"The Ditch"

Since we've moved out to the country, I keep hearing all these stories about people driving their cars into ditches. The way I understand it, it happens constantly. Especially in Winter, for obvious reasons.

When you live in the big city, there are a lot of driving hazards - and that's why car insurance is so darn expensive - but one thing you never have to worry about is... "The Ditch". There are cyclists right, left and center, wanton pedestrians darting from between parked cars, escaped dogs running wild, a myriad of confusing and often conflicting traffic signs, enraged drivers and countless other distractions.

By comparison, country roads offer only two dangers: ditches and animals (even domestic ones - cows, goats and chickens often do escape).  When you drive on a country road, you're mostly in a very calm state of mind, especially when driving at night in a snow storm, when snow flakes shining in your headlights transport you into an hypnotic voyage of intergalactic dreamy relaxation. And even more especially when you're driving The Spaceship, which is what we nicknamed our comfortable silver minivan. I can see how easily you could lose sight of the road edges during this kind of absent-minded traveling or even have to suddenly react to a night prowler running across the road and end up sliding into the ditch.

Last night, I was invited to a Tarot card reading with the gals and was asked to be the driver. On the way there, when I was cautioned to slow down on a sharp curve, I proudly expressed my confidence in The Spaceship and our expensive snow tires. Once inside and sitting around the table eating munchies, someone mentioned "The Ditch" and I innocently asked if everyone ends up in it at some point or other. Wylene laughed when she said "Well at least once, my Dear!". I suddenly felt a strange feeling of false confidence that I would never be one of them. You can guess what happened next.

The end of the night brought with it one of my country "christenings". As we were pulling out of Jenny's driveway, Terri yelled out "Watch out! You're gonna end up in the culvert!!!" I,  so innocently again, asked "What's a culvert?" when the right front end of the car dropped two feet down with a big clunk. I spun my tires and muddy water flew up into the air and Terri yelled "Don't spin your tires, we're gonna get stuck! You've got to rock the car back and forth!" So I did, or at least tried to. All that did was send more mud flying twenty feet up in the air. We were stuck.

Fortunately, I was amongst some very strong and independent women who knew all about ditches. It took half an hour, but resourceful Jenny got some cables from the house and succeeded in pulling The Spaceship out of the culvert with her truck. If I had been alone on a dark country road, I would have had to walk all the way home and possibly get eaten by one of our neighborhood bears. Thank you, Ladies! (Oh and I'm terribly sorry for ruining your beautifully white, postcard landscape just before Christmas time)

Now I know what a culvert is. The only problem is that I think it might be slightly different than a ditch, which means ... this story is to be continued.

Gone to the Dogs

City dogs and country dogs are two completely different beasts. Their daily lives differ in so many ways... and so does what we expect of them.  My two dogs were born city dogs, but like me, are now in the process of being countrified. It's been over a year since we've left our big city life behind and, just when I had convinced myself that my dogs are so much happier now and completely adjusted to their new freedom, something happened that made me reconsider the whole situation.














Emma was rescued from the Toronto Humane Society almost six years ago. She was a biter. Out here in the country they call biting dogs "ugly". With a lot of love and a little bit of discipline and a lot of avoidance (and some blood drawn on a few occasions), Emma became better and better over the years. And since we've moved to the country, Emma hadn't bitten anyone. Until today.

Today Emma bit "The Walker", Archie. Archie is an older man who lives down the road. He only walks during the Winter. Last year, we had a few issues and Archie had to wave his walking stick at Emma a few times until she got used to him and would only bark to warn me that a stranger was on our bit of road. We somewhat got along like that throughout the Winter months.

 
   

 

In the city, dogs are often confined to apartments all day long while their owners go to work in office cubicles. If they're lucky, they get to "own" pathetic little concrete backyards which they can protect against the occasional raccoon or squirrel. Their owners have to take them to the dog park twice a day, where they get to meet all sorts of people and play with hundreds of different dogs wearing pretty clothes who end up acting as their extended pack.

 

In the country, space isn't so limited. There's loads of it, all around. The pack is smaller - it has its main original four (Stuart, Karina, Emma and Chico) plus a few chickens and ducks. There is also the extended pack, consisting in human and dog friends, but we only see these other pack members during dinner visits, as opposed to meeting them twice a day without fail at the dog park.

Out here, there are all sorts of intruders the pack needs to be protected from. There is the rare trespassing non-pack-member dog. There are coyotes. There are wolves. There are bears. There are fishers and minks. There is a multitude of field mice and rats.  Most troubling is, there are also Winter walkers, like Archie.

In the city, your dog is on a leash until you reach the safe zone - the extended pack meeting place - the dog park. Country dogs have a different lot. Some live outside in a dog house (animals don't belong in the house), some are chained in place to ensure that hound noses don't lead them astray. Some have a job, like guarding a herd of sheep and live in the barn. A few have a similar life to that of city dogs and get daily walks on leashes. Most are free as a bird and come and go as they please. 

I should walk my dogs on leashes more often. Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer, insists that it's the best way to establish yourself as a pack leader and that walking together, exploring uncharted territory, is what actual packs do. Pack leaders don't send submissives out on their own to hunt and protect the den and surrounding territory, which is what I've been doing, I guess. When I let her out, Emma goes around the whole property and checks that everything is secure, after which she sits in the driveway and barks at the mail man's car, or at tractors that roll by pulling shit spreaders (giant trailers full of cow manure), or at other dogs barking in the distance. Once in a while, she threatens a "walker". 

One would think that all this "freedom" would be doggy paradise, but to be honest, I think my dog is bored. Last year she went on a lot of "errands" until we found her in the neighbor's cow field. This is not good. A farmer can legally shoot a dog found bothering his livestock. What's worse is that if, for example, a dog makes a cow trip and break its leg, the (likely dead) dog owner's got to foot the bill (I imagine approx. $1500 for a cow).

I'll admit that I don't walk with my dogs as much as I should due to my fear of all the animals we share this beautiful land with. The coyotes, the bears, but mostly, the neighboring dogs who are just like Emma: if you walk in front of their properties, some *will* bite you. So I sometimes walk with them to this corner, and to that corner, but it gets boring pretty quickly, especially in the winter when all is dead and still.

After Emma bit Archie this morning, I resolutely put her on a leash and went out onto the road to meet him. I figured that if she got to walk with him, he might become a part of her extended pack. Archie showed me the puncture wound on his leg. He said it was okay, that since she was a rescue dog, somebody must have done something bad to her in the past, that he understood, that he loves dogs. Archie is a very kind man. I assured him that I wouldn't let her loose by herself anymore. He warned me that if she ever bit a kid, we could lose her. I asked Archie if I could accompany him on his walks sometimes, and he said that he wouldn't mind. 

My new year's resolution (starting right now) is that I'll get myself a walking stick just like Archie's, and I will walk Emma every day. Maybe that way she'll be good and tired and won't have to protect our bit of road from walkers or even worse, from the lady who rollerblades by with her stroller during the Summer.