Tag Archives: dogs

What’s Better?

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What’s better than a slice of garden tomato on a slab of fresh, homemade toasted bread? With a little mayo mix spread and a sprinkle of salt? Well, maybe if you add a fresh cucumber to the mix. That’s the best. And crispy bacon too, if you have it, but you don’t need it. You really only need that fresh tomato and that crusty bread.

What’s better than a fluffy, tiny kitten snuggled in the nook of your arm on a rainy Sunday when the tasks you had to do have been done or saved for later and the only real pressing issue is this nap you’re about to take with this kitten purring and safe. And maybe it’s quiet in the house, but maybe you have kids and so the chatter of their pretend play is in the background as your eye lids get heavy. You might only drift off for a moment, but everyone’s home. Everyone’s safe. It’s Sunday. You can relax. What’s better?

What’s better than soup on the stove? The kind you put together with the person you love hovering in the kitchen to tell you about their day, or tease you a bit about the mess, or add a few more sprinkles of garlic and another bay leaf when you turn your back. What’s better than the smell of a recipe you’ve made together for over a decade, knowing you all love it. Knowing you’re all about to dig in and be full. Maybe adding a cheese sandwich, I guess. That could make it better. But you don’t need it. The soup stands on its own.

What’s better than your old ranch dog sitting next to you on the bench seat  of an old pickup in the crisp cool fog of a fall morning as the sun is starting to appear?

What’s better than that dog eagerly awaiting the work ahead, coming to the call to push the cattle out of the brush or pull the strays back in with the herd? What’s better? Maybe that old ranch dog gets let in the house by your young daughters to be called up on the couch to watch “Peter Pan.”  And he won’t look you in the eye when you admire the scene because he’s nervous that you might blow his cover as a house dog now and make him go out. But you don’t. You couldn’t. He’s a good boy, and not too stinky tonight. He’s mellowed out with his old age, and he’s earned it. He sleeps in your daughter’s bed now and you can’t help but notice the funny juxtaposition of his job as ruthless cattle hound by day and stuffed animal at night. This dog too, contains multitudes. What’s better?

What’s better than laying down next to your seven-year-old at bedtime and listening to her read you a chapter out of her favorite book? What’s better than her little voice swelling with inflection as she notices the exclamation points and quotation marks and so she becomes the character. It’s been a long day, but her bed is cozy and you drift off a bit until she stumbles with a word and you wake up, sleepily correcting her. She shuts off the bedside lamp because her eyes are sleepy too and in the dark she asks you a question about the stars that you can’t really answer because who really knows? Who really knows the depth of the universe and if there is anyone else out there, among those stars, who might be wondering too…

What’s better? What’s better?  

All the questions that will never be answered

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“Have you ever accidentally brought your ranch dog to town?” I asked the lady getting out of her horse trailer next to me at our county fairgrounds. I had just arrived to enter the girls and goats in their very first open livestock show and when I got out of the pickup, I realized that the goats weren’t the only animal that hitched a ride to Watford City that afternoon.

“Well, ugh, no, my dog just comes with me I guess,” she replied sort of confused while I realized that she was the entirely wrong audience for this self-deprecating banter. She probably had a corgi. Our eleven-year-old cattle dog, who has only been to town on vet visits, stood at my feet just staring up at me as confused as I was as to why he was there. His tail was wagging so hard it moved his whole body, because, while he knew he had made a mistake, there were also cattle here. And kids. And pigs and goats and sheep and all the interesting things he didn’t expect when he chose to leap into the back of the pickup on our way out of the yard, thinking we were going to do some ranch work.

“Well, his trip wasn’t planned,” I laughed and then dialed my husband to see if he had any ideas as to what to do with the dog now. “I’ll come and get him,” he replied, totally unphased but knowing the disaster this dog would be around fancy animals.

Photo by LG Photography (Look how fancy they are)

Have you ever received a text from that same husband on a sunny Sunday morning when you thought everything was going just fine so far, but then it quickly wasn’t? Because the text read, “You wrecked my pickup.”

