Indoor Dog, Outdoor Dog

Because of all the recent snow and cold weather, and the recent death of his companion Ruby, a couple of nights ago we decided to see if our remaining outdoor dog Jesse would like to start being an indoor/outdoor dog again.



I brought him into the house during the afternoon so he could get used to the change before bedtime. He's a nervous dog, very worried about trying to do the right thing, so he stuck very close by my side all afternoon. So intent was he on staying within a few feet of me the whole time, that he neglected to tell me that he needed to go out, even when he couldn't hold it anymore. Not exactly helpful, but hey, a dog makes mistakes sometimes.

We also had to deal with jealousy from our small indoor dog Leeloo, who wasn't happy about sharing her space and her people. Jesse was not interested in being mean to her, but he constantly growled at her to stay away from him, which she didn't always obey. Because Jesse could easily bite her in half if it came down to a conflict, I had to keep a very close watch on both of them.

Jesse was also having a hard time adjusting to indoor temperatures. We thought we were being merciful bringing him in from the cold, but all he could do was pant and drink bowl after bowl of water!

At night, Leeloo sleeps in her own bed, shut in our small home office. She likes a private place so she can sleep uninterrupted. In light of Jesse's accident on the floor earlier, I decided he could sleep shut in the bathroom, where the tile floor would allow for easy cleanup. I put a bed in there for him and left him settled in for the night.

Or so I thought.

In the wee hours of the morning, Jesse began to howl, long and mournfully. This caused Leeloo to start barking. It was not a peaceful night for any of us!

In the morning, when I let Jesse out for a bathroom break, he raced straight over to his outdoor pen and asked to be let into it. I took that as a sign that the whole indoor dog experiment was a failure. Whenever possible, I like to let the animals tell me what they want, and Jesse was clearly saying he had not enjoyed being inside, and he wanted to go back to his old routine as an outdoor dog.

It was still pretty cold out, but I figured he knew better than I where he was happiest. So last night, I left him outside as usual, with his big shed for shelter and his enormous fenced run.

Imagine my surprise when, first thing this morning I hear a sound on the back porch and there is Jess, escaped from his pen---something he has not done in about 2 years!---and begging at the back door to be let inside!

Apparently during the night he'd had second thoughts and decided he'd like to give the indoor dog thing another try. So now he's napping beside my chair, with one ear and one eye always cocked to keep track of where I am.



I suspect it's going to take a while to smooth out all the conflicts between him and Leeloo, and to remind Jesse about the housebreaking rules he's forgotten. But he's let me know he's willing to try, so I guess that's what we'll do!

R.I.P. Ruby

We lost our dog Ruby today. Yesterday she was fine, and today she was just dead, with no warning. She was getting to be fairly old for such a large dog, but still, apart from a little stiffness in her hips lately, she hadn't shown any signs that anything was wrong, so this came as a surprise.

When Ken and I first moved to Virginia, long before we bought our farm, we rented a house with a lot of land, and before long started talking about getting a dog. We discussed what kind of dog we would like, looked at all the pictures in dog breed books, and still couldn't quite decide what kind of dog we'd like.

Finally, after much debate, I said, "It doesn't matter what kind of dog we get. When we're ready for a dog, the right dog will come along."

The VERY NEXT DAY a litter of puppies was abandoned on our property. We figured one of those must be "the right dog." Out of the four, we picked Ruby as the one we'd keep.



She was smart, a little bit shy, and (usually) very obedient. I taught her many tricks. The normal ones, like Sit, Stay, Down, etc. But also others like Shake Hands, Speak, Growl, Crawl, and Shut the Door.





After about a year, it was obvious that Ruby was lonely, so we went to a shelter and got her a border collie cross, Jesse, as a companion. They made friends instantly, and have been companions ever since that day.

When we moved to the farm, they shared the large shed and 1/3 acre run we gave them, and spent many happy days romping together.

So, sad as it may be that she's gone, she had a good life and appears to have had a quick, relatively painless death, since we found her just lying in her shed as if she was resting.

Could be a lot of worse fates for a dog. Could be a lot of worse fates for any of us. And we'll always remember her fondly as "The Right Dog."

Goodbye Ruby. Rest in Peace.

Predator/Prey

My cats are skilled, enthusiastic hunters. Ken's Pomeranian, Leeloo, loves to chase, wrestle, and play rough with cats and other animals that are about her size.

So I was a little nervous about how our littlest lambs would hold up to any unwanted attention they might get, now that I've let the sheep out to graze in the yard. Leeloo is no longer let out unsupervised, and I always keep my ears open for any cries from distressed lambs.

But it turns out I've got the whole thing backwards. The lambs have made a great game out of cat chasing. Even the tiniest ones will go out of their way to gleefully attack the cats and chase them all over the yard. When the whole stampeding herd of lambs gets chasing a cat, you can hear the thundering hooves from the other side of the yard.

Leeloo, being about the same size as a large cat, holds about as much intimidation for the lambs. She would dearly love to play chase-and-wrestle with them, but only on her terms. When they come after her she gets scared and runs with her tail tucked under.

And rightly so, because while the grown ewes humor the lambs in the cat chasing, they get quite angry at Leeloo being near their lambs. They surround her and make every effort to beat the crap out of her.

The poor dog can't even go out to go potty in peace anymore. Someone has to go with her, partially as a chaperon so she doesn't chase the lambs, and partially as a body guard, so the ewes don't stomp her into a pancake.

After seeing all this, somehow, I'm not so worried about foxes coming into the pasture and stealing young lambs anymore. I get the impression that any fox that tried would end up being sorry.

Of course, the sheep still couldn't stand up to a large dog or a coyote, but I like it that they're fierce, self-sufficient Viking sheep, who---within reason---are able to look out for themselves.

Good Thing I'm Getting a Livestock Guardian Dog

After a night of unbridled gluttony, grazing on the lawn, the rams take a break to relax and digest this morning.

