July 8, 2009: Who would have thunk it?
Little Tina, the cattle dog. From 'naughty' Tina last week to full on cattle dog this week. Who could have guessed? Yesterday we had the vet in for TB testing on the 10 cows that graze our property. After testing, they were put out to pasture to graze for a couple of days. They were supposed to graze only the lower part of the hill but because we have been training up on the top part of the hill, all the gates were open and of course the cows headed to exactly where they should not have been. Kelvin decided to go up and bring them down, Tina and Blade afoot. As Kelvin was moving the cows, one of the cows decided she would test Tina. She was probably wondering what the heck this pint-sized little squirt was. Well, that pint-sized squirt gave that cow a darned good bite to the nose, turning the cow in her tracks and sending her on her merry way. Job done in no time. Gates closed! ...except this morning the cows broke through a gate and went walkabouts into the dog kennels. Much excitement there.
Cows are quite inquisitive. Last night I was out brush cutting some more gorse and thistles. I thought I'd start at the far end of the hill at the furthest point from the cows. Within minutes I was surrounded, and for the next two hours I was followed every which way by 10 curious onlookers. They kept a respectful distance but it was company for an otherwise lonely and mindless type of job.
When you are out brush cutting gorse and thistles one has plenty of time to think! No, not intellectual type thoughts but silly things. Like how all brush cutters are not created equal. We have two brush cutters at the moment (we blew up two in Canada on our farm there, but that's another story). One is a real 'girly,' (city) garden variety grass and edge cutter. It is good for smaller garden work but farm stuff, forget it. Not enough power. The other is a heavier duty cutter with a bit more guts to it and a super sharp gorse cutting blade. This is the one I like to use - one that can do a day's work and won't quit on you, and really cuts things (and fast). Occassionally I hear myself saying 'off with your head' to a thistle. The only downside of this bigger, stronger brush cutter is the petrol tank takes enough petrol to last a full 2 hours. Anyone who has brush cut anything knows that 2 hours solid is a LONG time. By the time 2 hours is up, your arms ache, your shoulders hurt and your legs are tired from walking around the hills on roughish ground. Last night I was almost at the end of my two hour stint and I looked up to see Kelvin and Bailey joining me. Kelvin had come up to carry the brushcutter down for me. BLESS HIS HEART! That is the part of the job I hate the most.
Another thing I was thinking about last night was how much life is about dealing with crap. ... I mean cow dung, sheep manure, dog poop. When you have animals, you spend a lot of time managing sh*t. Getting back to cows, I like cows. I'd quite like to have my own cows but dealing with cow dung just doesn't enthuse me. Dogs and sheep, OK, that comes up in smaller, usually more solid lumps. Cows, well, they just SPLAT, and everywhere. They call it slurry - which is defined as "a thick suspension of solids in a liquid." From what I've seen, there's much more liquid than solid...and dogs love it - eating it, rolling in it, smelling like it. No, I'll stick to my sheep and dogs, and somehow dealing with this kind of muck is far easier than cow dung and some of the sh*t that goes on in the corporate world. Perhaps I should take up something else other than brushcutting gorse.
Ok, this week we did not go trialling. Meg is still injured and will be out for a while yet. Darn! We'll be off trialling this week no doubt. This week we've had the other dogs out training on the hill, which is fast becoming our favourite training place. The views from up there are super. I gave Kelvin as wee demo with Jamie, Bee and Sioux working together to bring the sheep down from the hill and into their night grazing field. Bee was a wee star at this task. She likes working with Jamie. Perhaps they will be a brace team for me? One day I worked Jamie about 800 yards away from me. He was on top of the hill and I was at the far end of our hayfield. Surprisingly he worked well....after we sorted out that when I blew my lie down whistle, it did mean STOP. It takes a bit to get used to a dog working that far away, mainly getting used to the time delay for the whistle to hit the dogs ears. Of course, it seems to take a bit for the noise to go from the dog's ears to its brain and for action to occur! We're working on that but I am finding that I have to practice handling at this distance to get used to it.
Kelvin finally snapped a pic of the heron...actually, we have two herons now who take turns at hiding from the camera. They frequently sit on the fields just out of camera lens reach. But here is one photo of our camera-shy heron tucking into a slug.
Last week we had a heat wave here in Wales and this week it has been torrential rain. I headed out for a morning run with Jamie one day and we got caught in a deluge. The road we ran along quickly flooded and we were in water up to our knees in places. Kelvin snapped this pic as we finished the run. You can see the river of water going down our driveway. We were soaked through, although Jamie was completely unperturbed.
That's it. Another fairly routine, and not-so-extraordinary week for us. |
