposed to be “keepsakes.” Being the generous person that I am, I thought I could pick up a stuffed animal for her from Goodwill when I went in this afternoon. She’d chewed the faces off her couple of stuffed animals, and disemboweled her favorite one, so it seemed right that a new one was in order. 
So I found this hideous blue and yellow stuffed fish – It had plastic eyes, which I thought she might like (she loves to go straight for the face), and lots of appendages to chew on. 
The long and short of it: she loved it. For all five minutes that it survived. Sure enough, she went straight for the face, after whipping it around to break its neck. Within two minutes, she had popped off the little plastic eyes, and about three minute later, we looked out the window and she was surrounded by white stuffing, and meticulously pulling out the rest. She completely gutted the fish. 
It didn’t last long, but it was a nice idea.
Dad brought this little guy home yesterday evening. He found him on our long driveway, nowhere near water, and with a pretty sizeable chunk of his shell broken. We don’t know where he came from or how he got there, or how his shell was broken, but some kind person had duct taped him up, and it looked like he was subsequently taped another time or two. Given how warped the chipped piece was, it looked like he’s grown some since the injury. Overall he seemed like a pretty healthy dude.
Trixie didn’t know what to make of Mr. Turtle – She growled and put her ears back and looked all funny at him, but went along happily with Dad to dump him in what little water is left in the stock pond. He’ll be happy there.
Oh, the creative uses for duct tape.
Cleo is a mature critter, compared with Ditsy Trixie, and actually kept Trixie in line for a day. Usually Trixie takes off at the first opportunity (or the first hint of boredom) and hightails it to a cabin-sized brushpile where rabbits live. Yesterday, though, she only ran off once, even though she was off leash for hours. I was impressed.
Those two pups were a hoot to watch. They ran pretty much without ceasing for probably two hours, stopping occasionally for a short breather, plopping down exhausted and panting, until Trixie would pester and Cleo would bolt. Then the games would resume. If they weren’t running, they were tussling, nipping at each other’s faces and feet and jumping all over each other.
One good thing we learned is that Trixie has almost no territorial instinct. While it would be nice to have a dog with some guard-dog tendencies, it is nice to know that she is entirely unaggressive. Our old dog, Baby, would actively protect her space. Somehow, Trixie has no space. Or no personal space. Or both.
The temperature was reading in the 90s, and those girls were still zipping around the yard, sometimes stopping for a dip in the pool, then dashing off again. Trixie plunged her whole self into her pool, submerging her face and blowing bubbles. Cleo was much more dainty and ladylike.
During one of their “breathers,” I got this series of photos where they look like they are laughing uproariously. Every time I look at the pictures, I can’t help but giggle!
I always enjoy watching animals interact with one another. Whether it is watching calves playing on dirt piles, or horses frisking around a pasture, or laughing at the dog and cats as they try to work out their differences, or watching these two pups tear around the yard, I love seeing the interactions of God’s creatures. What a marvelous Creation God has placed us in!
After dinner, we worked in the garden, pulling weeds, tilling, and watering. It is terribly dry in all of South Dakota, but the Black Hills region in particular is in a state of severe drought. Forest and grass fires are a significant risk right now, and ranchers are feeling the effects of the lack of rainfall. Hay crops have been a fraction of what they are in a good year, and gardens are hard to keep watered. There isn’t much of a happy medium in this part of the country. Either we’re getting hailed out and flooded, or we’re dry as a bare-picked bone.
The sun set in a blaze of glories and we began to head towards the house. I was inside doing dishes when Mom called to me. “There’s a bat colony in the Miner’s Cabin!” she called. We had suspected as much about a month ago, but hadn’t verified this. I ran outside as fast as my sprained ankle would let me. She had already counted twelve bats leaving the Cabin attic, and we watched eight or nine more leave. What a sight! We could see them away over the stock dam, and high above our heads. We could hear them scrabbling softly before they emerged from the gable, and I could hear the tiniest, highest little vocal pitches of these amazing creatures as they wriggled out of their roost and swooped noiselessly into the evening. Judging by the number of bats we saw leave, we could have a maternity colony of fifty or more bats, including babies! We’ll have quite the project this fall making the Miner’s Cabin bat-proof. If there weren’t health risks associated with leaving bats in the attic, my vote would be to leave them. I love bats. Fascinating, beautiful little creatures.
The chokecherries on the ranch apparently disappeared for awhile, but they have sprung up all along the driveway. Mom was in Rapid City today and visited her uncle, since he called to let her know the chokecherries were ripe at his place, and she came home with pounds and pounds of them. After she got back, a short drive up our driveway yielded another third of a gallon or so of cherries. And many more to ripen, along with a few golden currant bushes I know of on our property! 
I also know of a great spot for chokecherries along Hwy. 44. But it is a secret.
The clouds were low and heavy, hanging in the trees, and already the landscape looks richer, greener. The rain pitter-pattered on the tin roof for most of the morning. At times it would nearly quiet, but then the sound of larger drops would lead into another downpour, though never torrential. It was the slow kind of rain that soaks in deep and doesn’t turn to runoff. We got 1 inch total. The frogs are singing again now. It was a good day for reading, writing, and hot tea.
Trixie wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the rain. Unlike our other dog, Baby, who would retreat into her dog house for the whole day when it rained, Trixie was soaked and muddy from digging in the yard, undeterred by the wet. She didn’t seem to care at first, but at one point jumped up and peeked in the window over the kitchen sink. I think she was a little bored. She had dried off a little by noon, so she went with me to take Dad his lunch in Hermosa. She is such a puppy! She hasn’t experienced many car rides and tried to cuddle up initially, then went back to trying to chew on whatever was close enough to get her mouth on, whether it was me, or her leash, or the blanket she was sitting on. She was pretty happy to see Sarah, who got off early from work today.
We’re hoping for more rain tonight. It doesn’t look like there is much chance of precipitation over the next week, but we’ll take whatever we get and be glad of it!
Song Dog Journal 