Where in the World is Irena Farm?

It's been two months almost exactly and what a two months it's been. Two surgeries for me, Ben passing away, training for Ted, a Christmas program, and most of all: The Move.

We have moved about half a mile down the road to "Jewel Pond." We already love it. We have moved most of the house stuff and we have a game plan for the farm stuff that doesn't fit here.

We've scaled back our sheep population dramatically. It feels very good. The core that is left is the best of the best of the best. Hard thoughtful culling is always a positive step for a flock. All my ewes are hardy, need very little to thrive, are parasite and heat resistant with minimal inputs, lamb with little need for supervision - no jugging for most of them. So it's hard to come up with a new culling principle.

I decided to go for uniformity. I kept the ewes that either look like or are good producers of lambs that favor my Blue Faced Leister rams. This is not an arbitrary decision. The ewes with wider heads and shoulders from my brief dabbling with Texel stock, do have some trouble when they have singles. I've done a bit of pulling of large ram lambs from these ewes. I never regret it - they mother quite well after that, but it's annoying to have to keep a close eye on only these sheep.

Ted is away for training. I thought it was important that he work in a different place, with a different handler, and no matter what always intended to send him somewhere for a few weeks. Then when we had first the one surgery, and then the bigger surgery and long recovery required, I asked (no, begged!) Christine Henry of Fieldstone Farm to take him on during this time and she was gracious enough to give Ted a shot.

It seems to be going well. Christine's been smoothing out some bothersome issues and I couldn't be happier with that - just getting that done is worth missing him for all this time. He's still weak on inside flanks but that's most likely due to my only working in a weak way before he left. I really was feeling awful the last few months and every practice session required a couple days to recover from for me.

It sounds like he should come back at least ready to move to PN. After lambing he should be confident enough driving to run in Ranch and Nursery. That's one thing lambing does for you! Especially when the pregger and nursery fields are in different parts of the farm - but that won't be the case this year. Still, there will be ewes who need to go up to the lambing shed and that will be about 200 yards from the part where they will likely choose to lamb (farthest from the house).

Lu, my oldest livestock guardian dog (going on twelve), has moved into the house for retirement. Keeping Min inside for her spay recovery gave me the idea. I realized I didn't need three dogs, especially with paring the flock in half. Min and Tully make a good team and when the weather warms up and the lambs start being born, I'll let Lu out during the evening shift again.

Lu has pretty severe degenerative joint disorder. I have noticed some slowing of her step and some limping in the wintertimes, but had no idea it had progressed this far. She's been on some supplements for joint health for a couple years, but I realized she needed more aggressive therapy.

I did a consult with Sabine Contreras of Better Dog Care. Sabine recommended a diet of high quality, low inflammatory protein that was easy on the liver (and kidneys). Lu's eating mostly fish, white rice, and potatoes, basically. She recommended a couple of supplements and I've got Lu on Cetyl-M as well. I wish I had before and after videos. It's been about six weeks and the difference is like seeing time turn back. Lu is wiggly and bouncy again!

Lu has also been on a very restricted activity level until this week. She didn't mind at all the first few weeks - then the next few she kept trying to slip out again.

I will try to keep this up again but currently Blogger runs like a snail on my poor little MacBook. I need to clean off the hard drive again.

Jewel Pond

This has been a wonderful place to live, but we've always known we would have to move on sometime. The owners have no intent of ever offering an option to purchase, and have made that known from the start.

We found a new place to start again, where we will be able to purchase when the time comes.

This will truly be a start from scratch. It's a lovely little farmhouse, and just 14 acres. I'm planning to make an outside gathering area in that carport. There's a front porch, too, and it's pretty nice, but it's probably going to be pretty warm in the summer with a direct southern exposure.


The majority of it is woods, but there's a couple of smallish paddocks to start off with.

Most of it is woods and very old paddocks or very young woods. There's a tiny little pond up near the northernmost side of the property. This is the one I've named Jewel Pond. Doesn't quite live up to its name yet. I'm going with the vision here!

The inside is very well kept up. The entry/living area is a real treat.

The entry - the door has lights all the way around - currently painted over and covered up from the outside (!).

And the living room. Fireplace not functional.



Next post, the guided tour.

Intermission

Well, been a while. I just haven't had the motivation to take care of this blog. It's certainly not been from a lack of events here. Too much rather, maybe - I seem to have trouble translating big events in my life to the restrictions of the blogging medium.

A rundown of intermedium events, probably topics for future posts. Ted's first trial - we won our class! It wasn't a cakewalk, either, the sheep were rather savvy to the young dogs. I do have a video, as well as a video of Patrick and Gus finishing their first trial run together.

We started tupping and it's going well. I'm looking forward to a good lambing.

Chad the 4-H lamb, bred right here, is going to be shown at the NC State Fair this coming Friday. I am excited. He's grown out very well. If my guys get the bug to do 4-H sheep it will apparently be no problem to supply them from our own stock.

