Autumnal Winds...

It's starting to have an autumn feel out there. The wind has been gusty for the past couple of days and it's been blowing a lot of the leaves off the trees. Even though it's barely September, the dried leaves crackle beneath your feet as though it's properly autumn. The strong winds feel wonderful as they whip around my face, blowing my hair into manageable tangles and surrounding me with a tornado of fallen leaves.

Unfortunately, the winds aren't so kind in other ways. When I came out of work on Friday, there was the cutest little creature lying on the sidewalk. It sort of looked like a baby alien, in a fetal position with little paws making little begging motions as they curled under its chin.

I didn't know what it was, to be honest. It was bald with a little mouse-like face, a rats tail but bigger than a baby mouse or rat. I ended up having to take a picture and my sister identified it as a baby squirrel.

It was hard seeing it so helpless like that. The wind had clearly blown it out of its nest and it must have fallen twenty feet at the very least. It was going to die, I knew that. But the optimist in me wanted to hope that maybe it was going to be fine so I scooped it up on a little piece of paper and gently laid it on softer ground and covered it partially with leaves, just in case its mother came looking for it.

Sadly, today, it's still there but it's no longer moving. It clearly succumbed to the shock of its fall. I think I might have to give it a proper burial. It was so tiny and helpless. Combined with the bunnies from this weekend, it was a sad sort of weekend for tiny newborn creatures.

It's interesting though that there are baby creatures around. I was always under the delusion that most mammal babies were born in the spring. Obviously not.

Yet even though it's starting to feel like autumn out there, I have to be careful not to get sucked into the delusion. This is the Midwest. In the Midwest, one day it may be a beautiful 70 degree day with a night temperature low of 50 degrees. Then, the next day, temperatures will rocket up to 95 degrees with a high humidity rate. This is why it snows sometimes in May and we have 85 degree days in December. You just can't predict it. In a way, that's fun. In other ways, when you're ready for the oranges and browns of Autumn and the hinted promise of winter snow, it's a bit of a disappointment when it's too hot for a jacket and the Halloween pumpkins turn brown and mushy in the heat.

Still, I'm starting to look forward to the cooler, crisper nights when it feels nice to sit outside, hands wrapped around a cup of pumpkin tea and smell the leaf fires that people are having in their yards.

I'm curious to see how the puppies handle the cooler temperatures. They were born in December so they have known winter but mostly, in their older puppy years, they've known only warm days with hot nights where they get hot in the sun. I have a feeling they're going to be bit babies when it comes to getting cold. Rory has already taken to crawling under the bedcovers on nights where I turn the air conditioning off and let the window fans bring in the cool night air. She's a bit of a bed hog too. She slowly worms her way over so that she's stretched horizontally across the bed. Since she's a dachshund and is quite long, this is quite a lot of space.

I'm trying to debate if I'll need to get the girls little coats for the winter. I tend to be opposed to dog clothes. They might look cute but it's weird to put clothes on a dog. Coats, on the other hand, aren't really clothes as much as necessities when it gets too cold and you have a shivering dog on your hands.

I probably shouldn’t look quite so far ahead. That would mean winter and my mother, who reads my blog, is genetically opposed to winter. It's best not to remind her that it's coming. She knows. She's already muttering about it even though it's several months away. I keep telling her to embrace autumn first in all it's apple-y goodness but she finds it hard to enjoy autumn because it means winter is not far behind.

Still, for me, I can't wait until autumn is officially here and I am able to burn my pumpkin spice candles, drink pumpkin tea and wish I liked pumpkin pie instead of just pumpkin flavoured things.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy the fact that even though it's still summer, autumn is cheating a little and barging its way in, forcing the leaves to fall a little early and the heat to ebb back a little. It's nice to have almost-chilly nights where the cool air makes sleeping a little easier, even if it does mean sharing my bedcovers with a dog with a cold nose.

Now, if her sister decides to sleep under the covers too, we might have a space issue.

Happy Wednesday!

Naughty Puppy Weekends...

It seems that, no matter how long the weekend, the weekend is never long enough.

I had big plans for this weekend. I left work a little early on Friday so I could hit the road with the puppies and The Interloper to head back to my parents before the traffic got too bad.

Apparently everyone else had the same idea. By the time we arrived, it was only a little sooner than we normally would have if I'd stayed at work all afternoon.

Nevertheless, it was still nice to get there. My parents are still in the UK so I was not only returning the Odious One to his home but also doing a spot of house sitting for the weekend. Since my parents don't get back until Tuesday, my sister is going to take care of Odie until they get back.

