The Boys of August

Coal and Spot have birthdays in August. Coal turned nine years old on August 29th. Spot turned three years old on August 22nd. Time was running out for me to get an August birthday picture so I just grabbed these with my cell phone camera, on the night of August 31st. :)

Coal is in pretty good shape, except for those darn stiff feet!

The birthday boys of August

Spot's infamous tongue makes another goofy appearance

I am ready for ACTION! 

(rolls eyes)... let's get this photo shoot over with and back to sheep

Chiefie is not a birthday boy (his birthday is in October), but I did get this sort of nice picture of him recently, as well. Chiefie has been sort of uncomfortable with a lot of scratching (and there are no fleas) so I started him on an all-fish  (no other proteins) diet, which seems to have helped at least somewhat.

Chiefie

Spot has been working (for the most part) really well.  He will have a minor meltdown here and there, but mostly we are on the road to improvement. I still don't understand the occasional starbursts, but at this point they seem related to slow or heavy sheep. I am going to work on getting him more comfortable in close with sheep and pushing them when they are slow. I think I can set up that situation a few different ways. It is frustrating though. What few chores we have, I am trying to do them all with Spot so that he has to listen to me and still work through a situation that is not just training for trials. I hope it will help.

Coal and I are trying to get tuned back up for the fall trials. I hope we can do it. I'd love to have one more season in open with him. The first set of entries went into the mail on September 1.

Ryme is always a good helper. He is happy to do any sorting, moving sheep, helping to catch, whatever. I don't think his bad leg will hold up very well on this hard ground, though, so I am not trying to just train on him much at all. Just chores for him, for now.

This summer still feels hot. Of course it is dry and hot as well. I hope we have some winter, this year, and if so it will be quite welcome.