Turns out pulling a little bumper-pull horse trailer with the tailgate down doesn’t end well, even if you were just moving it a few feet out of the way of the garage so you could go deliver the kittens to new homes in town before we leave on vacation in a few days.

Have you ever finished a complete two-hour set of music on a patio on a beautiful evening only to look down during load-out and realize the zipper on your jean skirt was down.

Was it down the entire time? Like, all the way down? Was my guitar at least covering it please Jesus? Did anyone notice?

These are questions that will never be answered, but they can be re-lived for the rest of my life at 3 am.

Have I reached a phase in my life where I’ve been the supervisor for so long that I’ve forgotten to supervise myself? Like, I forgot that I am the one who needs the most supervising, and that didn’t change necessarily with motherhood. But the responsibilities are greater. And the pickup, well, it’s a little more expensive.

I’m not going to lie here, when I assessed the tailgate damage, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I cried anyway. My level of being distracted is a bit out of control lately, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this working-mom-in-the-summer situation.  I think adding the cost of a new tailgate to camp fees and snack bills might have just sent me over the edge. I faceplanted on my bed. But I couldn’t stay there long because I had a gig in Medora that night and I had to get myself together (note to self: quadruple check my zipper).

On my way my little sister called me. “I have some bad news,” she declared. “Rosie had an accident on the trampoline and she broke her arm.”

“No!” I yelled in the Jimmy John’s parking lot.

“No, I’m just kidding,” she laughed. “The girls put me up to it.”

And then I laughed too. I guess it could always be worse.

But girls? We need to talk about what’s an acceptable prank around here. This mom’s nerves are shot.

The good life of a good dog

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My dad lost his old cow dog, Juno, last week. After fourteen years of chasing cows through the draws, barking at squirrels and fighting with raccoons, howling with the coyotes and riding shotgun next to dad in the side-by-side, she took her last rest in her snug bed under the heat-lamp in the garage and didn’t wake up again.

Fourteen years is a long life for a ranch dog living wide open, tasked with the very thing they were bred to do. The job of moving cattle alongside the horses, chasing them out of the tough brush or keeping them motivated while moving pastures is dangerous enough, but add in the other wild and unpredictable things—a rattlesnake or a mountain lion, a truck driving too fast down our county road—and it’s not surprising that some of our dogs don’t live to be old and gray. But Juno did. And while she was with us, she was about the best dog there ever was.

I can say that, and you can believe me, because she wasn’t my dog. Everyone thinks their dog is the best dog, but everyone loved Juno and you would have loved her too. I held her tiny fluffy body on my lap in the passenger seat of my dad’s pickup when we brought her home from the neighbor’s. We had just moved back to the ranch for good and I was excited to have a pup around and just like that she belonged here the same way every animal has on this ranch (except maybe those two wild Corrientes that kept trying to run away to the badlands).

Anyway, dogs out here, they’re special, like an extension of our limbs when there is work to be done or fences to be adjusted or when things need to be checked. And so they ride along, in the back of pickups or in the backseat or, like Juno, right next to you in the cab of whatever you’re driving, bringing along the stink from whatever they rolled in and all the personality they possess.

These dogs, the blue heelers, the border collies, the kelpies, the Australian Shepherds and all the combinations there can be, they know why they’ve been put on this planet, and it’s to follow at your heels, from barn to house to shop to tractor to cattle pen to pasture to pickup to four-wheeler to horse pen to the ends of the Earth in case they can be of assistance, or annoyance, but always in the name of companionship.

Our neighbor had a big blue heeler when I was growing up named Critter. Critter’s place in the world moved up through the years from pickup box to shot gun seat until Critter and my neighbor could be found driving around the place practically cheek to cheek, the dog making a point every once in a while, to put his paw up on his human’s shoulder while watching the trail ahead as a sign of partnership and solidarity.

