Source: Hayjumping puppies
Archive for January, 2016
Dogs. You can love them, and they can drive you crazy. You met the puppies briefly in the last blog post. In December, the dogs were very bored. They had been wanting to get the cats when the cats would sit on the hay bales to get away from the dogs herding them. The girls found a way to get up there.
One morning, I got up, and low and behold, the dogs were on top of the hay bales. They were on a roll of teasing each other and started chasing each other. I was lucky they had just begun. I tried not to laugh too much since I was videoing the whole thing. Here is the link for you to watch the fiasco. https://youtu.be/piOKTXdgq5c
I hope you enjoyed the vignette of our silly girls. You can see why we love them. The black one, Oakely, is our ADHD sweetie. Annie just loves to tease her sister but is more teachable than Oakley. I should have named Oakley after the bouncy, trouncy Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. She just bounces all the time when we are around. Or any time for that matter. But we have a Tygger in our group already. They are named after the famous folk sharpshooter Annie Oakely.
The girls were bought from Oklahoma and sadly enough had not had a human touch until they were six weeks old. They were born in February 2015. We bought them at eight weeks old. It was a litter of 8. Momma was a border collie and daddy was collie and blue heeler mix. They were also the smaller of all of the puppies. The males were twice the size of the girls. The only other female was cowering in the corner, so she was out. BUT, we fell in love with them. The first few nights I had them sleep with me in the recliner chair since they were so human love starved and in some way food starved. So I became the alpha, as the Jurassic World, Chris Pratt, had said. They love me and obey me, but are having to learn to help the man with the cattle in the future. But a half trained puppy is a barbarian puppy….. They are not allowed inside often just due to the fact they are going to be herders. If I had my way, they would sleep with us in the bed! Except WE probably wouldn’t get any sleep, we would be dead from being licked to death and bounced on. (I really should call my husband The Conductor, since that is what he was with the BNSF. The farmer, or the man, doesn’t quite sound right…. even though he is a rancher now and I call myself a ranchette wife with the small amount of 240 acres we do have)
There will be more of the puppies and their antics and hopefully their training to be cattle dogs. But first we have to have them spade to help their alpha aggressiveness diminish, especially to one another. They should not have been from the same litter and not both alpha females according to the animal behavioral trainer. This has caused some behavioral issues toward one another. I was hoping for one female to allow to have for breeding, but there are other dogs in the area, especially a Great White Pyrenees and we could not chance him breeding her since he is not penned up and they are not near two years old for safety and health sake.
Oakely
Annie
We can’t get up the stairs yet
The Holiday season is over, and the house is now quiet. My hubby and I are watching the football games. Well, he is, and I am at the computer.
Much has passed since the last posting and I have been remiss on keeping up to date. Learning the violin is much tougher than I thought and I will always be a die-hard French horn player. But working at a middle school/high school orchestra assistant. It has been so enjoyable to be around young students and a challenge to be in a new field.
But most of you are looking for recipes and the farm. We have been busy at the farm and all summer with new kittens, new puppies, and new calves. Both of our cats had kittens, and it looked like the kitten fairy switched babies with mommas. We have new puppies. Annie and Oakley, who are 3/4 border collie and 1/4 blue heeler. We have one that is ADHDHDHD! She is a dolly, even though she wears us out with all the energy.
New Kittens…. Four tiger kitties from the calico, Callie, and four from Oreo (3 calico and one black) It was so sweet, but then the mommas were fixed so that there would not be anymore. I don’t mind cats on the farm, but the farmer man doesn’t want but a few, and we don’t want to be irresponsible our animals just breeding constantly. Our big Tiger male, Tygger, tolerated them all.
Oreo’s kittens. Teddy bear and the three callies
Come play with me!
We were able to give away all of them but one, and he went by the name of Henry….trust me he chose the name. I said every name I could think of and then said Henry and three times he turned to look at me hearing the name and the name stuck. Annie and Oakley are very good at taking watch on the kittens, and they were the guard dogs, and they wanted to play with them so badly. But sadly we lost Henry to an owl coming in from the timber and I cried for days. Henry was so loved by Tygger. He mourned for days and followed my husband for days.
The next post will be on the new baby calves born late fall. There is good news and bad news. But life and death are something that occurs on the farm and still this nurse has a hard time dealing it.
God gave us the circle of life to appreciate life and death. Whether it is the blessing of the birth of a baby, an animal or death of a loved one or one whose life ended too soon. He knows the days of our life, and the number of steps we will take. Living on a farm hits it more with the cycle of life and death here.
Iced Tea in a Hot Kitchen 