Our old Ben, my first Border Collie and my right hand dog until this year, passed away from hemangiosarcoma just a couple of weeks ago. It was rather sudden though Ben's never had prime health. He was almost 13 and still quite active and overall free from typical "old age" issues. We had the opportunity to say goodbye to him with a lot of grace. We will surely miss him. I'll have a lot more later.

Finally, we are moving! I'm keeping the name Irena for our business and operation, but the new place is called Jewel Pond. I will follow with a separate post with pictures and more details.

Homeschool

Homeschool is going full steam now. We are short a couple of subjects for now as the materials are on back order, but that's okay. The conventions and nominations are providing lots of material for current events.

Homeschooling is getting very popular! People talk to me and think it sounds like a great idea, but not for them. The results are pretty obvious - most people remark on how nice the kids are. But I've noticed people seem afraid that it's something only special people can do.

Really though, it's just something you do because you feel like it's what needs to be done. Like raising a special needs child. You just do it. And there's so many methods and kinds of people that do it now that no one really has to re-invent the wheel. Although I'm thinking of developing, later, when the kids are not taking up so much time, a curriculum for teaching Koine Greek for kids. But that's not the wheel, more like the Cuisinart.

Poor Ted went from a lot of work back to just one little training session a day. Maybe. But all the work I did when I had the time has really paid off. He's super useful now. He's really turned into the go-to dog here.

We had a chance to run a for-fun trial course this weekend, a couple of times. Although he was shaky on his outrun, he did the rest of the course with no problem. The sheep were not feeling in the mood to pen but both times we did it, we got them in. Eventually.

And we did it without lots of running in circles - mostly we stood at the mouth of the pen with Ted going, "Is this it?" and the sheep going, "So now what?" and me going, "I'm forgetting something." I was picking away at them forgetting that not all sheep are sensitive to body pressure and need glaring and stomping to get them to respond to people. Finally Robin yelled, "Stomp! Glare!" Oh yeah.

I'll post videos and say more about this next time.

Ted Is Sick of Sheep

It's all our guard dog's fault.

First, they started coming over the (admittedly too short) fencing - first jumping, then getting lazy and stepping over it, squashing it.

Then the more athletic sheep started following. Not too much of a problem. There's plenty of grass right there to make them happy.

Then the late summer scorch hit this week. The grass is no longer yummy. It takes way more to satisfy them. We could set out hay, but it's hard to justify it when we've got 30 acres for them and it's only going to be a couple weeks until we start setting out feed for flushing (increasing condition for breeding).

My flower gardens are much yummier. Soon the whole flock was coming over the fence, and not just the squashed part, tally-ho.

The plan is to top all the fences with electric wire, and that will be just fine, but it won't happen until this weekend. Meanwhile my poor flowers!

Today I hit on a plan that worked! I am making the yard a place to avoid by training Ted there when I got "volunteers." Funny thing, I'm not getting many repeat customers! But I've got close to sixty sheep, and they only are coming half a dozen or so at a time.

This means Ted has worked, today, already, about eleven times, and each time we work the sheep for about ten minutes. The sheep just stand in one place the whole time, pretty much, so they are not stressed - except they don't get to do what they were hoping to do when they sneaked out of the fence. Most of them prefer not to come back, once they are finally put away.

The first four times, Ted leaped up the second I moved towards the back door, as usual.

The next five times, Ted leaped up when I said, "Look, volunteers!"

The next two times, Ted just rolled his eyes when I said, "Look, volunteers!" and waited for me to actually call him out the back door.

He's still working with enthusiasm and physically he's holding out just fine. He's not even breathing hard. It's no just longer a big deal.

The last time, only two sheep ventured out, and I tried something fun. I stood on the porch and asked him to push them as close to me as he could. He actually got one of them to step up on the bottom step, then one of the other dogs realized what was going on and barked in the window and the two sheep exploded in opposite directions. I sure wish I had had video of that. It's very encouraging for his future as a Useful Dog.

Tomorrow a friend is coming and I hope to get her to get some video.

I still can only get him to take that inside flank every so often but Robin has some ideas to share when we go over there Sunday. He's also still blowing me off when the pressure gets really tough, but his default behavior has gone from "grab and ride" to "dive and chase." And I realized today I can work on this weakness and break my sheep from running, now that he's listening better.

Harvest

The kids have been picking literally bushels of apples and pears this week. The first year we were here, we barely lived here so we missed that harvest. Last year a very late frost blighted the blossoms and actually killed two of the fruit trees here, sadly. One of them was our only peach tree, and one was one of the pears.

But this year we've had a bumper crop! The ducks kept the trees free of insects, I sprayed once in the winter and we actually pruned, and the trees are rewarding us with delicious fruit. I've never tasted a heirloom pear before. Wow what I've been missing. I dislike store pears very much, but these are so different - very tasty and interesting in texture. Not squishy and floury at all.

