No Need to Tiptoe around it

Soft breezes, green pastures, and a cacophony of various frog songs often ring through the air in the spring on our farm.  All summer, it is the sound of squawking birds flying through the hot and humid sky.  In the winter, it is the silence.  The peacefulness that cold nights and falling snowflakes bring.  But the most influential time of year is the fall.  It is the combination of falling acorns, bustling winds, warm sunshine, and the overall feeling of change in the air.  It is a feeling you cannot really escape.  It sneaks up on you and gently taps your shoulder to remind you that something different is about to happen and you better be ready. For us, it is a mixture of uneasiness and excitement all in one.

This fall was no different.  It was the ever-constant workload calling our name every day, beckoning us to keep pushing as hard as we could go.  Raising your own food and tending to animals is a job with no vacation days, no sick days, and you will have the worst boss imaginable...yourself.  If you don't nag yourself to be better than you were the previous day, then you need to fire yourself from homesteading and go get a 9-5 job in a brick-and-mortar building.  Fall is also a time to reflect and there is always time to do that when you're feeding your brood, scooping out old straw, or cleaning water bowls.  Reflection is as imperative as work ethic.  In all that reflection and change, some things on the homestead are constant.

Roosters crowing every morning like clockwork, the dogs greeting you at the back door, and the chickens stealing the hogs' feed when they aren't looking.  Some things do not change.  One of those things was the wagging tail and huffing and puffing of our old dog, Tiptoe.  He lived with the chickens and when it came time to feed him and the chickens, he would always come and lay his head on our thighs, as if to say, "I woof you and thank you for not forgetting me."  One morning late this fall, Jordan came in the house and told her dad and me that there was something wrong with Tiptoe.  He wasn't getting up.  Tiptoe sometimes did this.  He was a Walker Hound mix and whenever he had an ounce of freedom to run around the farm, he not only ran around the farm; but he would also check out the entire neighborhood.  Our neighborhood is rather large and a lot of it is wooded.  Sometimes he would disappear for a day or two, but he always came back.  He would sleep for two to three days and then he was ready to go again.  But this day was different.  Tiptoe had not been running the neighborhood.  He was there on the ground behind the coop.  He felt hot and he was in pain, somewhere in his torso.  We thought that maybe he ate something he shouldn't have.  We made the decision to take him to our vet.  

It was a tough day.  We took our dog we had since he was a puppy to the vet, thinking that maybe he had pneumonia or a bad stomachache.  What we didn't expect was the change that would hit us like a freight train.  Our vet called us later that afternoon.  Our choices were to rush the poor fellow to a vet hospital, wait to see if he would improve, or euthanize.  Remember all that change you expect to smack you in the face?  This change was a throat punch.  Tiptoe seemed fine the day before, but now he had a possible issue of something I couldn't even pronounce and the veterinarian tried everything she could to help, but the solution was not what we wanted.  It came down to put Tiptoe through all types of exploratory surgery and hope they find out what the definite problem was OR euthanize him and let him be at peace.

It was a hard day.  And if I can be extremely selfish, can I just say that Alex was working all day and night on that particular day, all four kids were absolutely distraught, and I had to make the decision on what to do.  In all fairness to Alex, he was working on night shift, so he slept all day to wake up and go into work all night.  It was not a fair situation where I could go and cry to Alex and try to force him to make the decision.  It really stunk.  I hated it and here I had to deal with the kids' emotions and then pilfer through my own...over a dog.  Yes, a dog that was so good to us and loved us unconditionally.  A dog that kept me from getting bitten by a copperhead the year I was pregnant with Timmy.  A dog that stayed right with the kids when they were off playing on the farm.  A dog that lived in the same areas as the hogs and the chickens and never once tried to hurt them.  A dog that could lay his head on your leg and you could feel his love exude from his very soul to yours.  It was a moment of realization that I was completely alone on this one.  It was a moment of fruition.  When you live on a homestead and have the responsibilities of caring for animals, you also have to take responsibility for their care and what is best for them.  And that means a whole lot of unfair change sometimes.

As you can guess, I made the decision to euthanize Tiptoe.  Our vet was amazing.  She stayed past office hours so we could come say good-bye.  It was pouring the rain that night.  The weather couldn't have matched our mood more.  We said our good-byes through tears and drove back home.  The next morning, I picked up Tiptoe and took him back to his farm. I buried him next to our other dog that passed away, Scrap. Now Scrap won't be lonely anymore.  Tiptoe will watch over him.

And then life moved on.  But it wasn't really the same after Tiptoe died.  Now, when I go to the chicken's coop and fenced in area, there is a void.  I guess there always will be.  It's strange how I always viewed Tiptoe as a constant figure on our homestead.  He was not something that would ever go away.  He was the only animal we had that started with us.  He came with us when we moved from our house in the city.  He moved with us into the RV.  He watched over us when we lived in a campground for a year. He watched over us when we lived on the land we owned (still in a RV) and helped us to befriend our neighbor, Kevin. He moved with us onto our current homestead.  He even travelled with us to Nashville several years ago.  He was always there.  

If there is one thing I know is that there are four seasons to a year, but there are many more seasons in life.  Each season brings something with it. It is obvious what the four seasons bring, but what may not be as obvious is what life's seasons may bring.  Fall is the one season that is unusual.  In homesteading, you can plant certain crops to grow in the fall and they will do extremely well in the cooler weather.  It is also a time when other crops start to fade away and you will have to rip out the decaying plants and prep the land for the following spring.  That is why fall is such a strange time.  Change is inevitable.  It is forced upon you, and you have to either rise to the challenge or sit back and let it knock you down.

For us, our seasons in life seem to parallel with fall more than any other season.  There have been many times where I have let that change knock me down.  Alex, on the other hand, has his fists up ready to get into a fight with change.  He doesn't like change at all.  His way of dealing with the various seasons of life is to stay constant in his work on the farm.  Usually with time, change is accepted, and we both move on.  This time, we moved on, but I had to say something about this season in our lives that came to an abrupt end.  After all, you cannot tiptoe around the way you are affected by the events that happen when you don't expect them.  So here is to the best dog we ever had the privilege to know.

Tiptoe

May 2012--November 2022