Summer don’t leave me
stay under my feet
hang warm in the sky
don’t dry up the wheat
Summer stay near me
to kiss my skin tan
mess up my long hair
hold tight my hand
Summer please stay here
in the chokecherry trees
on the back of a good horse
in the green of the leaves
Oh, Summer my good friend
there’s only so many hours
so take the bees and the rainbows…
but don’t take my wildflowers
To come down from the buttes after staying out a little too far past sundown only to see the lights of the barnyard illuminating the grass and the kitchen of the house glowing warmly through the windows, waiting for my return…
it means more to me than I can describe here.
I imagine the same sight greeting my grandparents, my aunt and uncle and my father. I imagine them feeling the same deep breath, the same overwhelming calm as they drove in from the fields, rode up to unsaddle a horse or strip off the layers from a hunt in the hills in the still of a late summer or autumn evening.
I imagine the smell of baked bread reaching them from the open windows or the smoke from a grilled steak waiting for them to sit down around the table, the door swinging open and the warmth of this old house whispering “this is home this is home this is home this is home…”
No matter how far you find yourself.
No matter the distance between you and these buttes.
No matter the time that has passed, the mistakes that you’ve made, the words you can’t take back, the pain you might hold onto, the life you might have found down the road or the love you might have lost here…
No matter.
Don’t worry.
This is home…
And I will leave the light on.
Around here you go to bed at night to a landscape brown and ready to shoot to the sky and wake to fields of flowers big and bright and alive. Around here you savor their aroma, their vibrance, their fleeting existence, because as soon as you close your eyes again they have withered into the earth.
Around here you wait for months for the sun to stay in the sky just a little longer to warm the ground and make things grow and allow you to stay out in the air until well past 10 pm.
Around here you must get to the corn before the deer, the tomatoes before the bugs, the berries before the birds, because every creature is waiting in the shadows to savor the fruits of summer before the trees start to drop their leaves, the sun casts shadows sooner, the rain turns to snow.
And so on this early August day I am hit with the realization that we are on the back side of summer now. The hot side, yes, but the down hill slope indeed.
The weeds are tall, the late season flowers are in full bloom, the clover has reached its peak, the kids are buying school supplies, the sun is leaving us a little sooner each evening, I am contemplating what types of celebrations I am going to cram into my birthday month and
and
and
the wild raspberries have appeared like tiny drops of heaven, little rewards, consolation prizes for a summer on it’s way out of dodge.
These perfect little morsels are what I spent the late summers of my childhood hunting while sitting bareback on a horse with my best friend and a plastic grocery bag. These tart wild fruits that grow on vines along the thick brush are what my eyes are searching for this time of year. To hell with the wild sunflower, the coneflowers, the juneberries that the bugs have demolished. If I can bite down on a wild, perfectly red raspberry and savor the juices that hit my tongue if only once in a summer I am satisfied.
Fall can come tap dancing in.
Winter can bring it.
I got my raspberry.
So it was with delight that I hit the trail last Sunday for a leisurely ride with pops, husband and little sister. It was the last day in July and it sure as hell felt like it. The air was muggy, but there was a nice breeze and the sun was hiding behind a skim of clouds for the time being. It was enough relief to keep us from baking, enough to allow us to saddle up and head for our favorite pasture in the east.
We weren’t looking for anything in particular, the four amigos. We just wanted to be in one another’s company as the morning rolled on into the afternoon. See, the other casualty of late summer is this: little sister is leaving. Yup. Back to east side of the state to finish up her schooling and become a grown up already. I haven’t admitted it yet here, but the fact that time is marching on and out too quickly, bringing with it this type of consequence, has been the catalyst to the waves of dread and the reason I have occasionally pulled on my crabby pants during the past five days or so.
I am lashing out at time and wondering why the bluebells can’t stay….
Why the clover must dry up…
Why the sun can’t maintain its heat…
Why my gray hairs multiply with each pluck of a straggler…
Why little sisters don’t stay little forever.
But anyway, there we were last Sunday strolling on the back of good horses through acres of wild sunflowers and grass up to the heels of our boots. There we were riding just a little further, despite the fact that the sun had reappeared and the temperature was rising. There we were, the four of us, bonded by our love for a place, the desire to be part of something a little more untamed, and the need to be together out in it for as long as we could.
