Wordless Wednesday - Happy New Year

Chiefie and the rest of us are looking forward to 2015, the Year of the (blue) Sheep!

Coal on Christmas

Here are Coal's Christmas 2014 pictures. He has been a good boy, and even though you get coal in your stocking from Santa Claus if you have been a bad kid, I have always felt blessed to have such a good Coal in my life. :) Even though he is a little monkey at times!

Spot's Progress, 12-26-2014

Spot's photo from Christmas Day, 2014

Patience is the Key

I haven't posted on Spot's progress for a while. It feels like we are in another one of those "plateau" stages again. I have to just be patient and keep working with him, and I am sure we will take another step forward at some point, very soon. We've been through these plateau periods several times in the past year or so. Patience is the key; sigh! Sometimes patience is difficult to muster! :)

Overall, Spot's doing well. He can do a nice short to medium gather without the wheels falling off. But, if I send him too far, those wheels may go flyin'! It's all stuff we have to work through and figure out together.

The driving is coming along, slowly. He is getting it about driving, but the steering part, is coming a little more slowly. He is getting the idea of the inside flanks, if I am super careful about setting them up with relation to the draws, the sheep, and me. I do put a solid stop in between each command...he needs it. The outside small flanks are almost harder to do because he wants to take them as a full flank all the way around to the heads, to gather. I am trying to work on all of this without getting too picky on him and flustering the both of us.

His recall is good. The whistles for stop and steady are in place; the whistles for the flanks are not all  there...it depends on the situation.

I use him for whatever small "chores" that we may have...which are not many. So sometimes I make up a chore just to do something different. Recently I was super pleased because I sent him into a smaller paddock for a group of about a dozen half-grown lambs, out a gate, then brought them through another narrow-ish field, and through another gate out into a large pasture. Spot took every stop and flank that I asked him to take, while escorting those lambs out to the field. It felt super to make that happen without any kerfluffles! :)  So there IS progress, once I start to add it all up. He is a good boy and tries hard.

Christmas Morning Fun

Dogs love water. I love doing chores on holidays and just hanging out with the animals. The guardian dog, Neve, got extra treats with his breakfast. The Scotties got some apples in addition to their alfalfa. The boys decided that playing in the little seasonal pond was great fun.

A branch had blown down from the tree that hovers over the seasonal pond. It must've blown down last night or yesterday when we had some winds blow through. The weather has changed from warm and wet to cool and sunny. The branch was in the seasonal pond and the dogs thought it needed a lot of attention. Ryme and Coal decided that it needed to be dragged out of the water and it was funny to watch them tackle that job together.

Ryme says this baby is mine!

Ryme and Coal work on dragging the branch out while Spot supervises

Ryme and Coal are still working on that branch!

Even Chiefie gets in there to help!

Ryme and his prize, dragged almost to "shore". 

Christmas is a time of gratefulness and sentiment; and connecting with family and friends. I'm always grateful when I can spend some time out with the animals, and give my dogs a chance to just be dogs having fun.

I did work Spot after all the water fun, but I didn't take any pictures of him. We will have to try another day when someone else is out there with me.

Cool Pics of Coal from Dunnigan Hills

Wow, I was really surprised and pleased to find these three gorgeous photos of Coal in my message in box. They were taken at Bill Berhow's Dunnigan Hills Fall trial a few weeks ago by K. Nichols.

Wordless Wednesday - Ryme & Scotties, last winter

This photo is from January 2014. We had no rain at this point in the winter.

Rain Like in the Old Days

Whew! We've had rain this week! We asked for it, and we prayed for it, and we did just about every other thing to beg for it, and by golly, we got it. All at once. Folks are saying that water rose up to places where it had never risen before. Wow. Lots of flooding and trees blown down, and other damage. A friend said it was "rain like in the old days" which I thought fit so well. We've had a long dry spell to say the least.

Spot working a week or so ago

The picture above is from a week or so ago. See the little bright green ditch that is between Spot and the sheep? That is now full of water. See the lighter green depression off to the right shoulders of the sheep? That is a vernal pool which is now full of water. Water, water, everywhere!

We worked dogs this morning and my guys were so happy to get out. They have been sequestered for almost a week. Everyone worked well considering they have been on hiatus.The only problem was working in amongst and around all the pools of water. It made for some interesting reactions in the dogs, and it makes the sheep reluctant to go in certain directions. I had to think a bit differently in order to work the dogs on things I had in mind to work on.

I had to pull out rubber boots that hardly got worn at all last year. I am still looking for overshoes that will go over my regular leather work boots. The muck boots are OK but do not provide much support. Last year I skated through; this year I will not be able to!

I know the drought is not over. I saw today online that Shasta is still only at about 30% capacity. But, that is up from the 20-something % capacity (less than 25%) that I saw only a few weeks back.  It will take a lot of water, rain like in the old days, to replenish Shasta. But it seems to be on its way there!