Without further ado, may I please present:


Harley the Happy Dragon

A younger, svelter Harley. Circa 2005.

I rescued Harley in 2003, after the unexpected and untimely death of my first baby boydog, Killer. I hadn’t planned on adopting again so soon. I was still grieving. But I missed canine companionship, and I’d taken to visiting local pounds on a pretty regular basis. Okay, very regularly. I knew all the dogs by name.

On Halloween weekend my boyfriend and I drove from southern California up to the Bay Area. On the way home, cranked up and hung over, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, we stopped to stretch our legs at some random animal shelter. It was a total whim.




I entered to the familiar sad sounds of a kennel – endless and desperate barking. Meandering through the maze of cages, admiring each sweet beast . . . and then I saw him. This quiet fellow. A big bully head on his muscular body, his appearance was tough but his eyes were nothing but tender. A gentle giant.

I walked up to the fencing and stuck my hand through the wire. He lifted his paw, placed it in my hand, and sighed. We hung out like that for 15 minutes or so, just holding hands. There was no denying he was my dog.

Damian and Harley go way back. This was taken ages before D and I got together.

3 days later we drove round-trip from soCal to noCal, 5 hours each way, to fetch my Harley. The poor boy vomited the whole way home (it took us years of patience to tame his carsickness). But with a little bit of time and a whole lot of loving (he had been abused) Harley was happy and healthy and totally assimilated into my life.

He is, seriously, the sweetest guy. And handsome too, the combination of which has prompted many (many!) people to offer to buy him from me. Weird, right? Who does that!?

But I understand – he’s just that awesome.

Harley celebrates Waits’ 1-week birthday. Is that a look or what, ha!

These days Harley is officially an old man. His hips give him trouble and he’s grumpy with the young pups. But he still follows me from room to room, all day, every day. I’ve never known a more loyal soul. And he still loves nothing more than to just sit quietly, holding hands.

Crash Bang Boom

Don’t be taken in by his cuteness. He’s scheming!

Ahhh, Crash. Where to begin with our accidental addition . . .

I do believe that some people come into your life when you have a particular lesson to learn. Crash has taught me more than a few lessons, and has been a constant catalyst for my own self reflection. He is truly my teacher and ever my vexer, and I love him unconditionally.

Crash was a pound puppy, adopted young by a family who lived with my grandmother. Granny lived upstairs with her two cats, and the family lived downstairs with this sloppy spotted mess of a mutt, probably a Dalmatian/hound mix. They named him Splash.







Fast forward 9 months and the tenants were moving. My grandma mentioned their plan to return the dog to the pound. Um, no way! “Let me put my feelers out,” I told her, “Before they do anything.”

A simple mass email confirmed at least 5 friends would be ‘interested’ in adopting a puppy. I told my grandma, “Let me take him. I can get him a good home, no problem.”

Damian drove the hour-long trek with me, though we were still just pals at the time. He hung with the dog in the back seat, all the way home, and stayed to play late into night as we tried to get this CRAZY dog acclimated. See, ‘Splash’ was 11 months old with no training at all. Abso. Lutely. None. Within minutes we had dubbed him ‘Crash’, a rhyme that was a much more appropriate moniker.

A rare moment of calm amidst the storm that is Crash Bang Boom

This dog was completely deranged, chaos on 4 legs. Beautiful, yes. And super sweet. But also a total nightmare. All my ‘interested’ friends backed out. Finally, one unlikely person decided to take the plunge – Damian! He’d never had or planned to have a dog, but why not? They’d bonded and it seemed a significant opportunity.

So off they went and the demon doggie was out of my hands. Can you see where this story goes? Within weeks Damian and I were a couple, and within months we were living together.

So Crash was once again my responsibility. And I took on the challenge with gusto, though I won’t lie and say I navigated gracefully. It took us months just to leash train him (years before he’d stop pulling completely). We worked endlessly on simple commands, trying to establish a basis of communication. Crash is hands down the most stubborn dog I’ve ever dealt with. But, with my insistent diligence, with Damian’s infinite patience, and with an early morning energy-burn, he slowly began to normalize. What an ordeal!