Nicholai:
Taj:
Preston & Freyr:

As you can see, it's hard to relax. The rams lead a life of constant peril, and always have to be on the lookout for dangerous predators like mountain lions:

And wolves:

A Swarm of Complications

I'm learning that sometimes it's not the really big problems that bring you down. Sometimes its the multitudes of insignificant complications and disappointments that swarm around you like biting insects that end up being the things that break through your composure and sap your fortitude.

The past couple of days, that swarm has been hard at work here.

My computer still isn't fixed, so I'm still using Ken's computer, while Ken is stuck doing his work sitting on the living room couch with his laptop.

Now our truck has broken down again too---the same problem it's had a dozen or more times before: it's fine one day, and then the next day you go to start it and nothing happens. Sometimes it cures itself the following day without our doing anything to it. Sometimes Ken fixes it by jiggling some of the fuses. Sometimes we tow it to the repair shop, only to have it start up fine for the mechanic. Sometimes the mechanic replaces something that seems to solve the problem, only to have the problem reappear the next day or the next month. Most recently, we replaced the ignition, which seemed to solve the whole problem, until yesterday, when the issue reappeared just as it always has.

So now, without any immediate funds to fix the truck (not that anything ever seems to fix it permanently), we can't continue our project of mucking out all the horse paddocks. So, when potential horse buyers come to look at horses, the place literally looks like crap. Plus, we have to move each day's supply of hay up the hill in several wheelbarrow loads instead of one truckload. And we no longer have the option of going to pick up a couple of days' worth of hay ourselves if our hay supplier can't deliver on time. In other words, many of our farm tasks are crippled.

Although we got the vet out here in plenty of time to do the Coggin's tests on the various sales horses, one of the vials of blood broke in transit to the lab, so now the vet has to come back out again on Friday and take the blood again. We don't have to pay for this second trip, but it still delays the paperwork for that particular horse. Lucky for us, it's one of the horses that isn't leaving until next month, or we'd be in trouble!

Ken got paid yesterday, including his Xmas bonus, which was a relief. I had been getting stir crazy here, since I had not even left the farm for the past month. So we decided to drive into Charlottesville and do a bit of minor shopping. We have no money for real Xmas shopping this year, but we thought we'd get a few things we needed at the pet supplies store and it would at least give me the chance to get out for a few hours.

Because we were mainly going to the pet supply store, we thought it would be fun to take our Pomeranian Leeloo with us. And it would have been fun, except that on the way there in the car, she got carsick all over me!

After driving to three stores and still not finding the item I was looking for, we gave up, picked up dinner at the Burger King drive through and headed home.

When we got back, we found that our electricity had been shut off. Ken knew it was overdue, but his paycheck had arrived and he knew we had money to pay it now. Unfortunately, he didn't think to call the electric company to pay it before we left for the afternoon. So when we got home, Ken phoned in our payment---plus a hefty fine---and we had to sit around by candlelight waiting for the guy to come reconnect the power. Kind of put a damper on my "big" afternoon on the town!

While we were waiting for the guy to come turn the power back on, we moved my big, room-divider sized candle stand downstairs next to the couch. Because it holds 39 candles inside individual glass cups, it produces quite a lot of light, so we could see while we waited.

But this morning, our Pomeranian Leeloo and one of our cats, Echo, got scuffling in the living room and upset a couple of our other cats, who crashed into the candle stand and knocked it over, breaking two of the glass cups and scattering shards all over the floor.

Another cat peed on Senter's horse blanket that was lying in the laundry room, waiting to be washed. This is only about ten feet from the cat door through which the cat could have gone, to pee outside, but apparently that would have been too much trouble.

Then, what was supposed to be good news today turned out to be another series of complications. The payment check arrived from the person who is buying our mare Bonnie. Only the person made the check out to our farm name instead of my name. Since our bank account is in Ken's name and mine, we can't deposit a check made out to the farm.

At first we thought we would just go to the bank and change our bank account to include the farm name too, so if this kind of thing happens again in the future, it won't be a problem. But it turns out we can't add the farm name to a personal account, so we would have to open a business account, and we can't open an account in the business's name unless we go to the county office to fill out a "doing business as" form.

So we went to the county office. They gave us a form, but said that we had to fill it out online. So we went back home to fill it out. I don't know what happened to the "doing business as" form since last time I filled it out, but what I remember as being a very simple, one page form that took only a couple minutes to fill out, today was this endless, convoluted array of contradictory web pages that asked for the same information over and over in slightly different ways until I had no idea whether I was even answering any of the questions correctly.

Finally, some of the definitions on the questionnaire were so vague and confusing that Ken called the "help" number for clarification. Of course, there was no one there. He left a message, but no one ever called us back.

By this time the day was pretty much over, so we just gave up on the whole stupid process, and I emailed Bonnie's buyer to ask her to send another check, this time made out correctly. So it'll probably be another week before we can get this much needed money.

Oh... and here's another irritating complication: What the heck happened to my blog header? For months it has been perfect, showing the full photo of my horses in the field, with the pale sky over their backs being the backdrop for the blog title. But suddenly a few days ago, with no editing from me, the whole header is a different size, the photo no longer fits, and the blog title is illegibly squished down onto the horses' backs.

I suppose I'll have to figure out how to fix it eventually, but sheesh, it took me long enough to get it right in the first place. What's the point if Blogger is just going to randomly rearrange stuff without my permission?

All these stupid problems are not so overwhelming individually, but when they all just keep piling up like this, it saps my drive and energy. I get so frustrated and tired. I'm just trying to do a simple, decent job. I'm not asking for the world. But some days it just seems like it's impossible for anything to go right.

Springtime in December

We've been having warm, damp weather in the mid-70s this week, very balmy and pleasant. Outside, some of the birds have been singing their spring songs, and some of the ewes, when I let them out to graze in the yard, started bouncing around like April lambs, stampeding up and down the driveway, hopping straight up in the air like Mexican Jumping Beans, and clashing their horns together in big, dramatic, mock-battles.

