Jack, A Dog Under Construction

Our little Jack has been getting into mischief lately. Thank the Gummi Mary he has been able to fortify himself with energy from Farmer H's bacon sandwich, served up to him all proper on a paper plate on the Gator seat.

Farmer H has a big project going right now: his freight container garage. The concrete for piers to set the two containers on was poured a couple weeks ago, and a crane came and positioned the freight containers on them. Thursday, the concrete workers came back to pour the floor. Farmer H spent the morning and a bit of afternoon babysitting that floor, lest Jack and Juno and Copper Jack decide to leave their paw prints for eternity.

Farmer H is all about old-school handyman techniques. When he used to change the oil in the vehicles himself, he thought nothing of pouring the old oil out on the ground. He burns the rubber and plastic coating off wire in order to sell it to the junk man. He's been known to dispose of the old kitchen cabinets from my $17,000 house in town in our sinkhole at the front of the Mansion property. He's also tossed a dead possum down that sinkhole. He pretty much looks at it like it's nature's wastebasket.

I try to tell him that whatever goes down that sinkhole goes into the groundwater. That's what made the sinkhole in the first place. We have several on the property, some filled in with eroded soil, and a couple, like the big one, that you can hear a distant splash if you drop a rock down in it. After all these years of living out here (19 so far!), with Genius and The Pony growing from toddlers to curious boys to tweens to young adults...Farmer H has decided that the sinkhole is now a safety issue, and it's his mission to fill it in. He hauls trimmed tree limbs and dirt and all manner of stuff over to it and dumps it in.

Let the record show that it's a fairly large depression. Not a big gaping hole. The hole part is just a couple of feet across. The depression part is a little bigger than our garage. Farmer H has been letting the concrete truck dump its leftover gunk into the sinkhole. Mainly the depression part. Which brings us to Jack's latest adventure. Farmer H told me about it yesterday evening.

"The concrete guy was dumping what little bit of concrete was left. Jack ran out in it. That dog is stupid! It was halfway up his legs. He just kept walking through it. His p*cker was draggin' in it! Good thing he came out before it hardened." (Pretty sure he was talking about the CONCRETE!)

"Is he okay? Did the concrete come off?"

"Yeah, he ran around in the grass, and most of it fell off. He's fine now. You can't even tell."

I guess it's a good thing Farmer H spent his time babysitting the concrete floor until the finishers got it smoothed out and polished.

I have a feeling Jack might be re-introduced to Mr. Shocky, now that Farmer H is here all the time to supervise him.