Missing Moses

Moses two days after I got him, 7-8 weeks old.

The first time I brought Moses home was in a small, soft-sided doggie carrier that fit under an airplane seat. In a few days, I’ll be bringing him home for the last time, in a small hardwood box with his nameplate on the side.

He was 22 months old in this photo.

I fell in love with the American Mastiff when I researched large dog breeds on the internet. It was November, 2004, and my 15-year-old Yorkie had just died. Fredericka Wagner of Flying W Farms in Ohio developed the breed by crossing English Mastiffs with Anatolian Shepherds. I loved his black facial mask and the fact that, unlike other Mastiffs, he didn’t  drool. Wagner had a waiting list longer than my leg, so she directed me to a woman in Houston, Texas, who had purchased a male and female from her.

I don’t know how I came up with the name Moses, but it proved appropriate. Crowds parted when he entered a room. Yet the most he ever weighed was 115 pounds, nowhere near the 180- 220 pounds the breed can reach. Perhaps his weight contributed to his longevity.

My research showed that a Mastiff’s life span is 10-12 years, but my vet said it was closer to 10. I praise God for that extra year and a half. He was showing signs of aging, though. His black mask had turned gray, he got winded after short runs, and had some arthritis in his hips. I had to help him up onto my bed, and he’d growl when I lifted his back legs. He started sleeping under my bed. He chased rabbits in his dreams, or perhaps he was simply scratching, but his thumping would wake me. I really missing that thumping.

He was more than just a dog. He was my buddy and my protector. I felt safe with him around. For the first time since I moved here, I feel alone and vulnerable. 

Morning coffee and afternoon wine on the front porch aren’t the same without him lying nearby, his head propped on the bottom rail as if it were a pillow. I used to love coming home to the peace and quiet of my log cabin in the woods. My house seems so empty without him, despite having two other dogs. The silence is deafening.

I miss his exuberant greetings. He reacted the same whether I had been gone a week,  overnight or for a quick trip to the grocery store. He would bare his teeth in a smile that, if you didn’t know him, you would take as a threat. But his tail would be beating the air like grandmother used to beat her quilts on the clothesline. 

January, 2016: You can see how gray his muzzle was.

I miss his smell. Each of my dogs has a different smell, and I loved his best. I used to lie down beside him on the floor and stroke his face and soak in his unique odor. His sleeping blanket retained a faint hint of him for a couple of weeks. At the vet’s, I kept sniffing his paws, trying to get that smell to embed in my sensory memory. The pads of his paws were still soft, even though his body was rigid.

I haven’t had an animal’s death to affect me like this since I was a child. For the first two weeks, waves of intense grief kept rolling over me, and I would sob until my nose stopped up. I fell into a deep depression, and though I’m gradually pulling out, I still see the world in shades of gray.

I look at his feeder and cry. I hear the doggy door flapping and I look for him. I catch a glimpse of Major, my yellow Lab mix, out of the corner of my eye, and for a nano-second I think it’s Moses.

I no longer have to lock him in my office when my grands are here. He had been aggressive with Gabe, and I couldn’t take any chances. I can get new sofa cushions now. He had torn up my old ones, and my office carpet (down to the subfloor), with his “nest building.” I can leave chicken thawing in the sink, bananas and butter on the counter. I remember coming home one night to find an empty crock pot on the floor, the pork chops gone.

I have many precious memories of him. I don’t want to forget them, but I do wish I could remember without hurting.

“His spirit is probably out there running through the woods,” my friend Annette texted me. “He will be near you always.”

Yes, he will. But I just can’t touch him any more.

This is the one I chose for his urn.
December 26, 2010

Goodbye, Moses

Moses loved to ride to barn with me in my UTV.

It’s the nightmare of every owner of an aged pet. You go away for a trip fearing you’ll find him dead when you return. This time, my nightmare came true.

About 4 p.m. Friday, July 15, I got a call from Jesse, who feeds my barn animals, waters my plants and checks on my dogs when I’m away. Moses, my 11.5-year-old American Mastiff, didn’t come out his doggy door to bark at him. I was at Gulf Shores, taking my chair and umbrella back to the condo after my last day on the beach. My daughters and grands had already left, but I had paid for seven nights and wanted my money’s worth.