The other day I came home to find our two dogs in the house. We have a border collie/Aussie cross named Remi and a Hanging Tree Cattle dog named Gus. They’ve lived in the garage and in the yard their entire lives like most cow dogs do, so when they get to come inside, they’re not sure what to do but stare at my husband’s face and follow him from room to room waiting for a command. And I’m not sure why he decided to bring them in, other than he’s been working on the house addition for the past couple weeks and he just likes to have them close. When you open the door though, they can’t get out fast enough to go roll in the snow and pee on the trees and chase the squirrels and run out ahead and do the things dogs are meant to do. Honestly, I’d like to come back as these dogs in another life, to know so fully what it is that you’re made for is a gift that only humans can overthink and screw up.

Maybe we should work to be more like the dogs, more like Juno…Fluffy and affectionate, an easy keeper and ready to be there when needed (and even when she isn’t–cut to that dog showing up ten miles from home when you tried to leave her behind.)

Anyway, life won’t be the same here at the ranch without you Juno. Thanks for all the help.

Taking a back seat to the dogs

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If you like dogs this is the podcast episode for you. I recently realized my true place on the ranch and, well, this is my way of working it all out. I sit down with my husband, Chad to reminisce about the good dogs, the bad dogs and all the reasons we love them. Which got us thinking about the best dog movies of our childhood, our infamous pug and that time Chad found himself butt-naked on the deck with a shotgun in the middle of the night…Listen at the link or on Spotify, Anchor or Apple Podcasts


I have a little beef with the hierarchy of things around here and I guess it’s time to complain publicly because, well, maybe someone out there can sympathize.

Recently, I was getting a ride from my dad in the side-by-side from my house to the farmyard to pick up another vehicle. This sort of exchange is common here during this season because of the tractor moving and stock trailer moving and cow moving that come with the change of weather. Dad hopped in the driver’s seat while me, his dear middle daughter who, at a certain dramatic time in our lives together, could be credited with saving his ever-loving life, had to balance on the end of the bench seat with half a butt cheek and one leg out the door while we tooled down the road.

Why? Because heaven absolutely forbid, we ask the dog to move.

Nope. No one say a thing about it.

Well I’m saying a thing about it.  See my dad has three dogs. They’re working dogs, cattle dogs, they have a job and they have a place and their place is inside the cab of the side-by-side waiting for Dad to come out of the house and get to ranching so they can come along.

The cast of characters is lovely really. Juno is a fluffy Aussie and Border Collie mix with the sweetest temperament who is nearing the end of her days here.

Juno in a flower pot

About seven years ago she had puppies with our dog, Gus, and dad kept one and named him Waylon. And Waylon is not a pup anymore, but a giant Hanging Tree mix with one blue eye and a real aversion to drama.

Waylon

Then, last winter, around Christmas time, anticipating Juno’s last few years here, enter Oakley, a pup he added to the mix with the idea that the old dog would help her get wise to the rules of chasing cattle through the trees before that old dog is too old to come along.

Rosie and Oakley as a pup

Not like you can really stop her though, remember. They’re all waiting for him. And they. Are. Not. Moving.

Nope. Not even for a grown woman who politely asks if maybe they can scooch over just a smidge, ugh, just a little, just need to get the door closed, ah, nevermind, this is fine, I’m fine, I’ll just sit on the floor here and let my leg dangle out the door…

As it turns out, along with teaching these dogs to ‘sick ‘em’ and ‘sit’ and ‘go back’ and ‘stay,’ they’ve all mastered my dad’s art of selective hearing in times like these. Did you know that dogs have that skill?

I’ll note here, that during this recent incident, the other dogs were not along. So it was just Waylon and me and Dad and there was plenty of room for scootching. But there was not scootching.  Not even a nudge. And there certainly wasn’t any suggestion that maybe the dog could get out and run over the hill with us.

Waylon was visibly making the move to ignore that I exist, suddenly forgetting his name, turning his back to me and focusing his gaze intently on the smudge on the glass of the driver’s side door. I think he even raised his left paw and put it on my dad’s shoulder, just to prove his point.

