Carlton thinks we went out and got him a friend. Note the slobber on his back. That’s from Alfred, the Big Dog.
Who’s that playing with that puppy we only got a few months ago (and by the way, happy 7 month birthday to Carlton!)? Why, that’s Vlassic, so named by Sara the neighbor, because he looks like Anita’s dog, Pickle.
Honest. Not looking for a dog.
We’ve only had the beautiful Carlton for a few months, and we’ve been enjoying him very much. He gets along great with the other dogs, and we’re happy.
But, on Sunday, Sara was meditating in her office, when she saw something on the porch. She thought it was something one of her kids had left outside, but then it moved! It was a very, very black dachshund mix dog. He turned out to be very friendly, very healthy, and obviously a house dog.
After a period of vaguely okay weather, with some rainy days and nice things like that, it is now extra-July here in the middle of Texas.
Combine that heat with all that Saharan dust, and people are staying indoors in droves. In fact, if I had a Gratitude Journal, my only entry this week would say, “Air Conditioning!” I’ve been dealing with most annoying asthma symptoms all week.
Be careful out there.
Mandi was trying to paint the inside of the house she’s remodeling this week, but it doesn’t have air conditioning yet. She now has heat exhaustion.
I’m being careful and plan to feed horses and chickens at sunset, and will probably drive over there rather than walk.
This saddle is quite complicated to clean, and was really a mess before! Behind it is a glimpse of the Australian style saddle. We still need to polish up those old silver conchos!
One of the things we do here at the Hermits’ Rest (and our “sister” ranches, the Wild Hermits and Wild Type ranches) is hang out with our equine friends. My neighbor, Sara, has had horses most of her life, and is a great rider. I always wanted a horse, but didn’t get the chance to own one until Sara gave me Apache, my Quarter Horse/Arabian cross, since she needed a more spirited horse to ride. I was in my late 50s, but my childhood dream came true!
Apache not looking thrilled to be saddled up and eady to go. My saddle is a Parelli “hybrid” model. It’s neither English nor Western. It IS comfortable as an easy chair. And lightweight, for my bad shoulder.
We’ve been to clinics together, but recently we have just been riding around the ranch whenever Sara is in town on the weekends. We work on new skills and explore the area. I’ve been working with Apache “at liberty” in the round pen, and we’re making great progress trying new things on trail rides, too.
Sara’s horse has a lot more training, so she works on opening gates, cantering, and doing complex maneuvers at liberty.
We each have the “right” horse for our skills and inclinations. I just love riding around the ranch with a friendly and kind horse, so Apache is great for me.
Here’s Carlton, really wanting to get out of the doctor’s office. This photo is the best one to show he has pale tan ears.
Yesterday, I shared some information on Carlton the puppy’s “weird eyes.” Today I’d like to document some of the things I learned about how he got to be “the world’s whitest dog.” (And, FYI he weighs 31 pounds now, which makes me think he will probably end up the size of his companions Brody and Harvey, though perhaps less bulky.)
I think that he has a whammo combination of THREE genes that make him pale. I learned a lot, thanks to a great collection of information on dog color genetics by Jess Chappell for a lot of this, along with the doggie eye problem reading I did from the veterinary opthalmomogist’s textbook (see references).
Carlton is not an albino
Nope, he is not an albino. Albinism is not found often in dogs like it is in bunnies, rats, and humans. There are a LOT of genes that can make a dog white, though. I won’t go into detail (you can read it in the links below), but I’ll share some ideas.
Is he a double merle?
At least two veterinarians who have examined Carlton have posited that his coloring is due to being a double merle. What’s that, you ask?
This is a cute little merle dachsund named Maggie, owned by my friend Mandi.
First, merle is a beautiful pattern that occurs in a number of dog breeds (I list some at the end of this article). The base color of the coat is beautifully dappled, and people like it a lot. It will show up if just one parent has the gene (it’s dominant).
You can see Carlton’s markings in this photo. The very pale markings around his ears are hard to see, but there.
My lovely puppy, Carlton, is 6.5 months old, as far as we can tell. He weigs 31 pounds, and is all legs and teeth at this point. He loves other dogs, warms up to people, and is generally the best puppy ever. He also has “weird eyes,” as one of our veterinarians put it. She advised that we check with a veterinary opthalmologist as soon as possible.
That visit came on Tuesday, and it’s sent me down a long path of figuring out exactly how Carlton got to be who he is, and why. I wrote up some of this on Facebook, but since then I’ve been doing a lot more research, and as a person who once considered majoring in biology, I found it really fascinating. In fact, writing up my findings is so complex that I am going to break it into more than one post.
Vet visit findings
The regular vet had diagnosed Carlton as having some kind of eye abnormality, in addition to being blue, so she sent me to the veterinary ophthalmologist to see what’s up. This is the same woman, Dr. Yu-Speight, I went to when my corgi, Gwynneth’s eyes went bad (she ended up having them removed and lived 4 more years). We had a wonderful visit.
First of all, Carlton was quite the little man through the whole appointment. He even jumped into the car on command, finally! I am so proud of this dog. He was incredibly well behaved until we got back home, when he went bonkers.
There was a great deal of eye prodding and dropping involved, but they tested everything from tears, to pressure in the eye to the insides. So, he dealt with many substances and implements. I was amazed at his patience, even though he was obviously not enjoying the process.
Sure enough, his eyes are not “normal,” which we knew. But he CAN see, better in darker light, which we also knew.
