Farm Fresh Blog

     "Why can't you wait for one dog to die before you get another one?"

Because when one dog dies it's already two years too late.

     The difference between working dog folks and pet dog folks is that working dog people know that if you aren't already training another dog to take the reins from your primary work dog, then you are two years behind.

     There is a big difference between working dog homes and pet dog homes. A pet dog home can enjoy the luxury of raising up a puppy without worrying about whether or not that pup will be ready for a job, whereas a working dog home knows that one freak accident can sideline or even kill your best employee and you are left in the pasture with a bucket of feed screaming at livestock who know you can't make them do anything.

     While our dogs enjoy the lives of pets, (living in the house, riding in the cab of the truck, getting their own ice cream cone at Dairy Queen) they are still primarily working dogs. I would wager that we spend more quality time with each of our dogs than the average person spends with the one or two dogs they keep as pets, and I think that's the part people don't understand about having working dogs. They take a lot of time. They are a lifestyle.

Meet Wyatt.

     Wyatt is the next generation of cowdog around here. His parents are working trial dogs. His sire is from cowdog lines. His dam is from sheepdog lines. Wyatt is bred to work. MoonPossum already loves him. She thinks he's the neatest toy she's ever seen.  Everyone else takes him in stride. In a multi-dog household like ours they tend to accept new pack members easily.  As long as there is enough love, kibble, and stuffed animals to go around, life is good.

     My last post angered a small handful of Blue Heeler folks who felt I was slamming their breed of choice and implying these dogs were stupid. Au contraire. Do you say your child is stupid because he isn't good at math? Perhaps she isn't an athlete but her talents lie in other directions. The boy who cannot throw a baseball today may be tomorrow's software design tycoon.

     A child, or a dog, may be more talented in one venue than another. Is anything wrong with this child? That dog? Certainly not. To jump to the conclusion that I think Blue Heelers are stupid is to entirely miss the point of the post.

     That said, perhaps I should address another issue. Border Collies. It might be easy to also jump to the conclusion that I feel a Border Collie is the smartest dog in the world and the greatest thing next to white sliced bread. Wrong again. Animal intelligence tests have always intrigued me, but by and large, dog intelligence tests often merely measure trainability and not actual intelligence.

Einstein said, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

     The very people incensed when they thought I was bashing Blue Heelers may be quick to proclaim their dog is smarter than a Bassett Hound, or a Bloodhound, yet stack them beside each other on a trail and the Blue Heeler receives a failing grade. Does this make him the Village Idiot? No, certainly not. He was not bred for trailing.

     This brings us full circle to the point of their rage. I dared to stack up a Blue Heeler against a Border Collie and declare the Border Collie the better working dog on cattle. Now you can argue until you're blue in the face, but the truth is that many herding dog trials allow competition from all dogs that can herd, and the Border Collies and Kelpies are whipping everyone else in pretty large numbers. Does that mean there are not certain dogs that can be very competitive against Border Collies and Kelpies? No, of course not.  Your Blue Heeler may just be the Michael Phelps at the swimming pool, but most of them aren't because they aren't bred to do that.

     Yes, I said it.

     The large majority of Australian Cattle Dogs, also known as "Heelers," aren't bred to work cows anymore.

     Most of them are bred to be good farm dogs and pets. That's not the same as working cattle. A few folks may still be breeding Heelers to work cows but you'd be hard pressed to find a line that has any significant number of actual working dogs. I'm talking about parents and siblings, and grandparents, and great grandparents, and great great grandparents who really do the dirty, dusty, muddy, sometimes bloody, work of herding cattle.

     And that's okay. It's really okay. That doesn't mean there is a damned thing wrong with your dog. There's not. But don't try to beat me over the head in indignation when I compare them to dogs who have been, and continue to be, bred for herding.

     We can also get right down to the nitty gritty and offend the Border Collie people too by saying they aren't bred to work cattle either. They're not. Most of them weren't and still aren't. That's why a lot of hardcore cowdog folks prefer the Kelpie or crosses. They feel the Kelpie is a tougher dog. I'm not gonna argue with those folks. They might be right, but it doesn't hurt my feelings any, or make me feel any less of my dog because my self-esteem is not wrapped up in my dog's working ability.

     That said, I'm still running a ranch, not a petting zoo. I need dogs that work. With the exception of two dogs who found a home here as pets only, every other dog on this farm either works, or is retired from working. That said, the bulk of the work is shouldered by just two dogs now, a two year old Border Collie, and a six year old Border Collie. The other Border Collies are retired. The Blue Heeler is older than the youngest retired Border Collie, so he's retired too. When he was actually working cattle, he was used to drive cows because that's what Heelers do best - they heel.

Let's go back to the fact that although we have a large number of dogs in this household, factor out the Livestock Guardian Dogs, and the bulk of the work is being done by just two dogs, Mesa and Trace.

     Mesa has turned two years old and is invaluable as a sheep dog now. She was purchased so that Lily could retire from working cattle but Mesa is so good on sheep and goats that she has now assumed all sheepherding responsibilities while Lily yells coaching advice from the back of the ATV. Mesa is so valuable to me as a sheepdog that I don't want to use her on cattle. She might get hurt, and then I'd be out my working sheepdog.

     Trace works cattle, but he's six years old. His style of working cows allows him a much longer career than Lily or Cowboy, who tend to go in close and get more confrontational. They are older and slower now, and confrontation will get you killed when working cow/calf pairs. Time to pull the plug and take the retirement package while they can still enjoy it. Cheering from inside an air-conditioned truck while Trace works cattle is a perk of retirement.

