Bella Makes a New Friend

 

Meet Trucker.  He’s an incredibly obese Min Pin that Bella met today and the two of them hit it off famously right from the start.

I take that back.  Bella played hard to get at first and she’d hide behind me with her hackles up.

 

She got over that fairly quickly and Trucker became the one playing coy.  Then it only took a few minutes for them both to realize they’d better get over themselves and take the opportunity to play together.   I couldn’t believe fat boy was able to get that belly off the ground!

 

 

The “kids” were able to play for a long time while we chatted with Trucker’s owner… a 72 year old gentleman who is still as healthy as an ox and driving a truck “to escape the wife now and then”.

 

He said Trucker is so fat because he won’t eat regular dog food, so he gets to eat whatever his human eats.  From the looks of it, he eats more than that!

 

We were worried that he might find Bella to be a tasty morsel.  I think Bella was having that same thought!

Where cheese comes from

 

I bet you thought cheese came from cows and goats.  I did too, until we had to pick up a load, including 13,000 lbs of cheese, in the Kraft caves in Springfield, Missouri.

Really cool caves, I might add.

 

Ya think?

 

This reminded me of that really old movie about a rat named Ben.  Am I wrong to love that movie?

 

These caves are immense and the temperature in the cave remains stable around 60 degrees Fahrenheit without heat or A/C.

 

They’ve built several office buildings into the cave walls and I’m betting there’s no fighting over a window office.

 

That’s a regular 53’ trailer with a yard dog tractor, just to give you a sense of how large this place is.

 

There’s also one very large hole in the ceiling to allow exhaust fumes to escape.

 

The concept of having a business like that underground to conserve energy is intriguing and kudos to Kraft for doing it! 

But I was still pretty happy to see daylight again.

I’m here, in an absent kind of way.

 

I’m here, lost somewhere in the world wide web, but I’m not home on the farm where I feel I should be.  I’m homesick and lost without the critters.  So why did I leave?  Why have I been wandering the road like a gypsy and not blogging for the past two weeks?

Cause I’m a truck driver, baby.

Back in January I lost my job after four years.  This was ok and I was never so happy to lose a job!  This gave me most the year to work on the farm and with the horses.  Except that I spent most the summer in my truck, chasing water, feed, and hay, and not so much time with the horses.  Then came Lee.  Lee is a misplaced cowboy from Texas who ended up in West Virginia by way of Alaska.  Lee had told me when I delivered Molly that if Glenn and I ever wanted to hire someone to work on the farm, he was our man.  He loved horses and his dream job was to work on a farm like ours with all those horses.  That got me thinking… hmmm… and I discussed with Glenn… and tossed it around in my brain a bit more… then we hired Lee and moved him out to the farm.  Let me explain the thought process on this:

1)  Taking care of 40+ horses over the winter was going to mean me getting another job.  For those of you who don’t know where we live, we are 12 miles from the closest small towns where minimum wage is about the best you can do.  Tack on another 20-30 minutes for a bigger “city”.  This would mean a big hunk of my measly pay check would be taken up by the commute and I wouldn’t have much time for the horses.  It would also mean working spring, summer, and fall – the busiest time for the rescue, and when I need to get all the training done.

 

2)  Taking care of 40+ horses over the winter would test my physical limits and it would be likely that someone would find my body frozen in the muck and mire with Sassy using me as a scratching post.  I would rather someone stronger and more macho push around those 800lb hay rolls and have the chance to freeze in the mud, thank you very much.

After five weeks to train Lee and get him up to speed on where he needed to go for feed, hay, and water, meet the vet and farrier, how to feed so many horses, which personalities he had to watch out for and which ones needed extra coddling (Lucille!), I felt I was ready to hit the road.   A week spent at terminal training and getting my CDL learner’s permit and here I am… stuck in Iowa waiting for Freightliner to fix the seven month old truck.  Again.

 

In my first week I’ve driven through Missouri, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, southern California (YUCK), New Mexico, Arizona, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Nevada, Iowa, and Wyoming.  I’ve seen the lights of Las Vegas, the smog of Los Angeles, the rugged desert of Arizona, and the snow covered plains (and roads!) of Wyoming. 

Can I go home now?

Here’s the plus side to living like a gypsy:  I’m going home in April and will stay home until next November.  I’m only going to team drive with Glenn during the winter when the extra money is needed to take care of the horses.  I have to go out every 59 days for at least a week to maintain my seat rating, but other than that my summer is free.  Lee will still be working for us in the summer, which means more projects get done and more horses get trained.

 

No matter how much I miss the dogs, horses, and especially my Lucky kitten, I feel like I’ve made the right decision.  I have the utmost confidence in Lee to take care of everyone and have friends that will be stopping by to check on things in my absence.  I’m still in charge of the rescue and take part as much as I can from abroad.  The wonderful world of technology will keep me connected and I’ll still be blogging about the horses and farm as long as Lee sends me pictures.  I’ll also be sharing pictures from the road and of our truck dog, Bella.  I think I’ve done what I had to in order to keep the horses happy and healthy through the winter.  I know some will criticize me for leaving, but you all know how I feel about begging for money and relying on the kindness of others to support these horses.  Finding a job that paid well and allowed me to take the summer off was the ideal solution, at least for this year. 

So stick with me this winter, it’s shaping up to be one heck of a ride.