We were chatting about the unprecedented rainfall and the lush vegetation when pops, always in the lead, pushed his horse through a barley visible trail like a cow dog going after an unruly bull and squealed like a little boy. The three of us stopped in our tracks. What could it be? A mountain lion? An elk? A big, black hole? Aliens?
As pops flung his body off his horse and dove into the brush one of us dared to ask that question. You know, the one that starts with “What” and ends with “is it?”
“What is it, what’s the deal. Are you ok? It must be an alien this time…pops? Where you going?”
“RASPBERRIES,” he hollered from behind a tangle of green weeds and thorny brush and vines.
“RASPBERRIES” he mumbled as he dropped his horse’s reigns to the ground to reach and bend and lunge around him, his wide fingers carefully plucking the delicate fruit from its vine before popping his mouth full of the wild, red, succulent berries.
Well, that was it. That’s all he needed to say to get the rest of us to follow suit, fling ourselves off of the back of our sweaty beasts and dive into a draw, braving thorns, mosquitos, poison ivy, bees, ants and that dreaded and inevitable alien to get to the prairie rarity before pops and the birds ate them all.
“There’s hundreds of them guys! Look at all of them….munch munch munch…remember this moment…munch munch…because in the winters…munch munch…we will talk about how we found all those raspberries out east that one summer…munch munch…here you go…taste some…”
And so we did. We all picked and tasted and searched the area like scavengers on a hunt for gold. We talked about what it might have been like to be a Native American out in this area and to come upon berries this sweet on a hot summer day.
We talked about the past summers where we wandered into similar patches. We talked about how many there might be here and what we could make with them.
We talked about coming back with a bucket.
But by the time we were done talking our fingers were stained red and so were our tongues and we had cleared the area of all visible signs of the wild fruit.
Because that’s the thing about wild raspberries, they very rarely hit the bottom of a bucket or make their way into a jam or pie.
No, no, no. They taste the best standing in a pasture, surrounded by sky and bugs and up to your eyeballs in foliage and leaves and vines and pure bliss.
So yes, the summers out here are brief. I don’t know why they have to be that way. I don’t know why the green leaves can’t hold on a little longer or why the wildflowers have to wither at all. I don’t know why 80 degrees only touches our skin for a few short months or where the bumblebees go when the snow comes.
I don’t know why I am beginning to notice lines on my face and a few strands of silver in my hair.
And I certainly don’t know why little sisters grow up and leave home…
or how wild raspberries appear and disappear like magic.
I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s for the best. See, if we had paradise all year how would heaven measure up?
Because I’m sure there are raspberries in every cool draw in heaven.
Raspberries and clover, blue sky and just the right amount of clouds, good horses and sisters and husbands and fathers and mothers all riding together through lush pastures like the one that exists out east of our home…
the one that exists in my heaven.
It’s been pretty scorching hot around the ranch these days, and I’ll tell you it’s not because of the sexy outfits I’ve been wearing to stay cool.
No, that’s not it at all. It’s just typical late July/early August for you. But you have to appreciate a place on the map where in the matter of six months you can experience a 130 degree weather shift.
March
July
Seriously.
I will be remembering this past weekend of 90+ temperatures when I am in my seven layers topped off with a hooded down parka that reaches my ankles.
Oh yes, I will remember.
But this morning as the thermometer stretches toward 80 degrees and it is only 8 am, I am remembering 30 below…and thinking no matter what, I like summer better. Hands down.
Because after a long, hot day where we’ve watched the sun emerge from the horizon and make its merry little way across the sky, beating down on our lawns and flower beds, sweating up our skin as we stand there, coaxing the flies to buzz around our ears and the corn in the east to stretch its arms a little higher, we sigh and sip our iced tea knowing that in a few hours we may be awarded a sweet reprieve. A breath. A sigh. A little cool-off before we hastily throw some burgers on the grill at dark and crawl under the sheets.
I call it the magic hour.