     Trace will retire from working cows in the next two to four years. It takes two years to train a working herding dog to the point where they are of real use, so realistically we should begin looking for another dog now before we need it.

     On our ranch we need dogs that work sheep, goats, chickens, and cattle. There are certainly individual dogs within many breeds that may be able to do the work here, but in all fairness should we not stack the deck in our favor and select from a particular line of dogs within a particular breed of dogs that has been bred for generations to herd just about anything that moves? I think so. For that reason, Other Half put his money down on another Border Collie pup and will spend the next two years getting him ready to replace Trace.

     Does that mean retired dogs get shuffled off to kennels where they are forgotten? Absolutely not. Retirement is a pretty good gig around here. It is rare that we go anywhere without a dog, or two, or three in tow, so in addition to car rides to town, there are also always rides to check cows, feed cows, and move cows. Old dogs do the easier jobs and pups learn from the old dogs.  All of our working dogs are also house dogs, so retirement just means fluffier beds that are closer to the heater.

Green cowshit splashes against the gravel as the dozen or so steers stand at the driveway gate, stomping with impatience, waiting to be let inside. Their tails whip back and forth like windshield wipers slinging a green shitty slime against the gate and each other. They are not happy. They want in. They are not my cows.

The neighbor has turned these steers out on the rich pasture next door and they are just a tad bit confused as to where they belong. No worries. Life in the country. But I have to manually open and close that gate every time I leave the house, so I don't want it looking like the loading chute at a cattle auction, therefore I dispatch a dog to take care of the problem.

I have multiple dogs who could handle the task, but using one of the Border Collies for this was like using a fine wood chisel to open a paint can. The Blue Heeler, who isn't much good for any kind of cow work that requires finesse, is perfect for this job. The chore demands little more than rushing the fence and barking like a madman. Right up his alley.

The short fat blue dog puffs with pride as cattle back off in surprise. He feels so good about himself. He'll never be as talented as the Border Collies. But today. Right here. In the moment. He can do this. And he feels good about himself.

I watch him and make mental note to select him more often for these tasks that he can do which make him feel good. When surrounded by Border Collies, it's easy to feel like a failure. As the cattle stare from a respectful distance he parades back and forth in front of the gate with a jaunty Barney Fife swagger and I am reminded of myself in an 8th Grade Algebra class.

I hated Math. Sucked at it, in fact. Sitting in a Middle School Algebra class, I was a little fat Blue Heeler dog surrounded by Border Collies. A country kid, I had just moved to a new town and was still overwhelmed by it all when I was plopped down in Mrs Pauline Thorogood's 7th grade Algebra class. The woman scared the shit out of me.

She was a tiny, wiry thing who chainsmoked and with the confident air of a Border Collie used to understanding everything, she tried in vain to teach Algebra to a country kid who didn't understand that numbers could be combined with letters.  It was a dismal failure. The one positive thing to come from that first year was my new best friend, Neecy Buchanan. We had three things in common: we lived in the same neighborhood, we both sucked at Algebra, and we both scared witless of Pauline Thorogood.

Like survivors of a shipwreck, clinging to each other in a lifeboat that was tossed around by the high seas of Algebra, we barely passed 7th Grade.

But guess what?

Eight Grade Algebra was also taught by Pauline Thorogood.

And we sucked at it too.

We were two little fat Blue Heeler Dogs in another class of Border Collies. Our expectations were lower that year so it wasn't as bad. Keep your head down. Hold onto your life raft. Weather the storm.  It wasn't pretty but on the last day of the 8th Grade, we were two little fat Blue Heelers confident that we had Ds in Algebra. It was enough to get us into 9th grade and out from underneath the withering disappointment of Mrs Pauline Thorogood.

And so there we sat, on the last day of school just trying to blend in and not be noticed as Mrs Pauline Thorogood handpicked students to leave the classroom for minor end of the year clean-up tasks. Run these papers here. Collect these Math books and take them to this work room. Have the Guidance Counselor sign this. Hands shot up in the air as volunteers eagerly leapt at the opportunity to help.

Pauline Thorogood's gaze swept across the classroom like a security search light at a prison before it landed on me. I think she saw me breathe.

"You! You and you! I haven't given you anything but trouble all year. You two can go do this for me."

And as Neecy Buchanan and I stood in front of Mrs Pauline Thorogood to pick up our assigned task, I did something I probably hadn't done in two years. I look Mrs Pauline Thorogood in the eye.

She smiled back at me warmly.

And in that moment, I realized that Mrs Thorogood didn't hate me because I sucked at Math. She didn't hate me at all.  And I didn't really hate Mrs Thorogood because I sucked at Math. For the first time in two years it occurred to me that Mrs Thorogood might actually like her two little fat Blue Heelers in a room full of Border Collies. Away from Algebra, and the fear of having to slink up to the front of a classroom and be handed a piece of chalk to finish a math problem that may as well have been written in ancient Hebrew, Mrs Thorogood might be a pretty okay person.

So we finished the day, and 8th Grade, basking in the glow of Mrs Thorogood's smile. And instead of remembering how terrified I was of her, I would carry the memory that I had misjudged Mrs Throrogood. But that lesson, like so many others, would probably have been lost had it not been for one thing.

The explosion rocked our neighborhood on that summer day.

Neecy Buchanan and I stopped pedaling our bikes and just stood with bare feet on hot pavement gaping as black smoke billowed into the distant sky.

The next day the newspaper would report that our Algebra teacher and three friends had been killed in a freak accident. We were all in shock. Even the Angel of Death should have been afraid of Mrs Thorogood. As only an 8th Grade girl can do, I put a lot of thought into it, and though the details of the tragedy still horrified me, I found a bit of comfort in one thing.

