Casper – September 13th

Angel and demon, all rolled into one.

In what I considered to be a bold experiment, we took Casper to the Sunday morning Farmer’s Market at the Victor Valley Museum today. Many, MANY new smells and strangers and experiences, including a stray cat wandering around (he HATES cats) and a rabbit sitting off of the edge of the parking lot.

To his credit, Casper was EXTREMELY well behaved, a little angel! No barking, no lunging, no going berserk. Lots of curiosity and sniffing, but all under control. I was very surprised and pleased.

Then the late afternoon came, back at home. He decided for reasons unknown to jump the 6′ cinder block wall in the back yard, out into the vacant, graded lots out there for future homes. Needless to say, this caused a certain level of consternation and anxiety and chaos, leaving me to be muttering things like, “STUPID fucking dog!” a lot.

Demon dog!

With construction scheduled to start next year on those vacant, graded lots the developer has the roads fenced off, so you can’t get a vehicle back there. So I grabbed Casper’s leash and headed down the block at full impulse power in order to swing around the end of the block, into the vacant lots, and then back to behind our house. My three big concerns with this escape are 1) Casper would just take off and we would have to find him or track him down. Yes, we have a GPS tag on his collar, assuming it works as advertised. 2) Casper could get hurt jumping over the wall. Not only is it 6′ tall, but on the other side, the lots on the street behind us are 8′ to 10′ lower, so jumping blind could lead to a significant drop, which could break a leg or worse. 3) There’s a lot of brush and bushes back there which could well be cover for unpleasant critters, in particular, rattlesnakes. Again, if he’s stupid enough to jump the wall and run off, he’s stupid enough to mess with a rattlesnake.

So, after running to the end of the block, down the side street to where the empty lots start, and then back across the brush and weeds and dirt to come up behind our house, that’s right about the time that the idiot canine JUMPED BACK across the wall and back into our yard, like nothing had happened. He seemed very impressed with himself, while I was sucking air big time.

Casper, I may be developing some trust issues here!

The only good thing out of all of the chasing and walking and so on was the stunning views of the three-day old Moon (9% illuminated) as a razor-thin crescent with the full disk visible in Earthshine, the reflected light off of the “full Earth” as seen from the Moon, plus Venus to its upper left. They were setting over Old Baldy, the 12,000+ foot mountain to our south, and our houses in the foreground. Amazing view!