Critters

01/03/25 Saturday Sadie has been here for one week today.  Tedi, from Great Spirit Animal Sanctuary texted me yesterday to ask how it was going with the new adoption, and that reminded me that she might not be the only person curious to know.

I told Tedi it was going well. That there were a few bumps as Sadie learns the ropes here, but very few. She pays attention, which is very good, because my voice is quiet. Yelling is reserved for big deal things – all the rest of the communication is quiet because that’s just how polite people operate unless there’s an emergency, right?

Sadie is smart. Maybe she was born smart, maybe she learned it as a survival technique, no way for me to know. She is clearly sensitive. Many rescue animals (and humans, too) block their sensitivity as a survival tactic. But of course, some rescue animals just aren’t smart to begin with. Some just don’t have any understanding of what is going on, some don’t care anymore. Sadie is smart, sensitive, and she cares.

So anyway, Tedi wanted to know if Sadie was settling in. Yesterday I said: We are still working out the bumps but basically everything is good. After all, it’s been just a week. If I had a new human partner in my house it would take longer than a week to work out the bumps! And humans get to work out the bumps by talking them out in human language – critters don’t.

That doesn’t mean critters can’t communicate.

This morning when I let Sadie out into the yard she barked. Twice. Woof woof. That was it, and I loved hearing it. First of all, it wasn’t a crazy reaction to whatever got her attention, it was an alert. Two woofs and she was done. She stared off to the east, towards my property gate (which can’t be seen from the house or yard), and waited to see what was going to happen next. Nothing, apparently, because then she stood down and continued her patrol around the yard.

Why is this good news? That Sadie alerted on something and barked meant that she was acting like a guard dog. She feels like a guard dog so she’s guarding something. That something is her territory. The two barks happened because Sadie has taken this place for her own.

She has been absolutely silent before this morning – aside from a few mild growls at kittens that are trying to eat her food. She has been very busy marking with her pee since day two. Sadie is satisfied that she has let everything know she lives here now. This is her place to be. She can speak up – and she has.

A proper alert bark is one or two woofs. By woof I mean a mid-range intensity sound. Not a loud bark, a woof is just enough to get attention. Alert woofs are communication sounds, meant to let her human know to pay attention to something. Sadie woofed, then stared (her body alert and tense) for a long minute before relaxing and continuing on with her day. I stepped outside and listened, but heard nothing. Poor me, I don’t have the ears or nose to know what she was alerting on, but as soon as she relaxed I told her she was a good dog. A very good dog.

 

12/31/25 Wednesday  As this is going to be a sort of critter journal for me, and since this is the last day of a tumultuous and sometimes traumatic year, I’m going to be adding to this page like I would my blog, except it’s going to just be about the critters. Like a blog it’s going to show the most recent entries first; unlike a blog it’s going to all stay in the same page on my website. It’ll be up to you, the reader, to scroll through if you want to see the older entries. Maybe I’ll add navigation eventually.

That said, this morning, the morning of the last day of 2025, started out just crazy, like the rest of the year has been. All the critters except Katie Goat have been… less than perfect pets. Just after dawn this morning, before the brewing of my favorite life-saving caffeinated beverage, I threw a jacket over my jammies and took Sadie Dog out to pee (note: this is Sadie’s fourth morning here since I brought her home). She pooped but didn’t pee. Normally (but it’s only four days – what is normal for her?), when she has to pee she does it pretty quickly. So, given that I was cold and wanted to get my wood stove cranking and also make the coffee, we went back inside.

Promptly I heard the crash of glass.  The perp (Poppy or Daisy – both are five-month-old destructo-machines) had knocked a glass off the shelf over the sink. It shattered, most of the pieces remaining in the sink. Both kittens wanted to investigate, so I had to shoo them away except some glass was on the floor, so I had to clean that up before canine or felines walked there. I dumped the glass shards in a trash bag that was out in my (hopefully someday soon again) studio, and saw that Sadie had peed in there. Copious amounts of pee.

She couldn’t have done that just a minute before?

I sprayed the urine lake with Nature’s Miracle (I buy it by the gallon because, well, obvious reasons) and let it sit a minute while I finished cleaning up the glass.

Meanwhile, I made the coffee and gulped down the first sip, burning my mouth. Forget the coffee – I was already late getting out to the barn.

When I finally got out there, Koko – 30 years old in a few months and mostly blind – was not into cooperating. I like to groom him or work on his feet a little bit each day, and he’s normally OK with me doing it while he’s eating breakfast. OK with the feet part, loving the grooming part. Not this morning. I asked him politely and he said no.

Fine. We’ll do it his way. I wrapped up the morning barn chores, snapped at Katie for teasing Sadie, then decided to take Sadie for a walk. She pooped and peed again, so I guess my floor is safe for a while. It wasn’t a long walk – a half mile – but no way I was going to go any further without more coffee.

I know none of my critters are doing any of this on purpose (well, maybe the kittens…). They’re young and feisty with life, or old and grumpy. Some of it is my fault, the dog peeing in the house part, at least. I have a catio for the kittens but Sadie needs me to finish the fence around my yard. I began expanding the area in anticipation of bringing her home but I still have ten more feet to go. The fence panels are sitting right there. I just need to get to it. I’m sure if Sadie could go in and out at will there would be no accidents in the house. She has been great about letting me know when she’s got to go out, but I was distracted by the broken glass.

But if Sadie could go in and out at will, then the kittens would do the same, and the dog fence won’t keep kittens inside the yard. I think from the way Sadie acts that she wouldn’t allow a coyote near the house, but I haven’t actually seen proof of it yet. Do I need to have another enclosed, cat-proof area, within the yard? The catio is on the porch so it won’t work for Sadie, so an additional area would have to be out on the dirt. Dammit, another fencing project?

I can feel resentment forming. Resentment leads to grudges.Today is a good day to finally finish the dog fence. I only have ten more feet and the panels are sitting right there. I just need to do it.Then I have to test it to see if Sadie can slip through it in the places where it is just horse panels, or if she will attempt to jump or climb.

That was all before coffee. Kind of fitting last morning on the last day of the year that has been chaos all the way.

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Housekeeping notes – 12/31/25

 

NAME	DOB	Adoption date	Species/breed	Sex	Notes
SE Kokopelli Kid	1996	1996 Born here	Horse/Arabian	Stallion	04/24/1996 DOB
Katie	2016	04/17/2025	Goat/Boer	Doe	03/25/2016 ?
Daisy & Poppy	2025	09/06/2025	Cat/domestic	Female	07/28/2025 DOB
Sadie	2016	12/27/2025	Dog/TBD	F/spayed