My memory of Mrs Pauline Thorogood would not be one of fear, or a hatred of Algebra, but of that one act of kindness when she said, "I haven't given you anything but trouble all year."

For in that act, she acknowledged a relationship I was too shy to change. And in that one act, she became, not a chainsmoking dragon, but a person who perhaps didn't understand the deep-rooted fears of a shy child. She was just a Border Collie trying to understand a Blue Heeler.

It wasn't until college that Algebra made sense. The instructor was not a mathmatician but a grad student from another field who just happened to be teaching the class that semester. He presented Algebra in a completely different way than I'd seen it before and it finally clicked. Perhaps it was the new twist on instruction or perhaps my brain had just grown up to the point where it could handle the abstract concepts better, but either way, I was proud to earn a B in the course, and as I walked back to my car with a spring in my step, I wanted to share the good news with Mrs Thorogood.

I am not normally a screamer. After a career in law enforcement, it's hard to scare me, but this did it. I screamed like a Hollywood actress in a B-Movie Horror flick.

Days like today should start with an ominous musical soundtrack, but it didn't. I had absolutely no warning. My day began, like most every day, with a mug of coffee in hand and a trip to the hay barn for feed. I had just set my coffee down on the truck and opened the gate to the barn when I heard one of the Border Collies barking. Stroking was more like it.

Like me, Border Collies don't normally scream in fright. They tend to be masters in the art of controlling the order of their universe and thus the deep alarm bark coming from the back side of the hay barn galvanized me to action. Mesa had something. Something not in her databanks.

Something that scared her.

It is spring in Texas. The winter was mild anyway, so all manner of dangerous things could already be out. Freezing nightly temperatures had lulled me into a false sense of security. Certain that Mesa had a copperhead or a rattlesnake, I cursed myself for leaving the gun in the house, and so dropped my wagon to hustle toward the back side of the hay barn.

The odor hit me first. Mesa did not have a snake. Like a shark's fin coasting just underneath the edge of the water, a black and white tail eased behind a fuel tank propped against the barn. Mesa had a skunk.

Fortunately the skunk didn't know it yet.

And that's when I screamed. God help me, but I sounded like that blond chick in all the horror movies before she gets axed.

I had not one, but four Border Collies, and one deaf and partially blind Australian Shepherd puppy, all within twenty feet of a skunk at 7 AM. And I hadn't had my coffee.

So I screamed.

The good thing about skunks is that they don't see very well. The skunk was beebopping along, in his own skunk world, oblivious to the fact that he was surrounded by four confused Border Collies, one screaming B-Movie Chick, and a half-blind deaf dog who was wandering in his direction.

The barnyard became like Edvard Munch's famous paintings "The Scream." Everything just stopped as the shockwaves of something the Border Collies had never heard before echoed across the sand.

Shock waves.

Then silence.

And MoonPossum, the deaf Aussie, continued her blundering collision course with the skunk. Just like that, the echoing scream stopped. The deafening silence afterward ended. And the carousel music sped to a dizzy tempo.

"Must stop Possum!"

I leaped for the puppy just as she located the source of that unusual odor. My arms clasped around her middle and I whisked her 38 pound hiney into the air. And I ran.

I screamed for the Border Collies as I ran toward the house with a puppy wriggling like a greased pig.

I just want to take this moment to point out that in January I made no New Year's resolution to get fit. I'm about 40 pounds over what I consider my idea weight, but what the hell, I'm not chasing drug dealers over fences anymore, and I like bread. That said, 24 HOUR Fitness has no program like this. Even an overweight, over 50ish woman with gray hair can run with a 38 pound squirming puppy in her arms when faced with a skunk.

We arrived at the house and I counted to make sure I had four Border Collies and one Aussie puppy. Check. So I dropped the puppy in the breezeway and went inside to inform Other Half that we had a problem.

Morning chores could not be started until the skunk was removed from the area. The sleeping man underneath the comforter was less than sympathetic. I went back outside to do it myself.

Leaving the dogs locked in the breezeway, I crept to the backside of the hay barn to get a location on my suspect. The entire barnyard was still. Sheep and goats who would normally be screaming in protest were curiously silent. Horses gazed across the fence in quiet contemplation. What would the Primary Caretaker do next?

A large white dog bounced through the cattle and squirmed underneath the fence by the horses. My Missing-in-Action NightShift Livestock Guardian Dog had returned. Apparently he had been in the pasture with the cattle when he heard my screams. He emerged from a newly dug hole under the fence and wagged his way in my direction.

And that's when the skunk sashayed right out between us.

The blond chick from the horror movies screamed and pointed at the skunk.

The dog needed no warning. Jury snatched it up and shook the crap out of the poor thing. Right there. In front of me.

He shook it.

And he shook it.

And then he dropped the still figure in the sand, trotted over to me, and announced,

"Sector 12 is now clear."

Then he said, "Oh my, I can't breathe."

And it hit him as he staggered off into the brush.

"I can't breathe. I can't breathe."

He said it just like George Lopez. "I can't breaffff....."

Jury rolled around in the sand. This would have been a tad bit comical except for one thing -
the skunk got up.

The giant dog was rolling around in the sand, "I can't breathe. I can't seeee!" And the skunk got up and slowly wobbled off.

The B-Movie chick started screaming again. "Jury! Jury! The skunk! It's not dead!"

The only thing worse than a live skunk at your feet is a maimed skunk at your feet, so I peddled backward, still screaming for the dog while the skunk wobbled to the front of my hay barn.