It's fun to see them so happy and frisky, enjoying the weather. By the time the weather gets this warm again, they'll be heavy with lambs, and won't feel much like bouncing, so it's nice they get the chance to play while they can.

I again spent most of the day at the computer, doing horse, sheep, and fleece related emails, and putting the finishing touches on my Sheep Inventory paperwork I need to have prepared for our Scrapie Inspection tomorrow.

I had most of the Inventory done two months ago, but then we sold another sheep and this year's lambs registrations numbers are in now, so I updated that info and then checked the whole thing over for errors or omissions. It feels good to have it all organized---and I'm really relieved that Ken saved all my files when my computer died, so I didn't have to redo the whole 14-page Sheep Inventory list from scratch!

A couple of fleece buyers who have been thinking about fairly large orders contacted me today to finalize their orders. If their checks arrive soon, we might have enough money to buy the next batch of hay, and possibly pay the electric bill.

With luck, it will be just enough to tide us over until I can finalize a few of the horse sales that are pending!

I also found out today that a friend of mine has had a wonderful new opportunity come up in her life that means she will be dispersing her flock of Icelandic sheep. She has given me first dibs on purchasing a group of her best ewes next summer, which I'm very excited about.

Not only will it give me a chance to expand my flock (which I've been wanting to do as soon as we have sufficiently reduced our horse numbers) and add several excellent unrelated bloodlines to my flock, but these sheep are also pre-selected for good heat and parasite resistance, which is one of my top breeding priorities here. So, now I have until next summer to save my money to buy those six ewes.

She's also offered me her trained Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog. We're seriously thinking about it. There are coyotes, foxes, and occasionally bears in our area, so a guardian dog really would be a good idea. But I know that they are not like other kinds of dogs, so I'm doing more research before I say yes, to make sure I'm prepared to do it right, if I take him.

If we get him, we'll probably try to find a good home for our other two large dogs, Ruby and Jesse, which is something we've been thinking about anyway. They are great dogs, but now that we live on a farm, they get very little attention and serve no useful purpose. I really think they'd be better off with someone who would play with them and enjoy them more.

But all that can be decided later. Now I just have to print out my Sheep Inventory and get ready for bed!

Leeloo and the Sheep Crook

One thing I can't abide, is a barking dog.

My two big dogs are pretty good. Mostly they remember to be quiet. And when they forget, I tell them, "Quiet!" and they shut up.

Of course, it wasn't always that easy. For a certain period of their lives, I'm sure they were convinced that their name was "RUBYJESSEBEQUIETNOBARKING!" But, like I said, now they're pretty good.

It's another challenge altogether to try to teach a Pomeranian not to bark!

Leeloo is a spoiled princess who doesn't actually believe that humans are the dominant species in the house. She humors us because we're the ones who can reach the fried chicken, the macaroni and cheese, and the popsicles. But she doesn't actually think we're the boss of her.

She has a private doggie run outside, which she hates. She's not in it that much, but for the time she is there, she usually runs back and forth nonstop, waiting to be freed. We call this place "Puppy Jail."

She knows we disapprove of her yapping constantly while she's in puppy jail. She knows that if she's barking, we won't let her out until she's quiet. All this means is if she thinks we're looking, she'll be quiet. If we don't hasten to immediately let her out, she proceeds to curse us out: "Yarp! Yarp! Yarp!"

Scolding her merely convinces her that she's succeeded in getting our attention. Spanking her has no effect. Neither does ignoring her---she'll persist in barking all day long if we let her.

But, quite by accident, we discovered a secret weapon: the sheep crook we recently bought to assist us in catching our sheep. You know, the classic Little Bo Peep tool with the long handle and the hook at one end.

When we first got the crook, we played around with it for a while getting used to how it handled before we tried catching sheep with it. During this experimental phase, we tried gently hooking a few cats with it. We were amused to discover that we could hook it under a cat's belly and hoist up a little, and the cat couldn't get away. The cats, while disgusted with our antics, were relatively tolerant.

When we playfully tried it on Leeloo, however, she was horrified beyond words. Scolding and punishing have no impact, but apparently EMBARRASSING her makes a huge impression. Now if she ever sees us brandish the sheep crook at all, she slinks into a corner and makes herself small and humble---and most of all, QUIET---for a while.

It's become something like a visual exclamation point between us---a canine hearing aid, if you will. If we tell her "Quiet" and she still keeps barking, we go out and wave the sheep crook at her. Suddenly, she can hear and understand our commands again---and we can enjoy a few blissful hours of peace!

The Pet-Lovers Diet

It seems like everyone nowadays is worried about their weight. And capitalizing on that, everyone else is making a fortune selling diet plans and books specialized according to everything from your body shape to blood type to astrological sign.

I figured hey, I could stand to lose some weight---AND earn some money---why not come up with a diet plan for people like me?

So here's why my diet plan is the best plan ever:

You don't need to change what you eat. You don't need to change how you exercise. It's all about portion control---and you don't even need your own willpower to take care of that.

You just need to enlist the help of my highly trained four-legged diet consultants, available to you for a reasonable monthly fee. For best results, you need approximately one cat or dog per 10 lbs. you need to lose. If more than one family member needs to lose weight, they need to hire their own additional diet consultants.

Here's how it goes:

You sit down in front of the TV with a big, heaping plate of fried chicken or lasagna or prime rib, or whatever other high-fat, caloric nightmare is responsible for inflating your waistline. You turn on the TV. You pick up your fork.

But before you can take your first, delicious, calorie-laden bite, your four-legged coaches appear as if by magic to remind you about the importance of portion control.

A fluffy red Pomeranian hops up beside you, puts her paws on your leg, and tilts her head in an adorable, heart-melting pose. You can't help yourself. You give her a bite of your food. SNARF! It vanishes, never to add a single point to your BMI.

