Finally finished

" Workin' all day and the sun don't shine
Tryin' to get by and I'm just killin' time
I feel the rain fall the whole night through
Far away from you, California Blue "


Well , not really California Blue. More like Sydell Blue.
The past week or so I have gotten busy resurrecting my used sheep handling equipment. If you remember I bought it over the summer and had a difficult ride down and back to pick it up. Managing to loose at least half of the support rods out the back of the horse trailer on the trip back.
When I picked it up it was loaded on a pallet and never really had a chance to inspect it. One of the items was a swing/slide gate that when unloading I came to discover was broken at a weld. I was just so disgusted that I put it off to the side for several months.
As the weather changed, I knew I had better address this stuff before it was too cold to give it a proper face lift. So I got to it.
My neighbor Randy was able to weld the swing/slide gate for me and so that was fixed. He also let me borrow his drill with wire brush and so I got busy removing the rust and chipped paint off of the MANY pieces of equipment. I spent several days from morning till dusk grinding down this stuff . I then got to painting all equipment with a good coat of Rust-Olem paint. As close to the Sydell Blue as I could match. This also took me several days to complete and at the end ( yesterday ) I was really disliking the color blue . My back was screaming at me each night from many hours bent over this stuff and picking it up each morning and moving back under cover each night. 
Yet in the end I am really pleased with how it turned out. It looks as good as new and was worth the effort as it saved me quite a bit of money to buy it used. It would have cost me twice as much brand new.

Though I will confess I just got my Premiere Sheep catalog and hot dipped galvanized is looking really good to me about now .


I did manage to get the dogs lightly worked.
Focus on the two young dogs, but managed one of the adults here or there as well.
I have started putting some whistles on the two young ones. Amazing how fast dogs pick up on the stop whistle.
Right now Flint is looking really good.  I am getting him driving and cross driving at good distance from me, he is holding his lines really well and getting better about his flanks.
It changes as time goes between the two dogs .
Rush at times seems to excel where Flint struggles or the other way 'round.
Rush is more solid on her flanks but her pace is a bit too hurried at the moment and she wants to be too close to the stock and boring into them.
She has not learned to rate herself on her own and stay back a bit . I am needing to keep reminding her of that "bubble"
She is very responsive and whippet fast in her work.
Rush seems to learn things faster, but Flint seems once he learns things he is good to go and needs less handling to keep him right.

Both work differently but I am enjoying them for what they are teaching me about training as well as how they are learning from the training I am giving them !

a year gone by

Last year on this day we had an early snow fall. Even for this area.

This year , while we were lucky to not have snow flying about we had a very windy, wet , chilly day . It was quite raw out , almost needing gloves.

I look at these two pictures and see that old apple tree still hanging tough to life. Half dead on one side, almost hollowed out at the bottom. Yet out of all our trees this was the one that had fruit this year. We had a really strong wind storm just as the blossoms were at their peek for becoming fruit and all were pretty much blown off the trees. This old tree still somehow managed to bear several apples this year.

I always seem to take account of the year gone by just about now. Not sure if it has to do with my Birthday around the corner but I'll bet it does. My Birthday holds more significance to me that the traditional New Years. My Birthday is my personal New Years day. I think of what I have done, what I had wanted to do as well as what I did not get done. I look back on the year.

 I said good bye to my long time equine companion Badger last New Years Eve . He made a bad turn on some ice , fell and never made it back to his feet. I had him in my life for over 30 years. Through good times and bad. He was a great horse and it was so sudden and horrible but thinking back it was in many ways a blessing. He was in great health right to the end , had a wonderful life . I am glad in many ways he did not linger with a long standing illness or had been in horrible pain with colic.  

This day last year I was also cloaked in ignorant bliss. Unaware that My Deigh was silently being attacked by Cancer and that we would have just a short time left to enjoy her. I took this picture of her last year on this day. It's still hard for me to believe she is not here by my side .

We miss her very much .

We also had to say good bye to our cat Splotchity over the summer. She too, had Cancer.

Though these are the sad things to reflect on there was also good to the year.

On this day last year my then just coming five month old pups got to see snow for the first time.

They were not too sure of it at first and huddled close to each other. They blinked when the snow flakes hit their eyes and it was so cold to their feet. But it did not take long for them to find the fun in it.

I think I like it....weeeeeeee

Me too !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today at a year and almost five months they have matured into useful, talented young dogs. I am thrilled with what I am seeing in them . I am looking forward to next season and getting them out running in sheepdog trials.