Along his journey, the gyroscope in his head partially righted itself and he was able to walk a wee bit better. Instead of continuing south and exiting the barnyard, the skunk came to the gate at the front of the hay barn and squeezed his fat ass underneath it.

(Note to Self: stop leaving excess catfood in the hay barn for the cats.)

The skunk wobbled behind the Bobcat.

A large black barn cat came shooting out. He looked back in shock,

"What the *@$< was THAT?!"

Jury recovered his breath long enough to respond to my screams and came trotting around the corner. The big dog took one look at the black cat and questioned my vision.

"Bbbb..bbbutttttt.... It's just the cat...."

The cat assured the dog there was indeed, a suspect in the barn. I opened the gate to let the dog inside. He stood there, unsure what the cat and I were pointing at.

Not only could he barely breathe, he could barely see, and the whole barnyard smelled like skunk.

On the other hand, he was willing to take our word for it that something nefarious was in the back of the hay barn. His ears confirmed this.

And that's when I heard the votes being cast.

Standing in the pasture, on the other side of the fence, four horses voted not to let the dog kill the skunk in the hay barn with 1400 pounds of fresh alfalfa hay.

Hmmmmm... point well taken.

So I called the dog back. Breakfast would be delayed. I was able to sneak a third of a bale out before the skunk moved behind the stacked hay. This effectively ended the Cafeteria Lady's participation in serving breakfast. The partial bale of hay was evenly distributed to the stunned and curious onlookers.

The Dayshift Livestock Guardian Dogs were advised that their shift would be covered by the Nightshift Livestock Guardian Dog since he already smelled like a skunk.

I then stomped into the bedroom to give Husband an update. He informed me that Jury was not the only one who reeked of skunk. Crap on a cracker.

So there you have it. My farm is on lockdown. I cannot switch shifts of dogs. None of the house dogs has had outside playtime. The goats are having to eat calf creep feed because their unopened bag of grain is in the haybarn. And Jury and I both smell like a skunk.

All before coffee.

On every farm there are some animals that are different from the others, animals that just don't quite fit in. And the more soft-hearted the farmer, the more animals like this he or she has tucked away, animals that could live on the Island Of Misfit Toys.

There is nothing wrong with them. These animals are just different. Special.

If you recall, last spring we bought Liam, a young bottle-baby Pygora goat.

Shortly before we picked him up, some friends found a tiny white goat about Liam's age, wandering on a game ranch, living with Axis deer.

They scooped the little girl up, fed her a bottle, and brought her to us where she lived with Liam. For the longest time, Natty and Liam were inseparable.

And then something happened.

Natty grew up.

And she outgrew Liam. Natty developed a fondness for Older Men - Dangerous Men.

When Natty started coming into season, she made it her mission in life to get to these adult bucks. This was a problem because Natty was still tiny and would try to crawl under fences to get to the big bucks. The Nubian bucks are so large that if Natty were accidentally bred, she could never deliver the babies.

Natty had attached herself to a Nubian wether, Tim, who was happy to bask in the glow of Natty's crush.

Soon Natty, Tim, and Liam were a trio. Still, Natty wanted a real man. The reality of life on a farm is that if you can picture "worse case scenario," you'd better plan accordingly, because it's coming down the pipes. With that in mind, I started to consider re-homing Natty.

Dear Friend Claire, was happy to provide a safe haven for A Promiscuous Teenaged Girl and her Current Crush, but that left Liam. I didn't want to lose Liam. The whole point of having Liam was his fleece. On the other hand, Liam was attached to Natty and Claire promised to give me his fleece when she sheared her sheep, so I agreed to let the Three Musketeers stay together.

But I had to shear Liam before he left!

 Twenty minutes later he was bald and ready for travel. Like a Marine at bootcamp!

When she arrived to pick them up, Claire fell in love with Jerri Springer, the little black "Who's ya daddy?" lamb. Since she wasn't part of my breeding program, and it would be next spring before another lamb crop went to auction, I happily agreed to let Jerry Springer go with Claire too. AND . . . since Claire said she wanted anything not in my breeding program, I showed her Ewok, the half churro/half Southdown wether.

"Load him too!"

Claire and I were both pretty happy. She was getting some tame pets, I was getting a great home for animals I didn't want butchered, and Other Half was tickled because that was five more off the feed bill. Claire's poor husband did seem a bit green however. As she and I were happily negotiating who was headed south in the trailer, he looked like he'd been hit by a truck. I think he thought he was coming for one, maybe two, goats. I recognized that look because I've seen it on my husband many times.

Claire has a donkey and a llama, so my little citizens from the Island of Misfit Toys should be safe with Claire. I'll miss them, but they're better off with her. Natty is safe. Liam gets to stay with Natty. Tim gets to keep his girlfriend and can finally be Big Man On Campus, Jerry Springer won't make her date with the butcher next spring, and Ewok can be in a pet home where he won't have to fight as hard for attention and cookies.

I will still get to have Liam's fleece, and he will still get to stay with his beloved Natty.

Behold the future in ranching technology - the drone. Ranchers all over Texas are buying these little rascals to make checking on cows a little easier. (Well, maybe. Or maybe Big Boys just need an excuse to buy another toy.) Other Half has been flying his drone all over the ranch and in addition to finding cattle, it is a lot of fun.  I named it Angry Hornet since it has a loud buzz. (Note: this buzz attracts Border Collies.) He's been flying it often enough now to get pretty comfortable, so today he decided to just sit at the picnic table by the back door and check cows.  It did not go as planned.

Since dogs are not big fans of drones, Other Half had me lock up all the dogs. The sheep put themselves up, but we failed to consider the Norman Factor and as Other Half was setting the drone out on a suitable 'take-off pad' Norm spotted Dad and ran for a possible bottle. Other Half had to run away from the drone lest Norman decide the drone looked like a $600 bottle.

