Coffee with a Diet Coke Chaser and an 80’s Pop Sound Track

So why am I driving down Interstate 81 with a cup of coffee in my hand, loaded with enough sugar to put an elephant into a diabetic coma and listening to Madonna, Huey Lewis and the News, Debbie and New Kids on the Block?  Because I have an 8AM base call 300 miles away, in southwestern Virginia and I left my house at 10PM to drive through the night to get there on time.  And there is nothing like caffeine and bad music to keep you awake. 

I hate coffee.  The smell of a fresh pot of coffee makes my stomach acid churn and my nose burn.  I made it through four years of vet school and its attendant late night without the ubiquitous cup of joe at my side.  But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I really don’t want to run into a tractor trailer or a guard rail at 75 miles an hour.  

Trying to stay awake for the 5 plus hour overnight trip from my house to Coeburn, Virginia, was nearly beyond me.  Therefore the need for a more efficient caffeine delivery system:  hazel nut coffee with chocolate creamer and four packs of sugar.  I made it to Marion, Virginia before the inevitable circadian rhythm pulled me under.  

I ended up taking a nap at a rest stop near mile post 50 close by the town of Marion.  I figured I was pretty close and since it was only 2AM, I could stop for a little bit for a rest.  I didn’t realize that I had another hour and half of driving ahead of me before arriving at base.  My F150 is an extended cab, with blankets and padding to make it a soft place for the dogs to sleep while they are in the truck with me, and it doubled as my bed that night.  The hardest part was trying to convince Cora to move to the driver’s seat.  She’s been scolded enough that she was very reluctant to sit up there while I was stretched out in the back.  She wouldn’t go easily and actually tried to sit on my knees and stretch out to the console between the front seats, her butt higher than her head.  She was painful to watch, all crumpled up in that position.  After a little more urging from me, she realized that it was probably more comfortable to get into the front seat.

After only an hour and half of sleep, and complete lack of REM sleep, the rumble of the tractor trailers woke me up and back on the road we went.  With the weird hangover shakes that come from too much caffeine and too little sleep.  Sucks, cause I didn’t have any fun getting that hangover.

It was still hard trying to get through the last little bit of the trip.  I am glad I couldn’t see how steep the drop offs where the cliff disappears since it was still dark.  We all made it to the base with more than two hours to spare.  Kind of a good thing, since I could feed the dogs in time for it not to be an issue while they are working, but I still could have used the extra two hours for some sleep.

The dogs could nap, but I couldn’t and I still had another 15 hours in front of me.

Teagan the Terrorist

Teagan at 10 weeks, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth...shoes are another story.

Four months ago, my beautiful girl Cora, had a healthy litter of pups.  All yellows, my favorite color Lab.  The first month, Cora did all the hard work; feeding, cleaning, keeping the squirming bundles of joy warm and dry. My turn came the second month, after their baby teeth came in and Cora had absolutely no interest in letting her litter of piranhas nurse on her anymore.   In the middle of taking care of everybody, I felt like it would never end. But my caretaking of the little ones came to an end and all, but one, went to their new homes.  For someone else to clean up after them.  You can see them here:  http://glendairlabradors.com/puppies.html

I kept the boldest, most independent of them all and named her Teagan (which means beautiful in Irish, or poet).  Oh, the hopes and dreams I have for her.  So many things to do, so many places to go and people to meet.  There is so much on her little shoulders, it’s amazing that she hasn’t collapsed under the weight of it all.  But because she’s a dog, she doesn’t care.  She doesn’t care whether she gets her AKC champion, a Master Hunter, or if she can find people.  Her favorite escapade in the entire world is to run full force into whatever dog is in front of her.  If she can make them yelp she’s happy, if she can bowl them over she’s ecstatic.  If she can get the others caught up in her puppy crazies and chase her round and round and round and round, her days work is done! 

I wanted to keep the pup with the most outgoing fearless and independent personality.  I did, but she personifies, be careful what you wish for, you may get it.  All the pups I’ve had before her, adored me and couldn’t wait to do whatever I asked of them.  Teagan on the other hand has given me the paw more times in the eight weeks I’ve had just her, than all my other dogs have ever given me in their entire lives, COMBINED!

She is fearless.  At training, a team mate of mine has a van full of German Shepherds that go absolutely ballistic if anything or anyone comes near the van.  Her preferred choice of entertainment when I let her out of the truck is to go around to the back of Misty’s van and stand there.  She’ll watch the dogs go mad, flinging themselves at the crate doors, screaming at the top of their lungs, slobber flung far and wide and generally lose their marbles.  She doesn’t run, her hackles don’t elevate, she doesn’t bark back at them.  She calmly squats and pees in front of them, marking her territory, then wanders off.  Ignoring me completely as I am trying to call her back to the truck.

What Parents Ask Us to Do

Parents are always proud of what their grown children have accomplished.  They brag to their friends over their accomplishments, the doctor, the lawyer, the business man/woman.  The good mother, how good their grandkids are, and so on.  So, if they have some bad plumbing, they call the son that can fix things.  Health problems, call doctor.  Trying to set up a will, call the lawyer.  I am a veterinarian, but they don’t have any pets.  However, I do train cadaver dogs.

