Holden

Thursday morning Matthias and I took Holden to the vet and had him put to sleep.  It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

On May 2, 1999 we took a little husky pup home.  We didn't know what we were doing.  We needed to stop on the way home to buy bowls for his food and water, a collar and a leash.  We lived in a one bedroom apartment on the 4th floor.  We already had two cats, two snakes and a tank full of fish.  We had part-time jobs and Matthias was going to school.  Looking at it logically, it was a very stupid thing for us to do.  But it was probably the best thing we ever did.

Like with Talula, we don't have many photos of Holden as a puppy.

He was the cutest puppy.  People in cars would literally pull over, get out of their cars and come over to talk to us about him.  Someone once asked to take his photo.  Even during this last car ride to Cleveland, someone came over to me at the rest area to ask about him.

Matthias and I both feel such a sense of loss.  I sometimes forget that he's gone.  I wake up thinking I need to go let him out.  I think about taking him for a walk.  His bed is still in the porch.  His blanket in my car.  Clumps of his fur is in the yard.  My brother and my brother-in-law were both right when they said, he was family.  He was.

We've been reminiscing about all the good times we had with him.  We've been looking at old photos.  Friends and family have been sending photos to us and I've been sending photos to them.  I think we have thousands of photos of him.

He was a serious dog.  Well behaved and gentle.  He loved coming with us, wherever we went.

We went for so many walks with him.  One of the reasons that Matthias and I wanted to get a dog was that our favorite thing to do together is to go for walks and hikes.  He would get so excited when we'd go to his favorite places.  I used to like to rile him up.  He wasn't a barker at all, but he'd talk and sing.  Asking him if he wanted to go to the frog bog and rolling down the window for him when we got close always brought a chorus of "woo-woo-woo"s from him.

He loved the snow.  Even when he was old and stiff, when we went out for a walk on a snowy day he'd be inspired to do some running.

And he almost always had snow on his nose

because he used to like to bulldoze through the snow, sniffing for cold, secret clues.  Unlike most huskies he was less interested in running than he was in sniffing.  The few times that he got out of the yard he was always found nearby with his nose to the ground.  But he did like romping around and playing.

And when he ran, you'd never be able to catch up with him.

He used to come everywhere with us.  Visiting friends and family out of town.  But also, he would go to work with Matthias and sleep under his desk or nearby.

He was a very cultured dog.  Got lots of exposure to art when Matthias worked for arts organizations.

And enjoyed being out in the courtyard surrounded by sculpture.

He was always up for anything.

Even when it was something he didn't like doing (he hated water).  He was always curious and loved meeting interesting people

and animals.

And hanging out with his favorite people

He was a picky eater and one of the hard things as he got older was making sure he ate enough; he kept losing more and more weight.  But he was always ready for people food.

And liked to help in the kitchen.

He also liked to help when we worked in the garden.

He and Talula were pals.  She liked him better than she liked our other cat.

It is hard that both of them are gone.

But as sad and as hard as it is, I am so grateful to have spent so many years with him.

I'm going to be taking a blogging break for a bit.  I'll be back in a week or so.

a chicken story

It's funny that I'm posting about the chickens when I'm not at the farm, but I intended to write about them before I left and didn't get around to it. 

I'm going to skip my Artist's Way check-in post for this week, or rather, last week.  I'm always late with them.  I haven't done much with chapter 4 yet and I'm not really liking the idea of having a week of reading deprivation.  I already feel as if I do not spend enough time reading.  Reading a book on a blanket in the grass seems like a perfect artist date to me.  I used to devour books and although I still read, it takes me a lot longer to get through a book than it used to because I'm busy doing all sorts of other things instead.  Taking time to actually sit down and read would be a lovely luxury.  I inadvertently deprive myself of reading all the time and don't think that purposely depriving myself will help me in my creative endeavors.  What I think might be more helpful for me would be a week of computer deprivation, or rather,  Internet deprivation.  Working on Etsy, visiting blogs, writing email, posting on Facebook and this blog all take a lot of time.  We'll see if I can formulate a working plan for that.

Until then, on to the chickens! 

About a week or two ago we started to hear what sounded like crowing coming from the chicken yard.  As our chickens have been getting bigger and bigger and the identity of our roosters more obvious, I was looking forward to the first rooster crow.  We have 28 chickens.  We ordered 5 females in each of 5 breeds and one male in one breed (Rhode Island Red).  For transport safety (to help keep everyone warm in the box), they threw in an extra male, also Rhode Island Red, and as a free gift we received an exotic chick just for fun.  Murray McMurray guarantees 90 percent accuracy for sexed chicks, so it was possible that we'd end up with another rooster, but not very likely.  As the chicks developed we watched their behavior and their physical development for clues.  It was pretty clear who the roosters were.  You can read about the chicks' development here, here, here and here.    

When we started hearing some crowing I was excited to figure out which of our two roosters were doing it.  Would it be John Wayne who is less shy and who has a beautiful green tail and a well developed comb and wattles?

Or would it be Number 1, who is a bit stockier, more skittish and has been slow to grow a tail and comb and wattles?

For days it remained a mystery.  You'd be surprised how difficult it was to catch the rooster in the act of crowing.  It always seemed to happen when I wasn't looking.  And then one morning I began to develop a theory.  It was a bit of a crazy theory, but it seemed possible.  Finally, I fully witnessed a crow and realized that I was right.  The bird who had been crowing was...

Polish, our still unnamed exotic chick.  The exotic freebie was a straight run chick meaning that it could be either male or female.  As John Wayne and Number One developed into obvious roosters, we ruled Polish out as one.  She's the smallest of our chickens.  She's dainty and not skittish like the other boys.  She's also not at all aggressive.  Sometimes John Wayne and Number One are bossy and stare down the hens.  Polish has never done anything like that before.  I cannot stop using feminine pronouns with her.  It is possible that Polish is a female; hens can crow, too, but that's usually when there isn't another rooster and it's usually a dominant female that does it.  Polish is not dominant.  I guess we'll have to wait and see how else she develops.

Now I'm thinking of her as a drag queen. 

Our adorable tiny chick

is still adorable, no matter what it ends up she really is.