Rocky the Comeback Kid: It’s a God-Thing

This is a guest post by V.K. Whetham.

I remember the first day I met the small border collie like it was yesterday; some images just stick in your mind.  I picked him up from an animal shelter in a small, very rural town.  The entire shelter has ten kennels – and one of the runs is used as storage.

This little border collie was found by a sheriff’s deputy who undoubtedly saved him from death. The deputy had seen him several times on his patrols, clearly abandoned and becoming thinner by the day. Haunted by these sightings, the deputy searched for him on his day off.  After hours, he finally found the little guy and was able to coax him into a crate with pleas and food.    

The border collie was so thin every rib was visible. Dirty and shaved, he was every bit the picture of an orphaned waif. He was also terrified. It was quickly determined he wasn’t adoptable “as is,” and a search for a rescue began immediately. That’s how WyoHerd rescue and I got involved.

We have no idea how this little dog ended up all alone in rural Wyoming – far from any home, town or farm.  We don’t know why someone shaved him.  We don’t know if he fell off a truck or if he was a dump job.  Many people do dump dogs in rural areas knowing that some kind farmer will find their dog and give him/her a home.  People believe these dogs are better off dumped in the middle of nowhere than in a shelter where they could be euthanized.

People are mistaken. Dumped dogs more often than not end up dead from being hit by cars, starvation and disease. They are easy prey for predators. Sometimes they turn to hunting small farm animals or robbing rubbish bins to survive, and farmers shoot them.  Farmers don’t want strays mingling with their dogs because strays often carry disease and parasites, nor do they want their pets threatened or attacked by strays.   

We also didn’t know what this little dog’s name was – no tags, just a collar. I knelt down next to him and petted him. I whispered in his ear, “I’m naming you Rocky.  You’re going to be a great comeback story, just like that boxer Balboa.” Rocky peed on my sandals.

It took a few days to coax Rocky out of the crate and even more time before he didn’t run and hide when the doorbell rang. Rocky was fairly easy to housebreak, but marking was another problem.  He was only about a year old but had already started marking everything in sight – and when I say everything, I mean everything.  Once this behavior starts, it’s very hard to extinguish. 

Rocky had some things going for him that other rescues often don’t. He is a beautiful dog with remarkable markings. He is also an unusual color for a border collie – reddish/brown and white rather than black and white. At the time he was very young and small. He looks purebred, just smaller than most border collies. He was also in good health.

I didn’t have Rocky for very long when a couple called from out of state to adopt him. I talked to them twice on the phone, but I had some doubts. I told my rescue coordinator that I wasn’t sure about them. They claimed they wanted a “special needs” dog.  They said they were experienced with dogs and could tolerate the marking problem. Still, Rocky had a lot of needs; I was confident he would be a great dog but he his rehabilitation was going to take some time.  I wasn’t sure he was “ready.” They said they understood. They could handle it. And Rocky was adopted within two months.

This was in September, and by November a relationship I had been in for three years crumbled around me rather unexpectedly – well, unexpectedly for me anyway. It was a crushing blow. I was humiliated and horrified. The details are brutal. I ended up homeless, living with friends for a month until I could move back into my home I had rented out. I was paralyzed with grief for months.

In December, I received an email from the rescue coordinator. Rocky’s adopted family no longer wanted him. Turned out the marking behavior was more than they could handle, he began attacking their small poodle out of jealousy, he wasn’t very obedient, and the husband didn’t have the time to spend with him.  He was needy and demanded constant affection. Would I take Rocky until another home could be found for him? I emailed her back without hesitation. Rocky had a home; he just had to come home.  

So Rocky came home. He walked into the house without hesitation and folded himself into my arms. He hadn’t forgotten me either. My Mastiff, Lady, all 109 lbs. of her, jumped – okay stepped – from the couch onto the coffee table to get a better look at him, tail wagging, protruding butt wiggling. My Aussie sniffed him, snorted and, in her usual princess-like attitude, began to walk away. She didn’t get out of the living room before turning back. She licked his face. Even my princess, snobbish and particular about who she greets, couldn’t resist him. We were so happy; Rocky had come home. He really was the comeback kid!

Rocky didn’t demonstrate any of the problems he had at his first adopted home except for the marking, which has improved with time. He can be needy and demanding of affection, but with time and obedience this too has lessened. He still will occasionally mark when he’s upset or anxious.

Sometimes when people adopt special needs dogs they treat them like fragile figurines and don’t provide correction and obedience training. The problem with this is that dogs are pack animals and if guidance and corrections are not provided to anxious dogs, they become more anxious. They know they can’t be the leader of the pack and if their humans don’t provide the leadership, they become frightened, desperate and sometimes a bit bratty. 

Love, food, water and medical care are the bare minimums. Obedience, time and guidance allow dogs to feel safe.  It works the same for children.