Something about this picture just tickled me.

Norman was quite interested in the Angry Hornet.

So were the dogs. Jury really, really hates buzzards. He is quite certain that Angry Hornet is merely a white buzzard. If he can ever catch it, that will be a dead drone. Note MoonPossum knows that everyone is excited about Angry Hornet but she's looking in the wrong direction, because, duh, she can't see it. She can't hear it either, but even a deaf dog that can't see well KNOWS everyone is barking at something.

So Angry Hornet takes off. And for some reason, Other Half gets distracted and instead of sending the drone up, up, and away, like he usually does, he let it hover over the little pond. And just about the time I quit taking pictures and called his attention to the trees and the pond, Angry Hornet just slowly buzzed into a tree and commenced to chewing limbs.

Other Half commenced to stroking.

And screaming. At me. For help. I asked him later why he was yelling for my help. What was it he expected me to do? He said he wanted me to catch it like a football.

"Do what?"

"You know, like a football!"

"But... but... it has blades. Blades that are moving very quickly.... blades...."

He then growled something about blade protectors on the blades. Okay, whatever. It was a moot point because Angry Hornet went straight from treetrimming to scuba diving.

I'd like to point out that Other Half can still move amazingly fast for a old man wearing bedroom slippers. (We can kiss those $60 sheepskin slippers goodbye.)

Angry Hornet & Angry Man

Who knows why Other Half had a brain fart and quit paying attention. Maybe he got distracted. Maybe he hit the wrong button. Or maybe. Just maybe. Maybe someone put a curse on the Angry Hornet.

"DIE, White Buzzard! DIE!"

Here are a few tools you should own if you live on a ranch:

1) Some kind of All Terrain Vehicle or a horse
2) A truck suitable for hauling feed
3) A stockdog

Let's expand upon Tool #3. A good stockdog is like a Leatherman Tool, a Swiss Army Knife, and a Trunk Monkey. (google it) I carry one almost everywhere I go. Seriously. My Border Collie is almost small enough to fit in my purse. Okay, maybe my backpack.

These are the chores in a typical day for my stock dogs:

Push sheep out of pen in morning while preventing goats from leaving.
Push goats off door as they crowd to mug the grain bucket.
Enter Buck pen as escort. Do not let bucks touch Mommy with their stinky faces.
Find Possum, the deaf Aussie.
Feed chickens. Keep Possum from entering chicken yard.
Find Possum again.
Move goats out of their pen after they finish breakfast.
Find Possum again.
Load up in truck to go to town. Move sheep away from front gate so truck can exit.
Move cattle away from next gate so truck can exit.
Say ugly things to anyone who comes near truck in parking lot.
Smile lovingly at the cashier in the Dairy Queen drive-thru.
Move cattle away from gate so truck can enter.
Move sheep away from gate so truck can enter.
Herd Darwin the Chicken back into the chicken yard with the other birds.
Take Possum on a walk. Find Possum multiple times.
Return Darwin to the chicken pen again before Possum finds her out.
Supervise Norman the Bottle-baby Calf on his walk.
Clean Norman's butt.
Make sheep that are afraid of Norman walk past him to enter their pen at night.
Point out to Mom that we missed some sheep. Pick up stragglers and push them into pens.
Take Possum for a walk. Find Possum multiple times.
Help return Darwin to her pen again.
Watch as Livestock Guardian Dogs receive an egg in payment for not killing Darwin. Point out the gross inequality in this system to Management. Receive a token egg. Leave it to go find Possum again.  Return to find that Livestock Guardian Dog has eaten the egg.

Some version of this is repeated each day. If the sheep leave the pasture for grazing then stockdog duties also include 'tending' sheep to make sure everyone stays within the boundaries and returns together as a group.  Mesa makes it her duty to find Possum for me and Lily has assigned herself the role of Kitchen Alert Dog, loudly announcing when the coffee pot and microwave alerts sound. If she had thumbs, I think she'd bring my Yeti full of coffee to me in the barnyard. Such is the nature of a good stockdog.

If you are trying to run a ranch without one, you're missing out, and working way too hard.

Don't short yourself and the dog by running out and getting just any dog. You need a dog that has been BRED to work stock. That is not your Labrador Retriever. He may be fine with your kids. He may be a terribly sweet, kind and loving pet. But he's not a bred to be stockdog. Don't set him up for failure and get pissed when he eats your chickens.

That said, do not run out and buy a wonderfully bred Border Collie (with papers and grandparents from SCOTLAND!) and then toss this pup out in the barnyard and expect him to just figure it out.

"But you said they learn stuff on their own!"

I also said I carry my dog everywhere with me.

A good stockdog knows the routine. She knows what's normal and what's not normal. A good stockdog has the desire to insert herself into the farm routine to make it flow. (Because all stockdogs are really into world domination.) A lot of professional trainers do shut their students away so the dogs can't learn bad habits. Those people know what they're doing and are trying to create the perfect learning environment for their students.

I don't do that because it doesn't work as well for me. (Mostly because I don't know what I'm doing.)

I start out with the best of intentions but I'm simply too far away from a professional herding dog trainer for regular lessons and I'm not sending my dogs away to boarding school. So I'm left with the Learning By Immersion method. We have a job to do. The dog and I. Together. I stack the deck in my favor by buying pups that are bred with the desire to both manipulate livestock (world domination) and be biddable (I get to be the bald-headed guy with the cat and the dog is happy being my minion.)

