"Monster" Makes a Visit

Yesterday some of us were milling about the kitchen, busily making grape jelly.  We have 23 rows of concord grapes on our property and those grapes make award winning jelly (at least according to our local fair!)  The grapes are at their peak right now, so as soon as school was over, we started on the washing and stemming of grapes - what a messy process!  My poor white kitchen always suffers to some degree with little purple stains all over the place by the end of the jelly event. 

The rest of us were outside working in the shop where my husband has his office.  My oldest son has moved out there as of yesterday, not because I quit as a teacher, though I have often wanted to, but because I couldn't seem to make any progress with him in his math.  This child wants to be a vet.  Well, if you want to be a vet, you've got to know your math, at the very least to get into the vet program and of course down the road to measure out doses of dog medicine.  Being an engineer, my husband has a bit of math experience and fortunately for me, he understands my son's issues as apparently when he was my son's age, he also didn't get math.  You would never know that today the way he works with quadratic equations with ease now, but it was because he finally had to teach himself in engineering school or he was going to get kicked out of the program after his first year of not doing quadratic equations so well.  It gives me hope to think it might just be a matter of applying himself more and forcing himself to open his mind, to truly choosing to learn as opposed to just giving up as soon as he doesn't know how to do something.  Once again, I'm grateful that my husband is on site as I would have had to hire a tutor if he hadn't been able to take some time yesterday to help.  There is a literal financial cost to him stepping in though as it definitely ate up some of his working hours.  He considered it an important investment of time, however, that will make it all worthwhile in the end.  I think it spoke volumes to my son, too, as one day, he'll look back and see the sacrifice his Dad made for him.  Hopefully, he really will be a vet one day and then we'll have the added benefit of having an animal doctor on site for free!

It was in the middle of all this that I noticed a truck pull into our driveway that I didn't recognize.  Then I saw a man at our gate going into the cow pasture with our son.  Then I saw horses in with our cows all moving around together in a frenzy.  I quickly yelled out to my other son, "Are the horses supposed to be with the cows?!  What is going on??!!!"  Then I yelled way across the field to my son going into the cow pasture the same thing, "What is going on !???"  That's when we noticed the dog, a new dog we'd never seen before, in with all the animals.  The dog was chasing all our animals making them absolutely nuts.  Thus, the reason the cows and horses were all mixed up together - the cows and horses had broken through all the electric fencing that was supposed to keep them separated.  Oddly enough, the dog's name was Monty, short for, don't laugh, "Monster".  It turns out this dog was perfectly named.  It was our neighbour's new dog, a husky puppy, that was nearly full height, and was apparently very badly, if at all, trained.  It certainly didn't respond to its name.  If anything the dog would go further away if called.  It literally went back and forth acre after acre, chasing our animals all over the place.  The cows were stampeding.  At one point, my son and husband had to jump out of the way of the huge 1200 lb bull as he and his wives tried to get away from the rat dog.  My other children, the older ones, were all out there, too, holding up fencing, trying to catch the dog.  My little ones and I were all inside watching the show behind closed doors, praying and asking the Lord to keep everyone safe.  Did I mention our cows have huge horns that could gore at any moment?  It was a wonder that our horses didn't get hurt by the horns let alone the other cows.  We half-hoped the dog was going to get stepped on, but he always avoided injury at the last minute!

Finally after who-knows-how-long, the dog finally stepped into the pond to get a drink.  No doubt all that running was starting to takes its toll on the busy little fella.  That's when my oldest son, who always comes to the rescue in events like these, saw his moment and grabbed the little bugger.  He had him in his hand and passed him over to his embarrassed owner who taught my children a whole new vocabulary of swear words.  We still had a cow out because she'd gone through the broken down fence, so he stuck around to make sure she got in, and then he and his brother went home with tails (ha!) between their legs.  Not sure if they were as remorseful as we would have liked, but at that point we just wanted them off the property.  It was raining throughout this entire ordeal to add to the dark mood.  Once they left, it took another hour almost to get all the fencing back together.  Not how we planned on spending our day, that's for sure.

We reflect back on the episode with gratitude however.  We are grateful no one got hurt.  It could have ended quite differently if a child had been in the path of one of the large animals.  We are grateful none of the animals got hurt or ran into traffic.  We are grateful the fencing was able to be fixed.  We are grateful that it was a way to demonstrate grace and mercy to a neighbour who may wonder why we responded the way we did.  We hope something good will come out of this with respect to neighbour relationships.  It took everything in my husband to stay calm and not shoot the dog.

Today, we'll finish the grape jelly as planned.  My husband and son will return to the shop and finish their work and math.  But we don't go on as if nothing happened.  We know we were protected by angels.  Today could have been a very different day.  I'm grateful, so grateful.