Border collies are notoriously smart, and Rocky is no different. As I turn off the lights for bed, he rushes to the bedroom and curls up on the pillow next to mine. That’s his spot and no one is going to get it.  Also, he never lets me go to sleep without touching me. Sometimes it’s a paw on my shoulder or a tail across my legs, but always he is there. Remember Nick? Rocky became a bit jealous when Nick began to sit on the couch to be petted, so he would run to Nick’s bed and sit on it – staring at him. This made Nick nervous and Nick would go back to his bed so Rocky could have his spot back. This doesn’t work anymore because Nick doesn’t care if Rocky has his bed as long as he is sitting next to me, so Rocky lays on him now to get him to move.

Also like most Herd dogs, Rocky always has his eyes on me. He’s never underfoot but always near. He’s not a brave dog, so I suspect his plan is if danger approaches me, he’ll be there to show me a way to escape. Lady’s our muscle, and, at 109 lbs., she doesn’t run very fast – or ever. Rocky would probably convince her to guard our backs.     

Rocky’s return was salve to my open wounds. I realized when he returned things were going to get better, happiness would return and this too would pass. He offered renewed hope and optimism.   

I also saw it as a “God-Thing.” Some people say they don’t believe in God because they can’t see him. It’s hard to find something if you’re not looking for it. I don’t believe in coincidence. I don’t believe that Rocky came home by accident. I don’t believe he was found accidentally by a sheriff’s deputy or that he came home exactly when I was able to provide him with the care he needed. 

I believe something more was involved, something bigger. I believe he was a part of a bigger plan that was executed exactly in the manner it was meant to. I have no proof of this, of course. But how big is God? Certainly he’s big enough to save a little dog’s life and to bring him home when his family needed him the most. 