We are blessed to live in a beautiful location and are making great progress at reclaiming the pastures that have layed fallow for so many years before we breathed life back into this old dairy farm.

The sunsets at night rival any western sky and living up on this hill gives us spectacular long views .

And each morning we are the first to be greeted by the Mother Star and the promise of another day.



who'll stop the rain...

" Long as I remember, the rain been coming down
Clouds of Myst'ry pouring confusion on the ground
Good men through the ages, try'in to find the sun
And I wonder, still I wonder, Who'll stop the rain....."

That old favorite from CCR has been running a loop in my head the past few days.
Yeah , yeah I know just a few days ago I was singing praise to the rain.
Today, well...not so much.
I'm done, sick of it already.
Flooded basement, flooded barn . Slick mud.
We had some record rain fall around here last week and then this week going on the third day of steady spritz with a down pour thrown in here and there.

our little stream that usually is a gentle flowing, bubbling, peaceful place to go

was now turned into a  churning , fast moving , swirling body of angry water.

Many of the local roads were impassable due to streams overflowing onto the roads
Poor Paul found this out the hard way as he was trying to get home and was getting turned back on each road he traveled .

Around the corner from us, an area the locals call the "flats" was now a huge lake. There is a road that runs through it with a small bridge that goes over what is usually a small stream. You could see no evidence of either the road or the bridge during the rains last week. The road just dropped off into the water.

on the bright side, this past Saturday we went to our neighbors Al and Ruth Johnson's "End of the Summer" party.
We had a great time. Good food, people. LOTS of laughs! The weather was just perfect that day/ night. Warm sunny day. Crisp clear night with little wind. They had a huge Bonn fire going all night and it was nice to step over to it and get the chill off when you needed to.

The young dogs seem to be finally getting it! I tested them the past few days and was able to get both flanking where I wanted (for the most part) on a drive out of about 100 yards. It is thrilling to climb to the next step and always makes the struggle of getting to it seem worth it. I am excited about these two dogs.
We have a long way to go , but overall I am happy where they are at for under a year and a half of age.

well I ain't "raining men" but...HALLELUJAH none the less

Okay so my reference to this song dates me as well as admitting grooving to the tune during the "bar" days of my youth. 
Yeah I've always been kind of a rock and roll girl but will admit to liking many of the dance disco tunes of my time.
Okay there , I've said it!

Anyway it was been raining at a steady pace since this morning , already two inches of rain in the rain gage. It has been MANY weeks since I have seen this in the main sheep field...torrents of water running down the hill.

The sheep don't seem to care and to be honest I did not let them out to graze today. That hill is steep and I was wet from the morning chores. The lure of my morning coffee was just too strong for me to override and slog down and back up that hill.

So not much going on today . Dogs are bored  with housebound activity.

At some point if the rain gets a bit less torrential I'll get them out on a good walk and then to the kennels in the garage.I really need to run a vacuum through the house and it's just easier without the Borders inside while trying to negotiate the machine around them.

I got all five worked yesterday and did some flank training on the youngsters. Dream and Spirit I worked on shedding. Bracken I used to gather sheep that were set in different locations on the property when done with the other dogs works. She had to gather  the training sheep in the hay field, bring them into a smaller field, turn back and gather the sheep I did not use that were out of sight in another field , join them all up.Them drive all of them to the electronet in the back pastures.
I used the far side hayfield yesterday  for the youngsters to lessen some of the pressures .

I feel they are still struggling with the flank command without a little help from me on drive out and across.

Even with saying this I was able to get some clean perfect flanks on a drive away as well as across .
Better, surely better.

I also wanted to test a bigger outrun on each and was happy to see them running out with good cast both ways. As I walked up to the sheep while they were running out I was thrilled to see them hit the sweet spot and thoughtfully engage the sheep to start them to me. 
Fetching sheep to me they are much more solid on flanks. I can stand still and am able to get them left or right  fairly easy. So I know they have a concept of what I am asking.

I like both young dogs. They are so similar yet so different in their work.
I want to push forward but there is a little voice that keeps tickling the back of my mind that says
 "steady girl. Take yer time. "
So far I have been good and listened, yet when you see and read about dogs the same age running at Nursery level it fools with your head some. I keep reminding myself the handlers that have dogs at that level with a 16 month pup,  have trained WAY more dogs than me.
I still am learning to train a dog correctly and in doing so I need to go slower and be more thoughtful in my training program since it is not second nature for me.
There has also been great lag time between young dogs and so this also impedes my progress a bit.
I have nothing fresh in my mind of the last ones I have trained.
Did they do this? Were they hard to teach that? 

