A couple more from today

Snow Day

Its a beautiful sunny day.....still cool, but not too bad, so the puppies got to go outside for a run this morning! They had a ball chasing their Mom around, but pretty soon their little feet were getting cold so we came in, but they sure enjoyed their time in the snow, even if it was just for a little while!

They are left to right:

Elli beside her mom

Then Hickman, Diamond, Shay, with Redi and Shine trying to figure out how the gate opens!

Shay

Shay, is staying here with me. What can I say....I've waited a long long time for a red merle :) You should never ever pick a puppy on color, but thats probably what I did:o) Along with the fact that I love her mom so much, and know that I found a pretty darn good puppy dad too :o)

Elli

Elli......chatty Elli :o) Elli is becoming a "talker"....especially at dinner time :) Elli is going to join Janna Heuer in Urbana Illinois, where she's going to get to work stock, and learn to track and do just about anything else that Janna thinks they should try!

Hickman

This puppy is waiting for the Hickman family to come and get her. She'll be joining Darrell and Leila and their family, and probably getting to hang out at the Lakeland College stockdog club. What a great facility, and a lucky pup!

Sprite

Sprite is waiting patiently for her new mom Lisa, who's due home shortly from Iraq! Then Sprite will be living in Missoula Montana with Lisa and Dan, where she'll get to do some stock work with Lisa.

Diamond

Did you wonder where this pup came from? :o) Diamond used to be Wtchy :) She is an incredibly athletic, and active pup! Diamond will be joining Laura & Kevin Radford in Alva, Oklahoma working for a living on their 2000 head LK Cattle Co. operation.

Shine

"Shine", the shinest little black tri female you ever saw :o) Shine's bite appears that it will be undershot like her mothers. Shine is available to an active home on a spay contract. She loves to heel and very much reminds me of her mother, so I expect she'll be a heck of a working dog. Please contact me for pricing on Shine.

Danny

This is "Danny". Danny is a very handsome blue merle male. He has a wonderful disposition, he loves to cuddle.....he also loves to heel :o) Danny would make a great addition to any farm or ranch, or any home who will love him and give him the active life he needs. Danny is available to the right working home.

Redi

This is "Redi" our special needs girl. You see Redi's right hind femur is broken....

When?........ we don't know!

How??..........we have no idea!

And to watch her you'd never know it is broken. She uses her leg just fine, and she can run and chase her sisters and brother (and catch them!) with no problem. You see, it just doesn't seem to bother her! The surgeons at the Vet College in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan have looked at her xrays and have determined that nothing should be done to her leg, at least not now, and maybe never. Redi, is available free of charge to the *right* home, that will love her and give her that special life she SO deserves. Until then, she'll remain here with me.

Snow Fun!

Today we got to go outside with Mom to investigate the yard and find out what snow is all about! And we can tell you ITS COLD! But we kinda liked it, and did you know you can eat that stuff??? Mom got the zoomies.....she's kinda goofy :) and we ran around a bit with her, but it was still kinda cold for us so we couldn't stay out long. Here's a picture each of us on our first snow day!

http://picasaweb.google.com/LBarJcowdogs/SnowDay?authkey=Gv1sRgCP_04dKqtPXV8AE#

We beep when we pass scanners :)

Our big adventure was a trip into town this morning to visit our vet :o) We HOWLED all the way into town just so mom knew we were in the van ! We all got our first vaccinations and we got our micro chips implanted, and we were all *very* brave, well except for WTCHy she cried a little.....she likes to think she's 10 feet tall and bullet proof, but she's not :) Mom says maybe we can go out and play in the snow tomorrow as long as it doesn't get too cold, and then Mom's going to work our big sister Chili on the calves........boy, WE can't wait until we're big enough to do that too! :)

7 Weeks

Hard to believe the little angels (and I use that term loosely!) are 7 weeks old! Life has gotten quite routine for them now. Up early, let them have a good run and play, then feed them breakfast and put them in their room for the day. Larry feeds them their lunch and then when I get home from work they have dinner and they are let out into the rec room to play until their last feeding of the day and then its off to beddy-bye for them. I had to laugh tonight when I gave them dinner......when Cathy brought me my new puppy feeding pan I thought it was so HUGE....its not so big now, and they are eating everything I give them.

here's a few pics from tonights round of carnage :o) I have to go clean the "wreck" room now!

as before, if this link doesn't work, copy and paste it into your browser....it should work then. I think I fixed this again, so this link *should* work now! :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/LBarJcowdogs/KyaXTrayPuppiesAt7Weeks?authkey=Gv1sRgCKrsjIiardHm4gE#

Dance little puppy Dance!