Their part of the county is still wooded and the road behind their house is tree lined and a good place to go walking.  But, they haven’t done much of that lately.  When I went home over the 4^th of July weekend, my dad asks me to do something for them.  About 3-4 weeks ago a body had been found on the road behind their house.  And they didn’t find out about it until it was in the newspaper: 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-breaking-news/2-arrested-in-death-of-silver.html

They ask me to go out and look for the drop site. They were just so excited that they might be able to gossip a little with their neighbors.  There are so many things that went through my head, the loudest: "how cool is that" and the other thought was "some people have all the luck"!  But, there are several ethical things that doing what they requested that would have been compromised.  So I didn’t look, I walked the dogs in opposite direction.  Very tempting though.

Stop and Look

When I was younger I loved to travel. The farther away I could get the better. My favorite trips where to Great Britain and the accompanying lands, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the land of my forefathers. Every winter I would try to go out West to visit my brother in Salt Lake City at the base of the Wasatch Mountain Range of the Rockies. I am a granny skier, means that I like to ski, but slowly. And the skiing in Park City was absolutely amazing. Not very many people and gorgeous slopes. I would also weasel my way into the avalanche patrol group to see if I could watch them work their dogs.

Then I bought my little slice of heaven here in Virginia and I only leave it under extreme duress.I love Virginia and all her variations. Our mountains are not as grandiose as the Rockies, but they are breath taking in a quiet slowly overwhelming way.

Fridley's Gap, Massanutten Mountain

In my travels around the state on the various searches I get called to, I get to see many parts that most of us don’t even think about. Let alone know about. From the Dismal Swamp to the Blue Ridge to the western most boundary, the Allegheny Mountains and everything in between. I am however, not a flatlander. I need to see what might be behind the next curve on the backcountry road, what the next little valley may be hiding.

We tend to forget that in our own backyard, there are scenes of beauty that we don’t need to travel thousands of miles to experience. That point was driven home to me when I was heading home from a search at the Homestead, in Hot Springs Va. I stopped at the top the mountain ridge that separated Calf Pasture River valley from the James River and got out to look around. The day was clear, bright and the scene breathtaking I felt I could see for miles.

In the Capital Reef area of Utah, there is an observation point that says you can see for 90 miles in every direction. Where I got out after my search, at the top of the mountain ridge, I don’t think I could see for 90 miles but I could see probably 10 miles before the mountains closed in.

Even around my small parcel of land the quiet beauty sneaks up on you. A walk in the first light of a summer morning, the crunch and creak of the newly fallen snow under your boot and the delicate lacey patterns of the dormant trees in snow above your head. And then in the fall, the surprise of a flock of turkeys strutting across the pasture or a doe and this year’s fawn grazing beside the horses.

Don't forget your backyard.  Stop, and look at it through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before.  You'll be surprised.

Landscaping the power company way

In April, my local electric company contacted me to let me know that they were going through my little hollow to clean up the right of way that our electric lines run through. I thought that was nice of them to let me know, but didn’t really think much of it.

A couple of days ago I was sitting in my office when a helicopter comes buzzing over my house. The electric company has an interesting way of accomplishing their landscaping tasks. Stunning, actually.

My electricity went out when the helicopter went over my house so I was thinking bad things were going on. So I was a bit relieved when an electric company guy pulls up my drive, hoping he had some information. He did, but it wasn’t what I thought.

Do you ever wonder how the power companies keep the massive miles of electric lines clear of trees and limbs from falling on them? I found out. They hire a company that flies helicopters and huge 30’ chainsaws that are attached to the underside of said helicopter by very long chains that fly around cutting trees and tree limbs. That sounds deceptively straight forward. However, the right of way is only 15 feet on either side of the electric lines. So the pilot needs to be able to keep the saw within those fifteen feet, not hit the wires, not run into the tops of the trees, and doing all this with the wash from the helicopters rotors making the trees and saw move as wildly as if in the middle of a thunderstorm. And sometimes do it backwards. All the while hanging out the side of the helicopter to see what he is doing, he also is also trying to fly the copter without it running into the ground.

So on Wednesday of this week, I start hearing the helicopter fly overhead and the power company truck drives up my driveway. Mainly because I have two horses in the pasture next to the power lines whose right of way is being cleared and they wanted to see if I could get them out of the pasture and up on the hill behind my house. I knew right away that this guy wasn’t a horse person. There is no way you can hang on to a frightened horse, let alone two at the same time. Because there wasn’t any way these horses have ever seen a helicopter close up like they were about to and calm isn’t a word I would use to describe my horses. One is an ex-racehorse and the other has about as much common sense as a pea hen. She also weighs close to 1200 pounds.

