Canine Interruptus
During the summer time when daybreak begins before 5am, it is easy to get an hour or two of work in before its time for the morning chores. This time of year it is harder to get out real early because more time is spent fumbling around in the dark than getting any decent work accomplished. The dogs would much rather I stuck to the early morning schedule because they use this time away from the dangers of the county road as their personal fun time. Even with a later start time, the dogs are happy any time they get to run off leash. They watch the hillside for coyotes, they run hither and yon across the pastures, sniff for moles and gophers at every mound, and are basically on their own to keep busy.
Occasionally both dogs will come back to wherever I am working to ‘check in’ and make sure all is well and that they are still free to play. Sometimes when they come to check on me, they will make a bed out of the loose hay in the barn and take a nap before going back out to their business. Usually it is only one dog at a time that comes over to see what I am up to.
Butler is more composed of the two, he strolls into the barn and stands around for a while, watching as I labor. He stands very still because he has figured out that if he waits patiently enough, I will notice him and give him a good scratch behind an ear or under his chin. Jackson the free spirit, doesn’t wait to be noticed and makes sure that I see him before taking off on another adventure.
On this day, I was busy splitting firewood that had been cut into chunks and was piled high in the bed of the Gator. I was only about half done with the load and had my ear plugs in and my back turned to the Gator while running the SuperSplit. When I turned to grab the next piece of wood to split. Jackson was on top of what was left of the wood, just looking for a comfortable place to plop his behind. It was not a nice, neat stack but a hodge-podge mix of various sized chunks thrown in the bed of the Gator.
For the next twenty minutes, every time I wanted a new piece to split, I had to push a leg or butt over before I could remove a chunk because Jackson was sure that this was the spot he wanted to rest. Once I got an area cleared off and there was bare bed, he stretched out comfortably as if to take a nap, but he was still in the way and I had to be careful so no chunks would roll or fall onto his splayed form.
When I was down to the last two pieces, he had perked back up and took off again on his next adventure. He must have realized that when I emptied the Gator, I had planned on loading up both dogs and heading for the house.
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