Resolutions and Goals

Ready or not, here comes 2009. And I'm ready. As far as I'm concerned, we can't get rid of 2008 fast enough. It has been one of my least favorite years. And I know in some respects, 2009 is going to be tough, too, with the way the economy is going. There are no raises being given where I work, and no cost of living increase this year or next year, which is a little discouraging. But at least I have a good job that, for the time being at least, seems pretty secure, so I'm not going to complain. Mostly, I would just like to put all the tragedies, accidents, deaths, and life-threatening illnesses of 2008 behind me.

I've been spending some time, as often happens this time of year, re-evaluating my circumstances. Am I wasting my life? Am I living up to my potential? Am I the kind of person that I want to be? Having I been living my life in a way that I can be proud of? To be honest, I'm not sure I like the answers to all these questions. I think that there is some room for improvement, at least.

In the past, some years I have made resolutions for the new year. Probably more often, I have not. I think this year, instead of making resolutions, I am going to make a list of goals that I would like to accomplish. Resolutions versus goals - perhaps they aren't that different, but it seems like an important distinction to me. I like the idea of setting some goals to stay focused on, to have specific things to work towards, rather than resolutions that I need to "keep". I'm not going to post them here, but I'm writing them down and keeping them in a place where I can see them.

So, Happy New Year to all! We are having an incredibly windy day here so far - so windy that my agility training field looks like a bomb went off in it - my jumps have blown all over the place, and even the heavy dogwalk and A-frame have blown over. Now I've got to get out there and chase down all my tunnels that have escaped from their moorings and are heading for the hills. I don't know what the neighbor's horses will think about my agility tunnels making their way across the pasture, and I don't want to find out!

Back in the Saddle Again

I hope everyone had a great holiday! I've been away from the blogosphere for most of the past week, doing all those holiday-type things. Christmas number 1 (with my family) is finished, and Christmas number 2 (with my in-laws) is tomorrow. Even though I put off my shopping until pretty late in the game, I feel really good about the final outcome. Most years, I do all my shopping on-line, but since I waited so long, I didn't leave myself enough time to allow for shipping this year. So I actually had to brave the crowds, and I'm glad I did.


For one thing, there really weren't any crowds. For another, I bought all my presents at small, locally owned businesses instead of big box stores, and it made me feel good to support local merchants. I discovered a really great toy store in town, where it was clear that each toy had been hand-picked by the proprietors, who knew everything about their merchandise and were able to help me choose some great stuff for my nieces and nephews. And they gift-wrapped everything for free, which was especially great, since I am a terrible gift-wrapper who uses way too much tape and usually ends up with copious amounts of dog hair stuck to each present.


I'm taking this whole week off from work, so I hope to do plenty of reading, hiking, relaxing, and maybe get a few things done around the house. And hopefully catch back up with all my favorite blogs!

Today's Walk

The past few weeks have been so rainy and dreary and bleak, but this past week it has also been unseasonably warm. The trails have been sloppy with mud, but yesterday high winds helped to dry everything a little. I'm finally starting to get over my cough and feel more like myself. We went for a long walk this morning, starting with the beaver pond trail. Here's a faint turkey print in the mud:



And a perfect little L print - not too exciting, I know, but it was such a nice print I couldn't help taking a picture of it:



The combination of moisture and balmy weather has led to a few fungi you don't normally see growing this time of year:


Does it look like someone has been nibbling on this one?


And here are a few new tracks I found in the mud. I'm not sure what sort of prints these are... the placement suggested that these might be a back foot and front foot from the same animal, but I could be on the wrong track, so to speak. They seemed too big and far apart to be squirrel, I think, but I could be wrong. (In retrospect, I should have taken a shot with a larger field of view that included dog prints for comparison.) Possum, maybe? Although I don't see the big offset toe that opossums have. I dunno... anyone?

Bobcat tracks

Here's a great find I made in the muddy road leading to our neighbor's barn: Bobcat tracks!


Huh? What's that? Oh! Ha, ha! You thought I meant--! No, no, not that kind of bobcat!

Seriously, I would love to find some real bobcat tracks, although they would have to have pretty good detail to distinguish them from the dogs' tracks. Our neighbor insists that we do have a bobcat population here - that he's seen them with his own eyes. I've never seen one, or any sign of one, but I'll keep looking for the real deal!