I had big plans for house sitting. I planned on having lunch with a friend on Saturday and then my sister and I were going to check out the very first 'fine dining' restaurant in my parent's town. It just opened. Given that my sister is now obsessed with Top Chef and I'm obsessed with food, we had decided to go see how really fine this dining was. It's a new restaurant, owned and operated by someone with whom my sister went to school. He trained in New York and is operating a 'big city restaurant with a small town feel' or something like that. His concept is farm to table which is very popular in big city restaurants. I think that's a fine concept...

...it's just, well, my parents live in Northern Indiana. In January when the ground is a frozen tundra, farm to table might be a wee bit of a hard concept to execute without having access to a big city selection of fresh produce suppliers. I salute the concept but am curious to see how it's executed.

It turned out that our dining plans were in vain, anyway. Even though the restaurant boasts "Walk In's welcome," we were turned away because there was a large party being hosted there and they were "full." Since it's only been open about two weeks and it was a Saturday night before 6 p.m. in a town who isn't used to "fine dining," we were a little perturbed. In addition, unlike most big city restaurants, this one does not politely post a menu on the window or outside so potential diners can, at least, see if it's worth making a reservation for the future or trying to 'walk in' on another night. Also, the website for a restaurant is not up and running. Perhaps I've watched too many Restaurant Wars on Top Chef but so far, this restaurant is not exactly winning me over. Since we weren't the only rejectees, we didn't feel so bad.

My sister and I ended up at a bar and grill type place in town. It was a nice evening in the end. It's rare when my sister and I get to hang out and we had a nice time grousing about being rejected from the other place.

Of course, no day is without stress. This weekend turned out to be quite stressful with the puppies.

Prior to my lunch on Saturday, I had gone to figure out where to put the puppies' crate for when I went out. I happened to glance out the window and saw little Rory running around in the farmer's field next to my parent's house. Given that my parents have a very large, very fenced-in portion of the yard set aside for the dogs and given that the farmer's field was not part of this area, I was a little alarmed. My parents live on a main highway. I think I've mentioned I've seen more than one dog get hit on that road. Needless to say, I flew into overprotective pet-parent mode and managed to coax Rory towards me by running out to her and bringing her inside to inspect for escape routes.

I thought I found it. Turns out, I had found one of them. There was another one I missed. Two more escapes later and I finally succeeded in stopping Rory from going AWOL again. I don't think she wanted to run away. I think she was just tracking the scent of all the wildlife that finds its way onto my parents' rural property.

Even though I got the fence fixed, it was still a bit of a worry for a while as to whether I really had managed to secure the fence.

It turned out I had. By Sunday morning, I stopped worrying.

I spent Sunday outside in the beautiful autumn-like day, writing on my little netbook. It was lovely. I took a break in the afternoon and went for a walk around my parent's large yard. I returned to the dogs' area and I heard the girls playing with a squeaky toy. "Funny," I thought. "I don't remember them bringing a squeaky toy that looked like that."

Turns out, it wasn't a squeaky toy. It was a very newborn baby bunny. They had found a nest. I managed to rescue the poor thing from the mouth of Sookie. I found somewhere out of the puppies' reach and I made a quick makeshift nest while I went to deal with the dogs. I hadn't thought about there being more.

There were more. Six more to be exact. Each time I rescued one, there was another waiting to be hunted by the puppies. I don't think they actually meant to kill them. Only one baby was bleeding and it was clear that it wasn't going to make it. The others were just carried gently in the puppies mouths as they showed each other their prize. I managed to rescue six of the seven.

I made their makeshift burrow cosy but I had a dreaded feeling they weren't going to make it. I made my brother, when he visited, come and look with me a few hours later. Miraculously, they were all alive.

In the end, my sister decided she would try to take them home and feed them with a dropper in hopes that they lived. However, I did some reading on the internet and discovered that while the intentions to save them were good, it was very unlikely, given their really young age, that they'd make it more than a day.

We decided to try to relocate them to a spot close to their old warren but out of the reach of the puppies. The best hope was that their mother would find them and adapt to the new location. The internet said that the scent of humans wouldn't bother them and the best hope to keep them alive was for their mother to keep taking care of them.

As of this afternoon, they were still alive. There were small signs that, perhaps, the mother came back last night. I'm hoping she's found them and will be ok with their new home. They were so tiny.

I was mad at the puppies for a while. It was hard seeing them hunt such tiny creatures. I know that's what they do; it's the dachshund nature. Yet it was still difficult to carry those tiny, pathetic, newborn creatures in the palm of my hand and not know if they would make it.