 If you have no background in dog training whatsoever and want a stockdog, invest in some lessons to at least get you and the dog on the same page. I get away with it because I've trained dogs my entire adult life so although I could benefit tremendously from professional herding lessons, my dogs still end up being pretty handy.  (Just not as good as they would have been had everyone gone to school.) Our lifestyle is such that the dogs are part of the family, not a pets, but as valuable, contributing employees on the ranch. Okay, Possum and Dillon are just plain pets, but the others punch a time clock, fill out a work card, get workman's comp, and retirement benefits.

And it starts with living with them, working with them, and letting them help. A good stockdog is more than just a collection of the right genes, it's a collection of the right experiences. Your job is to make sure your pup gets that experience so she can make it her job to make your life easier. And I'm all about that.

Mesa then.

Mesa now.

I got a note today from Tina in New Mexico. She was checking since she hasn't seen a blog post in a while. That's so incredibly sweet. And humbling. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to check in and say "Whuzzup?!"

Things have been pretty busy here the last few months. I've been trying to finish a Farm Fresh Forensics book so I can start sending query letters out to agents. Before the holidays I was approached by a television production company that was interested in doing a Farm Fresh Forensics television show. While it was an intriguing proposition, I'm not sure it'll ever pan out because they wanted to do a reality show and didn't realize I had already retired. They'd have to do the show with actors and that costs more money. Regardless of whether or not anything like that ever comes to fruition, it was still flattering that we attracted the attention of Hollywood (or in this case, Burbank.)

But life here is less about Hollywood and more about firewood. It's winter now and never do you more appreciate living in a barn than when you have to feed and it's 24 degrees outside. Deer Season is finally over and things can return to some semblance of 'normal' again. We don't really hunt but there are hunters on the properties around us. One set of hunters has a camp very near our main sheep pasture. The Anatolians are quite interested in the hunters who have petted and fed them. The camp is definitely more entertaining than a sheep pasture and thus Judge regularly sneaked over to visit his new friends. Jury was caught red-headed trying to pull a butchered hog out of a tree at 3 AM one morning. In his defense, the carcass was less than 100 yards upwind of the pasture. Apparently that was more temptation than his juvenile brain could handle. So to keep good relations with the neighbors, I opted to keep the sheep at the house and put the boys on lockdown when hunters were here.

Keeping track of MoonPossum is a full time job.

She has grown quite a bit and is as big as Mesa now.

While Mesa is built like Demi Moore in the GI Jane movie, MoonPossum is a 'full-figured' girl who is more like the Meghan Trainor song, "All About That Bass." (If you haven't heard this song, google it. Guaranteed for a smile.)

 Possum is deaf, but her vision appears to be better now. She isn't squinting as much and seems to navigate quite well except for dark shadows in bright sunlight. Possum lives in a silent world colored with smells. Her nose is exceptional and she follows it everywhere.

Because our barnyard is large and oddly shaped, it's easy to lose Possum around buildings and trees. We put a bell on her collar so we can keep tabs on her by the jingling but it's easy to get preoccupied with chores and find that you've misplaced Possum. This has resulted in racing around the barnyard in a panic calling, "Where's Possum?"

Since MoonPossum is deaf, one would think this activity would be fruitless, but far from it. Mesa is Border Collie. Border Collies excel in teaching themselves new things. Mesa has learned that when I lose Possum she is to locate the deaf dog, and do a drive-by on the little stinker who then sees her black and white friend and follows her back to me.

This works quite well. Mesa retrieves Possum no less than fifty times a day. Often it is no more than a casual poke to get her attention and let her know that everyone else has changed direction and is ready to leave.

The newest act in our three-ring circus is the addition of Norman, the bottle-baby calf.

Norman is a Shorthorn. He may have been a twin. Other Half got him from a friend who wasn't in the position to be able to raise him. We've had Norman for two weeks. He's already bonded to Other Half.

I have no clue what we're going to do with him. My suggestion to put him in the freezer was met with stony silence from Other Half so I'm guessing that's out. Most likely he will end up as another pet. If we ever get a milk cow then Norman can be a yard companion for it. After he is eating solid food well we can try to introduce him into our herd so he can ultimately go out onto the ranch. In the mean time he is penned beside the sheep and goats who are terrified of him. The dogs enjoy time with the calf because they normally never get to satisfy their curiosity with calves. Norman finds them to be a minor annoyance. As far as he's concerned dogs are only good for butt-cleaning and racing in the yard.

"And it's MESA by a length!"

Norman gets turn-out time in the barnyard where he can zoom and play. The dogs run beside him and Possum gets to pretend she is a cowdog.

Mesa keeps track of Norman and herds him back when he strays too far.

So in a nutshell, we're doing fine. It's still a circus here, and we've added a few more acts.  The book is almost finished and I'm already planning the next one.

You know you're a punk when you can't catch a half-blind deaf dog. In my defense, she's really fast.

Because severe storms with possible golf ball size hail had been forecasted I busied myself with getting my trucks under cover before I went to bed. I tucked in sheep and Livestock Guardian Dogs, set up my weather radio in the window, and crawled into bed. Other Half had been planning on leaving his truck outside in the elements because he's one of those "gotta touch the wet paint" people. Then he listened to the weather report and saw the radar. Hmmmmm. . .

Still stinging from the broken pipes fiasco, I think he knew he'd never live it down if he left his truck out and ended up with a broken windshield, so at 1 AM he moved the tractor out of the haybarn and drove the dually in.  (For you city folk, that's just a farm truck with four tires in the rear. Very common in rural areas where people haul heavy loads.) The problem was that the roll-down door wouldn't close because the truck was longer than the tractor. No worries. He just tied the door to the trailer hitch. Problem solved.