You know its TOO cold out when.........dancing to a CD on the computer with 8 puppies and their mom is what you decide to do to keep everyone occupied! With a George Strait CD on the 'puter, the puppies all crowded around me, thinking I had clearly lost my mind.....but then one by one they they went "cool......that looks like fun!" and joined in :o) Then their mom came to join us, which just made everything that much more fun and it became quite a good game :) The dogs are all feeling very cooped up these days as with temps in the mid minus 30's, it doesn't take long for paws to freeze up. The weatherman is promising better days ahead, maybe even ABOVE freezing by week's end. I sure hope he keeps his promise!!

new puppy pics soon!

5 Week Old Puppies!

A few quick candid shots of the pups tonight when I was supposed to be cleaning their room :o) Please ignore the few "pee patches" I was having too much fun laughing at their antics and trying to get a picture or two to get the pee wiped up before the pictures. I let them have the run of our rec room downstairs every night when I get home from work. It really is a "wreck room", but a great place for puppies to run and play when it is too cold outside.

Larry took these pictures this morning when the sun came out. I love the hoar frost....I think its beautiful!

Enjoy the pups! I've fixed (I think) the link to the pups pictures......hope this works better for everyone!

http://picasaweb.google.com/LBarJcowdogs/KyaXTrayPuppiesDec3?authkey=Gv1sRgCIDfnrL1z6zvGA#

Joan

http://picasaweb.google.com/LBarJcowdogs/KyaXTrayPuppiesDec3?authkey=Gv1sRgCIDfnrL1z6zvGA&feat=directlink

Little Monsters...

Wow.....I can't believe it.....the kids are 5 weeks old today! Yesterday I let them out of their puppy room for the first time, and they ventured tentatively into the rec room for a look around. Then retreated back to their room.......then came out again. That cycle repeated a few times, each time they got a little braver. Tonight when I let them out.....they TUMBLED out the door and took off like billard balls all around the room! I thought I'd take this opportunity to clean their room, but it probably wasn't one of my better ideas :o) Have you ever seen a garbage bag fly across a room being towed by a very determined pup?? I tried for some pictures but my camera just can't focus fast enough so I will try for some stills.......hopefully tomorrow night. Maybe I should take them now......they're sleeping like little angels at the moment :o))

Sunny days and working dogs

I'm pretty sure I've been transported to another galaxy, because this surely can't be Alberta at the end of November!! Today was such an awesome day......beautiful blue sunny skies, no wind and WARM (relative term, since this really is Alberta in November) temperatures! So after that pesky housework was done, out I went to start dog breaking calves. Chili still needs lots of cattle work, and so we brought about 10 head up into my round pen and started moving them, first one way, then the other. With Betty's lessons at her clinic last June ringing in my ears, it was pretty cool to see Chili respond so well. She really likes to heel but I found her equally good at holding her position on their heads when they tried to turn and challenge her. Chili did really well, she was able to control and move the calves, turn them back when they challenged her, and would easily release pressure on them when they turned and moved off her.

After we worked that group of calves, we put them back with the rest and then brought the sheep in and sorted off 5 head. We took the sheep into my arena and after a few fetching drills started some driving work. Unlike her mother, Chili has been a hard dog to start driving as her intense desire to group her stock and fetch them to me over-rides everything :) Parallel drives are very rounded as she leans so hard to the outside to flip around to head, but *FINALLY* today we managed to get some nice drives going!! Maybe the secret is to work her on cattle first as she seems to be able to easily hold her position driving them.

We'll try again tomorrow and work a different group of calves, and then another group of sheep.....hopefully this is the breakthrough I've been waiting for! ;o)

For those of you interested in the puppies, they are eating me out of house and home and growing like crazy! The whelping box has been put up, and they have the run of their puppy room now. I cover the floor with paper that I get by the roll at the newspaper office. It is roll-end newsprint and works great for covering the floor. Larry made me an over-grown paper towel holder that is attached to the wall. This makes it really easy to pull off 8 feet and with a flip of the wrist I can rip if off. The puppies are certainly getting an education, they are pretty used to that thing bumping and banging when the roll turns on it, and the paper goes sailing over their head :o) Then I get 8 little bodies trying to "help" me........I think we'll have to come up with a different plan at room cleaning time!

Will try for more photo updates tomorrow!