I'm hoping that they do. My sister is going to check on them. I'm hoping for the best.

Today, fortunately, the only puppy problems I had was Rory discovering the frogs in my parent's pond and trying to jump in the pond after them. She got her tummy wet but, fortunately, refrained from diving all the way in.

All in all, the weekend was not nearly the relaxing retreat I had in mind. Still, I got a lot of writing done, I rescued some baby bunnies (I hope) and I got to have some good company. I'd say, overall, that wasn't a bad way to spend three days.

Although next time, I think I'd rather it remained bunny-free.

Happy Tuesday!

Doggie Addictions

Hello. My name is Captain Monkeypants and I'm the mother of two addicts.

My children are not your classic children. They have four legs, long black bodies with a soft coat, black and tan faces and the biggest brownest eyes you ever saw. They also have tails.

Their addiction is not a classic one either. They're not after heroin, cocaine, crystal meth or even alcohol.

Their addiction is something far harder to control. It's bunnies.

Yes, my two darling little dachshunds, Ms. Rory Wrigglebottom and Ms. Sookie Stackhouse have gone and got themselves addicted to bunnies.

It may sound like an exaggeration but, trust me, they are as addicted and hardcore as any a drug addict when a rabbit is around.

I realized how bad it was this morning when, unlike most mornings, my puppies did not run outside, do their business and then come back to look for me while I was getting ready for work. Our usual routine is that I get dressed then they go outside. While they're outside, I get some biscuits ready for them and then I brush my teeth. While I'm brushing they usually come inside, ready for their morning breakfast biscuit treat.

This morning, they didn't come inside. I gave them a few minutes. I had time to put on my makeup. That doesn't take long since I tend to apply makeup so it doesn't look like I'm wearing makeup. That might not make sense to some readers but to most low-maintenance women, that makes sense. The goal is to look good without trying to look good.

I digress. I finally went to find out where my little puppies were. They were in the brush at the back of the garden. Since I didn't hear yips, the squeal of a captured bunny or anything else worrisome, I went back inside and continued my morning routine. Halfway through doing my hair, I heard excited yips.

The sound of excited yips means a couple of things. It means either Rory has found a hole to dig and though she's made quite a dent in the ground, she can't get any further. She's angry. Or it means she's found a bunny and is hunting it.

Since it was still partially dark and Rory prefers to dig in daylight, my heart sank. I went outside. Sure enough, my dachshunds were prancing and dancing around the tool shed, clearly having scented something alive, yummy and ripe for the capture. Sookie began to yip too. Worried about getting complaints from the neighbours- having heard what they have to say about the Dog Whisperer- I tried to get my puppies to come inside.

It didn't work. My usual commands fell upon oblivious ears. They were on the hunt. Nothing else mattered.

Ironically, in the half twilight, I managed to glimpse something small, furry and decidedly bunny-like streak out from under the tool shed to the brush area. The puppies didn't notice. They still attempted to get under the shed.

After getting angrier because I didn't really have time to deal with this, my tone got sharper. Normally, it's the tone that has an effect on both puppies and though they don't like it, they normally obey. Not today. The bunny was more important.

Since Rory was already halfway under the tool shed, I was worried she might actually get underneath so I picked her up. She wriggled and squirmed, completely focused on getting free, on hunting that bunny. She had time to throw me a, "What do you think you are DOING?" look before she squirmed again. I carried the wriggling pup inside. Sookie, always the more obedient one, followed. I shut the door.

I resumed my morning routine. Then I heard angry yips coming from the family room which contains the backdoor that leads out to the garden. Rory wanted to go back out. Sookie sat innocently by, acting like she didn't want to go out but I knew full well that as soon as the door opened, she'd fly out with her sister.

I told Rory "No" quite firmly and she came inside to sulk. Rather than their usual morning habit of tossing all the toys in their toy box on the floor, having a chomp on a couple, making a couple of others squeak, today they just lay there, sullenly watching me finish up.

Finally, it was time to move into the kitchen. I usually make my travel mug of tea, make the girls go out to do some last minute bathroom business during which time, I ready their crate. Then they usually come in, hop into their crate and then chomp their crate treat- a Waggin' Train chicken breast jerky piece- while I make my quiet and smooth exit out of the back door.

"Usually" is the key word here. Today was not a "usually" kind of day.

Today I reluctantly let my pups out, hoping that my scolding from earlier would get them back on track.