The apple trees bear small, very tart apples, probably suitable for various apple cookery. I'm bagging and freezing them. Some will be used for us, and some for the dogs. Next year I really want to learn how to can. Our kitchen is probably a "canning kitchen" as it's huge for an old small house, and has a large walk in pantry that is original to the house. This large country-style kitchen been wonderful for the weekly dog food preparation, but I'd like to utilize it more for us, too, as food prices go sky high.

The beginning of each school year is a "harvest" on the previous one, since it's the things that have been carried over the summer, that are the things that you know they've really learned. We've been off for six weeks, so I'm delighted that both boys have fallen right back into math and writing. We never really leave off reading and science (living on a farm is one long science project!). We are having to do some review on handwriting, but that was a new subject for both of them the last couple months of last year.

This year we'll be doing some serious current events, of course, with its being a Presidential election year. Today we talked about registering to vote, and some of the reasons wars start. I try to keep our lessons neutral, though you can never teach in a way that's completely free of a world view, since we are not machines. But, though we are very strong Conservatives, and the kids know it, I also want them to know why other people think like they do, and I also want them to know I don't think a hole will open up in the time/space continuum if they grow up to vote on the Liberal side of issues.

Ted and I have been putting in the time lately in all weathers, on sheep and ducks, and in various locations. I think we are finally reaping the fruits of that work, too. Ted's attitude has suddenly shifted to one that is workmanlike a lot more of the time. More importantly, I feel a lot more confident in trying one thing or another, and acting when necessary to correct him if he gets to fooling around. One really needs to be able to act almost without thinking many times, and the ability to do that and have it be the right thing (!), only comes with practice. One really can't buy it, or get it from books, or the internet, or even clinics or lessons.

We had a fantastic visit with Ted's breeders this Sunday, who came down for a visit at Robin's. I'll post more details about that later when I get some permissions to share some videos.

Mark Billadeau held sheep for us for a couple of outruns and Renee videoed them. I was sure that this would be a disaster if the camera were "rolling" but to my surprise Ted did well. This was also Ted's first time taking sheep off someone holding. Again, he was very sensible about it, only showing a moment of hesitation the first time.

This first one takes a little while to get to his actual outrun - Mark and his dog are the first ones you see at the top.

Contentment

It's natural, I think, for people to want to improve the things around them. And I believe that's a healthy instinct. The New Testament talks about "reaching for the goal." So I imagine that there are many things in our lives that could use improvement, and that it's important to discover those things and do our best to raise the standard.

But, there's lots of things that I'm learning fall into the category of "leave it." And some things do need improvement, but not in the way I think. I'm starting to see that almost always, the "leave it" things are the ones that are out of my hands anyway. And at other times I need to be cautious about my motives for wanting to "fiddle" with something, and my methods for doing so.

My brain hurts from all that abstractness. Let's get down to concretes.

The dogs have certain characteristics. I get into trouble trying to change things when sometimes these things are basic to their nature. Instead, what I should be looking for is how to shape these characteristics in a way that we are not clashing over what the dog wants versus what I want. When I do this, an amazing individual emerges - and if that dog doesn't fit here, there's most certainly somewhere that dog fits.

The more I focus on the dog, the fewer regrets I have for the choices I make. If I'm alert to the dog's personality and needs, and issue a correction in the wrong place, the dog will tell me and we can take that information and take a big leap forward next time!

I feel like I may have gone back over the bridge to the Land of Unicorns and Rainbows again.

I realized I've been making a somewhat major error in what I'm doing with Ted and really confusing him. But for the first time, maybe ever, I caught it myself and didn't spend time beating myself up about it.

It didn't feel like the end of the world and indeed we almost immediately got over it as it turned out. It's not that I care less about training than I used to, it's that I've finally learned how to enjoy the journey, I think. It's all about working with what's at your fingertips right now, and not comparing it to what "should be" at some future time. And that goes for my own progress, too.

The mistake, by the way, was that instead of a mild correction for taking the wrong flank, I was simply lying him down then reflanking. So, every time I stopped him, he was getting to where he'd automatically flank in the opposite direction. I was also using a bit too much drama to get him pushed back to where he'd cheat on me. Once I discover a level of drama that works, it's hard for me to let go of it and let the pressure off the dog!

Good Sheep Make Good Dogs . . .

I thought this was really cool. A friend and Open handler suggested on the Border Collie Boards this interesting way to help a dog learn the point of a nice, even paced fetch.

My sheep have drawn my dog into a cycle of fetch, push past me, and then circle around to head them off. This is so wonderful and reinforcing that each time it happens, if I'm not riding Ted's rear end with corrections, Ted will speed up even more so the sheep will go farther than the last time!

In this video you can see in the beginning where the sheep are galloping way down the field at the end of the fetch, forcing me to send Ted around. At the end I try to correct this with downs and scolding. This works okay but it does increase the tension.