I am pretty familiar with what lives around the Hermits’ Rest, probably because looking for moving objects is one of my best skills; I seem to have been blessed with better-than-average peripheral vision. That helps with birds, snakes, and stuff. It also helps with rodents, so I’m pretty darned sure we have some big old tree rats (Rattus rattus, my favorite Latin name), along with a heck of a lot of mice and voles. We always see them when Lee shreds the pastures (along with a whole lot of happy hawks, caracaras, and falcons).
The past few weeks, though, I’ve gotten a LOT of practice in mouse identification and spotting. It started when I saw mouse poop in one of the bathrooms. I was just glad it wasn’t rat poop. Lee saw that one and said the dogs “played with it.” Then, I saw some in the other bedroom. Uh oh. Worse, Lee found a mouse in his car. I figure they came in looking for the food that is always in there.
However, when my sister and I got in my (totally food-free) car and were greeted by a friendly mouse face, I knew something was up. She fled, and I escorted that one out of the car. I was concerned. Why are we suddenly seeing so many mice in the house and garage, I wondered?
After my post about the squirrels last week, my friend Matt Hickner began telling me about his own wildlife experiences at his relatively new home in Bakersfield, California. They don’t have tree squirrels there (not really any trees, as its a desert). But they do have ground squirrels and friends.
Since Matt’s house was recently constructed in a new neighborhood, there are quite a few empty lots nearby, featuring lots of dry grasses and dirt, which give him prime critter viewing opportunities.
A couple of days ago, he posted this on Facebook:
In the vacant lot across from my house are burrows that the local ground squirrels dug. These burrows were also a great temptation for the endangered Western Burrowing Owls to occupy. I can see all of this activity from my home office so I clicked a few pictures of them this morning.
Yes, burrowing owls! I’ve always been fond of those, since they were the mascot of the school my brother and my friend Anita went to (Florida Atlantic University, all the way across the US from Matt).
Borrowing owl keeping watch.
I checked with my friends at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and sure enough, both those places are year-round burrowing owl habitat. Apparently the eastern burrowing owls have more white spots than the western ones, but they are the same species.
Fox squirrel, busy trying to find a place to dig another hole.
I like squirrels. I had a pet squirrel as a kid, named Squirrelly, who we shared with our neighbors. He was cute and fun, though he made a lot of noise running in his wheel at night. Later he lived in our treehouse until we let him go.
Here in central Texas, we mostly have the fox squirrels, which are bigger and have more tan on them than the other ones, the gray squirrels, which are what you mostly see east of here. We do have some of each. They dig lots of holes, which mean the dogs think there’s treasure in there (acorns).
Squirrel Adventures
A couple of days ago, while Anita and I were walking the dogs, I saw a squirrel in the greenbelt with a black head and tail, with a gray middle. That was some cool genetics happening there! I’ve seen a black one near where I work, too.
Of course, some places have lots of interesting squirrel variations. I remember white squirrels in Baton Rouge, for example.
You always know when the Property Brothers (that’s a TV show) are in Toronto when you see the black ones running around. I have a deep connection with the black squirrels of Toronto, since I was walking down a side street one day when one tried to jump off a building into a young tree, but the tree couldn’t hold it. It landed on my head. All I knew was that suddenly there was a THUMP and scritching on my head. A little old dude excitedly pointed down the road and shouted, “Skwi-rrell!” in a cute accent. Then we all laughed our heads off in the middle of Yonge Street.
If you live anywhere in Milam County, Texas, you will know what’s bugging me.
June Bugs
Lots and lots of June bugs. We say every year around here there’s a plague of something. So far this year, these bugs are the winner. And, yes, I know it’s May. They always show up in late April here. We’re in the South, you know.
The bugs don’t really hurt anything, but they sure cause a mess. In the picture above, that is ONE day’s accumulation. My husband had swept the porch the night before (note that the mop and bucket are there from the previous night’s “adventure” where a skunk expressed an opinion about two of our dogs).
Our new puppy LOVES the June bugs, however. The other dogs will snatch one out of the air as it plummets to the ground, but the puppy would prefer to just sit there and eat then off the ground. Since the pup’s underweight anyway, I guess the additional protein isn’t killing him. So far.
I guess I should note what I’ve been seeing and hearing lately. There have been some great song birds at both my houses. There is a Chuck Will’s Widow somewhere near our Austin house, and their call is so cool (they say their name, loudly). You never see the bird, but you sure hear them! Ours are in the greenbelt across the road.
There’s another bird out there I can’t identify. It’s like a louder bobwhite call, without the first note. Bobwites go bob-bob-WHITE! And this bird goes bob-WHITE bob-WHITE! It’s a night-time bird, too. I’ll have to ask one of my birder friends for help with this one.
At the ranch, the prickly pear cactus has started blooming, and some of those supposedly delicious dewberries are starting to ripen. Since Sean Wall keeps saying how good they are, I guess I’ll make a cobbler this year. We certainly have enough of them.
Most of what we see in the pastures and fields are many, many dandelions, along with all the pollinaors thereof. No way am I getting rid of these delicious and useful plants!
The bluebonnets are fading, but the Indian blankets are coming on strong, and some of the Mexican hats have started. Plus, my tomato plants are fruiting. That’s all fine!
Just a blue-eyed boy.
The puppy
Yes, the Dogs of Hermits’ Rest have a new member. I adopted Carlton from the Cameron dog pound, which has to be the nicest dang dog pound on earth. Sandra, the dogcatcher, is a real animal lover and lavishes all the doggies in the pound with love and attention. She even works on training them.
After my 
The Hermits' Rest 