Silly Captain Monkeypants. I'm such an optimist.

They went back on the hunt. I don’t even know if they managed to stop long enough to go to the bathroom. All I know is when I heard excited yips, I was angry. I went out and I know that the real Dog Whisperer would have told me off but I shouted at my puppies. You're not supposed to yell at dogs when they do something bad. You're supposed to practice positive reinforcement.

Well, let me tell you, when two dachshunds decide they want to hunt a rabbit, you can say, "want a biscuit?" all you want and they don't hear you. "Want a biscuit," is usually Rory's favourite phrase. She knows what that means. Today, I might have been speaking Swahili. My temper rose. I'm the Alpha in our house and usually they know it.

It's a natural human reaction when you're angry to yell. I'm not proud but I yelled at my puppies. Sookie, thankfully, understood and she slunk inside, knowing she was in trouble. Rory, my little spunky pile of naughtiness, paid me no mind. I went to get her.

And she'd disappeared.

Yes, Rory W. Gilmore had managed to wriggle under the shed. I was alarmed. What if something bigger than a bunny was under there? What if she couldn't get out? What if….?

Then she emerged, covered with a selection of cobwebs. If she could have smiled, she would have been grinning like a loon, triumphant in her attempts to hunt down that smell. I'm not so sure she can't smile, actually. It certainly looked like it.

I'm guessing she didn't find the actual rabbit, only its scent. She finally succumbed to my command and came inside.

At lunchtime, both puppies managed to get under the shed while my back was turned. I covered up all the entrances I could find but they still kept searching. I sprayed them with the hose and they finally stopped. Tonight, I plan on getting some wood to block all the entrances to underneath the shed.

I did some reading online about my dogs' addiction to rabbits. Apparently, it really is likened to a drug addiction. When certain dogs that were bred to hunt like, say, dachshunds, catch the scent of prey, an endorphin kicks in and they basically get a natural high. Trying to stop them from hunting by offering treats was compared to trying to get a heroin addict to drink a Coke instead of shooting up. It's just not going to happen.

The only thing I can do is try to deter the hunting instinct by distracting them. However, even those that were offering this advice were pretty much saying, "good luck with that!" as they wrote it. Pretty much, I have two hunters on my hands.

My only worry is that they will get so frenzied that they'll find a way out to get to the bunnies that are always so close by. I don't want to have to resort to keeping them on a leash in the garden but that was one of the suggestions. As long as I can't see them finding an escape route, I think I'll just try to prevent any more tool shed burrowing and making sure they don't have any squealing, squirming bunnies in their jaws.

On the plus side, as the weather cools and the leaves fall, it might not be so easy for my little crackheads to scent their prey. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

Is there a rehab for dogs?

Happy Tuesday!

An Odd Dog Day

Today was a weird day. It began by me waking up rather early in the wee, wee hours of the morn' and having trouble getting back to sleep. Thereafter, when I finally did get back to sleep, I had the type of dreams that are not only perplexing, they're also exhausting because when you wake up, you feel like you were doing everything you were in the dream. In my case, it was outrunning a tornado which wasn't successful, by the way. You can't outrun a tornado, at least in a dream. Also, I suspect in reality.

Anyway, the morning at work was one of those where everyone is deadly silent and then suddenly one of the loudest people in the office starts to chit chat with someone outside in the hall. Normally, when there's been some noise, it's not as irritating but when it's been virtually silent with only the sound of keyboards being tapped or mouses (mice?) being clicked, it's rather grating.

It was also a day in which our company president, in one of his more jovial moods, decided to try to entice everyone in our area to join him in planning a skydiving excursion. I used to think skydiving would be fun. These days, my common sense kicks in and duct-tapes the mouth of fun so that it can't speak up. I wouldn't say I'd never do it. It's more that if I do plan on jumping out of a plane, I'd rather prefer it wasn't in the company of, say, our president and my coworkers. Also, I'd rather jump somewhere fun like, say, Hawaii.

I turned down the invitation to join him for lunch to plan the skydive. So did 95% of the people in our area. The other two were just there for the lunch, I'm sure of it.

By the time I did leave for lunch, I was rather looking forward to the comfort and cuddles of the puppies.

Well, it turned out that even that wasn't such an easy thing today. I let them out and I follow, intending to check to see if I have any more zucchini's starting to grow. I hear a strange, high pitched squealing. I turn to look at Rory and I notice she has this wriggling, squirmy, furry grey creature in her mouth and she's shaking it like she does her chew toys.