I am the tortoise in envy of the hare...
I just hope my fairytale ends the same as the classic Aesop fable

" Rainy days and Mondays "....

Well you most likely know how that song goes. Can't say I'm sharing the rest of the sentence.
We REALLY need the rain here and am glad it is damp and misty today. We are expecting some good rain over night and am looking forward to be able to listen to it hitting the metal on the barn roof while the weather is still mild enough to have the windows open.


This past week was the USBCHA National Sheepdog Finals.  It was blistering hot down there  ( here too )and felt so sorry for all suffering in mid day draws. It was up in the mid and high 90'S for the preliminary and semi final running of Open as well as high 80's early in the week for the young Nursery dogs.
I got not much done as fellow sheepdogger Heather Nadelman was faithfully  "tweeting" the runs as they were unfolding.
For the Semi and Double Lift Finals we had a web pod running. What a treat, as this year due to some unforeseen financial setbacks I was unable to make it to the Finals.


Patrick Shannahan with Riggs is this years National Champion. Well deserved and beautiful run .
My hat goes off to Wendy Schmaltz and Gin for an edge of your seat finish, penning the sheep and completing their run with seconds to spare! Grabbing the fourth position in the final seventeen left in the double lift.
Gin was also crowned Overall Stock Dog for placing in both the Cattledog and Sheepdog Finals this year.
Tommy Wilson and Sly were as spectacular as ever. Gaining Res. Champion.
Lori Cunningham and her not yet three year old dog Matt finishing at a  respectable tenth place .

My friend and neighbor Nola Keill , meanwhile was down in Georgia at the National Paso Fino Finals  kicking serious butt. Her spectacular paint stallion "Calif " won "high point specialty horse" honors and  both will be turning and burning off to Kentucky to showcase the Paso Fino breed at the World Equestrian Games next week!

(Meanwhile back at the ranch...)
I have been working the two youngsters on taking sheep out and back to the far pastures for grazing. This is more just letting them work the flock than me asking for specifics. All that is asked is they gather the sheep calmly, take a stop correctly when asked and to stay behind the sheep to bring them to grazing.
It is not true driving as the sheep want to go where we are taking them and they really are just following rather than pushing them.
Still it is an easy stress free way for them to understand the POINT of taking  ( driving ) sheep away from me.

Flint  (just say the word)

Rush

Both are doing a fine job and are becoming useful partners in daily chores.
We are still working on becoming more reliable on correct flanks for off balance and inside but these little works that don't require much tweaking or exactness break up the lessons and give a break to all in some of the stresses that go along with learning, and teaching for that matter!

natures bounty

Summer is winding down quickly . The weather has a hint of what is to come but still all and all it has been lovely. After last summer I never ever thought I would look forward to some good rainy days. We are in draught conditions up here. Wayne county is not as severe as our surrounding neighbor counties but it has been really dry and lacking rain this summer.

Last week we had a weather system blow just North of us. It closely missed us.

It came so close, that I was able to get a few photographs as it roared by. We had just a sprinkle and a little breeze from it, but of the places it crossed over had 1 1/2 inch hail and 60 + mph winds.

It sure looked like a tornado brewing to me as it slipped North of our farm.

our garden is winding down but was a pretty good producer this year.

I planted all Heirloom varieties of Tomatoes this year and had a bumper crop of them.

There are still a quite a few left on the vines, though the plants are

looking tired and weary .

our corn is ready and ripe, though not as good as we hoped. I think it was too cool to start and then too hot.

the pumpkins are coming along and I have a few nice sized ones in the patch.

cucumbers are done but we had a bumper crop of them too.

The wild blackberries and raspberries were out of this world this summer. So good to eat off the brambles and the yield was incredible.

So what does one do with all of Natures Bounty before the snow starts flying?

What ever one (eh hem ) CAN .

We had a visit from Ron, the guy who taps our Maple trees for syrup.

 He dropped off several bottles of syrup, maple candy , teas and assorted other goodies as well as a check for the use of our trees.

Now how cool is that?

Got a barn full of hay , though less than last year. I'm sure this year is more the average take off the hayfield than last years glut.

Got the hair ram in with some girls and in a few weeks I'll expose some of the Wool sheep to the Rams. I think I'll use both this year. A little of this, a little of that.

I hope to have a trial here sometime next fall so need to build up the flock for it.

Been training the dogs and all are doing well.