Crazy Busy

Crazy, crazy! How many days left until Christmas? I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet. Haven't sent any Christmas cards. I made cookies last weekend, but ate most of them myself. Work is out of control this week, trying to get things done before the holidays. I was sick all last week, and still have a bad cough, so haven't been sleeping well. I was hoping to be able to take two whole weeks off for the holidays - not go back until Jan 5. I really feel like I need a break. But we'll see if I can get everything done at work this week.

One day last week, Z started limping pretty badly on one of his back legs. I checked his hip and his knee, and ran through a dozen different doomsday scenarios in my head involving degenerative myelopathy and other neurological problems, before I discovered that he had a bad split between his toes on that foot. So, nothing really to worry about, but it will probably take a little while to heal. Poor guy - sometimes I think he's limping on all four legs now, but he never complains.


Just a few more days of crazy, and then I get a break! Wheee! I think I can, I think I can....

More tracks

We've been getting a lot of rain the past few weeks, and only a few little light dustings of snow. So I've been mostly keeping an eye out for tracks in the mud when we go walking. My job is made more difficult by the fact the the ground is liberally covered with tracks like this:



Hmmm... fox? Coyote? Or perhaps a pesky little black and white dog with naughty spots? Seriously, I doubt if I could distinguish between fox, coyote and dog tracks, but L is so busy and leaves so many tracks, sometimes it is hard to tell if there are any other tracks around or not. Second in number to L prints are the deer tracks, which are also everywhere. They are so common, they are hardly worth taking pictures of, but here's one in the mud, anyway.


But I did find some nifty tracks on the snow-dusted beaver pond trail a few weeks ago. I don't need help identifying these - wild turkey tracks, from a Thanksgiving day survivor!

For some reason, turkey tracks always crack me up. They just look fake, like some kid wearing turkey print stilts was out there as a practical joke.

Mr. Geek claimed that he saw a hippopotamus track out in the mud the other day, but when he showed it to me, it turned out to be one of my boot prints.

Evening Wear

A little while back, I posted about the dogs' fashionable blaze orange reflective hunting collars. But that's not the end of the fashionable dog-wear around here. Since night falls so early, Mr. Geek bought some collar lights from Cabela's for the dogs to wear when we don't expect to get back to the house before dark. The first time we tried them, I put them on the dogs' collars, but I was going to wait until it started getting dark before I turned them on, to save the batteries. However, a few minutes into our walk, L came crashing out of the trees towards me with his light blazing. What th--? How did you turn your light on?



He wouldn't tell me, so I turned it back off and we continued on our way. Several minutes later, it was on again! Hey! Stop turning your light on!

Once it started getting dark, we turned the lights on, and it was great! You might imagine that two predominantly black dogs don't show up very well at night, but with those lights - wow! I can see right where they are.




But after a few minutes, L somehow turned his light off! Did he not want me to see what he was doing? By now I was cursing these lights, but Z had managed to keep his light off when it was supposed to be off, and on when it was supposed to be on. Trust L to cause trouble. As we were heading back through the fields, I watched L bounding through the tall grass, and then he suddenly disappeared! Or at least his light did. I called him to turn his light back on for the third time, but this time it was gone! Well, the back of the light was still attached to his collar, but the part with the LED lights and the batteries had fallen off. We found it in the tall grass, still on, shining towards the heavens. I'm glad that the batteries didn't fall out, or we never would have found it. I guess it must not have been clipped together properly, and that's why it kept turning on and off as he was running around. And he runs around so much, he really put it to the test. Here he is streaking down the trail.


Since reassembling L's light, we haven't had any more trouble with it, so all-in-all, I guess the lights were a good buy.

Tracks in the Mud

One thing I do like about this time of year is keeping an eye out for animal tracks in the snow. The dogs always have such an advantage with their super sniffers, but they don't usually share their intel with me. When it snows, I finally get to see for myself what critters have been out and about, braving the weather.


Of course, so far we've had more mud than snow, but that's good for finding tracks as well. I've been keeping on eye on the ground for interesting signs, and found this track in the mud near the beaver ponds.


