We moved from Mexico back to the U.S. back in April, and I blogged about the long road trip with dogs and cats in June. Since then, this blog has been filled with guest posts that I had lined up before we left Mexico, and we’ve been unpacking boxes, tiling floors, and getting settled.
Now, it’s back to blogging myself. I’ve missed it, glad to be back! Have a lot of ideas for the fall. Books I’ve been reading on dog training, some deeper understanding of clicker training, and much more.
We moved back to to the same town in Colorado where we had lived for 10 years before moving to Mexico for about 5 years. Luckily, when we arrived with our dogs and cats, we had already bought a house from a friend. It’s got about half an acre of land — high desert with a lot of yucca, a well-defended plant with sharp spikes that are painful to human ankles and dog paws and legs.
Still, it’s a yard!
This summer, my husband Kelly and a friend put in the fence posts and installed the wire field fencing. Then Kelly made three gates, defining the half of the yard that the dogs can have access to. There is a garden area we will have to fence in before we start gardening next year, but for now the dogs can run through it. The only thing alive in the garden is rhubarb and so we put a fence around it, to protect the dogs from its toxic leaves. At least, the leaves are toxic to human so I am guessing that they are to dogs too.
So a couple of weeks ago, we turned the dogs loose in the yard. They loved it immediately and now they have favorite digging spots, favorite shade spots, favorite places to watch the cats from. (Our cats have their own, totally enclosed yard, where they can be outside but with fencing over it like a roof, the coyotes and neighborhood pets can’t get to them.)
LarryDog is 13 this summer and a bit slow. He loves his morning walks, but in the yard he is content to putter around.
Lola, our 4-year-old Rottie, is another story. We removed the yucca along the fenceline and a few trails for now, and she runs and runs. We play ball with her, and she had a play date with another Rottie girl last week. They have gone for walks together before, and they were fine off leash together, the first time we’d tried it. It was hot and they didn’t romp wildly, but a good time was had by all.
There’s a young Blue Heeler who lives a couple of blocks from here. Luckily there is almost no traffic in our area, because now and then he gets out of his yard. We are on his meandering route when he gets loose. Yesterday he and Lola had a great times running the fence line together, one on either side. I was tempted to let him in the yard to play, but Kelly pointed out that we don’t want the dog to feel TOO much at home here! LarryDog (himself part Blue Heeler) doesn’t like him. So the visitor and Lola played for a while and then the little guy went off.
Lola gazed longingly out the window at where she had last seen him. “I had boy friends like that,” I said to her. “He’ll be back sometime, for a while!”
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