Month: May 2018

Terri and I hadn’t been living on Strathmore Drive in the city, when she proposed that we get a dog.

“What kind?” I asked. “How about a German-Shepherd” she responded.

When she was single and living in Portland, Maine, she had a shepherd named “Caleb,” who was, by all accounts, the model dog.

I’d had dogs growing up but never a pure breed and never a shepherd.

Our dogs were mutts that came from somewhere which now escapes me.

My sister, Jane, brought home what appeared to be an escaped junk yard dog, that she named “Lucky.”

He didn’t like anybody but her.

When my brother Jim came home from his tour with the poverty program, VISTA, it was a few weeks before the dog would let him in the house without one of us having to meet him at the door.

Lucky stayed with us for a number of years during which we had to pick the mail up at the post office because he would take the seat off the mail carrier’s pants.

His encounters with the mail carrier weren’t by chance.

He dug a pretty good sized hole under a bush next to our house and would lie in it up to his neck and charge out when the mail carrier least expected it.

On some nights he would refuse to come in the house and would lie outside chasing traffic-particularly motorcycles.

My father would stay up all night with the screen door propped open and try to entice him into the house, when suddenly a motorcycle would go by.

The next day I heard him yelling, “You’re no Goddamn good. You stay out all night. You don’t come home. You keep everyone up!”

It took a while for it to register that he was yelling at the dog and not one of my brothers.

Lucky disappeared as mysteriously as he came.

One of the neighbors told us that they thought they saw him go by in the back of a pick-up truck but he neglected to get the license number.

Terri came across an ad in one of the weeklies that said a German-shepherd was up for adoption to a good home.

We made arrangements to visit.

My first impression of Buster was that he was the largest German-Shepherd I had ever seen.

He came into the house and proceeded to go from table to table picking up any toy the children had left behind.

The owners told us that he was only a year old but they decided that since they had a number of small children that they just didn’t have the time to spend with him.

They assured us that he was very good with children and I was reassured by seeing that he seemed quite gentle around them.

Terri and I told them we would talk and let them know what our decision about taking him would be.

I have to say that he was one of the most beautiful dogs I had ever seen.

We both came away with the impression that he seemed quite gentle and, since Terri had experience with shepherds, we decided to adopt him.

We brought him home and our adventures started.

Probably the first thing we learned was that if he was outside off the leash, he went completely deaf.

You could call his name until you were blue in the face and he wouldn’t come until he felt like it.

That never changed.

We both had some real safety concerns about this.

He had moved from the country to the city and the traffic was much denser so the possibility of his getting injured or killed by a car was very real.

Our second concern was that he could get dognapped and wind up in one of those dog fighting rings that seemed to be proliferating at that time.

Since we were both working it wasn’t fair to leave him in the house all day and we learned that there were down sides to that.

Shepherds, in particular, suffer from separation anxiety and during the short period we struggled to come up with a solution, he destroyed a couch in our television room.

The solution would have to come fast.

I got estimates from a number of fence companies but they were not only expensive but there was no guarantee he couldn’t jump the fence.

Strathmore was a beautiful neighborhood and the last thing I wanted to do was put up a chain link fence that looked like the second coming of Attica Correctional Facility.

As it turned out, the solution was across the driveway.

We shared a driveway with Kevin and Denny Harrigan who became great neighbors and great friends.

They had a female chocolate lab named Casey and they were wrestling with the same dilemma.

While neither of our yards alone afforded the dogs much room to run, if we fenced both of them they had plenty of room to play.

We hit upon putting an invisible fence that ran around the perimeter of both our houses and the dogs would be able to keep each other company and have room to play.

It would prove to be one of the most entertaining sagas I ever was privileged to witness.

More to come next week.

Once Donovan passed away, Terri was faced with a dilemma.

She had only two mules and taking one out for a ride would throw the remaining one into a panic because of separation anxiety.

The only recourse was to get another equine.

To my surprise, she wasn’t going to restrict her choice to mules.

Horses were in the running so to speak.

She spread the word among her riding group and everyone was on the lookout for a likely candidate.

Throughout most of 2016, Terri checked out a number of likely prospects to no avail.

Finally in October 2016, she learned from a friend about a Tennessee walking horse that she might sell.

Tennessee walkers are prized for their smooth gait.

When I was considering what kind of equine to buy, my friend and horse guru, Gordon Bellair, was very high on my getting a Tennessee walker.

Instead, because I’m a chicken at heart when it comes to heights, I opted for a mule because they were so conscious of their own safety that they won’t do anything dangerous to themselves and, presumably, me.

If I’d chosen another path, I would probably have missed out on my pal, Donovan.

Terri and several of her riding group went to look at the Tennessee walker and, as promised, he provided a very smooth ride.

Cody came home that fall.