Wrasslin’

Crash is still a work in progress. But aren’t we all? That’s the greatest of many, many insights that this small spotted hurricane has gifted unto me.

~~~

And what about you, do you have canine companions? Please tell us about them!

I get a lot of questions about keeping urban chickens and how we manage to do it, given our limited acreage. So today, I present a guided tour of the girls’ room . . .





We built a run down the side of the house, so they can always access a place to scratch and bathe and play. Using scrap wood and old wire and repurposed roofing, we got the job done with barely a budget. About a third of the space is covered – the area closest to the entrance, where the raised box sits. This offers protection from the rain (or snow). But the rest is nice and open, bounded only by mesh to keep the predators away.





Damian built ‘the winter box’ to keep them warm last snow season, and it sort of stuck around. Their food and water sits on a small shelf inside. They lay their eggs in there, but given the choice they’ll never stay overnight. It’s raised off the ground because our pet chickens have pet rats . . . that’s another story.

The little door in the front is just for them. The whole roof lifts on hinges, and that’s how we access their food, water, and eggs. It’s an incredibly simple design that Damian conceived of and constructed in a weekend. It works like a charm!





Did you know that wild chickens (jungle fowl) are tree birds? It’s true, they actually don’t like to sleep enclosed. When I learned this I was determined to give my girls a comfortable place to roost. In the picture above you can see their ‘tree’, which we built out of a hedge we’d cleared. A couple of hefty branches and the old screw gun, and our ladies were sitting pretty, sleeping perched each night at the highest point.

The hens spend their days free ranging the yard. This spring we built a fence to separate my garden from their grazing . . . which I was ever so grateful for. It’s been a wonderful summer of plucking slugs from the old potato tires and dust bathing under the plum tree. Seeing them living and loving it out there every day, it just brings me endless joy. I can’t imagine HQ without them!

But before all that, I wanted to take a moment and introduce you all to my two little beauties: Miss Petunia Blue, and Miss Princess SweetPea.

Petunia Blue was our first little darling.  I got her during a feverish fit of ‘nesting-mode’ madness – an unexpected side affect of quitting smoking.  Something had to be done, and it was either getting my hands on a chick, or it was time to consider getting pregnant.  Luckily, I chose the former, and we brought home baby Petunia.  Although I know better now, and would never again support the poultry industry, she sure was a fun little wee one.  She was 1 week old:

Petunia (or ‘tunes, as we call her) is a Leghorn, that classic and quintessential American chicken.  She is small and white, slender with good wingspan and proud tail feathers, with a mighty scarlet-colored crown and waddle.  Of course, she didn’t look like that when she was just few weeks old.  This is her trademark bugeye glare:

Leghorns are also a particularly chatty breed (her nickname is very appropriate), so we were quite relieved when it was time to move Camp Chicken out of the bathroom and into the backyard.  ‘Tunes was a few months old in this picture, and having a blast exploring the new world of the great big outdoors:

That was in late spring, and it was right around that time that we brought home Princess SweetPea.  Princess is a furry-footed Light Brahma, an Asiatic breed that is closely related to Indian Jungle Fowl.  We rescued her off Craigslist from a family that was paring down its flock.  Apparently, the father had decided that he would become a producer of the perfect fancy chicken, and was on a quest to manipulate the ideal breed.  Poor Sweet Pea was one of the many byproducts of his experimentations.  She was half of Petunia’s age and weighed nearly twice as much: 

These days the girls rule the backyard, where they reside in their little red henhouse.  At night they roost in ‘trees’ made of old lumbar, safe in their enclosed run.  By day, they free range the backyard, much to the dismay of neighborhood cats (who are equal their size and can’t do anything but stare) and pesky garden slugs.  They fertilize our plants, they mow our lawn, but most of all, they are just plain fabulous friends.  

Chickens are delightful, independent, unique, and sassy creatures, and I look forward to sharing my adoration and understanding of them, as this project unfolds.