We got to the barnyard and I swear Waylon would have kicked me out before we came to a full stop if he could. “Good riddance, where we going now Boss?” And both dog and human left me to get my own ride, carrying on with their day together like this was normal.

Which apparently it is now. Just last weekend we were loading up horses and help in the pickup to roundup cows a ways down the road. I thought I might sit up front with Dad and my little sister, maybe be in charge of the radio dial, take in the autumn foliage out the window. But Dad cut me off at the pass to open the tiny back door for me to slide on in. With Waylon. But Waylon wouldn’t move of course. Apparently, he couldn’t see me. He wanted the window seat. So I said “excuse me” and slipped on past to take my place the middle tiny back seat of the old pickup with the missing fencing gloves, miscellaneous tools, half-empty water bottles, extra feed store caps, sandwiching my body between two dogs who had just taken a dip in the stinky black mud at the crick in the barnyard while my little sister and the new puppy sat up front, the fall breeze blowing through their hair/fur on our way to get work done.

I mean, I’m a grown woman! I’m dang-near middle aged! I have aches and pains! I survived cancer! I saved my dad’s life once (or maybe more, probably but who’s counting?)

And this is my beef. I have taken a literal back seat to the dogs.

Thank you for listening.

Peace be with you.

A piece I wrote when I was 8 or so. I guess I have always known…

Mille the ranch pug

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Millie the Ranch Dog
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I think it’s time for a little update on Millie the Christmas puppy. Remember her?

The tiny black pug Santa dropped on our doorstep for the girls to love on and put in the baby doll stroller? Well, she’s grown into a fine addition to what is looking more and more like the Veeder Ranch petting zoo every day. Add a couple goats and a llama to our collection of ponies, dogs, cows and kittens and we could take this show on the road.

But don’t book us for any early appearances. Millie doesn’t wake up for the day until about 10 or 11. I know because she barks at us from her pillow fortress on the end of our 4-year-old’s bed.

Why does she bark at us? The jump down is too high, of course. Same as the jump up to the couch when anyone in this house thinks they’re going to be relaxing alone. Oh, the pug hates to see it. At the first sign of feet up and arms stretched behind a head, the little dog flees her pink fluffy bed to rescue you from loneliness on the couch. If only you could just give her a little boost…

And that’s what pugs are supposed to do. Lounge. And snuggle. And snore. But Millie’s multifaceted. Versatile. Complex. Put her in a box? She will shred it. Give her a squeaky toy, she prefers horse poop.

Seriously. Lord help us, it’s one of her favorite treasures. Good thing there’s plenty around the ranch for her collection by the front door, along with the dead snake, mouse guts and Barbie Doll head. Such a welcome site for visitors and the UPS man. Bonus, it makes her breath and farts completely intolerable.

Now that I think of it, Millie’s taste for dried up road apples could be her way of roughing up her fluffy edges so that she can properly fit in around here as a bona fide cattle dog.

If you’ve ever wondered if there’s a way to stop a pug chasing a trail of cattle over the hill toward your poor, unsuspecting mother, the answer is no. There’s not. At least I haven’t found the command yet, and boy have we practiced.

So we have some work to do on this cow dog thing for sure, but do you know what ranch pugs are really good at? Picking up cactuses and getting lost in the long grass. They’re perfectly low to the ground for things like that.

Millie proved it on our walk across the home pasture to admire the changing leaves the other day. One minute she was frolicking with the big dogs, the next, she’s nowhere to be found, turning my half-hour stroll into a one-hour search to find out what hole she might have fallen into.

Turns out she didn’t fall in a hole, but she did pick up a few little cactuses. And so she gave up on walking for the evening of course, and there she was, waiting for someone to rescue her by the fence post.

I don’t blame her. There’ve been plenty of times in my life out here that I’ve wanted to just wait by a fence post for someone to carry me home.

And so I scooped her up, Baywatch style, and we made the half-mile trek back to the house. If she were a true cow dog, she’d be humiliated, but she relaxed right into the role she was made for. Snuggling, owning us all and being heavier than she looks.