You pick up your fork again. A large, gray Maine Coon cat appears on the arm of the couch, purring loudly. As you lift your food toward your mouth, he reaches out one large, fuzzy paw and pats you gently on the shoulder.

You can't disappoint a creature full of such pleased self-confidence, so you hand over another bite of your food. As positive reinforcement for your good behavior, the purring in your ear increases by a few decibels.

Determined to finally taste some of your own dinner, you pick up that fork one more time. Just as the food is about to enter your open mouth, a brown tabby cat perched on the couch back bats at your hand. With five razor-sharp claws.

While you're examining your hand to determine whether you need stitches, your team of four-legged coaches spring into action to ensure your continued dedication to portion control.

The tabby cat leaps down beside you and parades back and forth, dragging his generously furred, plume-like tail across your plate. You push him away just as the gray cat sneezes in your direction. You can feel the spray on your hand---who knows where else it's landed?

Fed up (and yet underfed!), you chase the cats out of the room, only to return and discover the Pomeranian energetically licking your plate. Sure, they say a dog's saliva is actually cleaner than a human's, but her breath smells suspiciously like horse manure.

See how easy it is to lose (er---I mean, "control") your appetite, when you have the right team of highly trained diet coaches? It doesn't take any willpower at all.

Before long, you'll be abandoning the high-cholesterol evils of fried chicken and filling your plate with waistline-friendly broccoli, celery, and lettuce, just to be able to eat something that is not immediately confiscated by your pests (umm, I mean, "consultants").

Of course, there is a catch.

Scientific study (by which I mean, several months of testing by Ken and myself) has proven that---like most of the other diet gurus' plans---the Pet Lover's Diet doesn't really work in the long run.

Sad to say, but the inborn human desire for greasy, unhealthy foods outweighs (pun intended) the ingenuity of the cleverest diet guru. Pet Lovers find it easy to stick to this diet, but gradually compensate for the calories confiscated by the "coaches" by simply over-inflating the serving sizes at the beginning of the meal and learning to joke about the health benefits of a little extra "fiber" added to each meal in the form of cat hair.

Then again, the fact that their plans don't actually work never stopped any of the other diet gurus from making a fortune. All it would take would be for my plan to become trendy, and I could be rich and famous. Face it, if you're going to be overweight either way, at least my plan is more fun than theirs!

Now I just have to come up with a diet plan for overweight, overfed PETS!

New Bones and No Bones

I got a call from our butcher first thing this morning to come get our lamb meat right away because his freezer broke during the night. So I rushed right out and brought the meat back. It just barely fit into our freezer.

In the rush I forgot to ask about the bones he was supposed to save for me. I have a person who specifically wanted some of our sheep bones for a craft project, and I was going to use the rest for a project of my own (It's a secret for now, but I'll post pictures here if I ever get around to trying it).

When we checked back with the butcher, he said he forgot to save the bones for us, even though I specifically asked him to. This makes me a bit grouchy. Last year, he forgot that we wanted to save the pelts from the sheep we sent, and he ruined several beautiful hides by removing them carelessly and cutting them full of holes.

He's a nice guy, very chatty and friendly, but he's used to dealing with plain old livestock that are commodities, not high-value niche markets. So it seems that he doesn't exactly take sufficient care to preserve the special items I ask him to save.

However, he is very conveniently located, just a few miles away, so our choice is really to try to work with him and educate him better on our needs, rather than seeking a different butcher.

He did offer us any other bones we might want, including lots of deer bones (since this is hunting season, he's getting lots of deer in right now). That will work okay for my project, but the other buyer specifically wanted the Icelandic sheep bones because she's making a historical reenactment (SCA) project for which the Icelandic sheep would be most appropriate.

Oh well, we have one more lamb we may slaughter later, once we have more room in the freezer again. Perhaps he'll remember to save the bones for us then.

The other "bone" news for the day is

(1) Leeloo, our Pomeranian, finally got her leg brace taken off today. Her broken leg is all better! and

(2) Our ewe Peri is starting to use her rattlesnake-damaged leg a little bit, now that I've put a brace on her ankle. I don't think the leg will ever completely heal, but with the brace she regains a little more mobility and can live a more normal life.

Oh, My Aching Back

My day started out with unloading 1,000 lbs. of sheep grain (with Ken's help) into the barn, then loading another 1,000 lbs. of hay into the truck and unloading it again to distribute it to the animals. Then I distributed about 75 lbs. of grain to the various critters, and filled about 500 gallons worth of water troughs.

I also had to drive to the slaughter house and pick up the hides from the sheep we sent yesterday. The first time I ever did this, I (foolishly) assumed that I would be getting back nicely skinned and relatively clean hides, ready for salting, much like the deer hides I used to help my dad with during hunting seasons back when I was a kid.

What I get back from the butcher is something quite different: a heavy, bloody garbage bag, with all four hides lumped inside. Because I salvage the horns and skulls to sell to people who want them for craft projects, I tell the butcher to give me the heads back. They're in the bag too, still attached to the hides. When I open the bag, the stench of dead meat is overpowering.

Originally, the first time we sent lambs to slaughter, I felt a little guilty for not having to face the animals' deaths directly---after all, I order their deaths, but my part consists of delivering them to the slaughter house and picking up neat white packages several days later. I felt a little bit like I was getting off easy, because I didn't have to participate more directly.

But now that I know what it's like to deal with the hides, I know that I do face their deaths directly. I reach my hands into the bloody bag and haul out a hide. I cut the head from the rest of the hide, then turn the pelt upside down and bit by bit cut off the leftover bits of fat and meat still attached to the skin. When the first one is done, I hand it to Ken to carry into the shed to be salted, and I start on the next one.

It's a disgusting, smelly job. By the time all four hides are salted, the scent of dead flesh has soaked into my hands. It'll take many washings to remove it completely.

On the bright side, at least the pelts, heads, and horns won't go to waste. I even have a new idea in the works for an interesting use of the sheep bones.

