Tara the protector

[SnrRog]

Back in 1980, I was adopted by a 7 week old Heinz 57 puppy, while working at a customers house. She was a ball of energy. We named her 'Tara-dactyl', as she pretty much was always jumping, and could jump really high. 
   Anyway, about 2 years later, we moved to a new house, from the apartment. I never thought of it until springtime hit that I needed a lawnmower. My father, who was a tinkerer, had just been given an electric lawn mower and asked if he could fix it. I called him to borrow it, so I picked it up, brought it home with a couple nice long extension cords, and set out to cut the grass, which was starting to look like a jungle, grass was half way to my up my shin.
   So, I'm out working on the yard, and Tara runs out about 40 feet directly in front of me and lays down, facing away from me, but nervously glancing back to me every couple of seconds. As I got closer, I could see she was shaking, but would not budge. When I got to about 6 feet from her, I shut the mower off and went up to her to get her out of the way, but here, with her body sort of wrapped around a small hole, was a bunch of baby bunnies! Once I saw those, she then got up and licked me. Of course I gave the bunnies a wide berth until the day they finally all left.
   I sometimes still think about what the mower would have done had she not been there to block me!
   She went on to live for 18 years, the best dog I've ever had, and I still have 2 dogs laying by my side as I type this.
  I would love to put a picture or two up, unfortunately most of my pictures were ruined in a basement flood years ago.

   SnrRog

[VioletDove]

What a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing. It made me smile thinking about her protecting those bunnies.

[FlyingClayDisk]

Cute dog story!  Great dog.

Okay, I won't tell my stories about baby bunnies and dogs then.

Not a big fan of the critters here (rabbits that is).  Sorry.

[SnrRog]

Cute dog story!  Great dog.

Okay, I won't tell my stories about baby bunnies and dogs then.

Not a big fan of the critters here (rabbits that is).  Sorry.

  No, I don't care for them anymorre.. Moving from a concrete block apt to a small home in the city (with a smallish yard) was glorious! Being able to walk in the grass barefoot was a wonderful feeling!
  I now live in a rural area with an acre or so, and have a reasonably sized veggie garden. We were competing with the rabbits for the veggies. I had put a snow fence around it for a year or so, and it worked, but one day I came home from work and saw it was gone. 'It looked like shit' I was told. Then the creatures hit, deer were shaving off the tops of plants, rabbits, possum, racoons.. I swear it was an animal picnic. So, I was told to stop that from happening. Off I went to get some fencing, brought it back and got the head shake, 'no, that's ugly too'. I made her take it back and get what she wanted, and finally put some stuff up.
We have a cat who was good at keeping them at bay, but he's too old to do much anymore.

   Anyway, go ahead with your stories, you certainly won't offend me!

SnrRog

[FlyingClayDisk]

  No, I don't care for them anymorre.. Moving from a concrete block apt to a small home in the city (with a smallish yard) was glorious! Being able to walk in the grass barefoot was a wonderful feeling!
  I now live in a rural area with an acre or so, and have a reasonably sized veggie garden. We were competing with the rabbits for the veggies. I had put a snow fence around it for a year or so, and it worked, but one day I came home from work and saw it was gone. 'It looked like shit' I was told. Then the creatures hit, deer were shaving off the tops of plants, rabbits, possum, racoons.. I swear it was an animal picnic. So, I was told to stop that from happening. Off I went to get some fencing, brought it back and got the head shake, 'no, that's ugly too'. I made her take it back and get what she wanted, and finally put some stuff up.
We have a cat who was good at keeping them at bay, but he's too old to do much anymore.

   Anyway, go ahead with your stories, you certainly won't offend me!

SnrRog

Just wait until they get inside your $75,000 skid loader and do $8,500 bucks worth of damage, or the wife's Audi A8 and do $15,700 dollars worth of damage!!!  (and those are actual numbers too!).  The had to pull the cab on my skid to fix the damage, and just about had to pull the entire engine on the wife's Audi to fix that.  I hate those fuggin' critters, and encourage my dogs to EAT ever single one they can find!  We have millions of rabbits out here on the ranch too.

I also curse all these "environmentally friendly" manufacturers now too.  Words of wisdom to follow (for not just you, but anyone here who lives in the country):

It turns out that many auto and equipment manufacturers now make wiring insulation with a vegetable oil based material.  This coupled with all the pretty colors make wiring harnesses a delightful little treat for rabbits and other critters who crawl up inside your engine bay to get warm.  That little "snacking" is colossally EXPENSIVE, and maddening beyond description!  (words I simply can't write here because they'd probably even offend ME!).

