The Native Iowan

The rains are back. 130mm/ over 6inches over night. The stream is a river again. I’m ready for things to get dry.

Its impossible to get much done when its so wet. My property is a valley bottom, a drainage area for the land around us. We drain something like 1000 hectares of land. All the rain that falls finds its way down to us. I can hear the rush of the river from where I sit.

And the rains keep coming. The wet gets wetter. My poor dogs are getting tired of it all. I watched Nia try to find comfort in a chair on the patio. She, Nia, is too big for the chair but she tried. Tried to get comfortable. She’s back on her damp bed now. The chair didnt work out.

Its way too wet and muddy to let Nia come inside. Id like to, she’s a good house dog, but the yard is so mushy, so wet, so muddy that its impossible to keep her clean. Kinda sad.

An interesting thing about the weather… I believe it has stressed my dogs to the extent that they are out of sync with their reproductive cycles. I keep track of the dogs’ cycles. I intend to eventually breed my females (all 4 of them), and have one, Bella, lined up with a big guy named Bennie. My records show that Bella last came-on-heat 8 August 2021. She was 2years old on the 27th of July, came-on-heat within a week or so of her bday. Right on schedule, as predicted.

My aim has been to breed Bella after her 2nd bday. Her third cycle. I predicted that she’d be on-cycle again wishing 6months of 8August, February was the logical prediction.

Thus I find it interesting that none of my females here on the farm have come on-heat this year. I would have predicted that Nia would have her first system somewhere around her 1st bday, the 1st of March. Her sister, Quel, cycled in late Jan/ early Feb. She lives in Palmwoods with my son, Paul. Is a house dog. The mamma dog, Penny, should have cycled almost in tandem with Bella. None of my females here on the farm have cycled this year.

I can only think its the rain, the weather. The stress from the wet. Since November we’ve had relentless rains. And I can only attribute the break in the dogs’ cycles to stress caused by the weather.

And the rains continue.

Smiles

More later