On dogs

If you have ever visited the RTCO Warehouse, chances are you have met Lindy and Dot, our Canine Patrol Corps. Lindy is the lovely, long legged Standard Poodle, and Lieutenant of the Corps- and the brains of the outfit. Dot is her lovable sidekick and comic relief for the team. Dot is a tubby little rescue who thinks she is a long legged Standard Poodle. They sleep at my house and I am their personal chauffeur and valet.

What is the Canine Patrol Corps responsible for? Oh, well… the list is fairly short:

• Crumb cleanup in the kitchen and break room 
• Warehouse cat supervision (more about Maulie in her own post)
• Squirrel Patrol 
• Doorstop (Strategic Napping Patrol)

And, most recently, Dot took on the role of determining the soil moisture level in the garden at my house.

Last Sunday, my husband, Steve, challenged the weather and raced through tilling and planting our new, smaller garden plot. Earlier in the week we had lamented our old garden spot which was 14’ x 40’ and produced 100’s of bushels of produce in rich, loamy soil for over 20 years. We had tended and enriched it while our family and the sapling trees our neighbors all planted around it grew up. A couple of years ago, it didn’t produce nearly as well and when we stopped and thought about it, it was in part because our once sunny plot is now nearly all shade!

Dot  and Lindy on Squirrel Patrol

Since we are now empty nested, it made sense to start a new plot in a sunnier part of the yard and while we loved our big garden, we don’t need quite that much to care for any more. We are working on the soil in our new 14' x14' plot and it tilled up nice and loose this year. It looked healthy and happy Sunday evening, with all of our plants in. And then, of course, it rained. Lots. Lots and lots and lots of rain. Several inches of rain on our nice, loose soil.

And so, back to Dot’s new role of garden soil soup monitor. I was on one side of the garden when our neighbor, Bob, came over to take a gander at the havoc the rain played on our baby plants. He has a vested interest in our garden because we are his orange tomato source every summer.

Dot was on the other side of the garden. Dot likes Bob. Dot took the shortest route to get to Bob- straight through the garden. It was a good thing Dot had some momentum going, because Dot’s short legs were no match for our garden soil soup. She landed on all four smack dab in the center of the tomatoes and was instantly up to her brisket in mud. Immediate reaction- PANIC!!! You could see her limited intellect responding “Feet don’t fail me now”!!! According to the Dot Garden Soil Soup Monitor, we have good soil moisture- probably about 8 inches deep.