If you need us, we’ll be wrangling the cats, feeding the ponies and shopping for llamas to add to the Veeder Ranch petting zoo.

Peace, Love and Pugs,

Jessie

Oh Christmas Pug, Oh Christmas Pug…

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The Christmas pug
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Holiday magic. It’s 6:30 a.m. the day after Christmas and I’m in it up to my ankles here at the ranch, dodging unwrapped boxes, doll strollers, toy kitchen utensils and half-eaten candy canes, bleary eyed and still full from last night’s supper on my way to the coffeepot.

And now, holiday magic is chewing on the slipper that’s attached to my foot. And although it tickles, it’s a better plan than the doll-sized plastic sunglasses I just extracted from her tiny jaws while the rest of the house sleeps.

Because, OK, OK, I’m up, I’m up. And, you guessed it, holiday magic is a puppy.

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Actually, her name is Millie Sunny Elizabeth Scofield. She’s a tiny 8-week-old pug, and I am officially insane.

But I figure, at this point, with a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old taking turns strapping her into the doll stroller, I’m surrounded by so much cute and chaos that maybe no one will notice. And if they do, I’ll just tell them that she was cuter than a Roomba.

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And there’s no turning back now. Because, oh I had to do it.

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In my other life, I had a pug. His name was Chug. My husband brought him home to me at a pretty low time in our infertility journey, and Chug lifted my spirits by incessantly licking my face and peeing in my husband’s boots.

Chug

When we moved to the ranch, Chug, being the furthest creature from a ranch dog there is, tried his paw at it anyway. I once watched him fiercely chase a bull out of our yard at my husband’s command and retrieve a pheasant out of a field, so you could say he was confident.

Chug

So confident he even took on a porcupine, which took out one of his eyes. I think that’s what convinced the rig worker that took him that he was homeless or pathetic enough to need rescuing the day he went missing. I guess most people don’t expect a one-eyed pug to be wandering around 30 miles from town, but Chug the pug always knew how to pull at the heartstrings.

Chug

ARCHIVE: Read more of Jessie Veeder’s Coming Home columns

Almost three years after his mysterious disappearance, I heard through the grapevine that our one-eyed pug was living in Dickinson, 60 miles from the ranch. He’d found himself living with another couple trying to start a family.They called him Captain, made him wear a life jacket on their boat and kept him full of love, affection and plenty of treats.

I went to see him when I was pregnant with my first daughter and judging by his healthy waistline, it was clear he was just fine in his new home. By that time, I had processed his absence, and so I thought perhaps it was sweet serendipity that he found his way to a family that needed him the same way we needed him all those years ago.

But I couldn’t help but wonder if he ever peed in their boots…

Chug 3

Anyway, that’s the saga of Chug the pug. And as for Millie Sunny Elizabeth Scofield? Well, you can tell by her name that her story with us is already quite a bit different in all the same ways our lives have changed since Chug came into our lives.

And so she’s fitting in just fine so far, in her bed under the Christmas tree and the seat of the doll stroller and in the arms of my children who will have her as a lesson in responsibility and tenderness, patience and poop-scooping and from now on I will never know if they ate all their supper of if it was the pug.

Now I’ve gotta run. The kids are stirring and the tiny pug is dragging a Christmas shoe that is three times her size across the floor.

Sending you love and a wish to keep the warm, snuggly feeling of Christmas on into the new year.

What’s normal anyway?

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What’s normal anyway?
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On the evening of Christmas Day, after all the gifts were opened, the leftovers were boxed up and the goodbye hugs were given, we arrived home to our house in the middle of nowhere to discover an open front door, a bag of scattered garbage and every boot in the entryway missing.

In another setting, I imagine one’s mind might have automatically thought “burglar.” But in my life, my husband just mumbled, “Apparently the dog can get our new front door open” as he trudged with his arms full of bundled-up babies through that open door.