Remedy? - Aside from football stadium full of rabbit hunting beagles, the remedies are few.  Nothing works completely, but some things do help.  They are as follows:

1. Coat every exposed wire with a thick coating of the nastiest smelling axle grease you can find.  It has to be petroleum based and the more it smells like raw crude oil all the better (what I call sour crude).  I do this on my truck about 2x per year, and it's a thoroughly nasty, messy, and aggravating process, but it does keep the rabbits out.  Unfortunately, this doesn't work very well on a nice passenger car because you can smell that grease inside the engine bay every time you turn on the heater, defroster or A/C.  I don't mind it, but the wife and everyone else sure does.
   
2. A combination of live traps, ultra-sonic repelling devices, buckets of 12 ga, .22 cal shells and pellet gun pellets, and poison if you can put it places your pets and birds can't get into (and even then it's still not a great idea because it will still poison predators who eat these critters, but as the saying goes, sometimes 'desperate times call for desperate measures').
   
3. Dogs and cats who are trained to absolutely hate rabbits and other small critters and who get admirably rewarded for every single one of the vermin they kill.
   

Did I mention I can't stand rabbits! LOL!

And, I can only eat so many of the things, after all.

[ABNARTY]

Tara sounds like an awesome critter 

[Grace]

Back in 1980, I was adopted by a 7 week old Heinz 57 puppy, while working at a customers house. She was a ball of energy. We named her 'Tara-dactyl', as she pretty much was always jumping, and could jump really high. 
   Anyway, about 2 years later, we moved to a new house, from the apartment. I never thought of it until springtime hit that I needed a lawnmower. My father, who was a tinkerer, had just been given an electric lawn mower and asked if he could fix it. I called him to borrow it, so I picked it up, brought it home with a couple nice long extension cords, and set out to cut the grass, which was starting to look like a jungle, grass was half way to my up my shin.
   So, I'm out working on the yard, and Tara runs out about 40 feet directly in front of me and lays down, facing away from me, but nervously glancing back to me every couple of seconds. As I got closer, I could see she was shaking, but would not budge. When I got to about 6 feet from her, I shut the mower off and went up to her to get her out of the way, but here, with her body sort of wrapped around a small hole, was a bunch of baby bunnies! Once I saw those, she then got up and licked me. Of course I gave the bunnies a wide berth until the day they finally all left.
   I sometimes still think about what the mower would have done had she not been there to block me!
   She went on to live for 18 years, the best dog I've ever had, and I still have 2 dogs laying by my side as I type this.
  I would love to put a picture or two up, unfortunately most of my pictures were ruined in a basement flood years ago.

   SnrRog

Ohhh how sweet!

[SnrRog]

Back in 1980, I was adopted by a 7 week old Heinz 57 puppy, while working at a customers house. She was a ball of energy. We named her 'Tara-dactyl', as she pretty much was always jumping, and could jump really high. 
   Anyway, about 2 years later, we moved to a new house, from the apartment. I never thought of it until springtime hit that I needed a lawnmower. My father, who was a tinkerer, had just been given an electric lawn mower and asked if he could fix it. I called him to borrow it, so I picked it up, brought it home with a couple nice long extension cords, and set out to cut the grass, which was starting to look like a jungle, grass was half way to my up my shin.
   So, I'm out working on the yard, and Tara runs out about 40 feet directly in front of me and lays down, facing away from me, but nervously glancing back to me every couple of seconds. As I got closer, I could see she was shaking, but would not budge. When I got to about 6 feet from her, I shut the mower off and went up to her to get her out of the way, but here, with her body sort of wrapped around a small hole, was a bunch of baby bunnies! Once I saw those, she then got up and licked me. Of course I gave the bunnies a wide berth until the day they finally all left.
   I sometimes still think about what the mower would have done had she not been there to block me!
   She went on to live for 18 years, the best dog I've ever had, and I still have 2 dogs laying by my side as I type this.
  I would love to put a picture or two up, unfortunately most of my pictures were ruined in a basement flood years ago.

   SnrRog

Ohhh how sweet!

On another note,  I had to put down one of my dogs this morning, a lab/shepherd mix. He was a tad over 14, and went out this morning, and had some type of seizure, fell till the ground and lost the ability to breathe. Got him to the vet, and prognosis bad, so I said do it.
  This is the 4th time I've done this, and it  never gets easier.

  Goodbye, Maxie!

[Grace]

On another note,  I had to put down one of my dogs this morning, a lab/shepherd mix. He was a tad over 14, and went out this morning, and had some type of seizure, fell till the ground and lost the ability to breathe. Got him to the vet, and prognosis bad, so I said do it.
  This is the 4th time I've done this, and it  never gets easier.

  Goodbye, Maxie!

I'm very sorry to hear that... No, it never gets easier to let go of a loved one, even if it's to ease their passing and prevent undo suffering.

Here's to Maxie! for a life well lived...