In the next video, I'm following Denise's advice to try to settle the sheep and let Ted hold them quietly. Her idea is that if you reinforce the end behavior that you want, that's what will be strongest. It's good learning theory! And it fits well with Ted, my task-oriented dog. There's nothing he likes better than to be shown the job and then figure out his own way to do it.

In this video I'm not succeeding 100%, but it's hard to teach these sheep to stand still. The last time I got closest. I have been working hard at this and it's been an eye-opening lesson in itself! I use a different set of sheep every time so they are fresh. Gradually pretty much everyone will be broken, and they will be willing participants in training rather than nervous and looking to beat the dog all the time. Ted is teaching them to trust dogs, and in the future they will teach dogs to be good.



We're also continuing work on those off-balance flanks. Today I got Ted to confidently flank inside for the first time - that's more than half the battle on driving!

Obedience

Obedience is
The very best way
To show that you believe . . .

That's an old Sunday School song that's been running through my mind this week. In my mind, I want my dog training to be all about trust, the dog trusting me and me trusting the dog. Ironically this is probably the number one issue I have when I'm actually out with a dog. I don't trust my dogs, not really, truly, and they don't trust me.

If I ask a dog to do something, I'm instantly overcome with a wave of second guessing myself and the dog's ability to do it. Then the dog gets tense because that's a really strong vibe of indecision I give off at that point. It translates, for instance, into physical hesitation on my part.

Ted's a pretty eager to please kinda guy. He picks up on my signals really fast and he currently thinks it's his job to figure out everything himself. That's something we've been chipping away at, and now Robin thinks we are ready for the next step. I'm working him pretty much mechanically, giving him commands that don't feel "right" necessarily. He's still in control of the stock, but what happens with them all comes from me.

It's proven to be incredibly hard to make myself do this, until I thought of it in terms of allowing Ted to show me, one way or another, whether he trusts me. And it allows me,
to show him, that if he gives me a little I can give him a bunch back.

If he wants very badly to go one way, or the easy/correct way is in a particular direction, I send him the other way. And he's got to stop when I ask, not after or (more often) before. But, one thing I've noticed is that it's interesting trying to make this about just one difficult thing, not giving him a whole bunch of reasons to refuse in a row. Eventually (soon, I believe), he'll be ready for being sent where it's hard, and stopping off balance, and doing it in places that are scary, on sheep that are scary, but not now. When I get it right, I can see the tension melt out of Ted and he becomes "looser" - no hesitation about flanking or stopping or walking up when asked.

One time today, I was out working him and marveling that he'd gone so fast from very hard to move off balance, to seeming to enjoy swinging right around. In my usual way I was so busy thinking, "Wow, isn't my dog cool" and poor Ted was still executing my last command - "Come bye." I think he did two and a half complete revolutions before I came back to Planet Earth. So, that was good but a good example of too much of a good thing. We did some nice outruns and fetches and driving after that to cool things down. The ducks seemed very amused.

On that note, I quickly figured out one way to simplify this for Ted. Robin's sheep are, of course, lovely - mine, not so much. It's very difficult to translate something we are doing there to my sheep sometimes. But, I figured out my ducks are perfect for this sort of thing! They cooperate perfectly, since this is what they were raised to do, and they've never been significantly harassed.

I need to put a video up of one particular place where I feel I'm not quite getting it. It's when he's balancing them right to me - it's really hard to get him to flank off balance there. I accidentally got him going around a couple times but I'm not sure how or if it was right. I'll work with it some more and see whether it will just come out in the wash.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Some comic relief in the middle of today's Ted training video. A sheep steps on my flip-flop and then walks off wearing it. Otherwise it's more of the same. I do see in this one, that Robin is right, I'm behind him and need to get in the right place. Significantly, after the flip-flop incident, Ted goes very nicely and guess where I was when he went?

I set out some markers to help me see when Ted "leaned" - and to make it more of a job than a drill. I think that helped us both be a bit more relaxed.

A Fresh Start with Cord

Cord loves ducks. But he doesn't like working them on water and I will need him to do this later when we release these ducks on the pond. Ted will work them on water but I'll need both dogs to push them right up on land, most likely.

So, I'm starting from scratch with Cord. Cord doesn't like to "mess things up" on ducks. His eye is telling him to seek equilibrium. I want him to enjoy pushing the ducks past his Happy Place. So all I'm doing is asking for him to move them as he wishes, as long as he keeps moving. He's fully trained, but I'm using few commands so he associates the various pitched shushing sounds I'm using, with Fun and Frivolity. I hope this will increase his confidence as we go.

There's a Reason

I was a bit disappointed when I had to reschedule Ted's much-anticipated trip to "college" but I very much understand that his future trainer wants to make sure she does well at the Finals in September. Heck, for selfish reasons I'm very interested in her doing well - not to mention my best wishes for a friend and one of this year's few representatives from the East Coast. Now Ted will probably go in November instead.

But, I should know better than to have regrets over things that are not in my control. First, if everything goes as planned, he'll get a ride there instead of our having to take time away from the farm. That's a small thing.

