dogs | Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Clover blooming in the pasture outside my house.

It’s hot today at the Veeder Ranch. Not a smoldering heat, but the sun is beating on the scoria road outside my house and quite unexpectedly, the trees are standing relatively still due to the lack of push by the usually relentless wind. Which entices the flies to buzz confidently at my front door and around our horses’ noses, sending them into a some sort of trance, bobbing their heads like a metronome in an attempt to keep the persistent insects away. They head for the hill tops to find a breeze.

The cows also have a ritual, which I’ve only noticed, but haven’t studied (as I don’t claim to be, at the present time, a cow expert. I am however, to my husband’s dismay, hoping to become a pig expert, but we won’t go there today). They gather together in a cluster, maybe near the corner of a pasture, or on a side hill, and at a sporadic pace, switch their wiry tails, slapping each other over backs, on faces, under bellies, forming a sort of jumbled up assembly of “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine.” I imagine them saying to each other on these days, after a long winter of trudging through the snow, “Really? We just can’t catch a break here can we?”.

These instinctual methods for dealing with the mites that come with the short North Dakota summer seem a bit more methodical than my form of extermination, which is cussing mostly, and a flyswatter made available on every table in the house. Oh, and Raid.

But the pastures are green. Like neon green. After a couple days of rains that poured down from the sky like God was

The paint catching a breeze on a hilltop.

throwing out his bathwater (and God, I imagine, has quite the large tub), the sunshine is working on drying the puddles and putting a nice crust on the gumbo buttes of the badlands and the ruts created in the gravel roads around here.

So I roll up my sleeves and my pants legs and, with my flyswatter in tow, I sprawl out on the porch. Because of course I love the warm sunshine. It is what I have been waiting for since it left us last September. I welcome it to come and brown my skin and entice the sweat-beads on my forehead and chest. I tilt my head upwards, squint my eyes and say “bring it on!” Because, in my sun-worshiping opinion, we don’t get enough of these kinds of days up here. And when we do, unfortunately for the office bound and car bound and truck bound and shovel bound North Dakota employees, they do usually land on a Monday or Wednesday, followed up with a nice rainy weekend, which doesn’t stop the hearty residents from loading up their fishing boats and digging out their Bermuda shorts anyway, because dammit, the summer is short.

Clay butte outside my window baking in the summer sun.

I found in my days touring the Great Plains as a musician that there are two things people want to talk about when you tell them you are from North Dakota (as if they didn’t already figure it out as soon as I open my mouth): your accent (say “You Know”) and the weather. And as soon as I got done explaining that yes, I know I have an accent, and that I blame it on my Lutheran Church Lady heritage, and yes, I know I say “Dakoota” funny, and haha, yes, I wish I talked more like you and said “ant” instead of “aunt” and “yes” instead of “yah,” the conversation always turns to weather.

“It’s cold up there isn’t it?”

“Yah, sure is”

“How cold does it get”

“Pretty cold. Sometimes like 30 below zero” *

“Holy Shit”

“Yah”

Yes, we talk about the weather. Ask us and we will proudly declare that it takes a certain type of person to live here.

Cows switching their tails near the water tanks.

That the winters keep the riff-raff out. That we hunker down and deal with it.

But we, from the humble stock we sprang, rarely talk about the summers here. Maybe because, in our minds, they are not so dramatic. They don’t incline us to use as many puns and metaphors and exaggerated stories about the neighbors nearly freezing to death in a blizzard or almost dying walking across campus at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks (which is the coldest place on earth I am sure of it), or how the wind could blow the snow in a flurry one thousand miles an hour over roads coated with sheets of ice and North Dakota schools would not think of shutting down. No, North Dakota summers could not possibly be that dramatic.

But I think we are wrong here. The summers here are not to be skipped over on your way to explaining yourself out of why we endure the bitter cold. I believe there is something to be said, I mean, really be said, about the season that was sent here to save us.

Hondo cools off in the dam

Because graciously summer unfurls itself from its cocoon ever so slowly for us, year after year, revealing its colors in soft buds of green on the trees, allowing the sun to shine for just a few more minutes every day, enticing the crocuses to poke through the earth on the sides of hills. It gently whispers to us to open our windows, to let the winter air out of our houses, to let the dirt creep in on the bottom of our shoes, to water our lawns and watch the blades grow, to throw something on the grill. To warm up already!

It eases us into the new, refreshing sensation, like a mother coaxing her child to get his feet wet in the pool, to come in a little further, until he finally, after giddy squeals and nervous shakes, dunks his head under the water.

And although most North Dakotans don’t truly believe it’s summer until it’s half-way over, until we have complained

Pearl the mule going in for a drink.

enough about the rain and the wind and the tornado warnings, it is days like today we jump right in. We say to each other as we walk down the street “What a beautiful day!” “It’s gorgeous out there.” “Finally! The sun!” And we plop down in our gardens, and jump into the chilly lakes, and take our sandwiches to the park, and tend to our flowers. Because days like these allow us to completely and utterly forget about the long, frigid January, the snow we shoveled through to get to our garages and the white out blizzard on the highway we were stuck in during Christmas. We finally get a chance to thaw out enough to suck on a popsicle from the Shwan’s man.

In fact, show us a photo of the previous winter and it would be unrecognizable on a day like today when the sky is so blue and the birds are chirping and the dogs are panting and our children are covered in sunscreen and sweat. Those snow drenched houses were another lifetime. Another world.

My summer fly.

Because it is hot today at the ranch and North Dakotans everywhere are turning on sprinklers, nursing their first sunburns, opening their windows and feeling at least a little grateful for the flies.

And that takes a special type of person.