Others call it evening. Sunset. Dusk. Twilight. It’s that fleeting time where the sun moves slowly toward the west side of the world, promising soon to sink below the horizon, but not before it casts long shadows, turns the hilltops to gold, calls out the dragonflies, kisses the coulees with cool air, and fills our nostrils with the scents of crisp clover, wildflowers and grasses.
It’s the perfect time to grab your horse and head for the hills. Because if it was a windy day, the witching hour calms the breeze. If it was a hot and muggy day you might find yourself some cloud cover at the cusp of an oncoming thunder storm. If it was a sunny, 80+ day and you are out during the perfect time, you will literally feel the temperature dropping around you and your skin cool down as you ride or walk in and out of the draws and up the hill to catch the sunset.
There are jobs at the ranch that are truly enjoyable at times. Riding to gather cattle can be one of those jobs… if all goes well and the bull is in a good mood.
Unfortunately, the need for that task often signals the need to grab the tools and the bug spray to tackle the one job on the ranch that is often procrastinated and proves not quite as relaxing and soul-resurrecting as riding a good horse across a field full of fat and happy cattle.
It’s called fencing, and it’s not the kind that involves a skinny sword, a white jump suite and netted, alien headgear. It does, however, involve wood ticks, nasty brush, a kazillion horse flies, barbed wire, pliers and a lot of bending over.
And if that doesn’t sound pleasing enough, ranchers get a little extra comfort when they pull on their flannel jammies at night knowing that they are never at a loss of work as long as they have barbed wire fences.
Because as long as they have fences, the fences will need to be fixed.
Some of my earliest memories as a ranch kid are of hopping in the pickup on a hot August day with my pops or my gramma and grampa to go check fences. I had a good gramma and grampa who understood how to make a tediously long, hot day more pleasing to a kid by ensuring that candy and cookies fell magically out of the passenger seat visor when I flipped it down.
Happened every time.
I remember my short legs stuffed in holy jeans leaning against the stick shift of the old blue truck as my pops drove slowly down the fence line, stopping every few moments to get out, grab a staple, piece of wire or new fence post and make a repair. I remember dozing off in the hot sunshine or getting out to pick wildflowers. I remember sweating and swatting the flies and buzzing bugs that lived and multiplied in the snarly, thorny, swampy brush patches where the fence was always down.
I remember eating a warm ham sandwich in a shady spot and drinking equally warm water out of my pops’ water cooler.
I remember the poke of the barbs as I helped hold a string of wire, the holes in my jeans I would get as I attempted to cross the mended fence, the hum of the Patty Loveless or Clint Black song coming through the dial am radio of the old work pickup.
I remember the quiet, with only the cows mooing from the right side of the fence when the pickup was turned off during a long repair. And I remember getting stuck when that pickup wouldn’t quite make it through a draw–particularly the time I took a new puppy along only to have her puke all over my lap as pops pushed and spun and rocked his way out of the hole he dug himself in.
But mostly I remember being hot.
It seemed like that was a requirement when it came to every fencing job: Make sure the temperature promised to hit well above 80 degrees, wait for mid-day and then put on your jeans, boots and long sleeved shirt and take on the job.
And so there I found myself, having flashbacks of those memories this past weekend as I hopped on the back of the 4-wheeler to help tackle a fence line by the fields with husband. I have never gone on a fencing job with anyone other than my pops, but I don’t know why I expected the rules of fencing to change with any other man or at any other age.
No sir, no ma’am, the only thing that changed since I was a seven-year-old fuzzhead was our means of transportation. And as we zoomed that 4-wheeler up the path to the fields in the blaring, scorching mid-day July sun, the horseflies took a split second or less to remember that my skin tasted delicious and just like that we began checking off tasks and situations on the list titled:
“Rules of Fencing at the Veeder Ranch.”
They are as follows, in no particular order:
1) Well, we’ve been over the first one, but let’s just be clear. Choose to take your manual labor trip in the heat of the day. It is not a smart or comfortable option, but apparently the only option available to procrastinators who like to have a little coffee, a little bacon and a few eggs…and then another helping while they catch the end of CBS Sunday Morning.