Puppy Photo shoot

Well, its been a busy week! Last weekend some good friends came for the day to work dogs, and play with the pups. We had a great time working our dogs, my sheep got a good workout, and we figured out some portions of the Farm Trial we hope to have here next summer. Then we went inside and had lunch and the puppies got to come upstairs and have their pictures taken. Thanks to Cathy Bishop for the great photos!! I had fully intended to have the pictures all upload Sunday night, but its hard to upload pics behind closed eyelids...somehow a full day out in the fresh air took a toll on me :) Then on Monday, Larry and I went to the Flu Clinic in town and got H1N1 flu shots.......monday night seemed to bring more of those closed eyelids :( So finally here we are!

http://picasaweb.google.com/LBarJcowdogs/DropBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCKmfgufG8a-oFQ#

The pups are growing leaps and bounds ( there was some mention of little tanks ) they have a new puppy feeding pan, and they're making good use of it! The whelping box has been put up......the little mountain climbers could scale the sides with ease, so they are now sleeping in a big crate with a nice thick comforter in it. They probably won't think its too cool the day I put the door on the crate, but that lesson is a ways down the road yet :)

Enjoy Cathy's photography!

Joan

Looking At The World

Here is a few pictures of the pups, and a couple of short videos, and a few pictures of some of the newly weaned calves. Since I've never used the video portion of my camera before, I wasn't even sure if it was on! It did seem to work tho, so I will have to investigate this part of my camera and see if I can't get something better taken. For now, this will have to do :o) This weekend some friends are coming to work dogs and both Cathy and Lyn have much better cameras than me (and they know what they're doing with them too!) So we should have much better pictures of them soon! The kids had their nails clipped for the first time, and tonight they also got their first taste of puppy mush.........mmmmmm, Kya thought they tasted pretty good when she was cleaning them up! Cheers until the weekend!

Joan

http://picasaweb.google.com/LBarJcowdogs/20091116?authkey=Gv1sRgCJe9_d_VsM7AhwE&feat=directlink#

2 Weeks old

The puppies are getting quite mobile....they are learning to get up on their feet, and their eyes are just on the verge of starting to crack open. Thankfully Kya has decided to become a good mom again! :o) I didn't have to come home from work yesterday, and last night I got to sleep in my bed again :o)) The pictures were taken today at two different times. The ones taken on the green plaid were taken earlier, I didn't have such great success with them, so I deleted all the 'really' bad ones, :o) Then I decided to try again this afternoon right after they had eaten so they were a little more sleepy and slightly more cooperative!



Enjoy!
http://picasaweb.google.com/LBarJcowdogs/PuppiesNov11

Repairs and Curious Cows

Today was a beautiful day, so after some morning household chores it was time for some outside fix-ups. The pad around the south waterer has been deteriorating for a while now, and we thought we'd better get it fixed up before winter really hits. It is made of railroad ties laid side by side and joined together, and the outside ones were in bad shape. So we hauled all the stuff out there to pry out the old ones and put in new ones, and of course the cows all decided that would be the best time to come for a drink and some mineral. And then of course they thought they'd all better stick around to see what we were up to. It didn't seem to matter to them that they were really in the way of the tractor either, so after a few feeble attempts to move them the heck out of the way, I went up to the house to get Chili :o)

In short order Chili had gathered them all and had them heading out to pasture! She did a beautiful job of keeping them altogether until they got the gate into the 60 acre pasture. Right there are few turned right and headed up the fenceline instead of going thru the gate. Chili went thru the gateway, then headed up the fence on the opposite side from the renegades, got in front of them, turned them and headed them back down the fence and thru the gate. All without any direction from me what so ever! She took them part way out into the field and by this time I had made my way out to the field gate and called her back. We went back and helped Larry finish placing new ties around the water bowl, and just as he was nearly done, back the cows and calves came for round two! Once again Chili gathered them all and pushed them back out to pasture :) We finished up the pad and it is now ready for the gravel truck to bring a load of gravel in.......I think we'll close the gate when the truck comes so the cows don't come and supervise THAT job :)

WE're a WEEK old!!

Time flies! All was well in puppy land until Day 3 when Kya decided maaaaybe she didn't love her puppies quite that much :( She started to growl a bit at them, prompting me to panic and take her into the Vets on Sunday night.....haven't got THAT bill yet. Anyway, all is normal and well with her, I just can't figure out what is prompting the growl, so until this little chapter clears up, she is only allowed feeding/cleaning visits during the day, which she desperately wants to do, and I am sleeping by the whelping box at night, to monitor what goes on. hormones....aren't they a mystery! So here is the latest round of pictures. They are SO active, its very hard to catch them still enough to snap a decent picture!

http://picasaweb.google.com/LBarJcowdogs/KyaXTrayPuppiesNov409?authkey=Gv1sRgCOL-3ZOS5KyR1QE#

Enjoy :)