*just a note for those of you looking to take a visit, and don’t know me personally–I do tend to exaggerate, especially when it comes to the weather. 30 below zero has probably never occurred here. I am included in the dramatic bunch.

Happy first day of summer you crazies!

A Dog’s Life

It seems to be fitting that my first real pondering of this back home experience would be about dogs. Considering I have found myself at times (against my better judgement and all things I learned to love and respect about animals in my childhood) one of those borderline annoying pet owners who tries to relate to my friends who have actual, human children, with a story about my dogs that is in no way comparable, because they of course have four paws, no real ability to speak and are always happy to see me. I have also been known to put my two dogs next to the Christmas tree and make them pose for a photo to be sent to relatives. But in my defense, it is only because I knew I couldn’t get my husband to cooperate. I mean, they are dogs. Not children. I know this, but sometimes I slip.

Anyway, now that I am out here, the idea of being a pet owner has shifted back to reality a bit. Because when you are a pet owner at the ranch, there are some things you’ve got to get used to. I never did give this much thought when I was growing up here. I never had a house dog–just a cat who lived inside, but she was obsessed with my little sister, so we didn’t talk much (the cat, not my sister).

I was always a dog person anyway (and a turtle person, rabbit person, snake person, fish person and lizard person–which didn’t end well–but that is a story for another day).

My family had quite the collection of dogs over the years. All of them loved for their quirky traits and personalities, and all of them with a purpose–to help us in this wild place. To chase cows out of the brush, fight the bull that turned on us in the pasture, keep the raccoons and snakes and an unfortunate porcupine out of our yard and out of our way.

I became attached to all of my family’s four legged members. There was Patch, the ankle biting Blue Healer we got as a puppy when I was ten years old. My little sister wasn’t too fond of him considering he would take every opportunity when she was swinging innocently on the tire swing to latch on to her pant leg or her sock and catch a ride. But he was a damn good cow dog.

And there was P.V., my grandparent’s Border-collie who began her life with my grandma and grandpa and ended her life without them both. After that I swear you could tell that she missed them. She got sadder and sadder and was the only dog on the place that I know of to have died of old age and not a heroic or adventurous cause. But despite her sadness, P.V. was a good cow dog.

Let’s not forget, of course, P.V.’s pup Colonel, named in honor of my grandpa who always lost the name game with that suggestion. Colonel was a thick skinned collie with a lovely coat of hair who would accompany me during my treks to take photos and sing at the top of my lungs in the hills around the place. He was such a lover of human attention that his overzealous attempts at being the first to greet you as you pulled into the drive landed him in the way of an SUV tire. He survived the impact, but his hearing and sight did not. He used to be a good cow dog.

Which leads me to my predicament here in my second week living full time back at the ranch. As a girl I appreciated these rustic and rugged animals for what they were bred to do. They loved, loved, loved to be free to roam the hills, chasing rodents and the occasional cat, drinking out of the puddles and swimming in the stock dams. In my opinion, there was no better life for a dog really. I mean, some people would disagree, but then I would have to disagree with pushing a shitzu donning a sweater vest in a stroller down the street. I would argue that that is one pissed off shitzu.

Anyway, I digress.

During nearly ten years of being away from this rustic place, you couldn’t expect I would have gone all those years without accumulating some furry friends of my own. So now, as you have already heard, I have come home with a labrador and a pug. Home to the 3,000 acres of tick, snake, dirt, cow poop infested glorious spot of nature with two somewhat (minus the sweater vests) citified animals. I mean, yes, the lab, he was bred for something worth while and helpful to man. My husband has taken him on many successful bird hunting trips and he’s really good at it (the dog, not my husband particularly). You know, good at it, minus the whole “get your ass back over here” thing, which is also coincidentally causing some chaos around here as well with all the fun cows and deer and rabbits to chase–it impairs the hearing.

But the pug, ah the pug. Acquired last summer, after a particular slump in life’s progress, my judgement was blinded. It seemed like a good idea at the time. So here we are, the pug, well puggle actually–a cross between a beagle and a pug for those of you who need a visual. The beagle in him, is in fact his redeeming quality out here actually. That 1/4 blend appears to equip him for adventures that were not meant for dogs of his caliber. Other than that, there is nothing practical about him. A smooshed in nose causes issues when running for his life after horses he has been screamed at to stay away from. That curly tail is cute, but I have no doubt that the ranch dogs are mocking him behind his back. The short legs and small stout body do not propel him with ease across this landscape–they in fact make it so that he’s closer to the ground to sweep up the wood-ticks before they can get to any other living thing (I guess that is kinda handy).

But for all of these disqualifications, frankly, Chug the pug doesn’t give a shit and neither does Hondo, the 4-year oldchocolate lab with a hip problem and premature aging. See, these animals, in a different life, had they not been picked up by an eccentric, animal obsessed ranch girl, may have wound up in a neighborhood backyard kennel, tied out in a lawn somewhere, traveling the U.S. on the lap of a retiree in an R.V., or heaven forbid, in a turtleneck sweater in a stroller in Seattle.

But I’m not here to judge. All scenarios are fine lives for dogs, full of love from owners who need them. But it may come as a surprise to some people that what dogs really want is to sniff each other’s asses, roll around in the grass, eat cow shit, (and their own shit for that matter) chase other critters and run until they collapse in the shade under a big oak tree…

Or something like that.

I think of this when I’m pondering what the hell I’m doing out here with my scrawny arms and sometimes nonspecific ideas on how I can acquire the muscles and brains it takes to re-invent the idea of making a living off of my family ranch. And as I pick off the twentieth wood-tick from my dogs and me, or find a surprise in the form of a remnant of some once living mammal at my front stoop, I cringe a little and then take a look around.