We're back from Booneville.
If I told you everything we did up there, you would yawn. If I published anything I wrote up there, you would yawn.
It's a sheepranch, for godsake. Without sheep anymore. You sit around and the dogs run amuck and far.
I walked a lot. There's little paths that cover a lot of the steep 550 acres. The dogs chased a wild pig. We found a bloody hawk carcass piece this morning on our favorite path. I saw a coyote and a deer there the day before.
In general, the small dogs ran their asses off and got cuts and covered with stickers and would nearly pass out from exhaustion. Then we would sit in the hammock and I read a bunch of books about dogs. I think they made me write a bunch of freaky introspective crap that will never see the light of day.
Much of fetching of sticks from the pond. Otterpop and Gustavo can swim. Gustavo looks like a little water rat. Otterpop looks like a sausage buoy. Ruby doesn't even try, once she did a long time ago and she sunk.
Timmy had a hard time there. He can't see. I would carry him up to the pond and he liked it there. He paced around our cabin a lot and slept. He had good moments though and liked sitting around near the other dogs.
The other dogs impressed me with their ability to be dogs. They stayed in a pack and even if they chased a pig down, they always came back and in general stuck close. No one got sprayed by a skunk or eaten by anything larger than them.
At night we drank. My camera of course died on the 2nd day we were there.
It really was that boring and I loved every second of it.
We stopped in Healdsburg for some lunch. I took the dog parade out around the town square. I think you don't see that so much in downtown Healdsburg.
We're back and I have to go to work tomorow and I would rather sit on my ass at a sheepranch.
3 comments:
Thank god you are back! My outlook on life has improved significantly since I stopped reading the news with coffee, and instead read about Team Small Dog, so the last four days have started out miserably with bad things instead of good things, no strike that (missing roof, missing ranch, etc.). I mean *interesting* things-in-a-*fun*-rather-than-what-a shitty-world-sort-of-things. Like son shooting mother and brother on Younglove Street. See what I mean about the news? I was at the Jim Basic Distance Seminar (with a name like that, how could you not improve on the basics--all the other dogs already knew Left and Right...but it was fun! and the moral of the story/clinic is to buy land at the foot of Mt. Hamilton 30 years ago) all day, and then went to hear live music until way past my bedtime [10:00], so if YOU HAD JUST BEEN HOME SUNDAY, I wouldn't have even known that loved ones were shooting loved ones about 300 feet from my house (and about, oh, 1,000 feet from you house, I'd like to point out). So, I'm glad you had a good time, but let's keep it to once a year, OK?
Plus, your insights are overwhelming:
"The other dogs impressed me with their ability to be dogs."
See, this is why I never take vacations.
Jim inherited that spread when he married Nancy, she had it first. We always talk a lot about ranch maintenence when I'm up there. Timing is everything. As I'm sure you also learned in the distance seminar.
Wow, I missed the part about the son shooting the mom and the brother. I knew about the shooting because Gary went to the video store that night and all the streets were blocked off. The rumor that night was stabbing at Burger King, then it was in the paper the next day.
in case you were wondering. an email exchange from a genuine writer queried:
>>What did you write about while you were there?????? I am very intrigued<<
I answered:
>>i think my normally chipper writing style (which probably makes you cringe due to complete lack of grammar or structure!) turned into a boring senior thesis for a joint major of animal behavior and history of conciousness from anthropological dog observing for many hours of the day. from the hammock.
L<<<
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