Most mornings when I wake up it is already mid to upper 70 degrees. By the time I clean pens and feed dogs it’s in the eighties. This is not only too hot for the dogs but putting the pigeons in the release traps and covering it with grass is really hard on the birds, too. Even getting out at daylight doesn’t work when it’s this hot.
Josie.
Abby.
Boss.
The weather forecast for this morning was a chance for rain and 72 degrees. I woke up at 5:00 am to rain, thunder and lightning. I couldn’t go back to sleep so I stayed in bed and read a book. As I was lying there I thought my ceiling fan started making a funny whining noise. After a little while it stopped making the noise.
As I lay in bed a friend texted me to see if we had any storm damage. I texted him back that it was thundering and lots of rain but I didn’t think the wind had blown very hard. After I thought about it a few minutes I got up and checked. Didn’t see anything but lots of standing water. It had rained a bunch. Parts of Independence had received over 4 inches of rain in just a few hours.
I watched the weather on television and they said there was a tornado about three miles from my house, earlier. The whining noise I thought was coming from my ceiling fan was actually the tornado siren. By 7:30 or 8:00 am the rain had stopped and I went out to clean pens and feed dogs. About half of a big elm tree that is between my dog pens and the pigeon houses had blown down.
The tree had been dead for a couple of years and I’ve been thinking of taking it out because I was afraid it would fall on my dog pens or the pigeon houses. The half that fell missed the dogs and pigeons both but hit the fence around the big pen that I turn the dogs into while I clean pens, without doing any lasting damage. Once again the Lord has taken care of me.
But that ended any thought of training dogs today. I got the chain saw out and started cutting the limbs up and loading them on my trailer. Looking at the downed limbs I thought it would take all day. I texted my daughter, Dana, to see if my youngest grandson, Isaac, wanted to make some money. He was there in just a few minutes and by 1:00 pm we had all of the tree cleaned up.
Josie.
Before the storm came through I was going to paint the raised whelping pen I had built for the last litter of pups. I built it and moved the puppies into it without any paint. Yesterday I had taken the wire and flooring off so I could paint everything. So this afternoon I worked on that. I wish I had done it when it was cooler.
My dogs hate the 4th of July and so do I. I don’t live in a regular neighborhood but it doesn’t matter. There are fireworks shot off that shake my house. And from what everyone is saying there have been more fireworks sold this year than ever before.
Fireworks are different frequency from gunshots or something. My dogs don’t even act like they notice the gunshots but they all run and hide with the fireworks or even thunder.
Several years ago I was at a training seminar with an old dog of mine, either Pal or Lucky. I’m not sure which. At the time he was about 3 years old and had been hunted a lot. As the seminar progressed the guy doing the program said for everyone that had dogs that hadn’t been shot around take them to the other side of a distant barn.
Boss.
Since my dog had been shot over a lot I didn’t move. He started the seminar and shot a blank pistol. I was watching him trying to learn what I could from the seminar. After a few shots he asked me if my dog was gun shy. I told him, again, that he had been shot around a lot. He changed over to a 410 shotgun and he had no reaction to the shotgun. Dogs react to different frequencies different.
I hope that we have some cool mornings soon so I can work dogs. Some states bird seasons open the first of September and that’s only about sixty days away. Our dove season opens then followed by Kansas prairie chicken season. I hope my young dogs are ready.
Abby.