Once Cody became part of the herd, there was a change in the pecking order.

Cody is younger and bigger than Franklin and established himself as the barnyard boss.

Where once Franklin was able to bully Donovan out of his grain, he now found himself on the receiving end.

I can’t say my heart broke for him.

Like all of her other equines, Terri spent a lot of time doing ground work with him in the round pen learning commands.

Cody proved to be an apt student picking up the commands quickly.

He was so responsive, that during a gathering of her riding group at our house, she remarked on how pleasant it was to not have to play tug of war with a 1,500 pound mule on the other end of a rope who didn’t want to come.

“Who knew?” she said out loud.

After a pregnant moment of silence, her friend, Laurie Bobbett, said “We all did,” to a roomful of laughter.

While the third equine would appear to have solved the separation anxiety that would have arisen with the mules, Terri wasn’t done acquiring a herd.

I should have recognized that in the way we accumulate animals.

We now have two dogs, two cats and three chickens.

Occasionally someone will ask me if I have considered building an ark.

The truth is that I have.

The problem is that I would be tempted to set sail without them.

Earlier this year, Terri and her girlfriends went to a horse sale and she spotted a paint horse.

She was told that he came from Kentucky but the reality is that he could have come from anywhere.

He’s a nice, quiet, responsive and obedient guy who will be occupying the fourth stall that is being readied for him.

He is presently being boarded at Terri’s riding instructor, Meg Titus’s barn.

His name is Finn and he’ll be arriving home soon.

I don’t know if he is the last of the menagerie or whether there is another set of animals in our future.

The only prediction I am prepared to make is that when I ultimately go on to my great reward, those mules will be fighting over my recliner.

This also brings me to the end of my series on our animals.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I don’t know what I’ll be blogging about next weeks.

If it’s about current events, public officials or politicians at the state or national level, we will have segued from half-asses to complete asses.

When was the last time we got to do that?

Once all of the mules arrived home, they settled into a somewhat mundane existence punctuated by their periodic parties and escapes.

Franklin became the boss of the pasture, a role which Donovan was willing to abdicate and Tulip never expressed any interest in.

Donovan was content to hang out, eat grain and hay and was agreeable to the riders who wanted to saddle him up.

According to the woman I purchased him from, he had been part of a “hack line” at one of the resorts in the Catskills who ferried guests interested in a trail ride through the adjacent mountains.

He gave every indication that this had been his lot in life. Once saddled up, he was perfectly willing to munch grass in the yard while he waited for the other equines to join the trail ride.

In fact, munching grass became his focus in life.

If we went out on a trail ride, there would be an endless repetition to it.

He would walk six feet, stop and eat grass.

Walk another six feet and stop and eat grass.

There was no solution to this pattern.

You could kick his haunches, tap him with a crop, whatever, he would move another six feet and stop for grass.

I came to the conclusion that if Donovan and I had to ride to California, like they did two hundred years ago, we would both be dead from old age by the time we reached Ohio.

At the same time, I came to enjoy the ride, if you could call it that.

He would dutifully follow the other mules or horses and never let them out of his sight even if we stopped for grass.

Despite being the world’s most nervous trail rider, I became confident enough on his back to bring along a camera and take pictures of country and scenery you might never see.

Sometimes, we would be on a trail ride and others wanted to gallop.

Donovan and I didn’t.

“Make him run,” I’d be told. “He doesn’t want to run,” I’d respond, “I don’t want him to run either.”

In time, he became our go-to mule.

Friends would come out with their children and when they saw the mules, the first thing they would do is look at Tulip and ask Terri and I, “Do you think my kid could ride that smaller one ?”

“I wouldn’t ride that smaller one,” I would reply, “but I would put them up on Big D,” I’d say pointing at Donovan.

They would look at me skeptically and say “Are you sure ?”

Once I informed them that my two-year-old granddaughter had been up on him in the round pen, while we walked along with her, for a few turns, they were sold.

I can’t begin to count the number of little ones who had their first mule ride on Big D.

Little ones weren’t the only people who got bit by the trail riding bug because they got up on Donovan.

We had many friends who had not ridden in years or ever before, who took a ride on him and then started to take lessons to learn more about how to continue.

He never gave anyone anything but a memorable and enjoyable experience.

My riding teacher, Nancy Cerio, described him as “push button.”

She was right.

As Donovan began to age more, his balance became unsteady and he would start to stumble more frequently.

I also began to suspect that his eye sight was dimming.

It became increasingly clear that a trail ride would leave him very tired and sore.

It dawned on me that if he were to fall with me on his back that we were both going to get really hurt.

It was time for both of us to retire from trail riding.

He became a pasture companion and stuck close to hid herd. If you took either Franklin or Tulip out for a trail ride he would bray loudly over and over again until they returned.