My two young ones are coming along. I have been raising the bar a bit with them. Asking them to be more accountable to the correct flanks without my making it terrible easy or obvious what direction to go as well as off balance and inside flanks. Always a tough time for most young dogs as it takes quite a bit of mental stress for them to work it out. I can't say they are rocket scientist's but I like how they are handling the pressure and working through it. Each gets better and more reliable to take the correct flank each training session. I will rest the little brains with just plain chore type work or easy simple sessions every few works. I find for me it keeps them fresh and helps at keep building on  a good relationship.

It is hard on me and the dogs when working through the learning of new things and the ultimate confusion that comes with it.

Paul and I finally got a section of Electronet up in the back pastures. It kills me that the sheep would walk through knee deep lush pasture to escape through the failing fence line, sneaking into the hay field. So now they are unable to get out. Confined by four sections of fence to eat knee deep lush grass...awe the poor beasts.

This will be a great training tool for the two youngsters, though. Gathering the flock out of the home pasture and pushing them to the back section. Same to bring them in at night. May help them to relate the flanks I ask for with the work that will be needed.

I'll let you know how it works out....

In loving memory of Kilt

Today marks the Birthday of my first Border Collie "Kilt" .

He was born on 9/12/93 on a farm in PA. Well to be honest he was whelped in upstate NY and when the litter was old enough to go to their new homes they were brought to the PA farm.  I had always wanted a Border Collie. From when and what age , I can't remember exactly. I had lost my previous dog just a few months prior to Cancer. Ironically Kilts parents had bred the day my dog Raven had passed away. I always wonder about things falling together in such ways.

He was always busy and getting into things, always thinking.
I had a crate set up in our kitchen. He had a nice dog bed in it, but he had chewed away a corner and so I had taken it out and put it up on top of the crate until he was a little older and more trustworthy. Our Siamese cats enjoyed the dog bed where it had been located. Nice and comfy with a lovely view of the side yard. I happened into the kitchen and found the three cats in their usual spot, but to my surprise Kilt had climbed up on the chair and then joined them on the dog bed! I was so happy I had a camera on top of the refrigerator and quickly took the shot.

Kilt was I think the smartest dog I have ever known. Housebroken at about 10 or 12 weeks old. Learned his basic commands faster than I could give them.

He knew all of his toys by name and there were well over a dozen for him to pick.We used to hide them about the house and then ask for them by name. He always found them and brought the correct item we requested.

At the time I got him I was interested in competing in Obedience. I felt that living where I did at the time , herding sheep was not really an option.

Kilt did very well in Obedience but when he was a pup of about seven months old , I took him back up to PA and went to a clinic. Kilt was "keen" to say the least. I was hooked on the complicated dance of human, dog and sheep. I wanted the challenge . I started taking herding lessons when Kilt was a little over a year old. He had already had several Obedience Titles and to be honest we were both bored with it.

The next thing I knew I had sheep at home and started off on my journey into the sheepdog world.

I never looked back, nor have a regret to my choice. I have Kilt to thank for every thing that has changed due to that first sheepdog. Sheepdog trials, sheep, a move to a 54 acre farm in PA, each dog that has come after him is all BECAUSE of him. I can't ever thank that dog enough for the changes he has brought to our lives.

I was at one time very involved with horses, showing them. I still was riding and training when I first got Kilt but the shift was permanent. Where I once looked at and open pasture and would think "wow, would I love to open a horse up on that"...was now  "Oh man, What a huge outrun you could do out there, what a great place to work a dog".

While Kilt and I never amounted to much on the trial field , he was a good dog. Just not the stuff for sheepdog trials. As time went and I came to realise/accept this he still taught me so much about dogs, handling and training.
Never, ever to be coined and "easy" dog he was a dog that was ahead of my time.

Had he come to me now I know things would have been better for both of us.

As he aged and I had other dogs to work and train he became my husband Paul's farm dog. He helped Paul with the chores when I was off training or at a trial.

He was keen to work right to the end. I still remember several weeks before he left us , I was starting one of my young dogs out in a bigger area. Somehow, while we were out there I saw out of the corner of my eye a black and white blur squeeze through the gate and join the pup in the balance exercise. The two of them out there keeping sheep to me, the sheep not too thrilled about two dogs on them.

I yelled to my husband to call Kilt.

 He yelled back "Just tell him to lie down!"

I responded "That dog never took one stop his whole life, what makes you think he's gonna start now!"

Good old Kilt. We mourn your passing to this day but celebrate the life and love you gave us.

That'll do , That'll do