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Sometimes it’s better not to wait

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A lesson I should know by now.

This afternoon, I saw Koa nosing about by the pool. She never noses about by the pool. So I investigated, and sure enough, a dead mouse was floating in the pool.

I suppose I should have spared more than a passing moment to feel for the poor drowned rodent, but my first and immediate thought was, how the heck do I get rid of that? Because as I learned the hard way, there is nowhere in the yard that is safe from Brody’s investigational prowess.

The dirt in the yard is hard clay. You can’t dig more than an inch or two without some heavy muscle, and even that is not really helpful when you have a determined dog on your hands.

So I mulled about over it for a bit, before coming to the conclusion that I was going to have to find a burial site in the front yard instead, where the dogs never go.

Better yet, I decided, to wait until my husband came home, and let him deal with it. Then I went inside.

An hour later, I let Brody out, not thinking, clearly. When he reappeared by the back door, I took in his wet feet and thought, uh oh. I mean, it’s cold out right now. Surely, surely he wouldn’t go swimming in that arctic pool, would he?

But he would. If dead rodents were involved.

I looked in the pool. I suppose he imagined he was being helpful. The offending rodent was nowhere to be found.

And he was licking his lips. Looking quite proud of himself, I might add.

Ah, Brody. Keep that tongue away from me. More disinfectant for you, my friend. And some dewormer. BLEAH. Dogs are so gross.

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  2. Eeeeewwww. It is amazing what they will eat. Mosby ate a dead mouse once. Gulped it down in one swallow as we all ran at him screaming, “No!” Unfortunately for him we had to take him to the vet to induce vomiting because we weren’t sure how the mouse died, poison or natural causes. Our vet laughed and teased about how we weren’t supposed to feed him mice. LOL Also have to go out in the yard after days of rain and get rid of all the mushrooms because both dogs like those.

  4. My youngest LOVES the rodent buffet if it is around! We have shrews in our back yard during the summer, and he finds nothing more fun than trying to nose one of those out of the dirt, follow it around and stick it in his mouth, play with it a bit and then swallow it, if the humans decide to try to make him drop it. He did it three times this past summer. Blek!!!!!

  5. Belle has a serious rodent thing too. Last week she was out in the yard throwing something around and doing her little “high as a kite dance”. Turns out it was a LIVE gopher. I rescued the poor thing and took him to the front yard. Belle thought that was about the most amazing toy ever, one that MOVES.

  6. Hmmm…. My Golden, Tanner, once found a small snake in our pool that was “late”. His response was quite different. As the pool is a place where we regularly play fetch, and he is a Fetch Master, he did what he generally does–brought the item fetched from the pool to my feet and dropped it.

    He seemed to be aware that I was not going to toss it for another Fetch, sniffing it and nudging it as if to urge it to activity. When none occurred he plopped to the ground and took on a discouraged look. Another lost friend? I suppose so.

    “Bless you, Tanner. You seem to love all life”–our cat, our rabbit, our other dogs, and every critter found in nature.

    I’m not sure he would have made a good hunting companion, had he been acquired by a gundog sort. Just as well!

  7. Our Boo would carry everything in her mouth (yes a golden) including baby bunnies. Until she would swallow them. I still miss her.
    Tino-cat will bring all of his fresh food for us to appreciate and if we don’t grab it take it off for a snack. Baby bunnies and voles.
    Neither animal has been able to make any impact on the deer population. Now that would be wonderful. I hate losing tomatos to the deer, having bushes striped of vegetation in the winter, apples and pears from the trees…..

  9. So I have to tell you about the deer incident.

    Not too long before my, er, now ex-husband and I got married, some rep from the Travel Channel posted a thread on WC asking people to post about their adventurous honeymoons. We were planning on doing a two night horseback trip into the wilderness (all we could afford at the time) so I mentioned that.

    Turns out they were scouting for a show they were doing (that only lasted a season or two) called Honeymoon Adventures, and we ended up on an episode. For the honeymoon part of things, they couldn’t get the pack company to comp them for the camera crew in exchange for publicity, so they asked us if we wanted to switch to 4 days at a really nice dude ranch in Wyoming. Ummm, YES!

    Anyway, they wanted to come out for a day the week before the wedding and do some interviews and background stuff with us. At the time, we were living as caretakers on a horse ranch in San Luis Obispo. It was mid-June–the PERFECT time to come out there. The flowers were blooming, the fruit on trees was ripening, the pastures were slowly fading from green to their summer gold… Idyllic.

    So when the producer and camera crew showed up from Los Angeles, they were pretty blown away.

    Let me rewind just a bit more. The previous week, I got up one morning and went to feed the horses, and found my dog running in circles in one of the pastures, barking at something. When I got out there, I found a baby deer flopping around on the ground, with a clearly broken neck. It looked like it had tried to jump the pasture fence, hit the fence, broke its neck, and fell backwards on the ground.

    I ran to get my ex and his .22, but by the time we got back, the deer was already dead. Which left us with a dilemma. What to do with this creature? Despite the fact that it was a baby, it was already well over 100 lbs, and its spots had already faded.

    After a couple minutes’ deliberation, we remembered that the neighbors whose pasture boardered ours were out of town for the month. So we decided to drag it into their (empty) pasture and let the coyotes have at it.

    Anyway, back to the camera crew. So they spent the entire day at the ranch, shooting footage and interviewing us and exclaiming over just how beautiful everything was.

    Toward the end of the day, they wanted to get my ex and I on horseback, riding down the road between our pasture and our neighbor’s, with the sun low in the background. Like everything else, they made us do several takes. At this point all of us were tired and just wanted to be done with the whole thing. On one of the last takes, my dog decided to join us, running in front of the horses as we rode toward the cameras. I wasn’t paying any attention to her.

    Until the producer shrieked.

    “WHAT IS SHE CARRYING IN HER MOUTH!?!?!?”

    I called my dog, and she came proudly running toward me with her trophy in her mouth.

    It was a deer leg, from shoulder to hoof, somewhat shrunken/rotted, with shreds of hide and flesh hanging off of it.

    Shortly after that, the producer decided it was time to call it a day.

  12. i really love reading your blogs. brody sounds like a real character and so cute. but all goldens have the cutest faces and the best smiles. i live in the country, lots of deer and everything else. sometimes there will be 30-40 deer in my front or back. terrible. my oldest was coming in with blood on her everyday and smelling. (i have 3 min. schnauzers). i could not figure out where she had been, i have a creek but she wont go in it. so i was wandering around my property, i have over 11 acres. i found a dead deer, gutted, looks like a coyote or something got him, had antlers. it was behind my well house. no one would help me get rid of it, i dragged it over a mile, thru the woods, down to the marshy creek and thru it in. i had to get it away from my dog. i do feed them human grade raw venison.