R.I.P. Gopher

 Note: This post may contain some material that might be offensive to people holding strong feelings of closeness toward a particular animal species...namely gophers. If you happen to fall into this category, proceed with caution.

 If you are frequent visitor to our blog, you may remember a post titled, "R.I.P. Nutria" from last February. I must start by saying that Sage is not a cold blooded killer. This is only her second rodent mortality in her not quite two years of life. We are working on it...

 Anyways, here's how it happened. It was a VERY foggy morning and I could tell Sage was ready for an adventure. And, because I too was ready for an adventure, I came armed with my camera...which is a necessity for any great adventure.

It started off as a normal walk on the ranch. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The normal obstacles were present and stoically avoided. There were cattle guards that needed to be bypassed, sticker burrs that were plucked from tender paws, barbed wire that challenged unwelcomed visitors, and scary longhorn cows that protected the path.

 Sage and I were on a mission. A mission to make it to the end of the road (and then turn around and walk back). It was all very exciting.

Well, actually, the walk wasn't all that exciting at all! It was muggy outside and the air was so thick you couldn't see farther than 30 yards. I was worried that my camera lens would fog up and almost didn't bring it along. Not much was going on. However, things quickly took an exciting turn...

 Thinking I would get another neat picture like this one, I snapped a few before I realized that Sage's head was missing! Before I knew it, she was trotting over proudly with something in her mouth. "Sage, what do you have...?" As she dropped it at my feet, I couldn't stop shaking my head. So, being the caring and compassionate person that I am, I took the lens cap off the camera and got down to ground level to document the moment!

 The poor gopher was not amused and additionally, he wasn't completely dead. I will spare you the details, but Sage "played" with him a bit longer before the end came for him, which was probably not soon enough.

I was somewhat traumatized by the whole ordeal, but Sage seemed to get over it pretty quickly. Sage spent the rest of the morning checking out other gopher mounds while I tried to capture her on camera.

 I will try not to make too many excused for Sage, but I would like to say (for the record) that she is a very playful, adventurous dog that isn't too picky when choosing her playmates. This causes a problem sometimes when she chooses playmates that are too fragile to withstand the level of intensity she attains. Rodents seem to fall into this category, unfortunately for them. Especially because Sage is pretty fun to play with!

While these R.I.P. posts are quite entertaining, I hope Sage and I don't accumulate too many of them. Or at least I hope we stick to rodents...