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Meanwhile Back at the Ranch…

I’m sorry things have been a little quieter than usual…our electricity has been out!! It was out much of this morning, is back on now, but it looks like it will be out tomorrow as the utility company comes back out to fix the problem. After the flood, they were out here doing work on the lines and, somewhere between that line work and the shifting of some of the trees when the creek rose, apparently some tree limbs got on our lines.

The dogs, of course, were a big clue something was wrong. We’d been hearing a buzzing from the transformer by the barn, a noise that the dogs were finding very troublesome. They barked when they were outside…and when they were inside they wanted back out to check on that odd sound. As soon as it got dark every night, they were especially upset and wanted to be out in the yard, looking from the fenced yard over to the barn and barking. We didn’t see anything unusual but the utility man this morning said that there had probably been a blue glow at night from the arcing of electricity along the line. Once again, dogs know best!

So now we’ve got a huge truck on its way out tomorrow to replace parts of the transformer and check the lines which will hopefully fix the problem! This morning, the size of the truck and the small size of our road led to more brush cutting:

brush1

This follows days of brush cutting, briar removal (I now know how the inventor of barbed wire came up with the idea: briars!) and brush burning:

brush-john-dogs

On the plus side, all this flood damage and subsequent cleanup is resulting in some new trails perfect for dog walking. We’ve already taken a preliminary walk along the start of the new trail:

new-trail

And the clearing has unveiled some spots we didn’t even know were here, like this completely hollow tree:

newtrail-tree

And places where the flood moved rocks to create little bridges across the creek:

brush3

There’s still a lot of work to be done…

brush2

…but I can already see some nice fall and winter walks along the new trail, which parallels the creek, now back at its normal size.  After all the cleanup, we’re going to have some great new places for our twice-daily dog walks!

newtrail2

Paris Permenter
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This post originally appeared on DogTipper.com and is the sole property of DogTipper.com.