After messing with pictures for the last couple of hours, and thinking this just "might" take over my life, I"m going to try something different. Below is a link to a web album which has puppy pictures in it. I just put them into an album for now of some pictures of moving cows and working dogs etc. If this works and everyone can access it ok, then I"ll create separate albums for the pups. I hope this works! If you can't access the pup pictures and would prefer them individually on my blog, just let me know :)

Just so you all know, the last 2 pictures are of the male. Everyone else has either 2 or 3 pictures each.

http://picasaweb.google.com/LBarJcowdogs/LBarJAussies?authkey=Gv1sRgCLmk-qfN8JauXw#

Blue Female #2

Blue Female #1

All of these pictures will be just "bad" until they stop rolling and tumbling a bit....wow, these are active pups!

One More Group Pic

Here's one more group picture. The male is the darker smokey blue, and the rest are girls. There is altogether:

1 Blue Merle Male

2 Red Tri Females

1 Red Merle Female

1 Black Tri Female

3 Blue Merle Females

The Puppies Have Arrived!!

After a busy night, Kya has a beautiful litter of 8 pups! 7 girls and 1 boy! I'll post individual pictures in a day or so, but for right now here's a family shot or two.

Weaning Day at the neighbors ranch

I am waiting (impatiently I might add) for Kya to whelp......not long now tho, and she is becoming a bit restless making trips into the puppy room to check out the whelping box. She seems to remember exactly what that room and box are for :o)

Life goes on tho, and yesterday and today was weaning time at our neighbor's the Boulding's Lazy B Bar Ranch. I love it any time I can ride and work cattle so it was a great day for me today! It should have been only about 1/2 a day to finish up, however the calves that were weaned yesterday were an industrious lot and they managed to create a new gate in their corral, making their way back to their mom's in record time :( So, they had to be gathered and sorted all over again. I've included some pictures from today, and hopefully next week I'll be posting pictures of puppies!! :o))

Here are the cows heading home for the winter......down the road past our place.

Vaccination day at Holmestead Ranch

Last Monday was vaccination day at home. Our neighbors Doug and Rita (best neighbors in the world!) brought their horses over after dinner and the three of us rode down to our south quarter to bring in the cows and calves. Our cows are getting pretty used to being gathered by horse and dog so they gathered easy and off we went to the corrals. Once we had them all pushed up into the small corral we started sorting cows to Doug who was "gate man" on his horse Beamer. Rita and I would cut and push cows to Doug who would let the cows out the gate and turn the calves back into the herd. The cows are getting better at being sorted while we're on horseback, and so with only a minor bobble or two we quickly had the cows sorted out, and the calves run down the alley to the crowding tub.

So....cows out - check.

Calves in the alley - check.

One quick ride through the cows to make sure we hadn't missed any calves and we could start running the calves through the alley and chute to vaccinate. Didn't I say "calves in the alley" ?? oh noooo.........the gate to the crowding tub didn't get closed and half the calves came up the alley and through the chute and were back out with their bawling mammas! :(

Oh well........whats a good cowhorse for but to cut and sort cows :o))

Round Two........gather the escapees and their mommas and head back into the sorting corral. Hey......they're starting to figure this out :o) The cows were eager to cooperate, and this time we had all the gates closed, and all the calves in the alley!

Many hands make light work and 1,2,3 shots per calf and they were soon all done and back out with their moms. A month from now we'll do it all over again, only then it will be time for weaning and a few sleepless nights until the calves quiet down.

After we were done we headed into the house for some hot coffee (the temps were hovering right around freezing with a couple of little snow squalls thrown in) and cake. Just as we were pulling off winter coveralls, we looked out the window to see another rancher in the area moving a herd home past our place. I've attached a picture of Matt and Shauna Elines cattle heading home in my next entry because I can't see to figure out how to get those particular pictures to upload into 'this' blog.............some days this learning curve is almost too steep for me :o)

A short note about Kya

Kya is really starting to show! She seems bigger to me this time and I can't imagine what she's going to look like by the time she whelps! She seems to feel really good, and is still quite active playing with Chili and Jaime and still looks forward to doing chores.

Last week I received her ASCA Award of Merit in the mail, Kya ended up at #2 Advanced Sheep for the 08/09 season!