Watching the horizon for enemies

I go down to the pasture and get the halters ready just in case they do something stupid like try to jump the cattle guard and not making it. Whatever the power company was paying the pilot, it was certainly worth it. Especially when it came to the horses. He was smart enough to stay at one end of the pasture long enough for them to become somewhat accustom to the noise and sight of what he was doing. It also allowed them time to race to the other end of the pasture to watch the whole show. The pilot finished the first half of the right of way, and rather than continue straight on thereby pushing the horses into a tighter and tighter corner, he picked up and started at the far end of the pasture. This pushed the horses to the end of the pasture that was already done and they could hide out under the trees that weren’t being trimmed.

Here's what it looks and sounds like

Here's the view from the other side

The pilot put on a great show and I was late for all of my house calls, but it was worth it. My neighbor and her kids were down in the pasture with me just having a grand time. She remarked that she was glad the trimming was almost done because she was tired of chasing the helicopter.I found out that she’d been driving the kids around most of the morning, urged faster and faster by her oldest boy who is a machine maniac, following the tree trimmer. An unusual thing to be doing on their summer vacation!

All in all, it took him about 20 minutes to do everything. I spoke to the power company guy after the helicopter left the area and he said that if they’d done it in a conventional manner from the ground, what that pilot did would have taken a week and half for a ground crew with 5-7 men to do. The next step was for the poor guys that had to come in behind the aerial tree trimmer and chop up all the debris he left behind.

What A Fine Mess

Last weekend I came to the realization that the ugly shed behind my house was not going to magically fall down and disappear. Last weekend I also realized that I had some frustration left over from the work week that needed to be dealt with. Combine those two with a sledge hammer. And I got this:

The shed was not big and it was standing on its last legs, after being attacked by various wood eating insects throughout the years and the blizzards of this past winter. And I had so much fun knocking the crap out of it and bringing it down. After I took out the front wall and one side wall (and removing a window pane without breaking the glass!), there was a strip of metal attached to the very top of the roof that was flopping around in the breeze, so I grabbed a hold of it.

Pulled the metal to the rear and flipped the roof right off the walls and it rumbled to the ground with a great crash, with me laughing madly as it did so.

Then my dogs got to play on the mini rubble pile, mimicking a very small portion of what Finn dealt with in New Orleans. Finn was not impressed.

Even Dexter got into the spirit of things, pretending he wants to be an Urban SAR cat.

After I got finished with it

the sad reality was now that it was down, the next step was loading it on to my truck to take to the landfill. I stopped laughing.

Fearless yet Stupid

About 6 months ago I took in an adorable multi-toed orange kitten I named Dexter. And immediately fell in love with him because of his huge, cute mitten like feet and his complete lack of fear. He was only 3 months old and tipped the scales at only 3 lbs when I got him.

I was concerned that the older cats would beat the tar out of him when I tried to introduce him to the pride. An unfounded worry I quickly found out. He walked through my door, sauntered over to my alpha cat, Trouble, while she was eating and slapped her on the head so he could eat her food. WTH! Trouble’s expression was priceless.

From the very beginning, he would walk with me down to the barn, in and amongst the galloping pack of very large Labs that I have.

If any one of them would happen to step on him, he would immediately slap them across the face to remind them to watch were they put their paws. I guess he got tired of the dogs stepping on him so he runs as fast as he can in front us and zooms up a tree, to look at us as the pack passes underneath him.

The first week after he arrived, when he realized that he could follow me to the barn, it became a nightly ritual. One night, Ben, my newest Thoroughbred, finished with his grain and moved off to get to the hay I’d put out for them. I wasn’t really paying attention as I was very tired and it was after dark, when I noticed something on Ben’s back. Yep, Dexter had climbed the fence, got up on Ben’s back and was going for a ride! He didn’t seem that concerned and was almost curled up, asleep on him. He’s developed a small modicum of personal safety and hasn’t tried that stunt since then.

In the big snows of this past winter my other cats stuck close to the house. Fearless Boy was not discouraged nor defeated by the drifts of snow. He waded through the thigh high drifts down to the barn and back. Although, after struggling through the snow the first couple of trips he made sure to follow in my footsteps.

However, now that Snowmagedon is but a distant memory, he insists on going on walks with me and the dogs.

I kind of like having him follow us along, over hill and dale, marking our progress with high pitched screams at random points during the hike. The best time to hear him is when we cross a creek. His histronics are particularly piercing then.

He has an interesting way of walking because of all the extra toes he’s got that probably get in the way of a normal stride.

Actually, he doesn’t really ever walk, but seems to saunter from place to place. The vocal talent of this boy is impressive. What he lacks in range, he more than makes up for in volume. When he’s not paying attention to where we are going and he wanders off a little to do his own thing, he uses his voice kind of like sonar. He’ll scream and what for an answering call from me, and then tries to triangulate my position. Problem is, I’ve quit calling out to him when he gets lost. So a couple of times during our hikes, he wouldn’t cross the stream and would stand there trying find a dry way across, yelling at me not to leave him stranded. If he wants to get off the porch and run with the big dogs, I am not helping him. It only takes him overnight to get back home. But his screams can become deafening, even out in the woods. I am surprised that he hasn’t been eaten yet by a fox or coyote. The noise he makes is a distress sound, which should call all the prey animals in to see if they can pick up an easy tasty snack. But, he’s always made it home.

My stupid yet fearless Dexter