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As I wandered around my yard the next morning, shielding my eyes against the sun reflecting off acres and acres of fresh, sparkling snow under which any one of my boots could be lying (and hopefully not shredded), I couldn’t help but think that these are not the sort of problems normal people have.

Unless, of course, you live on a ranch in rural North Dakota. In that case, I’m guessing you’re with me here. You’re also with me on the thrill of the weekend morning drive to town without the kids so that you can stock up on a grocery supply that fills the deep freeze and hopefully lasts a few weeks.

ARCHIVE: Read more of Jessie Veeder’s Coming Home columns

And if you’re from rural North Dakota, or maybe anywhere up here in the great white north, please tell me I’m not the only one who has found herself and that overfilled cart stuck wheels-deep in the snow-packed parking lot on the way to the car. Like, so stuck I needed assistance from the nice lady who just pulled into her spot to witness me spinning out and grunting profanities under my breath in failed shove after failed shove to free it.

“No, these are not the sort of problems normal people have,” I thought again as I unwrapped the celebratory doughnut I purchased to eat on the 30-mile drive home… and then the second one because I was alone in my car with no one there to judge me…

snowy road

And, when I arrived home, I muttered it yet again, because after all that effort I forgot the milk and had to call a neighbor on the hunt for an ingredient I needed for my New Year’s Eve party dip. Because I swore I bought it, but it could have flipped out of the cart in my efforts to free it from the grips of the winter parking lot, or maybe it is in my car, just living in the black hole of space where the sippy cups, Froot Loops and missing gloves go to die.

Next time I accidentally lock the barn cat in my car while unloading the kids, I’m sure she’ll find it and have a front-seat feast, just like she did with my missing package of cashews a few weeks back — which was a welcomed clue to her existence before I accidentally drove her to a meeting in town.

Which, judging from the cat in a sweater I saw being pushed around in a stroller at the airport last month, showing up to a meeting with a cat might actually be normal everywhere but here. I don’t know anymore.

Happy New Year, you weirdos!

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Jessie Veeder is a musician and writer living with her husband and daughters on a ranch near Watford City, N.D. She blogs at https://veederranch.com. Readers can reach her at jessieveeder@gmail.com.

Hoofbeats and paw prints and measuring time

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Chad on his bay horseHoofbeats and paw prints and measuring time

My husband used to have a big yellow dog that would pull him around town on his Rollerblades. Young, strong and full of heart, the two of them flew through the quiet streets of our hometown, back when Rollerblades were cool and so was he.

I never knew the Chad that existed before that dog. They called him Rebel, except the only rebellious thing about him was that he’d take a cracked door as an invitation to go wandering.

Before Rebel, Chad’s family had a pup named Cookie. I never knew Cookie or the young boy my husband was when he loved that dog except I saw the home movie his parents took when they surprised their boys with her.

Chad always described it as one of the best and most exciting days of his childhood, so I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw the footage of that young kid standing so stoic and serious with that puppy in his arms, willing away his fidgety little brother with the darts of his eyes.

Last night, my husband and I started talking about our new border collie pup, a welcome addition after we lost the lab we had since we got married 12 years ago today. We are excited to see what kind of cow-dog she might become.

And then, without really realizing it, we started recounting our memories together according to which animals were there loving us, bucking us off, running away, getting hurt, growing old and teaching us lessons along the way.

“So, I starting hanging around you when you just got that horse, Tex,” he recalled.

“And my old mare Rindy, you remember her,” I said, reminding him of the first time I took him riding at the ranch and how I wanted to impress him so badly that my enthusiastic attempt at a graceful mount on her bare back resulted in me landing in a heap on the other side.

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Then there was his mom’s dog, Phoebe, who got her through the sadness of an empty nest, and our cat, Belly, who was so bonded with my little sister that we all got to watch her give birth to kittens on the beanbag chair in her bedroom.

And I never thought about measuring a good life by the good animals who witnessed us growing up, heartful and heartbroken, falling in and out of love with people and life and learning how to let go and hold on tight to one another or the big plans we’ve made and changed a million times.