I was excited at first, thinking that I had made an interesting find. So close to the creek and the beaver ponds, I was hoping for beaver, or raccoon. My first thought was opossum - seeing those three middle toes close together and the first and fifth toes offset is similar to the back foot of a possum. But not similar enough - that first toe isn't offset nearly enough. I'm pretty sure that this is actually just a squirrel track. Here are some similar tracks found in the mud near Squirrel Holler.

And here's more from near Squirrel Holler, showing all four feet in the characteristic pattern that squirrels leave as they bound along. The front feet, with the four toes, leave prints behind the five-toed back feet. I wonder if these belong to the big fox squirrel we often see near here.

And still more squirrel tracks a few spots along beaver pond trail, in the dusting of snow we got a few weeks ago. I can't see as much detail in these, but the pattern says squirrel!

I know we have a lot of critters around here aside from boring ol' squirrels, so hopefully before the winter is over, I'll have some tracks that are a little more exciting to share!

Cold and colds

I'm back home again. I can't say it was my favorite weekend. I've had a bad cold, and I'm sure running around all weekend at the agility trial probably didn't help. This weekend was one of the coldest trials I've been to. Technically, it was "indoors" but in one of those huge, steel framed, fabric-covered buildings. So, really, it was kind of like being outside, but in the shade. At least we were out of the wind and the snow, but believe it or not, we were not out of the rain. Condensation built up on the steel rafters, and it drizzled down on us all weekend. They had to put up shade tents inside the building to protect the scoring computers and ribbons from all the water.

It was so cold that the bowl of water I got out for the dogs in the morning froze over within a few minutes. I had to keep a stick next to the bowl to break up the ice whenever the dogs wanted a drink. And speaking of cold... honestly, there's no good time of year for using a Port-a-potty, but when it is 19 degrees outside, well... brrrr! (Not to mention the difficulties that arise when one is wearing about 300 layers of clothing.)

L did pretty well - 9Q's for the weekend, and we now have enough points to qualify for the 2009 Championships! I made a few stupid mistakes (can I blame them on my cold?) but I think L forgave me. I think he kind of liked having Z there with us - he kept trying to get Z to play with him when I walked them, and he even succeeded a few times.

Now I'm going to take a hot shower and go to bed early, and hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow!

Snakes, etc.

I got a little bit of a chuckle about how many people wholeheartedly agreed with Z's assessment of snakes. Personally, I like snakes okay - I even had a pet snake growing up, and was fascinated by it, even if it wasn't a very cuddly or interactive pet. I can think back to a time when I was afraid of snakes, though... when I was very young, my neighborhood was full of kids, but they were almost all boys, and they were almost all a few years older then I was. When the next door neighbor boy brought out his pet snake, I ran away screaming. Of course, the next day, he came out with the snake to chase me again. I must have been about 6 years old, but I quickly realized that this was going to become a habit unless I did something. So I swallowed my fear and feigned interest in the snake, which immediately made me a much less interesting victim. But in the process, I realized that I wasn't actually afraid of the snake - I really was interested. I even went on to study a little herpetology in college, before noticing the dearth of high paying herpetologist positions available these days.


Back in the present day, we have a rather large black snake living nearby, that we've spotted a few different places near our house and barn. He's easy to identify, since he is missing the tip of his tail, and we named him Stumpy Joe. (Sometime soon, I will have to post a full confession about my habit of naming all the wild animals.) While Mr. Geek isn't afraid of snakes, he's definitely a lot more wary of them than I am. He worries whenever he has to go into the crawl space under the house, or into a dark corner of the barn, that he's going to come face to face with Stumpy Joe. So he always hesitates before going in, and calls out in a tremulous voice "Hello? Stumpy Joe? Are you in there? Here I come - don't bite me!"


In other news, the dogs and I are getting ready to head out for another visit to my parents and a weekend agility trial. My dad doesn't really need any help from me anymore - he has been doing amazingly well since his accident. He has started driving again, and has been doing a lot of walking. He's even started going back to the gym, and is working towards being able to play golf again soon. But since I'm heading up that way for the agility trial, I don't want to pass up the chance to stop in and see how he and my mom are doing, and see if there is anything I can take care of for them.