But, the exciting thing. Since we are not driving to his trainer the first weekend in August, we might be able to do something I've wanted to do for a long time - participate in a Habitat home raising! Our credit union is supporting their latest push and supplying workers from their employees and any members that want to volunteer, too.

Meanwhile, I continue to grow and learn from Ted's training. After my week away we were both really rough this afternoon. It was hot, this exercise was a bit intense, and so I only worked him a few minutes. The idea is to discourage him from pushing all the time on the sheep - on flanks especially he's got a really lovely leeeeeeeeeaaaaaan in that drives the sheep a bit batty.

It's difficult to work this on sheep that are not dog broke, as I'm also working with his tension about "losing" them. I believe next time I'll work in this in the round pen. There's no dishonor in returning a dog to the pen to fix something, I believe - especially if we can make a major breakthrough on this!

An interesting fact is that there is a direct relationship between this problem (which I don't have the understanding or terminology to describe yet), and the fact that Ted doesn't really look for sheep when he runs out. Once he's got a set of sheep he keeps them together till death, et cetera, but he will blithely ignore sheep that are inconvenient for whatever reason. It's a maturity thing and I'm not worried about it. I sense that it's one of those "problems" that has a positive flip side.

I am using (well, attempting to use) two different approaches to helping Ted correct his "lean." In the first, I've placed the sheep so the fence and me keep them stationary. This "makes the right easy." As Ted begins to lean, I simply scold him, but also step back a bit wider (or try to do this - amazing how a week off will throw one's timing all off! We'll see whether I can get better at this.

The next phase, which was our assigned homework, was a bit of a disaster. I wish I had had time to practice this when I got home last weekend, before I hit the road for the week, so it would be fresh, but it was just impossible. My failure to execute this, I think, has to do with the difference between the lovely sheep at Robin's, and my knuckleheads (actually they are fine sheep, they just aren't hip to the whole "dog broke" thing).

What I'm supposed to do is create distance by, well, it's hard to describe but I need to keep him moving while at the same time make him think twice about "claiming" the space I've designated as "mine." Problem is, I am in this video, at no time, very clear about that message, and Ted finally breaks the tension with some tomfoolery. That's actually fine too as he needs to learn that he gets nowhere doing that, and also how to recover when things go badly (reducing his tension more - he gets scared that things "might" happen).

Enough yammering (nothing worse than novice yammering, probably - I'm sure there's much wince worthy in this but it will be helpful to me later to see how I perceived Ted's progress).

Graduation Day

Friday, we took Bet up to Northern Virginia to begin what I hope will be her new career. We took the opportunity to make it a much needed break from both the farm and the kids. This was to be our anniversary trip also - our fifteenth!

I am grateful for the help of good friends like our neighbors, who watched the boys, and Laura, who came and watched the farm for us. she did a bang up job and I really hope we can talk her into doing it again sometime. I.e., that she was not too traumatized by the experience. I promise next time that we will not booby trap the swing and the water hose!

It was a lovely ride up the Shenandoah Valley and we arrived an hour or so from sunset. We had a wonderful time after we dropped off Bet, in breathtaking Prince William County, including a tour of the Manassass battleground. Well, just a small part of it around Henry House as we had forgotten to bring sunscreen for Patrick.

As usual, I took some "Graduation Day" pictures of Bet before we left.

Is this my good side?


Hey, what's that?
People who have seen Bet in person are probably amazed that I've gotten so many pictures of her holding still. It's the magic of multiple frames, my friends . . .

Hey there! Got sheep? Geese? Ducks?


So, I got a bunch of pictures because, really, how cute is this dog?

It's really her main "fault" because she knows she's so adorable and oh, how she can work it!

Seriously, how could you even think anything this dog did could ever be wrong?

See, if you had her you'd want to talk like a chicken too. You know you would.

Bitty Bet on Geese

Bet's been here since, I believe, March. Ish. She and I are really starting to come to an understanding, I think. She's now almost done with her training and in fact is going next week for her "on the job" training and, I hope, her forever home!

Bet lost her last three homes because she has a bossy personality and way too much energy to burn, and it's a little hard to get her to focus on anything for more than 2.7 seconds. Training her has been all about walking the line between a serious "my way or the highway" attitude, and trying to show her the rules of the game. Every dog teaches me something and Bet's lesson to me has been how to play this balance.

The idea here is to show her the trick that these farm geese do, that I call "lame duck." One goose from the group lures the dog away while the family group heads for safe water. Finally at the end Bet gets that she's supposed to stay with the big group! Yay for Bet!

I'm going to try to embed this thing.

Holy moley, it worked, another milestone in my blogging life! There's more where that came from, mostly Tedlet videos, so I hope I'll have some time later to post those.

As the philosopher said, "Ta-ta-for-now!"

Interim

Well, I've discovered the first pitfall of blogging. When there's lots of interesting things going on, there's no time to write. When there's time to write, there's nothing interesting to write about.

