Monday, March 22, 2010

Dog Logs and other Stuff

Here we are, way up in the Far Nort'land and now that the water has gone back between the riverbanks where it belongs, our grass is actually starting to turn green.

But of course that means there's lots of work ahead for Ole and me. You see, we are the proud caretakers of a very large German Shepherd named Daisy. Those of you who own large dogs know that they leave rather large dog logs behind. And these dog logs have a tendency to pile up over the course of a long Minnesota winter. Then when the grass turns green you have all these really bright green spots that grow really fast because they've been fertilized so well. If we could only teach her to spread things out evenly so we wouldn't have to buy those big bags of granular fertilizer every spring.

This is Daisy guarding her peanut butter jar that Ole has cut in half for her so she can get her ant-eater tongue all the way to the bottom and clean every last molecule from the jar.


Now - back to the subject of dog logs!! Just what ever person wanted to read about, right?


Lovely Daughter has the other German Shepherd with her in the city. Last summer Ole helped Lovely Daughter and Sven put up an 8 foot fence in their backyard so Beau would have a place to be outside without being tied up. It works fine, but it's a small space as they live in an older section of town and have a small backyard. Needless to say, they had a rather large snowbank going across the backyard this winter, so Beau had to kind of go "mountain climbing" when he would take his trip outside. As the snowbank melted this spring, "things" sank to the bottom and eventually landed on the grass and formed what Lovely Daughter called "poop soup." She called me one day and informed me that she and hubby were going to be cleaning up "poop soup" that weekend. I was SO HAPPY that Daisy has five acres to run on and we don't have to clean up "poop soup" in the spring.

Having dogs in the spring, or just pets in general, makes for a lot of extra work what with all the tracking in and out all the time. I've got 8 little kitty feet, four big dog feet and two huge Ole feet that I'm cleaning up after all the time. And his big clodhoppers - uffda my - the sad part is that he knows he should wipe his feet good - even Daisy will sit on the rug in the back hallway and let her feet dry before she's invited in. Of course teaching cats that they need to do that is hopeless.

Lucy and Simon don't venture very far. They've just started going outside again within the last week. I don't blame them - prior to that it was cold enough to freeze their little whiskers off. I can really tell that spring is coming because they spend a lot of time sitting on the deck in front of the patio door in the sunshine - in what very little sunshine we've had lately.

Well, enough drivel for now. Can you tell I really don't have much to write about? See - you all may regret wanting me to start writing again.

Love Lena

3 comments:

MNLady said...

I, too, have large dogs that spend their time in the winter leaving their marks in one area. I had to do the pooper scooper thing once, but more snow melted, so it's time to do it again. NOT the most fun thing in the world, is it? All part of being owned by a dog!!! Nice to hear from you!!! Keep writing!

Carolyn said...

We used to have a large black lab,so I remember those days! Now that we have 3 little dogs, we just mow their "presents" when we mow the lawn. ;o)

Memaw's memories said...

Reason number 732 for not having pets at my house. I guess I'm just not a big animal lover. I grew up on a farm, and usually ate most of the 'pets' at some point.