Meet Maggie

Maggie - August 4, 2016

Meet Maggie, the four-legged (as opposed to the two-legged and four-winged) queen of Magnolia Hill Farm, from whence her name is derived.  We're still working on the hierarchy of the different queens, but most of the time I still consider myself to be at the top of the list.

We adopted Maggie from the Coweta County Animal Shelter.  We went there to look at a different dog, but Maggie was just so sweet, she won us over very quickly.   We couldn't bring her home for a week as the shelter does not release animals until after they have been spayed or neutered, but she has made herself at home in just five days.

Maggie is a Catahoula mix and has already shown hunting instincts and/or training.   One characteristic of Catahoula's is that they stalk silently and only bay once they have treed their prey.  It was two days before we heard Maggie bark, but she has since alerted us to things that she thinks are noteworthy!   Oddly, she barks a lot when hubby comes home from work.   We think the diffference to her reaction to my returns to the house and hubby's have to do with her being in her crate when I leave to run errands instead of being asleep on the couch when hubby has arrived home the past two evenings.  We'll get confirmation of that when hubby comes home at lunch to let her out tomorrow.

Maggie got a clean bill of health at our vet yesterday and behaved very well during our two hour visit there.   In fact, she was less irritable than I was!  Between my doctor's visit and hers, I spent far two much time in uncomfortable chairs yesterday.   (At least I didn't pee on the floor like somedog I know!)    

On Friday, my plan was that Maggie would not be a couch potato, but by the time I got up at 6:50 a.m. on Saturday, she owned half the couch at the RV and now claims anywhere from 1/3 - 2/3 of the couch at the house, depending on how many humans are sharing the couch with her.    She enjoys pouncing at the lawn mower and vacuum cleaner, but grows bored very quickly with toys.  She does not like us to be out of her sight.   Right now, we're hoping that being car-sick was a one-time deal, but I guess we'll find out this weekend!

Maggie helps fold laundry.

Maggie has to be right in the middle of everything we do, including folding laundry.  She curled up in the middle of the unfolded and then the folded clothes this afternoon and did her best to prolong a chore that I don't much like anyway.    After six weeks in the shelter, we understand her being a little clingy and that is getting better as time passes.   Owing a dog certainly isn't always convenient, but we are really enjoying her company, her curiosity, and her affection.

Dead dogs and Englishmen

I know that's not the quote, but I also know I'm not a man!   And after 30+ years in the United States (which followed 8 years in Germany),  little remains of my Englishness other than my accent and my sometimes-reservedness.  My cousin even says I now think like an American, but he can't define the difference.  I think of myself as American and Southern.  Southern -- it's been dawning on me more and more over the past few years that I would miss so much about the South were I to move to another region, much as I like to visit new cities.  It's the same as the way I feel about England now -- it's a great place to visit, but it's like wearing high heels instead of hiking boots.  Something just doesn't quite fit comfortably.

So what led up to thinking about dead dogs.....

This week the education services I subscribe to inundated me with articles about teacher burnout and teaching conditions by state.  Yes, unhealthy food seems to be what my body craves right now.  Yes, I take an additional 10 minutes for breakfast and coffee in the morning before getting ready.  Yes, to quite a few other things in the teacher burnout articles.  But I've attended conferences and taken graduate classes every summer for the past 6 years, so I think a summer off will cure that.   The articles about teaching conditions rank Georgia higher than South Carolina across all categories, but would teaching be better if we were living in an RV in Georgia and sharing a closet the size of a filing cabinet?   I sincerely doubt it.   But I want chickens, and I just can't have them here in the neighborhood.  And I'm not good at being patient!

All of this led up to the thought, "I want a beagle" while I was driving to work Friday morning.  Beagle rescue groups currently have some of the prettiest mixes and with such beautiful brown eyes!   It's been two years now since our dog died, and even longer since we lost the cats, and taking care of BIL's dog while he was on a business trip over spring break has just made us miss them all a lot.

Now, we have pets.   While the bees aren't technically pets, they are generally amusing to watch and we do get to nurture them.   The aquarium is relaxing to watch and I do feel sad when one of the fish ends up floating upside down. We even have a wild bunny that I kept inadvertently hitting with the garden hose yesterday as it searched for a spot that I wasn't trying to hit with Miracle Grow.  But we don't have any pets that will curl up in our laps and look at us with loving eyes.

Then sanity kicked in.  We also don't have any pets that poop on the carpet, unless I am really klutzy disconnecting the canister filter on the aquarium, and I can hardly blame the fish for that!   We're going into a month of late nights at work that tend to leave a dog with little choice but to poop or pee in the house.  We simply are not ready to move.  We don't have electricity on the farm yet and our house needs some work done before we put it on the market.  So I put all my longing for the outdoors and for the ability to see instant results after a hard day's work into re-pottting seedlings and dumping out failed cuttings.  We now have 21 magnolia seedlings, two of which are the same height as the one we bought from Arbor Day for $6.98.  (And that one is still settling in so looks less promising than my free seedlings.)   The aluminum baking pan into which I dumped the magnolia seeds that I forgot about in the garage fridge contains a swampy mess that somehow still keeps popping up a new seedling about once a week, so I left the soil in there for now after pillaging what was growing.  I've stopped counting Goldenraintree seedlings.   I have some very well rooted lavender and rosemary.  Most of the trees from Arbor Day and doing well and will certainly be ready to plant at the farm in fall.

As the sun set last night, we sat on our swing and looked out at the yard that was nothing but a sandpit when we bought the house and which has become our haven over the years.  We watched our bees drink out of the bird baths, and we watched the birds visit the feeders.  For the second year in a row, we have bluebirds nesting.  It took us years of us to find the right place for a bird house for them.  While sitting there, we planned where to put benches to take advantage of the sun, the shade, sun rises, and sun sets on the farm and we decided that every bench needs to have a hive nearby because the critters can be so much fun to watch.  And, yes, we will have a dog.  It may not be a beagle, and it won't be this year, but we can't picture retirement without a dog to take on walks around our future pond and own to our creek.  After a day outdoors, I can once again say that life is good.