We've been shearing, entertaining like crazy, I've been getting Ted ready to go to his trainer next month, and I'm getting two dogs ready for goosedogging (I hope), and one ready for his new life as someone's full-time companion. Until the travel madness of week after next starts, I'll have a chance to breathe over the next week.

Breathing means catch up work, though! We still have to finish up shearing (I sprained my wrist pretty badly and had to stop last week). Plus, we will be putting in another line of fence, bringing our total paddock space to twelve acres (four three acre paddocks). I don't foresee our ever fencing in the big pasture. If we fence in anything, it might be the four acre hay stand across the road. It's a crying shame to let that go to waste but it's bounded on two sides by highways so we'd have to fence it very securely, to the tune of about $1000.

So this entry is a placeholder. My apologies for that. Later, I'll post more on shearing, Ted's training, ducks, and goosedogs. Not all in one post though. This will help me remember later when things get boring again, what to write about!

Lynn's New Diet

Lynn starts a new chapter today. While three of the dogs are on 100% raw, anyone who isn't up to now was on kibble with fresh food supplements "just in case." I think, for one, that Patrick was a bit uneasy about the hodge-podge approach.

So when puppy Lynn came into our lives and presented me with several health problems (her age, her rough start in life, feeding a "giant breed" who wasn't really because of undernouishment) - I decided to call on an expert.

I just got my consultation back from Sabine Contereras at Better Dog Care. This will be fun! I'll replace her breakfast meal (now kibble with some toppers) with a meat, fish, rice, veggies, and organ meat mixture (the meat will be raw, the grain and veggies cooked and pureed).

These will be mixed on a weekly basis and portioned out in daily servings for the convenience of the menfolk who sometimes take over feeding (like now since I injured my arm shearing!). Freezing in cupcake forms and bagging up the "meatballs" means that PJ can take a more proactive role in feeding Lynn.

Raw meaty bones will also be portioned out and bagged separately just for her as Ben's, Maggie's, and Zhi's currently are. Her diet will consist of turkey, chicken, and pork - this is nice because these are all already currently a part of our diet. That's what I like about "Mordy" - she works with what you are most comfortable doing, or have access to.

Lynn will not miss out on sweet treats like berry smoothies and freezies, and recreational bones like this week's goat shanks, so that will be nice.

Our goal with Lynn is to improve her tolerance for a wider variety of fresh foods and challenges to her immune system, and help her continue to recover from early malnourishment and gastro-intestinal infections (parasitical and disease).

Dog Food Geek on Aisle Four

Today the selection at Compare Foods (Hispanic market) was particularly good. Goat on sale, calf heads, chicky feets, whole cow feet, pork kidneys and hearts - everything I was hoping to find basically. So I'm mumbling to myself estatically, exclaiming at new finds, throwing stuff in my cart with cackles of glee.

Suddenly I notice on my left, a store clerk looking at me fixedly. I looked to my right and yup, there was a mother and a teenaged daughter, also staring at me.

The odd thing was that I was so happy with my full cart, that I didn't really care that much! I just smiled at both of them and went to check out.

Bet on Sheep

Bitty Bet has an interesting love/hate relationship with sheep. Since coming here, she's settled down a lot, but she still doesn't like being "fiddled" with. Since "fiddling" is necessary here (the dog often doesn't know best how to get the sheep or even where they are), I've had to build up her tolerance for this slowly. Thus, since sheep require a lot of listening for a dog to be useful here, she greatly prefers working ducks and geese in the water, an activity which only needs about a quarter of the input from the handler.

Soon after Bet arrived, for instance, we had to put about 35 head, ewes and lambs, in our 15 by 15 lean-to pen. The sheep can play ring-around-the barn indefinitely if the dog simply follows the heads blindly in this situation - new dogs have to learn how to block that game, and how to act as a team with us to get the sheep in.

Since Bet Would. Not. Stop. - it was a minor disaster and she ended up frustrated and exhausted. We had to use a second dog to stop the merry go round action - once the sheep know they can do it, they'll keep doing it dog or no dog, unless you get a dog that can stop them, or a backup.

Today Bet made me proud. For some reason today the sheep were all over the place in our 15 acre back field, and Bet took every direction to find them in a blind corner about 200 yards back, then over the hill and down to the pond, then back down and further across the dam when I realized that wasn't all of them.

Not only that, but each time she brought them quietly and not railroading them along - very important since it was 91 degrees out there! She did need many reminders but she took them all and they didn't make her sulky!! Then, when we got to the gate, she took several off-balance stops and partial flanks, allowing me to sort off the ewes with lambs without any fuss. These were a real issue for her when she first got here.

She's going next month for a tryout with a wonderful goosedog handler in VA and I'm pretty sure she will make my friend very happy. But now I'm starting to think it wouldn't be so bad if she flunked out. . . .

