Not just for the birds

Category: Pets

  • Angus of the Chukar Hills

    "Angus of the Chukar Hills" by Rachel Teannalach
    “Angus of the Chukar Hills” by Rachel Teannalach

    When the season consumes you, you don’t worry about much else. When it’s over, you worry about everything else. Filling up that worry with good things to carry it away like water helps. Yesterday was one of those good days between seasons. We collected a painting we commissioned and hung it up. It is working already.

    We’d admired Rachel Teannalach‘s work for quite a while. Her eye for light and spirit in landscapes resonated with us. We lucked into taking her for a hike into one of our favorite spots, and she got to work, after we subjected her to what seemed like thousands of “favorite” photos of Angus in Hell’s Canyon.

    Not being a painter, I’d never studied her work closely, but having this on our wall now gives me the chance to see, maybe, what good painters see and translate through and onto their media and make into spirit and feeling.

    Detail: Brownlee Reservoir
    Detail: Brownlee Reservoir
    Detail: Angus pointing
    Detail: Angus pointing

    Only connect. Yesterday my teacher Bruce Gandy won a major bagpipe competition. A year or so ago, after watching a video I’d made about connecting things (one of which was chukar hunting with Angus), he thought he’d found the subject title to one of his piobaireachd compositions. “Salute to Angus of the Chukar Hills” was title he settled on. Having two works of art in sight and sound is good. What’s best for me is the connection between people and animals and landscapes and sounds that make me feel connected.

    Yesterday, we picked a puppy brother for Angus. Peat’ll be ready to come home in a few weeks (more on that later). We also went to a track meet and watched some of my students run well. Bruce won a major competition. We got a gorgeous painting. Ripples in water, crossing each other, making me smile inside, washing away worry.

  • It’s a good year for…snakes!!

    Last chukar season we encountered only one rattlesnake the entire four months of hunting and that was on a late November day. This year, we’ve already seen three rattlers while out hunting. It seems to be a good year for all types of snakes. More of them slithering across the roads, more flattened road killed ones, and just the other day our neighbor told us she found two rattlesnakes hiding in the tall grass near the children’s sandbox. Yikes!

     

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    Hells Canyon rattler, a couple weeks ago.

    Before knowing it was going to be the year of the snake, we thought about sending our bird dog Angus to a rattlesnake avoidance class. Angus’s older sister Glenna took the class a few years ago and was the star pupil and passed with flying colors. Unfortunately, her glory was short lived when she went after a big gopher snake the very next day. We didn’t ask for a refund since what do you expect from a dog that was affectionately known as a.k.a. “the Honey Badger.”

    Glennahead
    Cat doors and snakes won’t stop me!

     

    Our dog Angus is a sensitive, cautious little fellow who hates bugs, flies, or anything creeping and crawling. We hope his lack of curiosity in the snake department will steer him clear of rattlesnakes since we didn’t send him to a snake avoidance class. This summer we decided to have our veterinarian give Angus the western diamondback rattlesnake vaccine for dogs, given in two parts: one shot, then a booster shot a couple of weeks later. The vaccine is designed to create an immunity, decrease the severity of a bite, and to buy you time until you can get your dog to the nearest veterinarian clinic to see if additional treatment is needed. Of course every bite is different depending on the size and age of your dog, size of the snake, where it was bitten or how many times, and how much venom is injected.

    As you know, chukar hunting takes you far from roads and your vehicle. Luckily, most snakes try to avoid your dog and you but it helps to know the basic first-aid in case your dog accidentally gets bitten. We are no experts and you can do your own research but the following seems to be the most common ways to treat your dog.

    First thing is to recognize the immediate symptoms if you think your dog is bitten:

    • puncture wounds
    • severe pain
    • swelling and bruising
    • restlessness, panting, or drooling

    Depending on how much venom is injected these are the more severe symptoms:

    • lethargy, weakness
    • muscle tremors
    • diarrhea
    • seizures
    • depressed respiration (normal is mid-20s)

    What to do if your pet is bitten:

    • Keep your pet calm and carry if possible.
    • Limiting the dog’s activity will limit the venom moving around their body
    • Immobilize the limb if bitten on the leg. Try to keep the area at or below the heart
    •  Do not cut the bite
    • Do not try to suck out the venom
    • Do not apply ice
    • Drive your dog to the nearest vet clinic

    Talk to your own vet about the vaccine and see if it’s right for your dog since some vaccines are not made for all types of venomous snakes. If you’re hunting out-of-state or far from your home territory familiarize yourself where the nearest vet clinic is located and put them on your speed dial. If you are hunting down in Hells Canyon near Brownlee or Oxbow Reservoir, Heartland Animal Hospital in Council, Idaho has an excellent vet. Weiser, Idaho, nearby, also has a vet clinic.

     

     

     

  • Bird Dog Summer

    My wife just posted on Angus’s summer in:

    Bird Dog Summer.

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    via Bird Dog Summer.

  • Waiting

    Brittany spaniels
    Hike over, more waiting

    Six more months. Spring is such a tease. Angus and his new little buddy, Ava (I wish I could say it was our new puppy, but it’s a friend’s) got into some Huns today in some nearby BLM land. Ava watched Angus hog the points and got snoutfuls of bird scent. She’s going to be great come September. Angus missed some birds that we flushed, but finally seemed to dial it in near the end of our walk.

    Still, the waiting.

    Brittany pointing
    Angus points in the distance while Ava takes notes

  • Angusing

    Angusing

    Angus

    What is it about our dogs? Or maybe I should speak for myself, and – since he can’t type – Angus. I’m just in a tribute mood, perhaps because we’re in the “holidays,” and I’m feeling grateful for lots of things.

    Angus is at the top of my list. My new job keeps me away from him during the week so I don’t get to spend the same amount of time with him that I used to. He’s 5-1/2 years old, so between halfway and a third of the way through his too-short life, with any luck. Leslie (also at the top of my list) and I don’t have kids, so Angus bears the brunt of our parental feeling. He is spoiled, for sure. But he’s darned well appreciated, too.

    I try not to regret that I didn’t hunt with him until he was three. It’s hard not to because my connection, I should say our connection, has intensified a lot in our three seasons together in the field. Being away from him during the week and only able to hunt weekends, too, has honed my appreciation of him.

    Reading a fellow bird hunter’s blog yesterday also has something to do with this. In a post titled “I Slipped His Collar,” Randy described putting his “go-to” dog down in simple, heartfelt but unsentimental words. From his post it was clear he’d been through this many times. I’ve done it once and dread the next time. And I don’t want it to get easier, and suspect it won’t.

    Glenna and Angus have increased my predisposition toward morbid thoughts, but I came to dogs late in life and am regularly felled by the ineffable and ephemeral connection I feel with them (the dogs, not the thoughts). As I write this, I’m home for the weekend and Angus is bored and playing with his toys. Serial goofiness: rubber ball, shrieking monkey (three of them, in various states of dismemberment), Nylabone, then his chin rests on my knee. He wants to get out, and so do I. It’s these rarer moments of down time together that allow me this reflection and time to wonder if he’s reflecting on anything or just thinking of his next half-cup of kibble, or of nothing at all. Maybe he feels something like comfort having me nearby for a change. I hope so. I know I’m comforted by his presence, even while dreading the end of that.

    We both need to get out and look for some birds.