And of course, the ones I don't use, our dogs will eat. They're eating a big pile of beef bones right now. The butcher had a huge box of them he was about to dispose of, and he offered them to me for our big dogs. Even Leeloo got a little one.

After that, I did some cleanup around the house, and packed up some of my recent Ebay sales---although unfortunately, I missed getting them to the post office before closing by just a few minutes.

Now, my back is aching from all the lifting this morning. It doesn't bother me until after I sit down for a while. It'll be fine by morning, but now I'm going to go to bed early and get a good night's sleep.

I tried to go to bed early last night, but for some reason the horses were all going crazy in their pastures, galloping around like wild things, neighing at the top of their voices, setting the dogs to barking.

I got up out of bed to go check on them, and they all seemed fine. I think it must have been a bunch of deer crossing the field that spooked them, and since the weather has finally gotten seasonably cool, they were just having a good time exaggerating their fear to give themselves an excuse to run.

Oh... and here's a neat thing: my stallion Senter has developed a helpful new habit. First, a little explanation: Senter gets his hay and grain in a big plastic trough. When he runs out of hay, he tips the trough over, so he can eat any wisps that have fallen behind it. Every day, the trough ends up knocked over.

This is annoying because when his trough is upright, I can drop Senter's feed directly out the back window of the feed room into the trough. But when it's tipped over, I have to walk all the way around the barn, through three paddocks to set it upright again, then walk all the way back and toss the food in.

Well, for the past week, Senter has been knocking his trough over as usual. But when he hears me in the feed room getting ready to feed him, he knocks it back upright and (most days) shoves it back into place under the window!

He's done it almost every day this week. Every time it happens, I'm just floored. That's pretty advanced reasoning skills for a horse to figure that out all on his own, and then care enough to do it.

Now if I could just teach him to muck out his own paddock, I'd be all set!

Fillies at Recess

The rams seem to be feeling a bit better today, so maybe it was just a simple matter of dispensing worm medicine, selenium booster, and supplementing their protein intake. I'm sure it helped that the weather was cooler today.

Leeloo went to the vet for another checkup on her leg today. She was very frightened to have to go there again---bad memories!---but the vet says she's doing great. He removed some of the pins in her leg, so that the bones have to start supporting more of her weight as the brace supports less. In another couple of weeks she has to go in again, and might even be able to get the brace removed completely then.

I spent some time working on the website design I've been hired to do. It's actually a lot of fun. I enjoy doing it: the detailed work of getting the formatting and layout just so, as well as the creative aspects of coming up with ways to improve the customer's experience.

But the most fun part of the day was when I let the fillies out into the back pasture to play for a while. They are so beautiful, galloping around in the sunshine. Here's a video clip.

One of those times that they ran up into the paddock, Grace apparently tried to jump the fence again, because when I went up to pet them all after "recess" was over, Grace had a big scrape on her chest and the fronts of her forelegs (nothing serious, just a big patch of hair removed), and the top of the fence was bent.

Naughty girl! But boy, it sure does seem like she's got the jumping tendencies built in, if I can only teach her to do it safely and only when she's supposed to!

Goodbye Sebastian, Hello Ken

Here's what happened on the farm today:

1. My ram Sebastian and my ewe Shakti went to join their new flock. Thanks Natasha, I know you'll give them a great home!

2. My husband Ken and his puppy Leeloo came home from their vacation at our friends' rented beach house. They had a great time, and Leeloo even swam in the ocean!

3. My computer started suffering from random attacks of electronic narcolepsy---just blacking out periodically in the middle of things. Hence, I'm writing this on Ken's computer, while Ken attempts to back up all my files (just in case one of these blackouts becomes permanent). Hopefully, he'll be able to fix whatever's wrong. But that's why there are no photos with the blog tonight... they're all on my computer, where I can't access them right now.

4. A woman I've been in email contact with decided to buy my whole inventory of ram's horns and skulls for an SCA craft project. So, a little more money coming in---Yay! After I finished cleaning up the newest batch of horns for her, I decided to rub them with a little mineral oil. Wow, does that make them look nice!

5. We decided which are the "lucky" sheep who get to go to the state fair later this week. This will be the second year our Icelandics will be on display in The Big Red Barn, which is the fair's most popular attraction. It gets thousands and thousands of visitors every day of the fair, which is fantastic exposure for the breed, but it's also incredibly noisy and the sheep hate it.

Last year, our senior ram Nicholai was one of the two we took there, and he was absolutely miserable. So this year we promised him that he didn't have to go. But our sheep sold so well this year, we don't have any other impressive-looking adult rams left to send, only ram lambs. So we decided we'd send a couple of ewes as well.

Naturally, I'm reluctant to subject any of my most valuable ewes to such a lot of stress so close to the beginning of breeding season. So, if I can't send my biggest ram or my most impressive ewes... what criteria shall I use to pick who goes?

Since I couldn't go with "biggest," I decided to go with "cutest," which means my two leader ewes, Salem and Savannah. They're super cute and sociable, plus they were too small to breed last fall, so they didn't contribute any lambs to the farm this spring. Doing time at the fair can be their offering to the flock for the year. To add a little more color variety, I'll send a couple of the ram lambs with them. We'll have a gray mouflon, a black, a white, and a moorit. That should be a nice mix for people to look at.

We half-jokingly thought about sending Trouble the Runaway Lamb, figuring she deserved a little payback for all the trouble she put us through. But then we were afraid she might escape again, and we'd end up having to chase her all over the fairgrounds... It would be a whole new chapter to her saga here on the blog, but not one we're ready for! :-)

Sitting With Sheep

There was a smell of woodsmoke in the air tonight, and a warm, orange glow to the sky. Our neighbor Bob had been clearing new pasture land for his cattle next door, and tonight he was burning the big brush pile he'd made with his backhoe.

