Monday, February 18, 2008, 18:53
A Frightening Moment
Our little Shetland Sheepdog, Pixie, was eating her breakfast Saturday morning when she stopped all of a sudden and got a puzzled look on her face.
We were waiting for Pixie and Charlie to finish eating, and then we were going down to the barn to feed the horses.
Pixie went into the living room and began to move in small circles, all the while with a puzzled look on her face. Her back was hunched up, too, and she was holding herself in a funny position.
"Something is wrong," I said to Randy. "I think she's got a piece of dog food stuck in her throat."
I went out to the kitchen and ran a little water from the tap onto a saucer and mixed some canned kitty food with it. I figured if Pixie could drink some water, she might be able to swallow the piece of dog food.
Pixie willingly drank the "kitty food soup" -- and then, in fact, she finished the few pieces of her breakfast that were left. But after that, she went back to circling and being hunched up with a puzzled look on her face.
Then she began to retch.
"She's going to vomit," I said. "Come on, Pixie. Let's go outside."
Pixie willingly followed me outside. And once she reached the driveway, she went back to circling, being hunched up and retching.
"She's choking," I said. "We have to do something to help her."
As we watched, every time Pixie retched, a gob of white foam appeared at the corners of her mouth.
"What are we going to do?" I said.
Randy, who had not said much up to now, was wearing leather chopper gloves. He watched Pixie closely, and as she tried to vomit up the white foam again, he swooped in, and with the edge of the leather glove, caught the gob of foam and pulled it from her mouth. The foam contained a small piece of dry dog food.
Pixie immediately looked more hopeful.
"You did it!" I said. "You did it!"
"Maybe," Randy replied. "Let's keep an eye on her for a while."
I watched Pixie for a few minutes. She did, indeed, look brighter and happier, and in a little while seemed to be her normal, cheerful self.
Randy went down to the barn with the horse feed, and I went into the house for a hat and gloves. As I walked down the path to the barn, Pixie pranced and bounced around in front of me, happy to be getting down to the business of feeding the horses.
I continued to keep an eye on Pixie for a while, but she seemed fine.
Later on, when we had finished with the horses, we got out the snowshoes. The several inches of snow last week was enough so that we could use the snowshoes.
Saturday was a bright, sunny day. We headed down our hayfield and crossed the fence into the neighbor's field. There is a ridgeline with a slope running down to a low spot that looks as if it were a lake or a pond at one time -- maybe 10,000 years ago. Quite an extensive pond because it covers the length of 40 acres and extends north and northeast through the next neighbor's place.
In a wet year, it is quite wet and squelchy in that low spot, although it hasn't been wet for quite a few years now. We snowshoed down the slope and climbed over two more fences to snowshoe through a stand of large pine trees. When I was a kid, we owned this farm, too, and at that time, the pines were substantially smaller.
All the while, Pixie followed along behind me in the trail we had made with the snowshoes. She was happy to be out and about and exploring. Charlie was happy to be out, too, and snowplowed his way around in the snow, snooping here and there. He is quite a lot bigger than Pixie, and he is able to walk through deeper snow than she can.
By the time we returned, Randy and I knew that we had not been snowshoeing much lately. Our "snowshoe muscles" could tell they were not used to walking that way.
Pixie had kept up with us all the while and remained bright and happy when we got back to the house. By evening, she still did not seem to be suffering any ill effects from her choking episode.
I've never seen a dog choke like that. And I'm awfully glad my husband was there to help Pixie.
Pixie appreciated it, too, I know.
Blizzard Conditions
We did not get much snow Sunday night and into Monday, maybe 4 inches or so, bringing our total for the year up to 35 inches; we had 41 inches all together last year. But the wind on Monday -- now that's a different story.
The wind is blowing at around 20 to 30 mph from the north/northwest, and the fluffy snow is really drifting. I had to shovel my way down to the barn Monday morning, and as soon as I shoveled, the wind started working on filling in the path again. I decided not to shovel the path to Isabelle's shelter that runs next to my little training arena because it was already more than knee-deep, and I knew the wind would just fill it in again. Instead, I only shoveled the shorter path down the steeper part of the bank to Isabelle's pasture. Time enough later to shovel when the wind dies down. I hope.
The weather forecast said we were only supposed to get a dusting of snow. Not 4 inches. And I don't recall hearing much about strong winds out of the north/northwest causing a lot of blowing and drifting snow and below zero windchills.
The weather forecast for the next few days is that we are supposed to be below zero at night with below zero windchills during the day. Today the windchill makes it feel like 15 to 20 below.