Since Mr. Geek isn't going to have much time this weekend, I decided to take Z along with me, too. Hopefully he won't be upset by being at an agility trial and not getting to run the courses. I don't usually take him along to trials anymore - he knows where we are and what's going on, and I always feel so guilty when I take L out to run and leave him behind.

Anyway, now that I have the laptop, maybe I'll be able to check in from the road! Have a good weekend, y'all!

Fall Fashions

Whoops! Hey, guys - don't go across the creek! C'mon back!

Good dogs.


You might have noticed that the dogs are naked in these pictures. (They're not bashful.) However, shortly after these were taken, the dogs and I were walking down Beaver Pond Trail. They were about 20 yards ahead of me on the trail, where it comes out at the creek bottoms, when L suddenly jumped straight up in the air and let out a big alarm bark - AROOROOROOROO! (Translation: "strangemaninthewoods strangemaninthewoods strangemaninthewoods!") I called the dogs immediately, and then looked to see what had set him off. It was a hunter, dressed entirely in camouflage with not a speck of blaze orange (which is against the law) who had just crossed over to my side of the creek. Right next to one of the posted no hunting signs. And he clearly knew that he wasn't supposed to be over here, because as soon as he saw me, he froze, and then turned around and crossed back. He never said a word to me, and I actually didn't say anything to him either, since I am not in the habit of confronting armed strangers in remote wooded areas. Especially when they are obviously not terribly concerned about obeying the law to begin with.

Across the creek to the left is town park land, where hunting is not allowed. Across and straight ahead is the national forest, where hunting is allowed. And across and to the right is my neighbor's land, which is where the hunter headed after crossing back to the other side of the creek. I asked our neighbor if he had given anyone permission to hunt there, and he said no, but that he had caught two guys on four-wheelers out there the week before. Great.

It is disappointing - the dogs and I stay out of the National Forest during hunting season, (and then haul out loads of trash and beer cans after hunting season -grrr) but I'd like to think that we are safe here, at least. So, now we make sure that the dogs wear their blaze orange hunting season collars even around here.

Fashionable, no? I tell the dogs that they look like tough hunting dogs, and I think they buy it. They do show up much better with their hunting collars on, plus the collars are reflective, too.


And I guess I need to remember to wear my blaze orange, too. I'll be glad when hunting season is over!

Ground Level

While we are out hiking, I seem to spend half my time looking up at the trees for things I have missed, and half the time looking at the ground for animal tracks or scat or other interesting signs of wildlife. And another half of my time trying to keep track of the dogs. Hmmm - there's that math anxiety thing... regardless, it is no wonder that I run into trees, or trip and fall, considering how little effort I put into paying attention to where I'm going!

We spotted this little fellow a few weeks back, during a warmer spell, near where the Beaver Pond Trail hits the creek bottoms. It's an Eastern garter snake.


We released an Eastern garter not too far from this spot last spring, after it showed up in one of the labs at Mr. Geek's work the previous winter. Apparently, diligent scientists frown upon having wildlife slithering through their clean rooms. Not wanting to chuck the little snake out in the snow, Mr. Geek brought it home and we kept it in a big tank in the living room for the winter, releasing him once the weather warmed up in the spring. This one looks too small to be Stanley the Snake, though. After spending the winter being fed by Mr. Geek, I think Stanley was a little bigger than this one when we released him.

I'm pretty sure that Z didn't even notice this little garter snake sunning itself on the trail, as he zoomed on by. Z is very afraid of snakes. Big ones, little ones, dead ones... even empty shed snake skins - it doesn't matter. He jumps straight up in the air and backpedals so fast he looks like a cartoon character. I can almost hear that little cartoon sound effect that often goes with flailing legs. I've always wondered if he had a bad experience with a snake at some point, or if it is an instinctive thing.

Whenever we hike past the beaver ponds, I always keep an eye out for beavers. I actually have never seen one out here, and for a while, I even wondered if they might be gone. But then one day there was fresh evidence of beaver activity.

After these trees were felled, I didn't notice anything new for a couple of weeks, then seemingly overnight, a whole slew of new trees were downed. Those beavers really are busy creatures!

I'd feel a little better about all this destruction if the beavers would actually do something with some of the trees they have taken down, but they are all still laying where they were felled. I've always thought that there is a wastefulness about beavers that you don't often see in wild animals.