2) Make sure to spray on a nice mist of Deep Woods OFF to ward off the hawk sized bugs…and then forget to load it up in the bucket with the rest of the supplies as you head miles into the wilderness. I mean, why on earth would we need a second dousing of the stuff in the middle of a raptor infested coulee? Besides, with more bug spray we wouldn’t be able to really test how much buzzing and biting a human furnace/sauna can can endure.
3) If you think you may need five to seven steel fence posts to get the job done be sure to only locate one to take along. I mean, a man needs a challenge and figuring out how to re-stretch a half-mile of wire using a rusty plier, reused fencing staples from when barbed wire was first invented, a pocket knife and one measly fence post is the type of feat only a real Renaissance/McGuiver type specimen can handle…and we’re those type of men out here…even if you are a woman…
Which brings me to the staples…
4) Forget them in the shop.
5) But for the love of Martha, don’t forget the pug. I mean running for three to four miles at top speed behind the 4-wheeler to a location void of water and adequate shade or breeze is the perfect death defying act for an insane lap dog. Go ahead, just try to leave him behind, but don’t be alarmed when he pops up over the hill, tongue dragging on the ground, snorting for air and making a beeline to the tiny bit of shade the mid-day sun provides off of your small ATV.
And while you’re at it…
6) Forget to bring your good leather gloves. Instead, pull on the pair with a small, undetectable hole where your right pointer finger is innocently located and make sure that opening in the protective fabric is just the right size for a thorn to poke through and draw blood. Because the number seven rule of fencing just happens to be…
7) Bleed. Because you’re not fencing until you’re good and itchy, poked, stabbed, bruised and bleeding.
8 ) So make sure to bring company. Because if a man cusses in the pasture and there’s no one there to hear it, is he really even angry?
And if you’re cussing anyway, you might as well..
9) Sweat. Sweat like hell. Sweat all that bug spray off. Sweat out all that water that you forgot to pack. Sweat so you must roll up your sleeves just enough to expose your tender flesh to the thorns and thistle you must reach into to yank up trampled fence…
10) and then bleed again, cuss again, sweat a little more, turn around to find that your companion has disappeared over the hill to pick wildflowers, decide that only a really svelte and athletic cow could maneuver through your fence repairs, head home for lunch with every intention of returning after the meal only to actually revisit the site the next morning to find those extra plump, extra lazy cows are in the field again.
Ahhh,fencing..
Yup.
Some summer weekends are spent in the car rushing to get to the next destination, some summer weekends are spent cleaning out garages full to the brim with stuff gathered over years and years of saving, some summer weekends are spent on the water, some are spent in tents, some are spent washing windows and scrubbing floors, some are spent at weddings, some are spent singing for your supper, some are spent in bed sick with the flu…
Ahhh, summer, short-lived and spectacular around here, jammed packed with all of the above. Oh, if only I could read a book while relaxing on a blanket in the sun while tearing down the old garage while enjoying a cocktail while fixing the corrals while riding two horses at once while kayaking a crystal clear river while training for that marathon I swear I’ll run someday…
…if only…ah well…frolic, frolic, bask, swim, sing, work a little, climb, drive, camp, summer fun things and….
meanwhile, back at the ranch…
the cows are getting out.
Oh, there’s nothing like ranch living to bring you back down to earth. It’s a gift really, to slow us down and remind us why the hell we’re living here in the first place…and for the love of Martha there is work to do, so pay attention.
And this weekend husband and I had the ranch to ourselves while momma and pops enjoyed a much-needed extended holiday. That’s the nice thing about living as a two family unit on the ranch, there is generally someone to stick around to cover your ass. And mom and pops have been covering ours for a good portion of the summer and to be honest, I have been itching to cover theirs…
wait, that didn’t come out right…
Anyway, what I mean is I have been anxious to just stay home for a weekend and tinker around the barnyard, mow the lawn, work on tearing down that damn garage and watch the grass grow to unprecedented heights. Really, I’ve never seen it like this before. So on Saturday after we spent a good few hours sorting out old tires, a boat, a jeep, seventeen dressers, thirty-seven old grills and a microwave that may or may not have been my pops’ wedding gift to my momma, I threw my sweaty arms up in the air and declared it was time to go check on the cows.
