When Grace dug up areas of her yard like an excavator, I was pretty impressed. As I’ve said, we have maybe an inch of dirt on top of a lot of rock. The guys who came to build fence couldn’t use their usual heavy equipment for pushing in fence posts since the pre-coated posts are too light of a gauge, so they had to dig each hole by hand, about 50 of them. These are young guys, but digging holes is hard on anyone. They showed me the tool they were using to break up the rock. It looked a lot like ours, inherited from my Dad and made from a model T axle many decades ago. I got them each a tube of Bengay Advanced (and added a gift card to a local restaurant inside). They are very polite, and they thanked me for the Bengay. One looked a little confused, so I suggested that he open the box.
So, when I say that Grace digs, she has a lot of power. She doesn’t need Bengay, but this was almost 20X the number of holes that she dug, and the corner posts had to be dug deeper. Her shoulder muscles were really buff when she was doing her remodeling. Since we’ve been back, she hasn’t had as much enthusiasm for digging, until this week. She’s been excited about what is going on outside: building fence in the south part of the yard (for scent work) and rebuilding two of the yards. When you live in a mining area, you have to assess your yard for heavy metals (or for whatever industry issue is common to your area). Our yard was tested when we moved here, and it met EPA limits (100 ppm for lead – too high for my comfort, even though our yard had much less). With Grace investing so much in digging and ingesting the soil in the process, I decided to replace the surface layer of soil in her yard with better soil. Sourcing better soil here is an effort! (and “EPA-tested” doesn’t meet my goals) After testing three samples, I settled on one, but before we had all of the soil delivered, an unexpected rain occurred one night and that source couldn’t get into their field. So, on a short-notice basis, I had to find another qualified source, and one who could deliver the same day. It was like most construction projects: delays, hiccups, pressure and finally a good outcome, without time to spare. Meanwhile, with dirt being moved on the west and east sides, it spilled a little at a time onto the drive where I took her on-leash for relief. She had seen the dirt on her yard being spread, and she was very excited! A whole yard full of dirt for digging! And on trips for relief, she jumped down onto her elbows and swept the dirt in the drive back and forth between her paws, with gusto and sometimes forgetting that there was a human attached to the other end of the leash.
I was planning to let her use the south yard while grass grew on her yard, and I tried to explain gently that all of that dirt was for the purpose of growing grass. And I was dreading all that dirt being brought into the house over the next few months. No worries! We will have a drenching rain, and the dirt will now take the form of mud! I hope the grass grows fast.