Horror sunk in as my brain caught up to my eyes and I realized she'd found a baby rabbit. I didn't even know there were any baby rabbits around- I've only ever seen the grown ones. I sprang into action and forced her to drop it. The bunny stupidly did not break for freedom but, rather, headed to the zucchini patch. The dachshunds followed.

No matter how much I tried to shoo them away from the petrified creature, Sookie and Rory were too fast. Sookie was triumphant. This time it was she who had the bunny and was shaking it like a chew toy. The bunny squealed, I shrieked, in anger, fear and just plain shock. I got Sookie to drop it long enough for me to see that the bunny was now injured; its leg was gashed and it was, as the bunnies of Watership Down, might say, tharn. I didn't think. Instead, I swooped in and grabbed it by the scruff of its little neck before Sookie could try again. I paused for a minute, trying to figure out the safest place to release it. I opted for dropping it gently over the fence into Possibly-Joe the plumber's garden. He's the only one around us without any dogs.

The bunny froze. I had a minor meltdown. I might joke about killing bunnies and squirrels and such but, seriously, I'm a huge softy. I can't see an animal hurt. It just upsets me. So I did the sensible thing; I called my dad.

My father is very rational. This is why he's good in situations like this. First of all, he thought the bunny might be hurt so badly it was dying. He told me to kill it. This elicited another wave of horror. I could not kill a bunny. Not a baby one, at least. When I told him the bunny appeared to be moving, he told me to watch it.

Well, the daft creature was only trying to hop back into our garden, wasn't it? Injured leg and all! Sookie and Rory were going balistic, trying to get at it. They had lost all sense of puppyness and were suddenly dedicated, devoted hunters.

I finally managed to scoop up each dog and shut them inside for a while so I could give the bunny a chance to get away.

In the end, I think it did get away but you better believe I'm keeping an eye on Sookie and Rory.

I think the worst part of the whole ordeal is that while I know that my dogs are, well, dogs, I tend to commit the bad flaw that the real Dog Whisperer would chastise- I tend to assign them human characteristics and forget that they're really just dogs. So, when I saw them with the bunny in their mouths, I was more horrified than I ought to have been. My sweet girls who never get meaner than to give me a playful nip when they're scrapping with each other and that's never vicious, more that I'm in the way....here they were, acting like predators.

I was reviled. I was angry with them. How could they be so cruel?

Then I began to think about it a little more logically which was much easier when the bunny had limped away. Dachshunds were bred to hunt small creatures such as rabbits and moles. It's their nature to hunt that which they can catch. This is why Sookie will spend hours stalking and capturing cicadas in the grass, flattening them with her paw, just watching. She's a hunter. Rory, too, will stalk birds, trying to creep up and then getting sulky when they fly away and she doesn't catch them.

Even though, to me, they had hunted an innocent baby rabbit, to them, they had captured a prize. They didn't know it was wrong to do that. It's just what they do. It's in their nature. You can't stop the natural order of things. Just like there is larger prey that would happily capture my puppies- I'm thinking of a rather large mountain lion because that's safe for me to imagine since there aren't any mountains and, thus, mountain lions around here- my puppies hunted that which they could.

It took a while but afterwards, I felt bad for being so angry with them. If I just shifted my perception, I realized that a few centuries ago, they would have only been doing the job that their humans expected. Just because we humans have evolved into big softies who often shudder at the thought of hunting 'innocent creatures', doesn't mean that the dachshund has. In actual fact, I should really have rewarded them for their first 'kill' even though, I hope, they didn't actually killed.

By the time I went back to work, I felt slightly traumatized but better about it. I wasn't angry with them anymore- just a little sad that I have two dogs rather than two cute little teddy-bears who happen to look like dogs.

The rest of the day was only slightly odd. Aside from being rather frustrated at a couple of coworkers, things were pretty much ok. I also learned that my good friend, Ms. P. from Texas, had her own dog trauma today as one of her dogs captured and killed a neighbour's chicken.

It seemed to be an odd-dog day all around.

In the end, I decided after talking to some coworkers and learning that they all had dog vs. baby bunny stories, it wasn't quite so awful. I felt even worse for being angry at my girls so I stopped at Pet Smart on the way home and got them a squeaky monkey to play with. It's about the same size as the baby bunny. I'm hoping it will entice them to play with that rather than hunt the bunny but I'm pretty sure it won't. They are what they are, bunny hunters and all.

And just like with kids, even when they do bad things, you can't help but love them.

Happy Thursday!

I stopped at Pet Smart on the way home