Jesse went through the house calling for Moses. He says he checked upstairs and down. He jumped in my UTV and rode my trails, then walked one or two that were impassable by vehicle. After taking his brother home and buying more gas for the UTV, he returned for another trip through the woods. He stayed until sunset, when he couldn’t see to search any longer.

I feared the worst, that Moses had gone off into my woods and died. I texted my daughters and a close friend, Diane, here in Ashville, to pray. Then I packed up and left. I knew I wouldn’t get home until after midnight, but I couldn’t have slept at the condo anyway for worrying. Somehow, I felt that if I were home, he might show up. I was determined to search my property myself, regardless of the hour I got back, if he didn’t.

All the way home I alternately prayed, cried, felt peace, then repeated the cycle. Amanda and Diane tried to reassure me that he probably ran off into the woods chasing a deer or squirrel. “He’ll come back,” they said. It would have been totally uncharacteristic of Moses to stay gone for hours. So I knew he was either dead or dying. I just prayed I would find him before the coyotes did.

Maggie, my mixed-breed rescue, and Major, the lab I share with my next-door-neighbor, greeted me excitedly when I pulled up to my house about 12:45 a.m. Saturday. I called Moses’ name, holding onto a glimmer of hope that he would bound up to my car after all. He didn’t. Once inside, I noticed an unusual odor, not of decay, just something funky. Major pointed his nose toward the loft and sniffed. I knew where Moses was. Sure enough, I found him up there, behind my childhood doll bed and the open wooden crates my daddy built to store my LP albums. How Jesse missed him I’ll never know, because he was only partially hidden. 

After thanking God for closure, I came unglued. I’ve been a basket case ever since. I called Jesse and Diane to help me get him downstairs. We brought him into my office on a sheet, and I covered him with a quilt and locked the doors. Jesse left, but Diane stayed until after 3 a.m.

Before she left, and again after I woke up from a brief two hours of sleep, I kept going into my office and stroking his head and legs. I knew I had to get him out of the house so I wouldn’t keep doing that, but so much of me wanted to keep him here a little longer. I recalled that Roy Rogers had Trigger stuffed, but I couldn’t bear seeing Moses every day without hearing him breathe. It had been a week since I had seen him alive. I kept wishing I had been here, to cuddle him and whisper soothing words to him as he lay dying. 

Jesse and Diane came back at 9 Saturday morning. He helped me load Moses into my car, she accompanied me on Moses’s last ride to the vet’s office. The crematorium will pick him up Monday. I’ll get his ashes back in a week or two, in a box mounted with his name plate and at least one photo frame. The package includes a paw print in plaster and some hair clippings.

I sobbed all over the vet’s assistants. I felt like a blubbering idiot. I know this sounds morbid, but I had them take my picture with him, as I cradled his head one last time.  

The vet will check him over to make sure there are no puncture wounds, because of the snakes in my woods. I didn’t see any wounds, though. He looked as if he had gone to sleep and his heart just stopped beating.

I’m so grief-stricken, I fear mine will do the same.

Horse Calamity

Tuesday night was supposed to be a quiet evening alone with a glass of wine, after having the grands here for five days. My tranquility was shattered by a phone call from my next-door-neighbor, Cameron, around 7 p.m. informing me that my horse had her belly caught on a fence between our pastures.

Fearing the worst, I jumped on my UTV and tore out to the back. It was Mallory, my TWH mare. Her front half was on my side of the fence and her back end on Cameron’s side. She had bent the fence a little trying to get over, but appeared unharmed. She was standing patiently while Cameron was trying to get the fence down in that section so he could free her. Fortunately, I had replaced the barbed wire there with horse fencing several years ago, or we’d have had a mess on our hands.

I went back to the barn for a halter and lead rope. I put them on Mallory, and when Cameron laid the fence down a little, I tried to coax her across. When she stepped forward, she caught a piece of fence wire under the shoe of her left front hoof. Cameron used broken wire cutters to twist and bend the wire enough to free her. Then he spent a few more minutes pulling that piece of wire from between shoe and hoof. I pulled the last two inches out when I got her back to the barn. 

I don’t know how long she had been straddling that fence when Cameron’s son spotted her, or how long Cameron had been out there trying to free her. If they hadn’t seen her when they did, she could have stood there all night and possibly died of dehydration. If she had panicked, instead of remaining cool, calm and collected throughout the ordeal, she could have pulled her shoe and part of her hoof off trying to free herself. The question in my mind, though, was how in the world did she into such a position? 

