Yesterday, our neighbor’s adult son paid us a bit of an angry visit.   The first time we met I believe he came over asking if we had seen any of his chickens running around in the woods between our properties.   He doesn’t actually live on that piece of property, his family rents THAT house, but across the street is his mothers horse pasture & barn and apparently he was keeping some bantam games there and the new tenants dog chased them all off into the woods.    I figured they were all dead by now if he hadn’t seen them in days, how could some tiny bantams survive those terrible woods unprotected after all??!!!  He asked us to let him know if we see them roosting anywhere or hear them and he’d come on out and catch them.  I never did hear or see any until a couple weeks later, when I saw a whole bunch of them roosting over the pig pen at that rental house.  By this time, he already knew they were there and I supposed that he was looking after them.

Yesterday though, he came over to let us know that he was upset because some neighborhood dogs, including our Angel, were terrorizing & killing his chickens.   I say that is purely ridiculous, but of course don’t want to be one of “those” people, you know the ones, who don’t think their dogs can do any wrong.   But our Angel, ganging up with some local strays and attacking the neighbors livestock?  Angel is not the neighborhood stray, she rarely leaves the porch, and with her gimpy leg she’s hardly a threat.  Her temperment is cool and even for the most part, and in her old age, nothing is of any real interest to her.  She’s never made a move at any of our chickens, but does always look like she might pounce on some of the little ones if given a chance to.  Even with all of that, I STILL don’t believe he sees OUR dog anywhere near that property unless we’re with her.  It very nearly turned into an argument as he threatened to shoot her and informed us that he has the legal right to do so if she is attacking his poultry/livestock.  Spouting nonesense about the sheriff & the animal shelter, blah blah blah.  They really are no help, since funding and public opinion really aren’t on their sides.  Well, mostly he was full of hot air because he’s preaching to the choir!  I too wouldn’t hesitate to shoot any dog trying to eat/attack or damage my chickens or pens, but I highly doubt he’s even talking about our dog.  He’s just venting to the only people answering their door or willing to claim their own dogs!

He warned us that he was putting out some poison and would shoot if necessary.   And my husband reminded him that he wasn’t talking about our dog, so he should just move on and do whatever he needs to do.  Even though we feel very strongly about it, there are still no reasons to take chances.  If he did leave some poison out, I sure don’t want her finding any of it, so in the end we did what he asked.  Kept her locked up last night, and today we worked on stretching out some much needed fencing around the perimeter of the property.

Fencing our yard sounds simple, but it never is.  Awkward lines, poor planning, mishapen fence and/or posts mostly because what we use is flimsy & temporary.  Exactly what you WANT to use when your not sure what your doing, and can’t afford a few extra thousand for a perimeter fence of any quality.  We started years ago with a small area of the yard off the front porch and 50′ of fencing, upgraded to another 50′ and so on.  At some point, we put in a gate and made a nice front yard for the dogs.  THEN we got the chickens, and subsequently an 90lb dog that LOVES jumping our fences!!!  That was ok until the neighbor complained he was running her horses, and so we tried, and tried, and tried to contain him with our lame fences.  But we never could so onto a cable tie he went.  Of course, the ONLY place to anchor him to, and allow him still on the front porch AND to patrol the coops, meant that part of the fence was in his way.  And he insisted on jumping it, then progressively tearing it down big by bit everywhere in his way.  Really, there were tons of things in his way, fire pit, fences, flower pots, big logs, all sorts of stuff.  So we finally cleaned it all up in the last couple of weeks and now he is free to roam almost a complete circle on a 30′ cable tie.  And THAT is why the front fence was down allowing the little dogs to get loose & terrorize the neighborhood.

Well, most of the perimeter is now fenced enough to keep the little dogs in, improvements need to be made naturally, but it all went up in a couple of hours this evening.  We had to make some compromises, settle on some decisions for the future and just knuckle down and get er done!  We have no gate, no way out of the front of the yard at this point really, but will work on that over the next couple of weeks.  In the meantime, we’ll use the backdoor for the largest portion of everything.  A large portion of the fence line is now black chain link, very nice stuff, my husband brought home from the wind tunnel scrap piles.  I couldn’t believe how well it went up and how good it looks, I feel silly for not making it a priority sooner.   Again as with any of our projects, there is still much to do to really FINISH it, but I think, for tonight, we can rest easy that Angel will not be visiting the neighbors.

WHEW!  It was a LOT of work and I just wanted to tell you all about it!

I sat inside this morning looking outside as if it were some sort of abomination.  Buckets, truckloads, and two Olympic size swimming pools full, fell upon my small piece of the Smokies today, and there was nothing to do but watch in disbelief mixed with sorrow.

I knew that the tarp roof over the chain link dog run wouldn’t hold in a big storm, but I always think that I’ll get around to making it storm worthy before it needs to be.  But storms, unpredicatable as they can be, always seem to miss us and so I don’t take it as seriously as I should.  Today, an exception was made, and it appears we are the ONLY ones to get dumped on in the immediate area.

I planned to run out in between downpours and get them some assistance, drain the tarp which was already heavy with rain when I went out to fill feeders.  Unfortunately, before I could drop off my feedbucket & get some supplies it started again.  I could only stand there and wait for it to drop off some, there was no way I could go out in that!  The lightning was frightening, the rain so dense I couldn’t see the Hen House from the front porch!  Half an hour…  Fourty five minutes…. time passed so slowly, the water pooling everywhere.  Before I could get back the tarp pulled free of it’s anchors and flooded them with what must have been 20 gallons of water plus the ensuing downpour.

The rain let up enough that I could see, so I grabbed some zip ties, a pvc pipe w/cap & a bucket and made a dash for the back part of the yard.  Halfway there I could hear this chick just CRYING outloud… I stopped to glance at Lexi’s bantams, two of whom are in dog crates right now (boys will be boys) to see that one was SOAKED and crying frantically out of the side of the crate.  I ran over to see that she forgot to put any rain protection on him and he was swimming around like a duck in a few inches of water.  I opened the crate with my free hand, grabbed him and continued onto the dog run.  When I did make it to their coop, they were safely on the perch under their only solid roof waiting for rescue.  I’m afraid I didn’t offer a lot of relief, what with a strange set of tools and one bantam cochin under one arm.  I did the best I could to hold the roof into place as another cell burst over head, manually draining the puddles with one arm, calming a frantically soaked cochin in the other.   After another 10-15 minutes of holding the tarp my fingers were starting to cramp up so I had to abandon my efforst and find a safe place for the little guy I was holding.  I apologies to the Wyandottes and told them I would be back with a solution!

I dashed off back to the house, found a tub with some straw in it, popped the little guy in, and put a baby gate over the top to keep him in.  I ran back to the dog run, warmed my fingers and began the process of zip tying their tarp back on and figuring out a way to prop it up in the center to prevent any further puddling.  It wasn’t easy, but it is done for now.  The sun is out for the moment, but the radar still threatens more downpours.  I don’t look forward to being soaked to the bone again in this cold rain, so hopefully I can get things reinforced before the next one hits.

I’ve had enough time to dry off and get some coffee, and out I must go again to try & dry or drain out what water is left everywhere.

Sorry for the ramble, it’s been quite a day!  Until next time….