Our resident cats, Nellie and her daughter Polly, arrived almost two years ago thanks to friends who found a starving, half-dead adolescent cat in their yard. They took her in and nursed her back to health--which included discovering that she was pregnant, helping her raise five kittens and finding them all wonderful homes. No one ever wondered if Nellie had been a feral cat: She walked up to the first person she saw and began rubbing and purring, behavior that she continues to this day. If you came to visit the farm she would behave as if you are the most wonderful thing that has happened to her all week. Nellie, the feline Labrador. That same summer, as some of you may remember, I also had a pregnant cat show up on the farm. She was so secretive that I didn't know she was there until Read More
Archives for March 2014
The Beauty of the “Ready” Cue
Ah, spring is finally coming. Along with the mud. I don't know about you, but here in Southern Wisconsin the winter has been so severe that the ground is frozen as far as six feet down. Six vertical feet, just in case you've never had to dig fence post holes, is a long, long way. That means it will take a long time for the ground to soften, and a longer stretch than usual of dealing with mud. There is no where for the melted snow or rain to go when the ground beneath is frozen solid, so "mud season" means wiping dog off paws every time you go back inside after being outdoors. Yesterday, while wiping off Willie's paws for the first time in months, I was reminded of how much I love the cue "Ready." I wrote about it in 2010, but thought it was worth a reprint, given how many of us will be Read More
Favorite African Photographs
This week I'm grading 150 term papers. Yup, a 150 of them. My Teaching Assistant, Peggy B, will also be grading aspects of these same papers, so you can imagine that the two of us will be, uh, a tad busy for awhile. That's why this week's blog is a compilation of some of my favorite photographs from trips to Africa. It has been great fun looking through my "albums" and remembering the highlights of these trips, and I'm reminded that I want to get enlargements to put on the walls at the farm house. Been meaning to do that for how many years? Here are some of my favorites: Did I really get up close and personal with a pack of African Wild Dogs in Botswana? Did a Lilac Breasted Roller really hover just feet from us while trying to extract a beetle from the windshield of Read More
Assessing “Assess-a-Hands”
When I began working as an animal behaviorist I evaluated dogs in a number of ways, one being to give them a prized resource and watch to see how they responded when I reached for it. I remember working on a stage with a dog who was said to bite if you tried to take away his toy. After playing around with him to get him comfortable, I gave him his treasured toy and let him settle down with it. Then I squatted down beside him and began to reach toward the object with my hand. I explained to the audience that I wanted to see not so much whether he would growl or try to bite, but the expression on his face as he reacted to my outreached arm. Was his commissure forward in an offensive threat? Or backward in a fearful grimace? Over a hundred people held their breath as I reached closer and Read More
A Memorial: Fund Raising for Puppy Up!
For almost twelve years, my Great Pyrenees Tulip was the farm’s jokester, a shiny-eyed, smiley-faced cross between an oversized seal pup and a benevolent polar bear. For twelve years she multi-tasked as the farm’s protector and its own personal stand up comedian. She died in my arms several years ago, and is buried just a few feet from the front porch, where she used to stand and bark at the coyotes who yip-howled their way down a ravine toward my young lambs. No coyote, or canid of any kind, ever bothered our sheep when Tulip was alive, yet she loved everyone equally, dogs and people alike, unless they appeared to be a threat. Once I was awoken at 2 AM by hushed and hurried voices coming from my front yard. Alone that night, I peered out the window to see three shadowy figures moving Read More