Because there was a new mare in the barnyard I was anxious to ride, cool coulees calling my name, and hours of quiet time under the big setting sun…just what a girl with a scary old garage needed to decompress.
So we pulled on our boots, grabbed some bug spray and our horses and took off at a nice, leisurely pace to check the place.
I just have to take a moment here, before we get to those cows, to explain that even though I grew up here, even though I grew up here with this boy who became this man who rides this pretty bay horse, even though I walked these hills all my life and can hold this guy’s hand anytime I wanna, I still can’t believe I exist out here with him.
And on a night like Saturday night when the grass was tickling the bottoms of my boots, the tiger lilies were stretching out their petals and the new mare was stealing little nibbles of the clover anytime the softy on her back would let her, I was just blissed out to the max.
To the max.
So much so that I think I got off that mare approximately 15 times to measure the grass, to snap a photo, to pick a flower, to just mosey and stick my nose in sprouting things…
Poor, poor, patient husband…
So when we reached the gate to exit the fields and heard some conspicuous mooing coming from the next tree row, I was not disappointed that the cows were out.
Because it meant that we got to move them, my hubby and me.
And as the air was getting cooler and the sun was casting long shadows and kissing the tops of green hills, I tested out the mare’s trot while I headed west and husband headed east, loping that bay horse out across a sea of clover.
I got to use my cow-moving lingo (Example with left arm slapping my leg: “Move on mommas…yip yip…come on babies..hya, hya…get along girls…” ) as the mare and I pushed the reluctant cattle through the tree rows and the lush grasses they had stumbled upon and weren’t so eager to leave behind.
I got to weave that mare back and forth along the back of the line, gathering and pushing nice and easy toward the gate, just like my pops taught me a long time ago.
And as I watched husband bring in a few scragglers from over the hill I realized something: It was just he and I out here doing this. Pops was a couple hundred miles away instead of in his usual spot next to us, giving us the plan of action, giving us advice and telling us where we needed to be. Pops was a couple hundred miles away trusting that we could keep it together and we were out here alone with these cattle in the wrong spot, just husband and I fixing a little mishap, taking care of things together.
I am sure we had done something like this before, the two of us. But at the moment we got those cattle in the right direction, moved them on up over the hill, made plans to fix up that fence and decided things had gone pretty smoothly it was the first time I truly believed that perhaps, the two of us, as a team, were capable of handling this ranch business ourselves after all.
Because I would be lying if I said I don’t have my doubts sometimes as I climb into bed next to his body and we listen to the crickets chirping outside our windows, the frogs singing their night songs. I would be lying if I didn’t wonder if it would be easier to buy a house in a suburb with a well manicured lawn, a nice clean garage, close to the grocery stores, conveniences and supportive friends down the block.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that sometimes the weight of it all, the thought of being out here without my father riding next to us, a little voice in our heads, our lifeline for the hard decisions, push down on me hard some days. Days when a horse and I have some major disagreements, days when I fall through the barn floor, days when the cows don’t gather but head for the brush in all different directions…
Those days pops is there to laugh and say there is always tomorrow.
But on Saturday we were given the best gift of summer. A gift of companionship, good horses, a beautiful night and the opportunity to show one another what we are made of.
And we might not have it together tomorrow, but on nights when the ceiling of this little house pushes on my confidence and makes me feel lonesome and crazy, I will close my eyes and think of Saturday…
and breathe a sigh of relief knowing that with all of the opportunity, all of the traveling and vacations and lake days and parties and music and summer adventures I was given these past few months, it was that day on the back of the new paint mare who couldn’t take a step without taking a bite of clover, next to the man I married, riding home with the setting sun on our backs, it was that day my smile was the biggest and I felt the most like me…
It was Saturday and there was nowhere else I would rather be…
I wish I could bottle this up and send it to you.
I wish I could pick the right words to describe the sweet, fresh scent that fills the air tonight and gives me comfort when I breathe it deep in my lungs while standing still or moving across the landscape, stepping high, eyes on the horizon. Or maybe my hands are on the wheel and the windows are open in the car as I reach out my arm. Or I may be laying down, ready to drift to sleep while the breeze kisses my skin laying silent in the night air.