The crickets, cicadas, katydids, and tree frogs shrilled their orchestral harmonies from every tree and bush. Bats, in their mosquito-catching ballets, swooped and quivered overhead. The half-moon was high, and the first few stars were just blossoming into being.

In the midst of this beautiful evening, I sat cross legged on the grass, visiting with my sheep.

Not all my sheep are tame enough to appreciate a good visit. But when the shy ones see how much the tame ones enjoy it, sometimes even they are won over.

The fact that I was sitting down was enough to attract the sheep's attention. The friendlier ones came up right away. There's nothing they like better (well, besides food, that is!) than to be scratched under the chin and rubbed on the chest between the forelegs. It mesmerizes them, and they will stand there forever, enjoying it.

Before long, I was surrounded, with half a dozen sheep crowded close to me on every side. Their plump, plush bodies felt like big, huggable, woolly pillows. Pandora's rhythmic chewing sounded in my right ear. Savannah's warm breath tickled the back of my neck. Persia, Tansy, Phoebe and Poppy clustered around, wagging their tails happily when I scratched their itchy spots.

Salem crowded so close to me that the cool, smooth ivory of her horn rested against my cheek. In her attempts to win the majority of my attention, she climbed right into my lap. Believe me, when a 150 pound sheep stands on your shin bones with her pointy little hooves, she gets your attention pretty quickly!

It always amazes me how peaceful these sheep visits can be. I love my horses, but they don't soothe me the way my sheep do. Sitting with my sheep smooths away all my tangled nerves.

It amazes me too, that the sheep seem to enjoy it as much as I do. After all the times during the year when I have to do something unpleasant to them---shearing, worming, vaccinating, tattooing, ear tagging---you would think that they would hate me altogether.

But they are smart. They know the difference between when I'm working with them and when I'm just visiting. And apparently, they don't hold a grudge. I've even had proof---as good as a sheep can give---that they care about me and consider me part of their flock.

Last winter, right after we'd gotten our Pomeranian puppy Leeloo, she was still very small (about 2 lbs.) and very shy. So to help her build confidence, one of the things we would do to exercise her was to run around the yard a few times with her chasing us, and then "fall" down on the ground and let her hop on us, so she could feel like she won the race. It was a fun game for people and puppy alike.

When my sheep, who were pastured in the yard at the time, first witnessed this game, what they saw was their beloved shepherd being aggressively pursued by a ferocious (albeit small) wolf.

To their shock and horror, their beloved shepherd fell, and the ferocious wolf leaped upon her, clearly ready to rip out her throat. Oh no! Who would bring them their feed if their beloved shepherd was killed?

All the sheep (including some that are normally so shy they won't approach me willingly at all) immediately came to my rescue. They crowded around me, stood protectively over me, and waved their horns threateningly at the "wolf."

It was hilarious! When I got up, brushed myself off, picked up the wolf and began petting it, the sheep were completely shocked.

Nothing like a good laugh to brighten my day. Plus it's nice to know the sheep really do appreciate me!

Leeloo Joins the Lemming Society

One of the blog's readers asked recently how Leeloo has been doing lately. So here's an update: She will still be wearing her leg brace for quite a while yet, but she is starting to use the leg more when she walks and plays.