More than once I wondered if the neighbors and passersby thought that he was being tortured because there was no doubting his anguish from being separated from his fellow barn mates.

Now, the rides for children who were visiting, fell to Franklin and Tulip who performed this task agreeably.

Some adults took Franklin out for a trail ride if Terri went along on Tulip but there was still no telling what Tulip would do with a stranger up on her back.

In August 2016 old age caught up to Donovan and he went on to his great reward.

It was one of the saddest days of my life because he was truly one of the sweetest animals that God ever created.

He’s buried in the pasture and Terri planted wild flowers on his grave.

Now each spring when the flowers bloom we are reminded of how lucky we were to have had him in our lives and we retell the stories about the jailbreaks and his Animal House Party.

He still provides both joy and laughter.

More Next week.

I was sitting in my home office early one morning a few years ago when I heard the clopping of hooves outside.

I was pretty sure it wasn’t Santa’s reindeer in the middle of May.

I jumped up and looked out the window to see the south end of a mule going north on the road outside our house, along with two other mules.

After swearing under my breath, I called the office and told my staff that I would be late and to tell the lawyers who were scheduled to appear, to go on to the other courts they had appearances in that morning.

“What’s wrong?” my court attorney asked.

“There’s been a jail break,” I answered, “”I’ll explain later.”

I went outside where Terri had a bucket of grain and a lead rope.

Since there were horses a few barns north of us, we didn’t have to go far.

The mules were racing around our neighbor’s property and did their best to elude capture.

I knew we had no hope of catching Tulip or Franklin but since Donovan was close to my age, I was confident that he wasn’t going to run forever.

Sure enough, he started to tire and began getting increasingly interested in the bucket of grain.

As he stuck his nose in the grain bucket, Terri threw the lead rope over his head and he decided to go quietly.

With Donovan in custody, we started to walk south to our barn. Mules being such herd animals, it wasn’t long before Franklin and Tulip fell in behind us.

When we got back to the barn, it became apparent that the three of them had gotten out through Donovan’s stall.

That was how we learned that despite his age, Donovan had a talent for opening his stall door if it was left just so slightly ajar.

It wouldn’t be the last time.

Later that year, we decided to have an addition added to the barn and hired our Amish builder for the job.

It was a cold December night that had a mixture of snow and drizzle falling.

I was driving up our road when out of the corner of my eye, I saw three mules standing on a neighbor to the north’s lawn.

I swear that they almost seemed to wave to me as I drove by.

I went home and discovered that one of the workmen who had been building the addition to the barn had left a gate open.

Terri and I drove to the neighbor’s property with a bucket of grain and only Donovan was there.

Franklin and Tulip had decided to explore the woods behind the homes on the road and you could hear them crashing through the brush.

The danger was that it was both dark and rush hour and if they suddenly broke out onto the road, they could get hit by a vehicle.

Terri saddled up Donovan and went into the woods and was able to herd them home.

It was a nerve wracking experience.

The most memorable jail break involved them not even leaving the barn.

Terri and I had been out on a weekend night and arrived home pretty late.

As we were getting ready for bed, she said “I think there is someone in the barn.”

I listened and didn’t hear anything and suggested we get some sleep.

After a few minutes I heard the noise too.

“Maybe we should take a look,” she said.

We went out to the barn, opened the door and Franklin and Tulip were standing in the middle of the barn eating hay.

It was also clear that they had managed to get into the grain room and eat in there, until their hearts and stomachs were content.

The most mysterious part of this was that although Donovan’s stall door was open (he managed to do it again!), he was nowhere to be seen.

Since both barn doors had been closed, I knew that he hadn’t gotten outside.

Needless to say, it isn’t hard to miss a sixteen hand, almost two-thousand pound mule in an enclosed space.

To say the least, I was perplexed.

Suddenly, we both heard a noise in the tack room.

We opened the door to discover that Donovan had managed to get into the room, shut the door on the other two mules so that he could consume all of the horse treats stored in there by himself.

He looked both content and pleased with himself.

We put all of them back into their stalls and surveyed the scene.

I don’t know how long they had been out of their stalls but the place was a complete mess.

It looked like a party scene from the movie, “Animal House” and the phrase “partying like its 1999,” kept going through my head.

We agreed to clean the mess in the morning, since it looked like it would take all night.

The next day, as we were cleaning up, Terri said, “Look at this.”

I walked to where she was standing and saw my riding helmet lying upside down on the floor with a large pile of horse manure inside it.

“It looks like Franklin finally got back at me for all that hissing,” I said.

“No,” she answered, “that was in the tack room, Donovan must have done that.”

“And I thought we were so close,” I told her.

When I’m leaving the barn now, you can hear the loud clanging of the stall doors as I make sure they are all securely locked in.

It sounds like Attica at the end of the day.

More to come.