I imagine everyone has something like this that hits their nostrils and brings them back to a time in childhood when they felt so deeply loved, so overwhelmingly safe, so much themselves, so free. Maybe it’s your grandmother’s warm cookies from the oven. Maybe it’s the smell of a diesel tractor plugging across a field. Maybe it’s your parent’s home or your fur on the back of your old cat or the salty air blowing across the ocean and onto vast beaches.
For me it is sweetclover.
It’s not something that graces us with its presence every year, but when the ground is saturated enough and the sun is warm it seems to pop up overnight like an old friend knocking on your door unannounced–and you just happen to have the coffee on and bread warming in the oven.
And so I think I have sweetclover in my skin. My first best memories are laying among it, rolling down the highest hill on the ranch as the sun found its way to the horizon and my cousins, tan and sweaty, hair wild, would fling their bodies after me. We would find ourselves at the bottom in a pile of laughter and yellow petals would float and move around us and then stick to our damp skin.
For us the clover was a blanket, a canopy of childhood, a comfort. It was our bouquet when we performed wedding ceremonies on the pink road wearing our grandmother’s old dresses, an ingredient in our mud pies and stews, our crown when we felt like playing kings and queens of the buttes, feed for our horses, our lawn, a place to hide from the seeker, to rest after a race, to fall without fear of skinned knees, a promise of summer.
A wave of color to welcome us home together.
And so it has appeared again, just like it did last July, only bigger, more bountiful, taller–up to my armpits even the sweetclover grew! It’s there all season, the seeds tucked neatly under the dirt, and still I am surprised when I open the windows of the pickup after a late night drive and the fragrance of the lush yellow plant finds its way to me.
The night is dark but I know it’s there…
And I am taken back…
I am seven years old again and my grandmother has our bunk beds made up in the basement and my cousins will be coming down the pink road soon. And when they get here we will climb Pots and Pans and we will put on a wedding and look for new kittens in the barn. We will play “The Wizard of Oz” and I will be the Tin Man. We’ll catch frogs in the creek and take a ride on the old sorrel. We will play tag on the hay bales in front of the barn.
We will hide from each other in the clover that scratches and brushes against our bare legs.
Oh, I wish I could bottle it up for the cold winter days that showed no sign of release.
I wish I could build my house out of it, weave it inside my walls, plant it in my floor and lay down in it at night.
I wish I could wrap my family–my father and mother, my sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles, my grandmother and grandfather and all of the souls who have touched and breathed and lived where the clover grows–I wish I could wrap them in its soft petals and sweet stems and watch as they remember now.
And tell them not to leave. Not to grow older.
I wish I would have sat still long enough to smell it on my skin when I was looking to find the real me.
I wish I would have always known I had it there.
But mostly I am just glad that it came to visit me this year…
so I could remember.
that I would come into this world a child of this earth
that I owe the moon and the night fireflies
my quiet mouth
and listening ear
and the rain my skin to lay kisses upon
that I would inhale the air
draw it deep
fill my lungs
and release with my breath
a compassion
and grow a heart light with plans
bursting to know
that we are a piece of this clay
the plush on the petal of the wild sunflower
the minutes that tick with each passing hour
the sun on the way to the dark
and the light that results from its spark
Yawn.
Happy Monday.
Please indulge me while I utilize my dramatic cast of characters to express myself today…
After a weekend of long island iced teas, hugs, long lost friends (and their small duplicates called children), swinging a golf club at a tiny white ball and only making contact on about half my attempts, a campfire, a few beers, a pot luck and belly laughs I am considering asking these two if I can join their pile…
I hope they don’t mind if I drool.
Because if I could close my eyes right now there most definitely will be drool.
In the meantime I will not be operating heavy machinery, making major life decisions, running for president or putting on an epic dance recital complete with Lady Gaga costume changes.
Maybe tomorrow.
Today I will be using my time awake to write myself a quick reminder that unless there is an emergency or I need to get up to pee, it would be wise to never again be conscience on the other side of 2 am.
And I will get some work done.
Just give me five more minutes…
This is Pudge.