(See Life Plays Us Like a Game of Jenga and The Dogleg in the Dog Leg, if you missed what happened to her).

~~~~~

Because of Leeloo's tumble down the stairs, she has now earned her place in The Kelley Family Lemming Society. Yesterday, she received her official club shirt.

What, you may ask, is The Kelley Family Lemming Society? I asked the club's founder, my husband Ken, to write an explanation:

Here follows a description of the Kelley Family Lemming Society (TM), and how it came into being.

The first inductee is my sister Co----. About 25 years ago, when she was a new driver, she was taking some friends for a spin in our family's little sporty convertible, an Austin-Healy Sprite. Well, there was a little too much "spin", and she lost control of the car, went off the road and down a fifty foot embankment. Crash. No major injuries, but we never did get that car working again.

The second inductee is my sister Ca----- (of my six sisters, four have names starting with "C"). About 13 years ago, she got married, and went with her new husband on honeymoon, hiking in the woods in New England. While hiking, she fell off a cliff, also about fifty feet. She hit some trees on the way down, which meant the final stop at the bottom wasn't as harsh as it might have been. She got to take a helicopter ride, but I don't think she remembered it. She was more seriously injured, but has recovered well.

The third inductee is my sister Cl----. About a year and a half ago, she was out with her sons on vacation in Iowa, riding 4-wheel ATCs around the countryside. Whee, another fifty foot cliff. She was in traction for a while, and now wears a brace. She is healing, but it'll be a while before she's done with the brace.

A little while after the third incident, I came up with the idea of forming the "Kelley Family Lemming Society". I made up T-shirts for them and presented them to my sisters when we gathered together for my mother's 80th birthday. I was a bit nervous that someone might be offended, but fortunately, they all thought it was hilarious.

While I was making the shirts, Nancy commented that if I did that, family members of mine would get jealous and throw themselves off cliffs in order to join. I laughed, but didn't disagree. Sure enough, since then, one of my nephews fell off a cliff. I haven't sent him his T-shirt yet.

So, it occurred to me that Leeloo fell off the Pomeranian equivalent of a fifty-foot cliff, so she should be in the society, too. So I made her a T-shirt and she is now an Official Member.

Fortunately, I haven't been in the position of awarding a membership to anyone posthumously. But if I die falling off a cliff, I suppose someone should make me up a shirt and bury me in it.

So as part of Leeloo's celebration of her new club membership, she's going on vacation to the beach with Ken this week, while I stay home!

Because someone has to stay home with the animals to do the daily chores, Ken and I took separate vacations this year. That way, we each get a break from the farm without having to pay for a farm sitter.

I already took my vacation in June (camping with friends). Now Ken is going to stay with some friends at their rented beach house all week. Since I can't go with him, he's taking his puppy.

Now that's a true example of the phrase, "lucky dog"!

Peri's Progress and Other Photos

Remember how awful Peri's leg looked when I wrote about it before?

Here it is three weeks later. No maggots, no necropsied flesh, no giant hole that lets you see down in between the leg bones. Just a lot of pink new flesh.

The leg is still weak and floppy in that area (presumably from nerve and tendon damage) and Peri still lies down most of the time, or hops around on three legs.

But her attitude is cheerful, her appetite is good, and she has learned to lie still and let us do the daily cleaning and rebandaging of the wound, so it looks like she's going to make it through this adventure after all.

(See Peri's Reprieve if you missed reading her story the first time around).

While I'm on the subject of legs: Leeloo went back to the vet again today for another checkup and bandage change on her broken leg.

(See Life Plays Us Like a Game of Jenga and The Dogleg in the Dog Leg, if you missed what happened to her).

She's making such good progress that she doesn't have to go back again for a month now.

Unfortunately, having the vet change the bandage again alerted Leeloo to the fact that bandages can come OFF, so when she got home, she immediately chewed the new bandage off, and we had to put it back on ourselves.

But in the meantime, I took a picture of her "Bionic Puppy" leg, showing all the pins and braces holding it together.

It's been a bad summer for legs here. Besides Peri and Leeloo, our cat Henry and our mares Char and Scylla each were briefly lame in one front leg, for unknown reasons. Fortunately, they recovered without expensive vet care!

I narrowly avoided a potential medical emergency of my own tonight. When reaching down to turn off the outside faucet after watering the animals, my hand passed within six inches of this lovely and sinister looking Black Widow Spider.

Normally I don't kill spiders. I figure they're mostly going to eat bugs that are more annoying than they are, so I like to let them alone to do their job.

But, sorry, I just couldn't leave this one to live and reproduce right next to my back steps where Ken and I and all our cats hang out regularly. We do not need any more medical emergencies here, either of the animal or human variety.

On a brighter note, I had to take a picture of the hay in our hay feeder after we filled it up tonight.

I thought it looked pretty, the way we arranged the alfalfa and orchard grass bales in an alternating checkerboard so that each horse will be able to reach some of each kind of hay when they come in to eat.

Naturally, they'll all crowd in and rush to gobble up all the alfalfa first, so it's important to make sure each horse gets her fair share.


Here are the horses waiting for us to open the gate so they can come in and eat that alfalfa.

Here's what happened when the gate was opened.

That's Torchsong, our yearling Paint/Saddlebred cross filly at the end of the video. Quite the firecracker today, wasn't she?

Poor thing, she's at the bottom of the herd's pecking order, so she knows there's not much point in hurrying in to be fed, since the other horses make her wait until last anyhow.

The Dogleg in the Dog Leg

For those of you who might be wondering, Leeloo's surgery went fine. When I took her in to the vet's the day she broke her leg, I saw her "before" x-rays. Her left front leg had a 90-degree angle in it just above the ankle.

When Ken picked her up after her surgery, he saw the "after" x-rays. He said it looked just like a normal leg, except for all the pins and braces holding it together. So, luckily for Leeloo, there's no more dogleg in the dog's leg. After about 12 weeks of healing and rehabilitation time, she's expected to be good as new.

Here she is a few days after her surgery, with her big bandage covering her leg brace, and about 1/4 of her hair shaved off:



When I got home last night from my somewhat less than successful trip (see Can't Catch a Break... Or a Sheep!), I decided that it was one of those rare nights when I really wanted a drink. A brief search of our liquor cupboard turned up just the thing to lighten my mood: a tiny trial-sized bottle of watermelon schnapps. Mmmm... tasty!

Leeloo had also had a rough day, since she had had to go back to the vets for the first checkup on her leg. They changed her bandage to a slightly smaller one that left her foot bare so she could start learning to walk on that leg again.

So, when the schnapps bottle was empty, I let her play with it. Even though there was nothing in the bottle, she still did a creditable impression of someone getting totally drunk after a hard day:







After this, she continued her imitation of a wild drinking binge by vomiting on the rug. Twice!

She's on the mend though, and is in good spirits, if a little subdued since her accident. Now our job is to work with her several times a day to make her begin to use the leg a little bit more each day, so that it keeps getting stronger.

Life Plays Us Like a Game of Jenga

Life plays us like a game of Jenga. One by one, it pulls away our supports and adds to our burdens, just to see how long we can stand. --Nancy Chase, August 14, 2007.

~~~~~

Tomorrow I'm leaving on my sheep-delivery trip. So I had a lot to get done today.

I got up early so I could give the 4 traveling lambs their pre-trip worm medicine and vitamins while it was still cool out. I was in the kitchen mixing up the vitamin drench and our Pomeranian Leeloo was racing up and down the hallway, romping with the cats.

All of a sudden there was an ear-splitting burst of yelping from Leeloo. I thought the cat had gotten annoyed at last, and scratched her. But the yelping didn't stop. I put down what I was doing and went to find her.

She was lying at the foot of the front stairs, shrieking like a fire alarm. I literally had to put my fingers in my ears before I could approach her. After a minute, seeing that help had arrived, she quieted to small, sad, quavering whimpers.

As soon as she stood up on three legs, I could see that her left front leg was broken. Just above the ankle, it was bent upward at a 90-degree angle where there shouldn't be a joint. When I lightly touched it with one finger, it flopped loosely as if not even connected.

No wonder she'd been shrieking so loudly. That had to be unimaginably painful and frightening to her. She'd probably tried to chase the cat up the stairs and had fallen.

Damn! A puppy in severe pain, another vet bill added to our already overburdened expenses, my busy morning schedule suddenly tossed out the window... none of this was good.

Ken is away on a business trip, and Leeloo is mostly his puppy. They are so attached to each other, we joke that she's his new girlfriend. He loves this dog more than anything. I looked at the clock: 7:30 a.m. He'd be up by now, but not yet occupied with his business day. I grabbed my cell phone and called him.

