Farm Fresh Blog

As The Kids and The Neighbors will tell you, around here, you can easily plan floods and calving around one thing - Other Half WILL be out of town.  This is such a certainty that I'm sure the Weather Man consults Other Half's work schedule to determine when torrential rains will hit this area. (If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'!)

The rancher next door also knows this is when the calves will drop. And I will call him in a panic because labor is too long, or a calf is looking puny, or the mother hasn't passed the afterbirth, or for whatever other cow-related problem that he will climb the fence and solve for me.

So it was that despite the fact that Texas was once again in the throes of another drought, Other Half and Aja left, and guess what? The Weather Man called for Horrendous Rain & Hail. And I had 8 dogs to juggle. And I had to go to work. And a cow was about to calve . . .

So I left for work. Sure enough I caught a murder. (we say this like it was a virus) Anyway, I caught a murder. The worst of the storm held off until we were just about to load up and leave. (Thus insuring a wet run to the truck and the joy of wearing wet clothing the rest of the night.)  The storm was so bad that even while creeping along, when my suburban reached the top of a high-rise overpass, I literally felt the truck slide across the highway as it was pushed sideways by windgusts. (This, Ladies & Gentlemen, scared the crap out of me. Being pushed by the wind off the top of an overpass is NOT on my Bucket List! Just sayin'. . .)

Anyway, to speed the story up, I was frantic to get home and get my dogs out of the weather, and with Dear Friend Jeannie and her husband on the phone as my co-pilots, they safely navigated me through flooding situations and I arrived at home shortly after the worst of the storm had passed.

Even in the dark I could tell we had received a tremendous amount of rain. My garden was an island. We had received pea-sized hail but the baseball hail that smashed windows down the road had skipped us. Nevertheless, the dogs were frantic to get inside, everyone except Briar. Briar is a not a wuss. She puts on a patient face and deals with whatever the weather sends her way.

            And Lily.

Lily laughs in the face of thunder. In fact, she barks at the thunder and taunts the storm. This never fails to scare the beejeebers out of Trace, Cowboy, Ice, and Oli, who ARE scared of storms.

So I put Oli and Trace in the living room. I put Cowboy in the Muck Room which joins the bedroom. I put Ranger in a kennel in the bedroom and I went to bed with Dillon and Lily. Ice, (The Black Wolf), passed out on the bedroom floor. I think after the hailstorm, she was such an emotional wreck that she had nothing left, mentally or physically.  I went to bed at 1:30 AM. At 2:00 AM I heard a brief growl from Dillon and the bedroom exploded with breaking glass.

WTF! (pardon my French)

  "Ma bad."

It would appear that Cowboy heard the thunder roll and decided that he wanted in the bedroom. Cowboy was not taking another chance with a hailstorm. Dillon growled at him through the door, and the rest is history. A pane of glass (1 foot by 2 feet!) was all over the carpet and I was left to pick up glass for the next thirty minutes and figure out how I was going to plug the jagged hole. A cold wind was already blowing through the Muck Room and into the bedroom.

Both dogs were fine. Not a scratch on them.

I considered calling Other Half (happily sleeping in his hotel room with just one dog). I wanted to wake him up and scream at him for leaving me with this mess - by myself! AGAIN!

But I "cowgirled up" and found a metal sign and some gorilla tape. The problem was fixed enough to at least get back to bed. By then it was 3 AM. I put Cowboy in a kennel in the living room and tried to go to bed again. I was just getting snuggled back to sleep, listening to the thunder roll, when I heard a scratch at the bedroom door.

"Mom?"

I ignored him.

"Mom?"

I ignored him.

"Mom? Can I come sleep with you?"

The scratch was quiet, soft, pleading.

 The Troll Dog doesn't ask for much, but when he does want human attention, I try to listen to him. So I got up and opened the bedroom door. Oli shoved past Trace and rocketed into the bedroom.

(Big Bad Police Dog had decided that hail storms are NOT on her Bucket List.) Trace smiled at me and hopped in bed. Okay, whatever.

I climbed back in bed and thought of Other Half in his hotel room. One dog. Clean sheets. No storm. No mud. Lucky bastard. Then I curled up with his Labrador. My Border Collie snuggled in behind my legs. The Malinois snuggled in front of my legs. And Trace the Troll nestled himself on top of Other Half's pillow.  The thunder rolled in the distance. I thought about the hail damage and what tomorrow would bring when the sun came up - in less than 4 hours.