She’s an Australian Shepherd.
She’s approximately 107 years old, give or take.
She has one blue eye and one brown eye and it freaks me out a little. So do the large twigs that occasionally get stuck in the wooly fur of her backside while she’s traipsing all over the countryside looking for something to chase. Because this is Pudge and age only slows her down when it comes to work.
When it comes to chasing things she’s not supposed to chase, she’s only 85.
Anyway, this is Pudge the Australian Shepherd and she’s sitting on the 4-wheeler waiting for Pops to come out of the house and do some fencing.
Pops is her human…her human who lets her ride with him on the 4-wheeler.
I can’t be certain, because the two haven’t specifically let me in on the agreement, but I think she gets these special privileges because Pudge the Australian Shepherd is the only legitimate cow dog on this place and Pops needs her sometimes to actually chase a cow out of the brush on command (instead of on a whim) or to herd a few strays toward the open gate.
That is my assumption anyway, given the fact that I’ve never seen Big Brown Dog or the One Eyed Pug enjoying the breeze that bounces through their floppy ears as they scoot and bump along the pastures on the cushioned seat behind Pops.
I really can't imagine why...
Nope, they are left at the mercy of their own legs when it comes to tagging along, while Pudge continues to ignore them and pretend that they never came to eat her food, tear up her beds, sniff her butt and all out ruin the good thing she had going when it was just her and Pops.
Anyway, I just wanted to introduce her to you because the girl is an underrated fixture on this place. She’s a pet, yes, but also an actual necessity. She is timid at home, lazy even. But when it comes to doing her job behind cattle, she is fierce and holds nothing back. Pure instinct.
Pops got Pudge on hand-me-down when I went off to college. Her previous owners moved to town and couldn’t keep her anymore and Pops needed a new cow dog. She happily fit in and found her cozy spot under the heat lamp in the garage in the winter, in the pickup box in the summer and through the window screen and under the covers of little sister’s bed during a spring thunderstorm.
The dog’s deathly afraid of thunderstorms, so when mom heard the crash and nearly had a heart attack thinking some insane burglar had finally managed to locate her house and had broken in to steal all of her crystal, potted plants and her diamond earrings only to open little sister’s bedroom door to find Pudge nudging her way under the covers, we cut the dog some slack.
And poured mom a tall glass of wine.
Because that thunderstorm thing, I think that might be the dog’s only flaw.
And don’t tell the pug, but I think Pudge might be my favorite.
Oh, he'll get over it...
See, the dog didn’t have a say in where she ended up in life. She’s a dog and dogs generally don’t go house shopping. But Pudge has this reputation of showing up where she needs to be at the right moment and shining her fluffy little light. I think she did it for Pops when she jumped in his pickup to head to the ranch.
And it turns out she did it for me when I came home one winter from college in Grand Forks, lonesome, overwhelmed and a little depressed. My family’s solution? To bring Pudge with me back to college. She’ll love the attention and I’ll love the company.
So I did. I brought her back to my duplex in the middle winter in the windswept, freezing cold college town, introduced her to her food dish, the clipper for her out of control coat (another reason we can relate), and a leash as I bundled up for long walks with my new therapist.
Once the dog got used to the idea that she couldn’t just wander off looking for squirrels like in her previous life at the ranch, she settled into her new role with ease. She slept on the cool wood floor at the foot of my bed, sat at my feet as I plugged away at research papers or strummed my guitar, left fluff-balls of fur all over the carpet, laid in the winter sunshine on the front stoop quietly watching the cars pass by, and in general eased my nerves and made me feel closer to sane as I got my big girl legs back under me.
I eventually brought her back to the ranch, back to her pickup box and back to where a dog like her belongs. But every time I returned to the ranch for holidays or summer visits after that I made sure to linger a bit longer outside to give her an extra scratch.
Maybe she knows why.
Maybe not.
But now that I’m back at the ranch, sometimes she makes the trip between the two houses and shows up at my door.
I like to think she’s checking up on me, making sure I feel better now.
I do Pudge. I do.
And I like to think maybe I’m her favorite too.
Need more puppy love? You’ve come to the right place
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 
