Cynde Holding Misty
with Dusty and Cricket

Cynde holding onto Misty with the south fields behind her. The ground was desert unless irrigated and it really shows in this picture. Cricket is the shorter dog here and Dusty I got from the same friend as Misty. The dogs were close friends and would take off on adventures coming back on time with porcipine quills in Crickets face and another time she had been shot and our neighbor who was a vet had to patch her broken leg up. We were also given a couple of kittens by a neighbor. He brought them to us in a gunny sack and turned them loose. They were not used to domestic handling and ran to the house and climbed up to the top of the roof and stayed there a couple of days till hunger got the best of them. Later Cynde brought them inside and they climbed the curtains just like the logs outside. They did not stay inside long..This picture was taken shortly before Melissa was born.

To the left of the picture was an adobe hillside that had a large prairie dog colony. The dogs, especially Dusty would try to out run them and catch them if they strayed too far from their holes. Dusty was fast enough that once in a while he was successful. Cricket wasn't fast enough to catch any prairie dogs but porcipines were unfortunately.