I loaded up the CrazyMobile with six dogs yesterday - my five plus Robin's Moon who happens to be hanging out at Chez Crazy for a little while (not permanently). We went out to Julie's to work a little and to play a little.
We took two nice walks - and nevermind the fact that it's stupid cold outside the border collies, excepting Moon, all decided to take a swim in the frigid creek. Not just once, but twice. Man was it cold, but the dogs were happy to get out.
Zippy was not thrilled to be taken on a walk, but my vet wants to see him maintain the muscle mass in his back end, or possibly increase it. Speaking of Zippy - turns out he has a Grade 4 heart murmur. I need to get him scheduled to go in and take an X-Ray, and start him on some meds. He's just sixteen, and finally starting to show his age some. It absolutely breaks my heart, but on the other hand I've been blessed with almost five years with him now and I'm grateful for each day. Well, that is except for the days maybe where he's "One Papillon Free to a Good Home".
Ginger got to come into the big pasture with me while Julie and I worked on pulling some of the unpalatable parts of the round bale she'd just gotten off of the bale. While we did this Ginger wandered around obvlivious to the fact that Kelly and Spottie were out there working. Ginger is oblivious to sheep as Zippy is oblivious to chickens.
I worked Linc a bit - and practiced staying relaxed but firm. It worked pretty well, and he managed to stay relaxed. I used him to sort Crazy Red out of the group, and then to sort sheep later for the puppies. I didn't see any crashing into the sheep on inside flanks, and I was very pleased that he seemed to be listening just right. I think it would be fair to say we BOTH had good attitudes. Mark the day down.
After that I got to see some puppy working (yay puppies!) and then Nick got recruited to push the sheep off of the feed bunks while Julie put out feed. He pushed the ducks off of the feed too - which always makes him happy as he loves him some ducks. I then took him behind the barn with me to collect eggs where he got attacked by one of Julie's housemate's Velociraptors. I told him to "get em up" - which to Julie's dismay only resulted in closed-mouthed lungeing. Oh yeah, Velociraptors of the world shall quake at our feet. NOT! So much for that. I'd hoped he might teach them a lesson. Guess not.
Finally around 4:30 we put dogs up and went to pick up about 35,000 bales of hay. No, not really. Actually it was 35 bales of hay that the hay guy threw down to me as I loaded them on the trailer. Julie supervised. Activity points baby! We wound up putting them up in the dark as we realized when we got back that we had JUST enough daylight for that second dog walk. I'll admit that when we got to the last bale (we had to carry it a ways, toss it over the fence, and then stack it in the barn) I was pretty wiped out. Good work - a nice start to this week's plan to start losing weight, making healthier choices, and so on. Too bad it won't count as the week starts on Tuesday.
Our reward? After the hay stacking (Julie did most of the stacking part) a stop at Cracker Barrel for pancakes. YUM! So really living in the city and not having my own sheep means I have to work harder to get my dogs work, and work harder to get MYSELF work. But it's worth it.
After all of that I went home and washed off Nick's neck. Why? That's because Nick had apparently amused himself by rolling in cat pee while I helped Julie with hay. Bad dog. I then fed dogs, and hung out with my feet up just waiting for bed time. I must have gotten lazy recently as the work took much more of a toll on me as it should. But man is it ever rewarding.
Photo by Dan King
We took two nice walks - and nevermind the fact that it's stupid cold outside the border collies, excepting Moon, all decided to take a swim in the frigid creek. Not just once, but twice. Man was it cold, but the dogs were happy to get out.
Zippy was not thrilled to be taken on a walk, but my vet wants to see him maintain the muscle mass in his back end, or possibly increase it. Speaking of Zippy - turns out he has a Grade 4 heart murmur. I need to get him scheduled to go in and take an X-Ray, and start him on some meds. He's just sixteen, and finally starting to show his age some. It absolutely breaks my heart, but on the other hand I've been blessed with almost five years with him now and I'm grateful for each day. Well, that is except for the days maybe where he's "One Papillon Free to a Good Home".
Ginger got to come into the big pasture with me while Julie and I worked on pulling some of the unpalatable parts of the round bale she'd just gotten off of the bale. While we did this Ginger wandered around obvlivious to the fact that Kelly and Spottie were out there working. Ginger is oblivious to sheep as Zippy is oblivious to chickens.
I worked Linc a bit - and practiced staying relaxed but firm. It worked pretty well, and he managed to stay relaxed. I used him to sort Crazy Red out of the group, and then to sort sheep later for the puppies. I didn't see any crashing into the sheep on inside flanks, and I was very pleased that he seemed to be listening just right. I think it would be fair to say we BOTH had good attitudes. Mark the day down.
After that I got to see some puppy working (yay puppies!) and then Nick got recruited to push the sheep off of the feed bunks while Julie put out feed. He pushed the ducks off of the feed too - which always makes him happy as he loves him some ducks. I then took him behind the barn with me to collect eggs where he got attacked by one of Julie's housemate's Velociraptors. I told him to "get em up" - which to Julie's dismay only resulted in closed-mouthed lungeing. Oh yeah, Velociraptors of the world shall quake at our feet. NOT! So much for that. I'd hoped he might teach them a lesson. Guess not.
Finally around 4:30 we put dogs up and went to pick up about 35,000 bales of hay. No, not really. Actually it was 35 bales of hay that the hay guy threw down to me as I loaded them on the trailer. Julie supervised. Activity points baby! We wound up putting them up in the dark as we realized when we got back that we had JUST enough daylight for that second dog walk. I'll admit that when we got to the last bale (we had to carry it a ways, toss it over the fence, and then stack it in the barn) I was pretty wiped out. Good work - a nice start to this week's plan to start losing weight, making healthier choices, and so on. Too bad it won't count as the week starts on Tuesday.
Our reward? After the hay stacking (Julie did most of the stacking part) a stop at Cracker Barrel for pancakes. YUM! So really living in the city and not having my own sheep means I have to work harder to get my dogs work, and work harder to get MYSELF work. But it's worth it.
After all of that I went home and washed off Nick's neck. Why? That's because Nick had apparently amused himself by rolling in cat pee while I helped Julie with hay. Bad dog. I then fed dogs, and hung out with my feet up just waiting for bed time. I must have gotten lazy recently as the work took much more of a toll on me as it should. But man is it ever rewarding.
Photo by Dan King
3 comments:
What a great weekend!
It WAS a great day. Well, all but the part where Nick rolled in cat pee and stunk up the whole van. Ewwww.
It sounds like an adventure!
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