Well, 2008 is here. I hope everyone had a nice holiday.

Overall I think 2007 was a good year. Andrea and I got to visit Hawaii, she did well at work and my business was decent. However, I did lose four friends:

Kevin Bennington, 50, my next door neighbor. Died while at work painting.

Bill Hinkel, 51, old boss and friend, died on the treadmill at the gym.

Phil Hollins, 41, died in an avalanche while snowboarding.

Dave Martin, 85, vascular dementia.

We also lost two dogs and a cat: Mitcha (15), Cynder (14) and Diamond (16).

But we did get a new dog, Maya, and our Freya, who is now over six years old is still going strong.

She took out deer number last night.

After our guests left on New Year’s Day I took a nap for a couple of hours and then started the chore of taking down the holiday decorations. We went out to bring the horses in about 11pm and I thought I’d be able to come back in and go directly to bed.

That didn’t happen.

When Freya came in she was covered in blood. Seriously dripping. She’d obviously killed something so I took her to the bathroom to wash her off while Andrea went out to find the victim.

It was a six-point buck, and it was still alive.

Her method of operation is to run the deer down and bite at the rear leg, and if successful she will open up the femoral artery. I got out the shotgun to put it out of its misery but by the time I got to it, it had died.

We got the truck and loaded the body into it so the dogs wouldn’t get bloody again or drag body parts all around the farm (Andrea found a spine on the back porch the other day). Usually we find them well after she’s taken them down, but this one was fresh, so she decided to look into what it would take to dress it for meat. Considering that it was dark, cold and nearly 1am we decided that we didn’t want venison that badly and we finally went to sleep.

This morning I cut of the antlers as evidence and took the body to dump it out in a field nearby (but not too close). The county dump won’t take the body so I figured I’d leave it for the buzzards. Of course, I got the truck stuck in the process and had to walk a mile back to the farm and ask my neighbor to help me move it with his tractor. By the time I got to work it had already been a long day.

Happy New Year.