So far this year, including Monday, we have had 35 days of below zero weather. Last year we had 22 days of 0 or below 0 weather. During the winter of 2005-2006, we had 6 days of 0 or below zero weather. In 2004-2005, we had 11 days of 0 or below. In 2003-2004, we had 14 days of 0 or below zero weather. But in each of those past years, the weather would be below zero for a day or two and would warm back up again to at least the 20s. It would not stay below zero for many days or weeks at a time. And we did not, in between times of being below zero, have days when the high temperature was 10 or 15 degrees and the low would be 2 or 3 above the way that it has this year.
No wonder it seems like we have had a lot of cold weather this winter.
By the end of the week, the total for this year will be closer to 40 days of below zero weather if the forecast for the rest of the week is accurate.
Last fall, the National Weather Service predicted above normal temperatures for this part of the country with average snowfall. So far we have had neither.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, February 16, 2008, 20:01
Surviving the Cold
I received an e-mail this past week from a Rural Route 2 subscriber in Florida. She wondered how the animals were managing to survive all of the sub-zero weather we've been having in this neck of the woods. Friday morning, the temperature was 12 degrees below zero Fahrenheit -- again. It seems that the morning temperature for more than two months, since November 30 when the thermometer first dropped to 0 at night, has been below zero an awful lot. And in fact, it has. I checked back in my weather records, and since November 30, the temperature has been below 0 for 34 days.
Actually, I consider it to be a miracle that animals *do* survive such cold weather.
For one thing, the horses grow thick, heavy winter coats, and that helps them stay warm. The hair is thick enough even on their ears and noses to protect them from the freezing temperatures. They also eat more hay when it is cold outside. And they know enough to stay out of the wind when the windchill is far below zero.
And then there are the barn kitties, who all burrow into the hay and snuggle up together. When it is very cold, we hardly ever see the barn kitties. They come out for a few bites to eat when we come to feed the horses, and then they go right back into the hay. When it warms up a little so that it is above zero, that's when they come out and eat and eat and eat.
On a sunny day in freezing temperatures, the barn cats find sunny spots out of the wind to soak up the sun's rays. Sometimes they hunker down on the south side of the barn underneath the plum tree. Sometimes they sit in the doorway of the lean-to to enjoy the sun. And sometimes they sit just inside the barn door where I usually put Kajun's hay. When it is sunny outside, I put Kajun's hay outside so he can enjoy the sun, too.
During the winter, I bring warm water down to the barn three times a day for the barn kitties. I put it in a big insulated coffee mug that fits in a holder actually meant to hold a small salt block. It works out very well. When it is way below zero, I have three insulated mugs in operation. Two are in various stages of thawing out in the basement and the third one is down in the barn with warm water in it. If the temperatures gets down to 10 or 20 below, the insulated coffee mugs freeze solid overnight. It takes the better part of a day for the ice to thaw enough so I can dump it out to use the mug again.
Charlie and Pixie don't have too much trouble in the cold weather. If it is very cold and windy, I put Charlie back into his kennel in the basement during the day. And when it is very cold and windy, Pixie only goes outside for potties, and then she comes right back inside.
And then there are the song birds. During the winter we have chickadees and juncoes and blue jays and cardinals and nuthatches and gold finches (dull and drab, not bright gold as they are in the summer) and purple finches (also dull and drab, not raspberry as they are in the summer) coming to the bird feeders. When it is very cold and windy, we do not see the birds, either. They, too, find someplace to hunker down out of the wind, and then when it warms up a little, they come out to find food to eat.
As for the Whitetail deer, they are smart about surviving as well. When there is a lot of snow on the ground or when the snow is too crusty and hard for them to dig through to find corn in cornfields that the corn pickers missed or too crusty to dig down to find anything else to eat, the deer "yard up" and gather in big groups in areas where they have various kinds of trees and bushes to browse on. They, too, spend time on sunny southern exposures or hunkered down where they are out of the wind.
The interesting thing about Whitetail deer is that their metabolism and digestion changes in the winter to allow them to survive by browsing on trees and bushes and by eating acorns. Well-meaning people have put out hay for deer in the winter time. The deer cannot digest the hay, and they starve to death with a belly full of hay.
At least I know I don't have to worry about Kajun and Isabelle starving to death. Not from the amount of hay they've been eating and the corresponding horse manure they have been producing that is now frozen but when it thaws out this spring -- I will be picking up with the wheelbarrow. All I can say is -- I will *really* have my work cut out for me!
Farmall Tractors
Check out this website that is all about Farmall Tractors. The website owner has posted an excerpt from “Give Me a Home Where the Dairy Cows Roam” -- the story ‘Spring Cleaning’ about Dad waxing our 460 Farmall tractor.
LeAnn R. Ralph