Vaccination time

This morning about 8:30 I loaded Mouse into the trialer with 5 other horses for the short ride over to the lake pastures to help my neighbors gather their cow herd and sort off the calves for vaccinating. The herd of about 250 cow calf pairs gathered easily...they know this routine well.......and off we went to the corrals. There was a very cool wind blowing from the north, and they were a little difficult to get into the corrals (remember I said they know this routine?) but we did manage to move them all in. With all of them in the corral it was very full, and so while Doug sat on Putz in the middle of the gateway, Donna, Gail and I rode into the herd and started pushing cows to Doug. Doug and Putz would let the cows pass him and turned the calves back into the herd. It didn't take us too long before we had all the cows sorted out and a corral full of calves left behind. A really good test for a solid cowhorse! ;o) Soon we were moving small groups of calves into the holding pen for the boys to push them into the alley. They were vaccinated and turned out to go find their waiting mommas.

Once all the calves were done we rode out and gathered the herd again and pushed them back north (remember that cool...nope make that COLD wind??) to the pasture we brought them from, and headed back to the trailers for some hot coffee!! Loaded the horses and headed for home......I was back at my barn by 1:30, a good mornings work! I had fully intended on taking some pictures but it seems I need to buy some new rechargeable batteries for my camera :( So I've added a picture of the herd at the corrals at branding time.

Weekend Chores....again!

I'm really certain that weekends should be 5 days long, and weekdays 2 days......that way a person might stand half a chance at getting everything on the "to do" list done!

Yesterday afternoon we spent hauling bales from the field to the stack yard. I also wanted to redo some fencing around a small field behind the quonset to try and keep my sheep in, since the hot wires weren't working so well. So every time I parked the truck and trailer for Larry to off load the bales I would get out and pull staples and take off a couple of strands of barb wire and roll it up. This system worked pretty good....multi tasking at it finest :o)) I had bought 32" field fencing so I wanted to leave the top couple of strands of barb wire and put the field fencing on underneath, AND I left the 2 hot wires on the inside! By the time we were done hauling bales I had all the old barb wire that I wanted to take off.....and the fence ready for the new stuff. This afternoon right after lunch we went out and hung the fencing. Hey....it looks good and if those damn sheep get out of there.....they better keep on goin if they know whats good for them! I had Kya go gather the sheep from another field and bring them in for me. She can still get out and around her stock, I do see a little bit of a belly starting to develop, but its not slowing her down yet! :)

Back to work tomorrow.......its kinda looking like the mosquitos scourge has ended and there is still enough daylight hours when I get home from work, so with any luck I'll be able to work Kya and Chili for a while yet. I had fully intended to set up one of Sherry Bakers new proposed courses this weekend, but that didn't happen...guess that little chore gets moved to next weekend's "to do" list :)

Weekend Chores

Spent the weekend getting things ready for winter, which like it or not will probably arrive sooner than we'd like!

We started hauling our hay in the from the fields, what little of it we have this year :( The 2 fields that we normally hay which generally yield 150-175 bales gave us 34 bales :( We also hayed about half of our 40 acre slough field this year......a first for us as since we moved here as it has always been toooo wet to get on to. This field yielded 106 bales, so we have a start to our winter feed, but still need to buy more......if we can find it :( I also fixed part of my electric fence in hopes that my sheep will stay put! I let them out this morning only to look out my kitchen window a while later to see them galavanting thru one of the cattle fields, so I sent Kya to bring them in. She did a lovely outrun and gathered them all up while I stood at the gate.......buggers! She seems to be feeling pretty good thru this pregnancy and shows no signs of slowing down yet!

Mosquitos.. or how to go broke buying insecticides!

Kya bringing some sheep out of a pen.

Kya bringing sheep in to the round pen.

2 big bulls.

For 2 years we've been Mosquito free, then about 2+ weeks ago they arrived in droves and it seems they're trying to make up for lost time! They have been extremely viscious, so we haven't been doing much training, or much of anything at all if it involves going outside!

Last week Dorien Vogelaar from the Netherlands came to visit me for a couple of days. Dorien has been bit by the trialing bug, and entered her first trial with her Aussie this past August and they did very well! :) So, now she's thinking about what she would like from her next Aussie. Dorien is interested in a pup from Chili and so she came to meet and us! Dorien also takes terrific pictures, (check out some of them on Chili' and Kya's page) so we SPRAYED her down and went out and worked dogs each day! Poor Dorien, unfortunately they really liked her:( But she did get some great pictures!

Until the mosquitos die out my evenings are pretty much bringing the horses in and spraying them down, and then having Kya or Chili bring the sheep in.....feeding everyone and heading back inside.

I'll add some of Dorien's pictures over the next few days....oh and a couple of her Bison pictures....they were at the top of her list of things she had to see while visiting Alberta!

Getting Started

This is a new venture for me, so bare with me while I figure blogging out! I've had a fun summer with lots of visitors, many of them dog friends with canine partners in tow :)..... so over the next few days I'll get some summer pictures up, and keep everyone up to speed on Kya's pregnancy! :o)