They’re along with us, on the end of a leash, the reins or the bed, steady and predictable.

“Cowboy’s close to 20,” my husband realized then about the young bay horse that made a cowboy out of that lovestruck teenager.

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Seems like time wears itself thinner on the backs of the beasts we love until, one day, we catch ourselves remembering them and the scruff of their fur and the click of their paws on the pavement and how they pulled us through when we were young, strong and full of heart.

How a dog’s life measures time…

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Hondo
How a dog’s life measures time
by Jessie Veeder
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The first year my husband and I got married, we lived in the little house in the barnyard where my dad was raised, unloading all the earthly possessions a pair of 23-year-olds can acquire in the short and broke spans of our adult lives — hand-me-down lamps and quesadilla makers. By the time we emptied our car and unwrapped our presents there was barely any room left for walking.

And so I did what any responsible 20-something newlywed with an uncertain future would do: I got my husband a puppy for his 24th birthday.

Dog in the stock tank

It’s been more than 10 years since I chose him from the swarm of his wiggly brothers and sisters. I picked him up and he melted in my arms the way kind creatures often do.

And then the woman warned me.

“Big dog, more poop to clean up. That’s what I always say,” she declared.

And she was right. He is big. His paws make tracks like a wolf in the mud and his tail clears a coffee table with one sweep while he runs to the door enthusiastically to welcome guests, sometimes with an accidental and oblivious swat to the groin.

And while he spends most of his time outside these days, grunting while he rolls around scratching his back on the lawn before picking up the giant stick I swear he’s saved for five years, when he does come inside, he still wonders why he can’t sit on the couch with me.

Me and the dog in the grass

Because in his mind he is fluff, weightless and wishing to fit in the palm of a hand all the while working to squeeze his body between the small nooks of this house, taking up the limited space available for walking.

But what he is in cumbersome, he’s always made up for in manners, polite and happy to move out of the way when prompted, not recognizing that perhaps he may indeed be fluff after all … and the rest of his 110 pounds is taken up by his heart.

But 10 years weighs heavy on a dog. White hair has appeared around his snout and his eyes droop a bit. His winter fur is slower to shed. Tonight we’ll go for a walk and he’ll hang by me instead of running ahead to kick up pheasants. If I have to take him in the pickup these days, I have to hoist him, heave-ho style, all 110 pounds.

I hoped our babies might grow up with him, but it all took too long and he’s beat them to the growing thing. I didn’t know when I made him part of our lives how those big paws would track time. I hope we have him around for many more years, but I didn’t know when I chose him, when we were so young, how fast a dog’s life goes…

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On horseback…

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We’re in the thick of fall at the ranch, which doesn’t mean as much pumpkin spice flavor as it does wooly horses, wooly caps and scrambling to get things buttoned up and rounded up for the winter.

On Sunday gramma came over to watch Edie do the things Edie does, like try as hard as she can to stand on her own, fall down and get concussions…oh, and blow kisses, and I headed out with the guys for a ride out to the west pastures to move the cows to a different pasture and find some strays.

The weather looked sort of threatening and chilly from behind the glass windows of my house, so I bundled up in layers and squeezed into the riding jeans I haven’t worn since I was three months pregnant, and headed out into a calm and sort of rainy day.

And it was a much needed trek for me, something I used to take so much for granted before I had a little one attached to my hip. Now, if I want to go out for a ride it involves “arrangements.”

So many simple things these days involve more planning than I ever did in my pre-baby life. But it’s worth it all around. Gramma gets one on one time with the baby and I get one on one time with the things I love most.

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I traveled those hills on my sorta of slow and lazy horse, took two pees in the pasture behind bullberry bushes because I drank too much coffee,

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Here, hold my horse…

chased cooperative cattle through open gates,

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got sorta lost looking for a stray, got slapped a few times by wayward branches, got kinda wet in the rain and the deep creek running high because of all the fall moisture and came home a different woman, reminded that heaven isn’t the only thing that can be found on horseback…

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Sometimes, you wind up finding yourself again too.

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