How big is God? So big that when I whispered in a little dog’s ear that he was going to be the Comeback Kid, God heard my promise and made sure it came true.  

~~~

V.K. will share Lady's story here soon!

Adopt one, until there are none.

Hay Season

The temperatures have finally moderated and we had some decent rainfall this weekend. Yay! The much-needed rain will help with the fire danger and start the long journey back to full ponds, lakes and reservoirs.

The drought damage, though, will extend well beyond this season. Warm-season grass that should be matured and going to seed now to produce new grass in the spring withered long ago.  The rain is too late to help our native Bermuda and too early to jumpstart the cool-season grasses. Still, it’s more than welcome.

The horses have munched through the pastures with the best grass. There are three other pastures they can graze but the grass in those is sparse and poor. I’d put off mowing them – that is until last week. The first pasture I’ve tackled is 8 acres I bought off a neighbor who moved a couple of years ago. The neighbor used to run a couple of cows and a horse on it, but it hasn’t been mown often. I did give it a rough mow last year and was pleased with the amount of good grass in it. I had expected a good crop this year, too.

Yep, gotta mow around all those trees up ahead.

It’s fenced, but it’s old fencing: a combination of rusted barbed wire and even rustier field fence. The steel T-posts holding the fence up are weary-looking but solid for the most part. The mid-posts and corner-posts, though, are wood, and many of them either were burnt by a grass fire a dozen years ago or are simply decaying.

My plan was to string an electric fence inside the perimeter to keep the horses away from the rusting fence line. In normal soil, the extremely lightweight, fiberglass posts are easy to set. The ones I bought even have a convenient ridge built in that you step on to drive the post about a foot into the ground. This, however, isn’t normal soil. No way I could set the new posts into ground as hard as concrete. So I mowed the acreage and let the horses into the pasture, hoping that the game of finding a few blades of grass amid the weeds will keep them entertained enough they don’t go rubbing their backsides against the fence to give themselves a good scratch and wind up getting cut on the rusty barbs.

I’m not sure the ground will be softened enough after this bout of rain to drive in the posts. So far, the horses are behaving themselves and thoroughly enjoying being in a pasture they’ve not had access to before.

The brush pile is waiting for a calm day just after a rain to be burned and buried. It's been waiting now for nearly a year.

A couple of the acres have a lot of trees on them. I’ve tried to leave as many seedling native pears as I can in a small grove but that means tedious mowing to get around them. It takes me, on average, about an hour to mow an acre. The cut grass has to dry for a couple of days before being baled – or bagged, which is what I do since I don’t have expensive baling equipment. I use a large grass sweeper that collects the grass but doesn’t bag it. I still have to circle back around and hand bag all the hay.  To mow, rake and stuff 50 bags of hay takes me the better part of 5 days.

It's a John Deere with a 5-foot drag-behind mower (aka brush hog)

The brush hog in action!

Fifty bags of poor-quality hay will last maybe 2 months if I s-t-r-e-t-c-h it out. I’ll mix it with a like amount of good-quality, purchased hay; add in 3 or 4 dozen bags of leaves (they’ll be dropping soon enough!); and supplement with plenty of grain. Goats and horses will do fine.

Once the ground dries out, I’ll tackle the other two pastures and bag up maybe another 30 bags of hay. Whoo! It’s a good workout. The best thing? Just look at the sunsets after a long day’s work!

Summer Drought

Here in North Texas, within 10 miles of the Red River that forms the southern border of Oklahoma, we experienced record-breaking heat and an extended drought this summer. Officially, there were 66 days this summer when it’s been 100+ (38C). It’s been as high as 117 (47C) on the thermometers here a couple of times. As late as Sept. 29 it hit 100 degrees.

We’ve had measurable rainfall here at Rainbow’s End twice in the past 4 months. The first time was barely more than a trace and the second time, in late August, was a decent inch or so. Last month, I watched two systems go by, dropping rain to the west and to the south, but not on us.

While the temperatures have finally moderated this week (yay!) to cool mornings that warm rapidly to the high-80s (~31C) in the afternoons, we’re still looking for rain. Maybe this weekend. There’s a 20-30% shot at scattered showers.

I’ve posted pictures elsewhere of land so dry and cracked it’s dangerous for livestock to run across. The pastures the horses have been using have pretty much been grazed over. I mowed an 8-acre pasture this weekend that has lain fallow since last year. It’s mostly weeds, but there’s a little grass in it. I’ll be able to bag about 10% of it as winter feed and the rest will be used for bedding. Hay prices last month were already 1/3 higher than they were last year. I’m betting they’ll be double or more by December.

Non-native trees have really struggled. My althea and crepe myrtles didn’t bloom at all this year. This maple tree dropped its leaves in early August. I have no idea if it will recover.

Similarly, and not surprisingly, the water-loving willows and cottonwoods also dropped their leaves prematurely. 

The native cedars (junipers), which are evergreens, seem to be doing well, and the bois d’arcs are hanging in there too, though fruit production is way down. Same with the native pear trees. Thankfully we started out with good rainfall in the spring -- the ponds filled and fruit set well. As the drought wore on, however, immature fruit dropped and much of it dried up “on the vine.”

The pear crop started out promising enough in late spring. By early September, it was a dried-up memory.

I’ve come to rely on a pear crop and bushels of horse apples to keep the goats and horses and ducks and chickens treated up and happy in the early winter. I’ll continue to treat them with fruit from the grocery but, ouch – another bite out of the wallet.

There are three ponds on the property: one a natural catch-basin for run-off and two that were dug to provide the dirt to build the pads for the barns. The smallest pond is about 5-foot deep (that’s how tall I am!). Here I’m standing on the dry bottom looking over the rim.

The catch-basin is the largest pond. When I first moved here, it was home to a couple of hundred catfish, stocked by the previous owner. I’d bring leftovers and dry dog and cat food to feed them. They’d come a-swimming over as soon as they saw me. It was quite delightful. A couple of years after moving in, we had our first summer drought and the pond dried up for the first time ever. There were a lot of happy herons that year. Thinking that first drought was just a weather blip, my dad and I took the opportunity to build a small pier in anticipation of restocking the pond and enjoying the antics of a new batch of catfish the next year. It wasn’t just a blip, though, and when the pond threatened to go dry the next year, I had to face the fact it would be a long time, if ever, before the pond would see fish again.

The pond, full, in winter during one of the very occasional snowfalls the region gets.

When the pond is full, water is within an inch of the top of the lower section of the pier. During heavy rains, the lower section goes underwater completely.
In the upper right you can see a tree that's fallen in due to erosion.

The dogs love to swim. Today, Loki is standing in the pond wondering where the water went.

I am quite baffled where these mollusks came from. These shells are 6-8 inches across and there are numerous shells scattered along the dry pond bottom. One of nature's mysteries.

Behind the main barn is what I refer to as the duck pond. In the past, it’s been where the ducks trundle off to in the mornings and hang during the day before coming back into the much-safer backyard to spend the night. Sadly, there hasn’t been much trundling lately.



The ducks have to go through the goat yard on their way from the backyard to their duckpond.



 



This is the normal water level in the duck pond.



This is the level it was at last week. Today, it's even lower.

Another of nature's mysteries. A crayfish (aka crawdad) in a land-locked, man-made pond. I've seen a handful of these guys around. My guess is their eggs came in riding on the legs of wading birds. 

So we wait for rain. My appreciation for the trailblazers who settled this country and had to live off the land and survive whatever the seasons threw at them has increased tenfold. While my plans to bag up enough hay this year to see the horses through winter and to harvest enough native fruit to keep them happy fell through because of the drought, I know my beasties and I will find the needed feed anyway. Early settlers had no such safety nets. For what we have, I’m thankful.