"Hi, what's up?"

"I think Leeloo just fell down the stairs and broke her leg."

He asked if she had any other internal injuries, and I assured him that I thought it was just her leg. She was still whimpering softly in the background. Ken heard her, and softhearted guy that he is, started getting choked up.

"Take good care of her," he managed to say. "I can't listen to this anymore."

And HUNG UP on me!

I stared at the phone in disbelief. Umm. Yeah. Thanks honey. No problem. I'll take care of everything.

Have I mentioned that sweet and kind hearted as Ken is, he's not really great at dealing with emergencies?

To his credit, he called me back a minute later and helped me quickly locate the vet's phone number. But, good grief! What would have happened if I'd phoned him while she was still shrieking? My ears were still ringing from that an hour later.

The 45 minute drive to the vet seemed really, really long. Poor Leeloo whimpered the whole way. I know she was in a lot of pain.

I dropped her off with the receptionist just after the vet hospital opened, before the vet had even arrived. I drove back home and waited for the vet's phone call.

When it came, it wasn't good. Leeloo had definitely broken her leg, but in a place that requires surgery rather than casting or splinting. And our vet doesn't do that kind of surgery. She'd have to refer us to a vet in Charlottesville. Surgery would cost around $2,500. The exam and x-rays from the vet who couldn't do anything cost $273.

Damn! We simply don't have that kind of money right now. I called Ken back to see what he wanted to do. When I told him the price estimate, he said, "I don't think we could do that even if we wanted to."

"Okay," I said, "but what do you want to do instead? Do you want to put her to sleep?"

I don't know what he thought our other options might be, but this suggestion hit him like a bomb. I heard him fighting back tears. "No," he said. "We have to do the surgery. We have to." Poor guy, he was at a business conference, surrounded by coworkers and customers, and having to deal with this at the same time.

I still needed to tend the sheep before the day got too hot. Not only did the traveling lambs need attention, a couple of my own sheep were showing symptoms of heat related stress, so I wanted to dose them with vitamins too, before I left for my trip.

Worm medicine, vitamin drench, and for my own stressed sheep, a couple of vitamin shots. It's not easy to hold a 100-lb. sheep still by yourself while you're the person poking it with needles! They thrash around and fight to escape, and it takes both brute strength and a steady hand to get the job done.

One sheep, Sally, thrashed so hard, she ripped the needle right off the syringe. When I felt around in her wool to see if it was still stuck in her, I discovered that in ripping the needle free, she had also ripped a big hole in her skin.

Great. Another animal disaster was all I needed for the day!

I felt around and around in her wool and could not find the needle. I assume it got flung onto the ground somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

Then I had to go back to the house and find my can of Blue Kote to spray on the wound, to disinfect it and keep the flies away while I'm gone.

After all the sheep were finally taken care of, I drove back to the vet's, picked up Leeloo and drove her to the doggie orthopedic surgery specialist in Charlottesville. I think if this had happened to any other animal on the farm, we would have had to bow to our depleted finances and have the animal put to sleep. But I can't ask Ken to give up this dog that he loves with all his heart.

So I went in, filled out the forms, looked at the scary x-rays of the puppy leg with the extra joint where there shouldn't be a joint, and listened to the vet describe the bone pins, clamps, braces, pain killers, and physical therapy he has planned for Leeloo. He's very nice--a friendly man who takes the time to explain everything in detail.

But all the while, I'm thinking, "How are we going to pay for this? We have to do it. We have to do it for Leeloo and for Ken. But how are we going to pay?"

By 2:30 p.m., seven hours after I started, I finally got back home again. I hadn't had anything to eat or drink since the night before, and I'd used up most of tank of gas driving back and forth.

I was tired, emotionally wrecked, and starving. For the rest of the afternoon, I made a bunch of phone calls and wrote a flurry of emails, getting directions, confirming meeting times, and finishing up last minute details for tomorrow's travels. Then it was time for evening chores, feeding the animals and filling the water troughs.

Now it's almost 9 p.m., and I still have to pack for my trip!

Three A.M. at Old McDonald's Farm

During the day, the animals are quiet. Sheep, horses, dogs... mostly they relax in the shade, reluctant to move much in the heat. But lately, during the night it's a different story.

I'm already behind on my sleep because I've been lying awake worrying about our finances a lot. Now, apparently, the animals have decided not to sleep at night either.

All night long, it's a "neigh-neigh here and a baa-baa there. Here a bark, there a bark, everywhere a bark-bark." A regular Old McDonald's Farm animal sing-along. And since to me every one of those animal noises could herald a possible emergency that might need my attention, I am getting no sleep.

Of course, none of the sounds actually DO herald an emergency. It's just animals being animals.

It starts with the horses. Glory in her weaning pen cries for her mother. In the paddock behind the barn, our stallion Senter--ever hopeful that some mare might be calling for his services--screams back.

The broodmares decide that now would be a good time to make their hourly commute from stuffing their bellies at the hay feeder in the front pasture to brushing the flies off their backs and bellies among the close-growing cedar branches down at the bottom edge of the big pasture.

It doesn't matter that it's 3 a.m. and pitch black outside, this commute always takes place at a gallop, 12 sets of thundering hooves shaking the earth. This sets the farm dogs barking. The sheep, hearing that everyone else seems to be active, wake up and decide to do a roll call to see where each of their flock mates is.

Yesterday, I was so tired from being wakened so many times through the night by the animals, I ended up having to nap on the couch for most of the afternoon. I had a million things I should have been doing, but I was just too drained and incoherent from sleeplessness, I knew I needed to catch up on the sleep first. I hate being so tired that I forget stuff and can't form a logical train of thought!

It was another active night last night, but I can't spend today napping. I have to load up four lambs into the back of the Outback and haul them off to the vets (an hour away, each direction) to get their health certificates for interstate shipping.

It's only two more days until I head out on my sheep delivery trip!