Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Pets

  • No Resident Pack Anymore

    When we first built the house by the pond, we moved in with a pair of coyotes for neighbors.  He was a beefy built coyote – deep chested, and occasionally reported as a small wolf.  He wasn’t – just happened to have a blockier, larger size body than the typical coyote.  It was only after Renata got the game cameras set up for a year or so that we realized his consort was missing her left eye – and their hunting patterns always included him on her blind side.

    Our old pair of coyotes are gone now – and they were good neighbors.  Don’t know if someone shot the old coyote, or if it was just old age and decrepitude that took the two from their home on the hill – but we no longer have local coyotes.  The pair  have been replaced by packs that come in from 3 directions – west, north and southeast.  The blessing of modern technology – trail cameras can provide a lot of information about where predators are coming from.

    We’ve had a feral cat population close by for years – living by the trailer court and north aways, and wandering from there to our field and to the school.  The trail cameras show that the three new packs are cat hunters.  Not a surprise – we lost one young house cat last year, but the trail camera leaves no doubt.  

    Before the feral cat population grew so large, the rodent population in the hayfield was fairly well controlled by resident weasels.  I suspect that the resident weasels were taken by the feral cats – for whatever reason, with the weasels gone, the vole population exploded.  The voles did enough damage to the fruit trees in the garden that I responded with bait stations to poison the voles.  

    I’m not real sure what the change in coyote population will bring – but 3 packs coming in to hunt cats is starting to make a big dent in the feral cat population.

  • Thoughts on a very small dog

    Thoughts on a very small dog

    A couple years ago, my little dog died.  Today I can celebrate his 14 years of life.  A dog’s life is always too short. 

    Shadow was a baby doll or teddy bear Pom – carefully bred for a short nose, a high forehead, and an all around cute face.  Not my choice, but I had no problems confusing him with my first Pom.  Brandy had been a partner.  Shadow was a pet.  He began earning his kibbles with my mother-in-law.  He didn’t care if she called him by the wrong name, or even if she called him cat.  As he saw his first job, it was to spread joy in an Alzheimer’s unit.  He tackled it with enthusiasm.

    He was, by choice, a South Dakotan.  Our 3 acres, with a shelterbelt and pond, was the right size ranch for a 6 pound Pomeranian.  Fortunately, he grew up without the presence of border collies, so he developed an unorthodox and safe style of encouraging invading cattle to depart.  There was the absolute joy of intimidating herons that would try harvest fish in his pond.  He was convinced that rabbits were evil and filled with bad – he had chased one under the Quonset, only to have snow slide from the roof, trapping him.  Another time, he saw a rabbit hopping toward him, and set up an ambush – only to learn that it was a jackrabbit, and larger than he.  He was a South Dakotan.  Montana was too big – he tried, but the pond and the field were just too large. 

    As an old dog, he would accompany me through Home Depot, where young women working there would recognize him and call him by name.  He had always had a soft spot for girls – he assumed that all of my daughter’s friends came to visit him.  I suppose to a certain extent he was right.  The ladies adored him.  As he aged and couldn’t walk, he could still work from the pickup, on the seat, wrapped in my jacket, with the radio tuned to Rush Limbaugh. I’d be outside, fencing, cutting wood, or just about any job I could park a pickup alongside. When Hannity came on to his channel, he would bark to have the radio turned off, and return to the house.

    Probably his greatest service was recognizing that Samantha had became face-blind after the truck hit her.  He appointed himself as her service dog, taking a station to her side if she was meeting someone he knew, and interposing his body between his girl and any stranger.  His failing vision took that duty from him, but he led us into understanding that a Pomeranian can identify enough people and objects to be a service dog for the face-blind.  He hated his replacement, she had taken his job and his girl.  I suppose that, in reality, I was his second friend, the one who would take him for rides, walks and eventually just carry him as I walked.