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??