I know she’s in season, and Cameron’s stud horse is in the pasture next to mine. He was nonchalantly munching grass while we worked on Mallory, as if to say, “Who, me? I had nothing to do with it.” Wednesday morning, when my farrier came for his regular trimming and shoeing visit, he surmised that she had backed up and kicked at that stud, as if to say, "Not today, dear, I have a headache." Then her hind legs came down on the other side of the fence.

Several times that night I thanked God for pulling her through unscathed. Turns out she wasn't unscathed. My farrier pointed out several cuts and scrapes on her hind legs, and the swelling from her hocks (the rear-facing knee-like joints) to her thighs. The vet came out and determined her wounds were in the soft tissues, not the muscle or tendon, and not deep enough to require stitches. He gave her antibiotics and a shot of Banamine for pain.

His prescription included me giving her another pain shot around 7 p.m. that night and one a day for the next three days, putting an antibiotic powder in her feed once a day, and running cool water over her hocks for 10-15 minutes twice a day until the swelling goes down. 

Praise God for a calm horse and a quick-thinking neighbor.

CHIGGERS & TICKS & FLEAS, OH MY!

They’re eating me alive.

It took me a couple of days to figure out it was chiggers. I pulled a seed tick off me. It was in an unmentionable place. I itched in so many places, I thought it was from mosquito bites, or even fleas that my dogs had brought in. Fleas just laugh at the Frontline-Plus I use on them, so I sprinkled  them with Seven Dust, an old remedy that seems to be working.

Then I remembered my first encounter with those tiny red bugs known as chiggers. It was right after I had moved to this rural area. I had trimmed weeds in my front “yard” half a day, and by that evening, my ankles were covered in chigger bites.

I thought I had protected myself against any insect bites this year. I have used Deep Woods Off, then an organic bug repellant that smells heavily of citronella. In this heat, though, I sweat off any protection within an hour, even during early-morning forays.

Chiggers live in the woods, in tall weeds and in tall grasses. Hello, I’m surrounded by all three. Chiggers jump on you and hitch a ride. Only their larvae bite, a fact that offers no comfort at all. Those are microscopic in size. Contrary to folk lore, they don’t burrow into your skin. They don’t have to. They can, however, stay attached and feeding for several days.

Like an other-world creature from a sci-fi movie, their claws help them grab onto your skin. Then a chigger attaches its mouth to the skin and injects saliva. Ugh! The saliva contains an enzyme that breaks skin cells down to liquid form. Your body responds by hardening skin cells around the saliva, creating a tube through which this critter sucks the dissolved skin cells. Double ugh.

What makes them so insidious is that they like to bite in tender, moist places like the folds of your skin and places where clothing fits tightly to the skin. In order words, around the ankles, waist, armpits, crotch or behind the knees, I have bites in all those places except my armpits. So pardon me if I don’t show you a photo of my bites.

Summer and fall are prime time for chigger bites, of course. They aren’t active when the temperature falls below 60 degrees and die off when it drops below 42 degrees. Now you know why I hate summers.

Nothing itches worse than chigger bites. Not mosquito bites. Not even tick bites. The itching they cause is so intense you almost claw your skin off scratching. I’ve tried topical Benadryl gel, spray-on Benadryl, a generic Benadryl capsule, Neosporin cream with a pain-relieving agent, and Ivy-Dry spray. The latter does nothing but burn like hell. 

You aren’t supposed to use oral Benadryl while using the topical. Bummer. But I saw no such warnings against Neosporin with Benadryl capsules. So that’s what I’ve resorted to. That combo brings a little relief, at least for a few hours. Then I repeat the process.

When I get to heaven, I’m going to ask God why in the world he created chiggers. For the life of me, I can’t see what purpose they serve, other than to make people miserable. 

Now excuse me while I scratch.

Schedules vs. Flexibility

Mallory is always a joy to ride.

I’ve never been much of a scheduled person. I can make out schedules with the best of them, but sticking with them, well, that’s another story.

