Making a ranch dog

Mack is a customer dog that has been here since October. I will be running him in nursery this year. In an effort to make training a little more interesting I have been using him to do farm chores and sorting sheep for lessons. This week after some snow we needed to feed sheep. We have increase our flock tremendously this year. We currently have 120 yearling ewe lambs and 50 bred ewes. This weeks task was hold the sheep of the feeders so Justice could get the bales into the feeders without being ran over by sheep. Or sheep getting run over by the tractor.

Meg is also the helper. Although small problem working Mack and Meg together I am regularly telling Mack to lie down and Meg thinks I am talking to her. Their names sound too much the same.

Here is the obligatory Guardian dog picture.

Next the ewes. We just bought a flock of pure bred Katahdins that have never been moved by a dog. Mack handled them like a pro.

Auditioning a new friend

In the past I have had no luck with Guardian dogs. Luckily now we have Bear and he is super. Just turned two and hitting his stride. With our sheep numbers now over two hundred Bear is needing some help. Raising a puppy just takes too long. We are currently auditioning a new friend for Bear.

Hannah is an 18 month old Maremma. She came from a farm not far from here where they had sold all their sheep and needed to re-home all their dogs.

She is still learning the ropes. Only been here a month now.

Bear and her are getting along good.

Ode to a sunset

Sunrises are highly over rated
They also involve me getting up very early. Over the last couple of weeks I took pictures of the sun set.

Some pictures with my camera and some with my iphone.

Those are what we call wind clouds over the mountains.

I also took these cool fog pictures the other day.