Christmas visitors - 2009

We had Mrs. Cardinal here today.

Along with the male.

Coming in for a landing.

Having a little snack.

And then we realized that there were two pairs of cardinals flying around. The two males were chasing each other in the trees.

We also had some gold finches who came to eat.

We also get a lot of mourning doves.

Random shots of the dogs on 12/21/09

I know, I know, it has been ages since I updated this blog. Shame on me. I was outside with the dogs yesterday and decided that I should get some updated pictures of all of them. This picture shows Phire to the left and Corbie on the right. Phire will turn 10 in 13 days. Hard to believe as I can still remember when she came to us at 3 months old. She flew in from Michigan and when she came in, the airline called wondering if I could please come down and get this puppy. I guess she wouldn't stop barking. She still likes to talk a lot. (c:
Corbie will be turning 5 the end of January. She is a Bett daughter and is a neat little dog on sheep. I am working on building her confidence in a lot of ways. I think that it will be a constant. She especially needs confidence building in regards to lifting sheep off of a set out team. Sometimes it seems that she doesn't want to lift off of a stranger and sometimes it seems like it is the other dog that bothers her.

Here are Stryker and Cash. They are half brothers out of our Ripley. Stryker is on the left and just turned 7. He is our great white one and is actually Steve's dog. Cash, on the right, will turn 6 the end of February. He is my up and coming trial dog. He is strong eyed and is also a line dog. If I let him get too focused on the sheep for too long, boy is it hard to break his concentration and get him to flank off or something else.

Here is Cash giving his opinion of having his picture taken yet again.

Stryker, just looking adorable.

This is Bett who just turned 8. Where do the years go?? She is mother to Corbie.

This is the newest resident here, Sting. He will be 8 months old on January 2nd. He is a handsome smooth coated boy. He is full of himself and I will have my hands full when I start him on sheep this spring.

Here is Sting with his best bud, Corbie. If you want to know where Sting is at, look for Corbie. He follows her everywhere.

Snow on October 12, 2009

I woke up to all of this snow this morning and it is still snowing 4 1/2 hours later. It just won't stop.

This is the snow out in back of the house on a rock that is part of our retaining wall.

This is where the snow really looks out of place. On green leaves!!

It also doesn't look right on these yellow leaves of our birch tree.

Cash did a look back

I am so excited as Cash did a look back for me this evening. He is a very strong eyed dog and has been giving me some trouble trying to teach a look back. Tonight as we were bringing the sheep from grazing back to the yard for the night I wanted to work him a bit. I let the sheep go down to the barn. I then sent Cash on a right handed outrun. He flanked out very nicely and started to come in. I gave him another away flank and he kicked out as far as he could. Once he picked them up a few were left behind. I told him, look back, he looked towards those sheep and back the main packet. When I had told him to look back a 3rd time, he looked at the second group long enough for me to give him an away flank and he took it!! I am so excited that he did that!! It has been difficult as being he is so strong eyed that he locks in on the main group of sheep and won't acknowledge the second group.

I also worked him on coming thru the sheep to start the shed. Another difficult task for him being strong eyed and because I have had to work hard with him to flank out all the way and keep his sheep together. I did manage to get the sheep separated out enough to have two successful call throughs and I left it at that. All in all, a good quick training session.

Sting turned five months old

Here is Sting at five months.
He wants to know when he gets to start working sheep.

Come on, are you sure I can't work sheep.

Hey, who goes there??

Two weeks post-op doctor visit

I just had my two week follow up appt this morning. The doctor said that I am healing up perfectly!! Good news. No pain in my lower abdomen. He said that I still have to stick with my restrictions but that I can start doing some light stuff. I go back in four weeks for the final follow up and then I should be good to go. I sure am glad that I had this hysterectomy done as I am feeling so much better.

New ram for the next two years

This is our new ram who arrived early afternoon on Saturday. We had used our previous ram for two years and he needed to move on as we couldn't breed him to his daughters. He moved to northern Minnesota in late spring in exchange for a ram lamb. We had also made arrangements to exchange one of our ram lambs for this guy. So we are set for rams for the next four years.

It will be interesting to see what colors he will produce. We'll see if he can produce tri-colors with our ewes.

He does think that he is a handsome dude. Corbie was the one who got to bring him down to the ram field and she thought that he was one big sheep.

One week post-op

It has been one week since my hysterectomy. I still can't believe how easy this surgery has been. I couldn't drive for a week, so pretty much stayed home. I did take walks each day down to the barn and/or mailbox. I did one Invisible Fence lesson yesterday and still felt fine. I got home in the afternoon and just took it easy, took another nap. That is the one thing that I have been doing almost every day, taking a nap. I figure that with healing process I am just getting tired mid-day and need a nap. I am still amazed with how good I feel. I would certainly tell any other woman not to hesitate to have a vaginal hysterectomy. I can't wait to be past the 6 weeks of healing and not lifting over 10lbs to see how great I'll be feeling.

Thank you to such great friends

Above is a watercolor that was given to me by some good friends. It is of Jag and me before a trial. I was not aware that they were going to do this for me. But they found this watercolor at a trial over the past two weekends and decided that they needed to get it for me. This means so much to me for so many reasons. I cannot express my thanks to these three friends. I will treasure and cherish this forever.

Thanks to my three wonderful, sheepdog friends.

I am home from the hospital

For those of you who follow my blog I just wanted to let you know that I am home from the hospital. Surgery went very well. I recovered well enough to come home tonight. Now on to the process of healing.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts and prayers.