Livestock and Heat

I've been re-reading my Pasture Profits book again (on forage-based livestock systems), and giving some thought to the problems of raising sheep in the southeast. In the past, I've thought of it as a heat tolerance problem related to the ability of the animal itself to survive in heat and humidity. I've focused on my sheep's natural ability to resist worms, thrifty feed use, and kept up with mineral requirements to try to ensure optimum health during this time. It works well, but I still hit a real hard wall with regard to growth at this time.

Now I'm considering this as a feed management issue. If we lived in an area where we had harsh winters and snow cover, we'd have to ensure that food was available and accessible. There's no snow cover, but the hot sun means the sheep can only eat at certain times of day, or in the shade, where the forage is soon stripped.

If I had zillions of dollars, and we actually owned this place, I'd rework all my summer pasture over to heat-tolerant forage and ensure very dense ground cover, particularly near shade and water. But, that's not possible. So I've come up with a plan that will include concentrated feed for the lambs through the summer, as if they were being dry lotted, plus access to good but not superior hay in a shady area (the concentrated feed will provide energy). I estimate that I'll only be feeding a few wether lambs, some bred ewes for fall lambs, and my replacement ewe lambs, over the summer, so this will not be a big hardship. It will pay off in heavier and healthier lambs I hope, and a good pregnancy for my ewes that will be bred over the summer.

I'm very thankful that we have the paddock space to do this!

I will continue as we've done, with the open ewe flock, just rotating them over pasture until the big dry spell. I hope we'll have some hay stocked up for that - I'm planning to purchase some rounds now while the prices have dropped - they are a quarter what they were going for just a couple months ago!

The ducks, our Rouen flock, are doing great with access to their little swimming pool. They are about twelve weeks old now and swimming like, uh, ducks. The kid's job is to feed them twice a day, and change the water every time it gets ooky, which is a few times a day now. I love my ducks! They are keeping bugs low in the yard and garden now - last year I had tons of slugs - this year, not a one! Go little ducks, go!

Do No Harm

I haven't posted in a while because I'm still unsure what direction we'll take here. I've been reading various blogs. Some I've enjoyed greatly, and I've taken note of what I liked about them. Some have not interested me as much, though sometimes the subject matter is a topic that appeals to me. Some have downright horrified me, and I've given them a wide berth after reading enough to ascertain that it doesn't fit in my standard of things that should take up my time.

. . .Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Phil 4:8 NIV)

Not only do I want to follow this in my own life, but I want to offer something that fits in this guideline.

I've seen blogs from people who seem to delight in hurting others. I cannot understand this. One person, one life - we have only one chance here to make a difference one way or another. Why be one who is adding to the hurt in the world?

Obviously I am a theist. More specifically, I believe Francis Schaeffer's manifesto that "He is there, and He is not silent." I think we have a responsibility to reflect God here in this plane of existence, of space and time.

Thus, I'm seeking a purpose that not only refrains from harm, but also will elevate readers in some small way.

I know what I don't like, as detailed above. Plus, there are blogs that inspire me to move on quickly but for no reason other than boredom. I greatly fear being one of those myself!

What I do like are blogs that are humorous, and also provide some service, whether it's information on a topic, or recipes (yay for Pioneer Woman!), or just really wholesome entertainment (yay for Pioneer Woman again!).

All of this being a long winded way of saying, I still have no idea what to say here, yet! And, I just realized to my chagrin, that this is a blog about blogs - even worse, about my blog. Arrgh. Does that make this post a metablog?

Update! Kids' Demand THIS Recorded

So we had so much of the above left over, we had leftovers tonight. I shredded the chicken as it heated, added a smidge of water, and then made a simple cheese sauce (below). We served it with tortilla chips (blue chips, our favorite!), smothered in the cheese sauce.

Slightly More Diet Friendly Cheese Sauce

1/2 cup fat free sour cream
1/4 block Velveeta

Start heating the sour cream over very low heat in a heavy saucepan. Or, better, use a double boiler (I don't have one of these - it's on the List of Things to Get When I Remember). Meanwhile, cut the Velveeta into teeny-tiny chunks - less than 1/2 inch ideally. When the sour cream is bubbly hot, add the Velveeta. Then stir until it's all melted (you don't have to stir as much with a double boiler). Makes about a cup.

Chicken and Chili Beans

Many times I'll go grubbing around in the pantry and freezer and throw something together. Sometimes it gets rave reviews. Sometimes, not so much. The problem with the former is that invariably I forget what I've done (the problem with the latter should be self-evident). Hubby pointed out this blog is a good solution to preserving the randomly-generated successes for future use.

I've been informed by hubby that I must put this one, whipped up last night, on the blog:

Chicken and Chili Beans

2 lbs chicken, boneless thighs or breasts (these you'd cut up into quarters)
2 cloves garlic, diced or just smooshed like I do
2 tbsp olive oil
1 can chili style beans in sauce, not drained
1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained well
1 tbsp dried cilantro or about 1/4 cup fresh chopped
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 cup hot water or fat free chicken stock
1/4 cup salsa, any style

Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet, on medium and add garlic, saute until golden brown. Add the chicken and saute until opaque, about five minutes each side. Reduce heat slightly and add remaining ingredients except salsa. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Add salsa and cook five minutes more, to warm salsa through. Serve with warm tortillas, or over brown rice. This makes lots for four.