My biggest excuse is that I like flexibility. Trouble is, I’m too darned flexible, so I find that I only accomplish what I have to in order to meet a deadline. Christian psychologist Dr. James Dobson calls it, “the tyranny of the urgent.” I tend to see after whatever I feel is urgent, letting other stuff slide. Then I get frustrated because I didn’t do the things I really wanted to do, like ride one of my horses.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need some structure in my life. That means scheduling time with my horses and the gym. I want to ride more, and I need to exercise to gain some strength and flexibility. It’s one thing to lack the strength to pull myself up onto a horse without a mounting block or step-stool. I can rationalize that because it’s better for the horse if a rider doesn’t pull on the saddle with her entire body weight. It’s a sad state of affairs, however,  when I have trouble throwing my leg over the saddle.

So, I came up with a simple, flexible schedule that should allow me more time with my horses and the gym. In the mornings, before the summer temperatures and humidity squeeze the breath and electrolytes out of me, I’ll ride and exercise, but on alternate days. Later in the evenings, when it has begun to cool down, I might work on outside projects, like refinishing porch furniture and planting succulents. I’ll stay indoors and write or do other indoor projects when the sun is at its highest. When winter comes, I’ll ride during the middle of the day, and stay indoors when it’s cold.

I got off to a good start this week, and feel so much better emotionally for having done so. Monday I rode my TWH, Mallory. Tuesday I went to the gym, Wednesday I rode my Cobb pony, Jazzy, and Thursday I was at the gym again. Ideally, I should be at the barn or gym by 7 a.m., but that hasn’t worked exactly as planned. Nevertheless, I’ve been back in the house, showered and dressed by 10:30 each morning, which ain’t half bad. The idea is to rotate the horses, so that I ride Mallory twice and Jazzy once the first week, then Jazzy twice and Mallory once the second week, and so on. That way, each horse will get some much-needed exercise at least three times over a two-week period. The benefits for me are psychological and emotional. 

Jazzy isn’t as excited about my plan as I am. Unlike Mallory, who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, Jazzy can be ornery when she hasn’t been ridden in a while. That’s especially true when we’re leaving the barn. (It’s called barn sour.) She dumped me off Thursday. After lunging her in the arena for a few laps in each direction, I got back on and rode for half an hour. Thank goodness for Epsom salts and Tylenol, but my left hip hurts as bad as a country singer’s heartache and I’ll have a hitch in my git-along for a few days.

I would ride Mallory again today, but I have a movie date with my grandsons at the Summit. Like I said, it’s a flexible schedule.

Ben and George and Me

I have this thing going with two of our country’s Founding Fathers. 

It began when I met Ben Franklin at his gravesite in the Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia last week.That in itself was rather disconcerting.Then he started getting personal.

“Are you married, madam?” he asked politely. 

“No, I’m a widow,” I replied, still reeling from the shock of seeing him hovering around his own grave.

“I am a widower. I have asked two (or was it three?) women in Paris to marry me, but they turned me down.”

While that wasn’t exactly a proposal, it was the closest I’ve come to in many a year.

He graciously agreed to pose for a photo with me. I must say he’s rather photogenic for a ghost.

Next day, we (Carol Stern and I) moseyed over to the National Constitution Center. We found the “Headed to the White House” exhibit about presidential campaigns too noisy and too busy. We did enjoy pretending to sign legislation in the Oval Office mock-up. 

The most fascinating exhibit, however, was Signers Hall. That’s where I again encountered old Ben, who stiffly agreed to let me sit on his lap for another photo.

George Washington was hovering nearby. I didn’t realize how tall that man was! He posed with me, too. But I read somewhere that he has wooden teeth, so I refused his kiss for fear of splinters.

The foregoing exhibit features 42 life-size bronze models of our Founding Fathers that are amazingly, well, life-like. They are in various poses, some sitting, some standing, many talking together in small groups. The artist(s) who cast them used portraits and descriptions to get their heights, features and clothes as accurate as possible. It was great fun wandering among these guys.

We learned how the term “gerrymandering” came about. Being a wordsmith, I always enjoy learning the origins of words and phrases. While serving as governor of Massachusetts, Eldridge Gerry (a signer of our Declaration of Independence) approved a salamander-shaped district to help his party win seats in the 1812 state senate election. Mapping electoral districts to favor one political part over another quickly came to be known as “gerrymandering.”