The storm was a non-event for our little area but I'm not complaining. Any time we dodge hail it's cause for celebration. So the next morning I made my coffee, let the dogs out, and greeted the day. MoonPossum, the deaf, visually impaired, Australian Shepherd puppy, wears a bell on her collar so we can keep track of her as she toots around the barnyard. On most mornings, the tinkling of her bell is a welcome addition to the normal din of sheep bleating, goats screaming, chickens cackling, cows mooing, horses neighing, and dogs barking. On this morning it was absent.

Always afraid that Possum will find a hole in the fence and slip out with large livestock or the everpresent BoogeyBeast, I dropped what I was doing and marched out in search of Tinkerbell. There was a muffled jingling inside the haybarn. Damn! With the dually's ass sticking out of the barn, the barn gate couldn't close and thus MoonPossum had gained access to the Forbidden Palace.

The Hay Barn houses the tractor, the hay (duh!), pallets of cow feed, the bobcat (tiny bulldozer-like Tonka toy for men), tools, more tools, and Nikita the Barn Cat - Queen of the Night. Nikita is a hired assassin.  Like most contract killers, contact with her employers is minimal. We place catfood (payment offerings) in her bowl (altar) and in turn, she leaves the bodies of her victims targets lying either by the altar bowl or on the hay.

Rats equal damaged bags of cow feed. Rats attract copperheads. Close contact with live rats gives me gray hairs. Thus Nikita the contract killer is exhalted to supreme status on the farm and given whatever she wants. Therefore copious amounts of cat food are placed on the altar.

The altar (cat food bowl) is set on the pavement near the tractor where Nikita sits on her throne (tractor seat). From this position the Queen of the Night lies in wait for any and all rodents attracted to her altar. It is not at all unusual to find one or two dead rodents (sacrifices) each morning. Her top number was three large rats and a mouse in one night.

And so it was that I heard Tinkerbell shuffling around inside the Hay Barn. As I untied the string on the door the sound of the altar (cat food bowl) scraping across the floor announced that MoonPossum had found the cat food. After I freed the door, it rolled it up and sunlight flooded the barn to reveal a smiling MoonPossum with a rather large dead rat in her mouth. The rat's tail bounced in rhythm to the tinkling of Possum's bell as she bounced across the pavement.

"DROP THAT!"

The curious thing about a deaf and blind dog is that they cannot hear you scream at them, and so Possum settled down at the altar and commenced to gagging down that rat, tail first.  The rear-end of the dually was sticking out of the barn door like Winnie-the-Pooh stuck in a honey jar. I tried to squeeze through on the right side but it wasn't happening. Too much sourdough bread. Too much winter clothing. So I sucked in my breath and squeezed through on the left side. The front of the truck was pulled up so close to some tools that I couldn't pass without climbing over. Possum saw me coming and momentarily stopped choking down her rat to run under the the truck and out the door.

I squeezed my fat ass back past the truck bumper and out into the barnyard where Possum lay in the sand poking her rat.

At this point I paused and whipped out my phone to preserve this moment so I could roll it out the next time she was licking Other Half's face as they played in his recliner. I am wicked that way.

With photographic proof in hand, I then snatched up a barn rake and marched toward Possum. She smiled at me as I approached. With the sun to her back the half-blind dog was able to see me and the rake and read my intentions, so she grabbed up her rat, and danced off gagging it down as fast as she could. I tried cajoling her. I tried threatening her. I tried chasing her down. You know you're a punk when you can't catch a half-blind deaf dog.

I resorted to ordering the Labrador to steal the rat. This was fruitless too. Apparently possession is 9/10ths of the law no matter how small you are, and as such, Dillon had no intention of stealing a rat from a baby. MoonPossum settled down in the driveway to crunch the rat. The puppy grinned at me before turning her head sideways and crunching that rodent's skull like a child with a Tootsie Pop. And that was it. Down the hatch. All gone. It was enough to make me barf up my sourdough pancakes.

Rat down, MoonPossum burped and smiled at me. I gagged. The puppy was then happy to wiggle up to me. She tried licking my hand as I snapped a leash on her collar. I then locked her in a kennel run and went inside to scrub the rat cooties off my hands. And then scrub out the kitchen sink. And change coats. Cuz there were rat cooties on the sleeve.

Back outside I backed the dually out of the Hay Barn and rolled my garden cart inside for fresh alfalfa. Nikita meowed and curtsied to me as I hoisted a bale aside and uncovered a hidden graveyard of rat heads.

I plopped the bale at my feet in disgust. Nikita meowed again and stepped back and forth on her front feet kneading the air with her toes while I swallowed the rising bile in the back of my throat. Briar shuffled up beside me. After one quick glance to assess the situation, the big white dog snarfed up rat heads like popcorn shrimp. I gagged and stumbled outside into the fresh air and sunshine.

The only good thing about starting a day with dead rats is that things can only go uphill from there. Farms just ain't for sissies.

     The leap to murder is not that far when you're standing naked in a cold shower and the water runs out. The line between holy matrimony and homicide blurs even further if it was a loving spouse who promised there would be enough water.

     I ask those of you north of Texas to withhold judgement on those of us who had a fifty degree thermometer drop in one day. I awoke Sunday morning to find that it was 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Water freezes at well above that temperature. Ask any newscaster in North Texas. They advertise that kind of information freely. They even tell you days in advance that temperatures will plummet like a roller coaster at Disney World. Prepare for it. Doomsday cometh!