It's tough being a puppy

I was down putting up rabbit fence on our gates this afternoon. Then I went on the outside of one of our fields to trim branches away so that I wouldn't hit my head on them while I working dogs. It is awful hard to see those things with a baseball cap on. Sting had to stay up in the main yard by the house with the adult dogs and obviously felt that he couldn't relax and sleep without me up at the house. I was barely back and in the house maybe 5 minutes and I looked out our patio door and there he was, all stretched out sleeping. Poor thing, all tired out. I think that he has reached another growing spurt and that is making him tire out too.

Sting at four months

Sting says, "Aren't I handsome?!"

Sting thinks that he could go out and show whomever how to work sheep.

Yes, I could really help them with the sheep.

Look Ma, legs!!

Just love this series of photos

It all starts out with a dog lying down and then it starts.

Stryker working on 8/31/09

Steve worked Stryker after he got home today. He worked mostly on driving and the turn at the post. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Phire "acting" her age

This is a mature, almost 10 year old Phire.
It started raining, pouring, this afternoon and I called the dogs into the house. Well, all of them but Phire. I called and called for her and she didn't come. I was just getting ready to put on my rain gear and go find her. Then she came marching across the front yard all wet and covered in mud.

I brought her into the garage and all I could do is just look at all soaking wet and muddy. I sure wish I knew where she was as it seemed to take her awhile to come to the house.

Innocent puppy..........

Here is Sting sleeping out on our front porch. Doesn't he look so innocent?? But we all know better when it comes to puppies.

As we look at this picture and see that he is watching the sheep very intently and trying to figure out if he can get to the sheep. So, he's not so innocent, eh.

One week ago

One week ago this morning we lost Jag. It has been a difficult week dealing with his loss. I have been learning to do chores without my Jaggie. That is a difficult thing for me. I can't take things for granted any more. I have to be on my toes at all times now as my younger dogs aren't trained as far as Jag was and I can't take it for granted that when I ask for a flank it is going to be nice and wide and I can't take it for granted that I can give a flank command and turn my back and continue doing what I need to do. I need to watch and use every time on the sheep as training. I know that they will get better, the more that I use them and work with them. But, I still miss my Jag. He was my boy, my conversationalist. Oh, the conversations that we had together. We used to poke fun at Steve and talk about other things.

We miss you, Jag. Thanks for the Monarch butterflies.

Last picture of Jag

I took this picture on Friday, July 24, 2009. I had the dogs in the yard as I was walking out to take some pictures of a hawk. This is the last picture of Jag that I have before we lost him. He was giving me these sad eyes hoping to work sheep. This was in the morning so it wasn't time to bring the sheep in yet. We are still having a hard time believing that he isn't here any more.

Rough week

I have some very sad news to report. Kathy Heilenman of Iowa City who has been a leader in our organization and a part of so many of our events, has passed away. I just found out that she died last night after a valiant struggle with cancer. She was very aware that her condition was tenuous but she kept going, doing what she loved and was so good at with very very few complaints...She is an inspiration to us all...I will never forget her.


Boy, has this been one helluva a week. First Jag yesterday and now my friend, Kathy H. from Iowa. I hope that Jag was there waiting to greet Kathy until one of her own dogs can join her. We will all miss Kathy dearly.

Thank you Kathy for my Corbie. If it hadn't been for you, I would have never met Jenn and then Jeep. Thank you for you friendship and the wonderful conversations.

On July 30th, 2009, we lost our Jag, Our hearts hurt today

Although I sit here with a broken heart and tears in my eyes I need to express what Jag meant to us through my eyes.


We will never forget you,
We will always love you,

Our hearts hurt today

You were a herding champion, both sheep & ducks,
You were the CHORE DOG!!

Our hearts hurt today

You were always dependable and faithful,
You were the proud father of Styrker,

Our hearts hurt today

Sheep held the up-most respect for you,
The squirrels in our bird-feeders had the up-most fear for you,

Our hearts hurt today

The rest of the dogs will miss you, Jag

Our hearts hurt today

You ran your last trial just last week, had some trouble on the big field, but never gave up,
We now know why

Our hearts hurt today

Sogn Valley Farms will never be the same, Jag
Our hearts hurt today

But as we all know, that with time, the memories and thoughts of you that today fill our eyes with tears, will someday fill our hearts with laughter and joy, Jag.

But for now, our hearts hurt today.

by: Steve Beatt
A loving tribute to a fine and one of a kind, working, caring, loving friend, Jag.

That'll Do, Jag

We lost our dear Jag this morning. Words cannot express my sorrow and feeling of loss right now. I already miss him so much. We both started as green, newbies and made our way all the way to the big fields. We started out in novice and went all the way thru to open. We made our attempts at the 725 yd field and ran on plenty of 400 - 600 yd fields and had a fun time doing it. Jag was my right hand dog, my go to dog around the farm and I will miss that terribly. I know that there is going to be a difficult task and I'll call for Jag and then realize that he is not here to help me any more. I learned so much about sheep and this whole thing called herding with Jag. I couldn't have asked for a better teacher. We both love you Jag and we miss you terribly.

I wanted to share a few pictures of Jag working our sheep. This was his working some of our sheep this past winter, March 2009.

Jag loved to work his sheep and would do it all day long if I asked it of him.

Jag also enjoyed working ducks. We did a few duck trials earlier in his career and he loved it. But he didn't want to have anything to do with chickens tho.

I wanted to share a few shots of him at some of the trials that we ran at.

Here we are shedding some sheep at a trial here in Minnesota a couple of years ago.