I’m not a history buff, but my Philadelphia experience in general, and Signers Hall in particular, piqued my interest to the point that I ordered a book called, Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed The Declaration of Independence. There were 56 of them, by the way.

Can’t wait to read about these "new" men in my life.

The Cowgirls Rode Away

I love to travel. I love visiting new places, experiencing new adventures and making new friends along the way. 

That’s what made my trip to Las Vegas last month so special. Annette and I went to see and hear George Strait in concert, and that was, hands down, the best part of the trip. But way up there in a tight race for second place was horseback riding in Red Rock Canyon and making new friends from Texas, Illinois and Ireland.

Diana Hood, Annette Greaves, Elaine Miller
 gather around Barbara Garza.

Annette was already Facebook friends with Barbara Garza. She and her husband, Joe, live in Bloomington, Illinois, about three hours from where Annette lives in Streamwood (near Chicago). We had tried to hook up with the Garzas when we were in Texas for the GSTRC last year. They were headed to Del Rio and stopped for the night in San Antonio, but we left for Bandera before we could meet.

In Vegas, we had brunch with Barbara and Joe, along with Diana Hood of Austin, Texas, at the MGM Hotel Sunday after the two weekend concerts. Diana has followed George since his honky-tonk and dance hall days at the very beginning of his career. We enjoyed listening to her stories about some of the nice things he has done for some of his loyal, long-time fans.

The horses were saddled and waiting.

That afternoon, a van picked us up at the hotel for our Sunset Trail Ride in Red Rock Canyon. It was just half an hour from the Strip, but in that short time we made three new friends among our fellow adventurers. Sam and Irene Marshall and Sam’s sister, Gwen Tener, were from Ireland, I love an Irish accent, but had a little trouble understanding what Sam was calling his wife. It sounded like “Iron,” but it was spelled, “I-r-e-n-e.” We had a wee laugh about that.

The five of us exchanged Facebook monikers, email and snail-mail addresses. Sam and Irene are planning to come back to the States next year for a three-month motorcycle tour of the South. Naturally, I extended Southern hospitality by inviting them to stay with me when they come through Alabama. They reciprocated with an invitation to Annette and I to stay with them should we get to Belfast or Bangor, County Down, in Northern Ireland. I was sincere in my invitation, and so were they. 

The trail ride was supposed to last an hour and 45 minutes, followed by a cowboy dinner. We had such a good time, just moseying along at a gentle pace and looking at the spectacular scenery, that it didn’t seem that long. Perhaps the greenhorns thought differently, but I could have ridden another two hours. 

Red Rock Canyon was named a National Conservation Area in 1990 and is run by the Bureau of Land Management. Known for its rock formations and their vivid colors, it would be worth exploring by car, foot or a longer horseback ride. The color of some of the outcrops in those Aztec Sandstone cliffs is due to the presence of iron oxide or hermatite. Exposure to the elements caused iron minerals to oxidize or “rust,” resulting in vivid red, orange and brown-colored rocks. 

Spiky cacti lined our trail as we wound through the Mojave Desert. We saw lots of Joshua Trees, which are just as interesting dead as they are alive. Oh, and a desert bunny hopped along with us for a while.

Of the eight people who paid for the ride, plus the three trail guides, I’d say only two of us weren’t eating steak. “What kind of cowgirl eats fish?” someone asked me, in a good-natured chide. But man, that salmon was good. It was cooked with a special seasoning that the trail boss makes and sells online. I think he’s missing a grand opportunity by not selling it on site. The salmon had lemon slices on top and was wrapped in aluminum foil and cooked on the huge outdoor gas range where the steaks, corn-on-the-cob, potatoes with onions and cowboy beans were cooked. I’m drooling all over my keyboard as I write. We finished by roasting marshmallows over a fire pit and pressing them between two chocolate-chip cookies for a variation on S’mores.

Compadres on and off the trail

When Annette and I discovered that our new Irish friends were staying at the same hotel we were in, we invited them to one of its bars for a drink and a chat. Sam went up to his room, leaving us women to ourselves. Annette drank water, but I introduced Irene and Gwen to an Italian margarita. During the hour we were perched on those bar stools, the three of us bought a round each! Irene decided it was her new drink, and later posted a picture of herself in her red-white-and-blue cowboy hat drinking one in the Vegas airport.

It was a great ending to a great day.