     I believed them. I believed them because I am a rule-follower. If I read a sign on a park bench that says, "WET PAINT," I do not touch the bench to see if the paint is really wet. My Other Half, however, is "paint-toucher." He must touch the paint. He must pee on the electric fence. And so like the ant, and the reluctant grasshopper, we busied ourselves for the coming freeze. The chicken coop was winterized with bubble wrap and burlap. Cows and horses were fed extra rations. Dog beds and stalls were packed deeply with hay.

     Friday afternoon the wind shifted and a arctic breeze began its low steady push south. At 4 pm I was watching water in the troughs freeze so I told Other Half it was time to turn the water system off and drain everything to keep the house water from freezing. The grasshopper argued that the heat lamp would be enough. The ant again pointed out water freezing in troughs.

     By then we had a fire going in the house and it was toasty warm. I fed the dogs their supper while he installed a heat lamp in the pump house which contains the water filtration system. After supper I went to bed early. I didn't take a shower and wash my hair before bed because the water had already been turned off.

     At 1 am Other Half woke me to inform me that he'd gone outside to turn off the water before coming to bed and the pipes were already frozen. Wait! Wasn't the water already off? Didn't we see water in the troughs freezing at 4 pm? Was it not then the logical conclusion that water in the pipes would also freeze? The grasshopper had not leaped to the same conclusion as the ant and had chosen to wait until bedtime to shut off water. By then it was too late.

    Hell hath no fury greater than a woman who missed a bath the night before she is to participate in a big Christmas program at church. Although 15 degrees Fahrenheit may be a heat wave in Canada, it is enough to make Texans loose their minds. At 2 am two people standing in a polar wind will make no attempt to be nice to each other. Imagine two grizzly bears yoked together. There is a lot of roaring but not much work gets done.

     I texted Son, "I will need bail money. I'm killing your father."

     "U chose him."

    So while I was singing "A Great And Mighty Wonder" at church, my Other Half was at home working on frozen pipes. Sunday night the temperatures dipped even lower. I awoke at 6:30 am and texted Son, "Holy shit! It's 8 degrees!"

     According to the weatherman it was actually only 11 degrees but really, when it's that low in Texas, what difference does a few degrees make?

     Apparently, quite a bit.  The pipes that didn't burst on Saturday night, burst on Sunday night.

     We were blessed with a half a pallet of bottled water and much of it was still in the hay barn, so we hauled four cases to the house. That water was used for drinking, cooking, and washing dishes. Tired of sponge baths, Other Half decided that water would also be used for a shower. He hauled the propane camp shower out of the horse trailer and busied himself with hooking it up.

     "There's not enough water to wash my hair. I'm gonna go over to Virginia's or Nora's and bathe there."

     "We have plenty of water. Cases and cases of water!"

     "That's drinking water! I have long, thick hair. I need a lot of water to rinse it."

     "There's PLENTY of water. It won't take that much!"

     In an effort to convince me, he took a shower himself. The propane heater was set up on a dog crate he had pulled to the shower stall. A pump was placed in a bucket of water. Water was sucked into a propane heater, then sent through a shower nozzle and came out in a weak stream. This was a two-person job. One person worked the propane heater and pump while the other person showered stood in the cold waiting while water which alternated between frigid cold and seering steam dribbled through the flacid hose.

     "See! I only used a quart of water."

     "You used a gallon."

     "It's your turn."

     "Dude! There is not enough water to wash my hair."

     "Yes, there is!"  (And the paint isn't really wet.)

     By this time I was an enraged grizzly yoked to Yogi the Bear, so in a effort to prove the point, I climbed into the shower. In hindsight, this was really stupid. I am much like a cat. I do not like to be cold. I do not like to be wet. Why I would choose to be cold and wet just to prove my point, merely illustrates the depth of a blinding rage.

     "Hey, are you almost done?"

     "NO! I'm rinsing my hair."

     "Uuhmmm.... We're running low on water. You need to wind it up."

     Yogi the Bear was finally realizing the problem, but by then he had a wet grizzly in the shower. He shuffled off for another case of water. The grizzly shivered and cussed as bottle after bottle was uncapped and poured into the bucket to be heated.

     Yogi the Bear peeked behind the shower curtain at a very angry wet grizzly.

     "Oooh sexy..."

     "I will kill you."

     And there you have it, the recipe for murder. In his defense, even had he turned the water off and drained the pipes before the freeze, the pipes would probably still have burst. One pitiful heat lamp was not enough against that kind of polar shift. Tricks that normally worked for people up here didn't. Pipes burst all over north Texas this weekend. Plumbers are no longer answering their phones. Hardware stores are running out of PVC.

     We still don't have running water. Hopefully we'll get it back in order today. Warm and dry, the grizzly has calmed down and had time to reflect on the situation. The upside is that we now know where our weak spots are, and are much more familiar with our water system. Apparently there is more to it than simply turning on the kitchen faucet. Huh, who knew?

     After a 911 call to Dear Friend Sue, in Wyoming, I got more tips on tried and true methods for handling extreme temperatures. My next order of business after the water is flowing is to insulate the pipes again. This time, in addition to the fancy foam we will also be packing that sucker full of sheep wool!  Yes! Sheep wool! The poor man's insulation! With plastic baggies, socks, and duct tape, I should be able to insulate every bend of pipe, every nook and cranny, and every spot that cold might creap. Oddly, even though we still have the fancy foam insulation, I have more faith in the wool. As Sue pointed out, if you could only pick one animal, pick a sheep. A sheep meets so many needs.

    The Navajo use the expression, "Sheep is Life," because they consider the sheep to be a sacred gift from the Creator to meet their needs. I think they're right. I, for one, will be wrapping the heck out of those pipes with sheep wool today.