This recipe is Core for Weight Watchers, and very low fat and cholesterol for others watching their diets for various reasons. And the kids loved it with the tortillas - especially topped with cheese and sour cream!

A Useful Dog

My standard for what makes a Border Collie, a good Border Collie, is "usefulness." To me, this doesn't mean my dog could do something if he had training, or a better handler, but that he will do it. Usefulness is the opposite concept to letting me down when we're out there working.

I know that many times it's my fault my dog can't do something, or doesn't know to do it, but there are other times when a dog should just be there, keeping contact but not making a mess, and that's all I need. I'm not trying to win the Bluegrass or Soldier Hollow here, just getting sheep from Point A to Point B.

Ted delights me more every day. I know, it's sort of reminding me of the coach who admonished his young athletes against showboating in the end zone: "Act like you've been there." It's still wonderful after so many disappointments, to have a youngster with all the pieces in the right place.

This morning we had a new experience. The newly weaned lambs took a field trip deep into the woods, probably after the poison ivy and other brushy leaves currently at their tasty, tender best. This would be okay with me, but the woods are outside the fence, with the paved state road bordering them, and after they browse their fill, the sheep tend to wander down to my landlord's beautifully landscaped small pond, drink, and then top off with a few of his wife's perennials for dessert.

Ted worked in the woods like there were no woods. He was fantastic (Ack. Act like you've been there.) level headed and found each lamb, plus made sure the mamas with younger lambs all came with as well (and weren't flustered).

The nice thing is that I think this may be the first time that these sheep haven't had the upper hand in the woods. They like to play games with my dogs, who all being hand-me-downs, or trained by me in - ahem - previous years, all have major weaknesses.

The other nice thing is that I think this was my big payoff for all the work we've been doing on fences, in corners, and in the lean-to. Weird pressure was always Ted's Achilles heel, and here it seemed like it was almost the opposite - he really seemed to relax and get into the "busy" nature of the job.

The only bad thing was that he was so "into" it that he was hard to stop and about 50% less obedient. He was handling things just fine on his own most of the time, but there were a couple times that if he had listened, I could have helped him a bit.

I think we'll do some putting sheep in woods on purpose, in the near future, and see what we can do about that last bit.

I Totally Should Not Be Doing This

I tried the blogging thing several years ago, when you had to explain to most people (meaning all but the geekiest of geeks), what a "blog" was or the meaning of the verb "to blog" (I blog, you blog, thou bloggest, they will have blogged). I didn't like it for a lot of reasons. The blogging sites either offered not enough control over look and feel, or too much, meaning you had to do it all by hand via html. I'm too much of a control freak for the one, and too lazy for the other, to be worth it.

Then a short while ago, I started realizing that my long e-mails about, well, not much, were boring people. It's now de classe to put that sort of thing in personal communications. I could almost hear their thoughts - Why don't you blog instead? Then we could pick and choose what's interesting?

So here we are.

I’m one of those “too much or too little people” - both phases supremely boring to read, I know. So, what my hope is, is to make this as extrospective as possible (though blogging is de facto an expression of introspection, even on external topics). Not to make it less boring, but in the hope that I’ll culture that habit in my thoughts permanently. And that's the last really "me" focused bit I hope to bring here. I have to plead indulgence for spiritual reflections however - this is the inevitable result of writing to a diverse audience.

Plans for the week: I’m working on building Ted’s confidence holding and working with pressure. This paid off many-fold when I had a customer come for a lamb. Ted held them for me for about thirty minutes, largely on auto-pilot, while we yakked and I pulled out one lamb after another to compare and narrow down our choices. It was only when they’d gone that I realized that was his first time doing that, solo, for that length of time. And afterwards, just curious, I took him out to see what doing the “cutting horse” thing for that long had done to his “outwork” - and lo and behold he now has twice as long an outrun, and shows no more than a normal baby dog amount of nervousness on the drive.

Thus, I’ll continue to work on his “at hand” pressure, and play at training trial type stuff pretty much only when others are here - or to set it up for a video. Meanwhile I’m delighted that he will now go out reliably for sheep as far as he really needs to anywhere on this farm, with the exception of the large field. The issue there is less the distance (in sight gathers are around 250 yards now since we fenced the bottom chunk), and mostly the fact that the dog must work out of sight for most gathers.

I'm also going over to the lake twice a day with Bet (except days I'm too busy). She's gotten amazing at spotting geese even before I do. It's hard to see them on the hilly, woods-surrounded lawns since we go when the light is pretty low. The geese have gotten to where she doesn't even have to move, they just go where she can't see them, uplake.