What a Drag!

Meet Spur.

We went on our first drag today.

And we had an attitude about it.

But guess what we saw?

Yeah, dem sheeps. 

I can't decide if I liked this drag better ... or if I prefer the joyous harmonious sounds that emerge from the crate when Spur is in it.

But my favorite puppy part...

Jodi

Puppy Inquiries

I have had a slew of emails on the black and white pups, along with others.  If you're interested in one of the pups or one of the pups I am planning, you'll need to call me.  My telephone number is 208-412-6107.  Email inquiries will not receive a response. 

(T.R., the internet is about as far from anonymous as you can get.  Nice try, though.)

Jodi

 

Fun weekend!

I'm exhausted!

Friday night, I went and hung out at Whiskey River to watch Hung Jury play.  They are always good for a fun show. 

Saturday, went out to Couch's with Echo2 (the female I'm finding a home for) and put her on stock.  She wasn't too keen at first, but I'm sure it's probably due to being told NOT to chase anything all her life.  Once she figured out she was allowed to, it was on!  She did great!  She should make someone a very nice working dog.  If you're interested in her, give me a call at 208-412-6107.  (Not accepting emails on any of this.)  Here's a photo of her.

She is a doll, and would make a great pet if someone was interested in that also.  She's very calm ... and loves loves loves her ball ... or sticks ... or toys ... or anything you'll throw for her.  I've never seen such a toy-driven dog in all my life.

I met up with Colleen, Jaenne and Mary Saturday night for dinner at a killer Thai place in Meridian.  The sushi was to die for, and I'm sure has ruined me for sushi anywhere else.  Amazing.

Sunday morning, it was off to Couch's to go horseback riding.  This was the most fun I've had in a long time!  We hopped in the truck and brought the trailer over to Bud's house, loaded up Bud and his horses and off to Succor Creek we went.  Couch missed it.  I went to get on Doc (one of Bud's horses), and didn't quite make the last couple of inches, so Bud came in and gave me a shoulder up!  Haven't laughed that hard in a long time!  Rode in 2 or 3 inches of snow, drinking whiskey and bullshitting, and came upon the creek.  Bud's horse is a really nice ride, very trustworthy, sure-footed, and sane.  I loved him.  Stopped for lunch ... cooking brots over the fire on a stick, and drinking some more whiskey.  Time to get back on the horse.  I pulled him up to a small rock, and got on pretty effortlessly that way.  Rode all the way back to the truck, doing some more bullshitting and drinking and laughing.  What a good time!  Can't wait to do that again.

Sunday night, Colleen and I headed over to Jaenne's house.  She made a crockpot beef casserole thing that was YUMMY!!!  My drunken ass showed up there with yet more whiskey, as if I needed it.

Monday morning, I got up and made breakfast for Colleen and I.  Then we headed to Marsing, got our fishing licenses and some tackle, and took the dogs out to the Owyhees for a dog run.  Came back to Marsing and threw a line in at the Marsing pond.  I caught a small rainbow in the first five minutes, but unfortunately, that was all we ended up catching, so we let him go.  Went to the pizza place in Marsing for "dinner."  That was better than I thought it would be.   The salad bar was pretty fresh, and the pizza was pretty good.

Taking a break for a bit now, and then we'll figure out what to do tonight.  I'll need a vacation from my weekend.

J

 

Free Pups

I am looking for a home for two working bred pups ... and will place them in the best homes I can find, so if you're interested, tell me your story, and tell me what your plans would be for a pup.  They are purebred pups, and I can show you the pedigree on the sire and dam, but the pups themselves will come with no papers.  Sorry, no shipping.

These are lousy photos.  I will take some better ones when I have more time.  The pups are three months old.  Both male.  Here's the first one.

And here's the other one.

 

Once training starts, the price will go up.

Thanks, dogs.

I love being up in the middle of the night on a weekday.

You rock.

Spring is a comin' ...!

Got my first black egg this morning ... the ducks are laying!  I was going to wash it off and take a photo of it, but when I washed it, quite a bit of the black part came off.  I didn't realize it would.  Anyway, I'll have to figure that out as I go.

I put the sheep out in the front pasture now that everyone is done lambing.  It's nice having such a small flock.  I still have plenty of hay left, and I am not over-sheeped out by any stretch of the imagination.  I remember a couple of winters having somewhere in the range of 40 sheep.  I have 6 adults plus three lambs.  It's a good number.

Here's the one born a couple of weeks ago.  She's adorable, as is her mother.

And here's the cute little ram lamb.  His mother is a bitch!  More on that later.

Here's one of the lambs from last year.

The twins.  Mom needs a haircut.

  I got some stuff done today.  I started the endless raking process in the backyard.  Cleaning up after the dogs from the winter.  Yucko project, but it needs doing.  I also started trimming stuff back.  This bush thing was blocking my view from my living room.  I've been wanting to hack on this bush for quite a while now, and I finally did it. 

I now have yet another pile of sticks.

Here is what that bush looked like last year.   Hopefully it's a slow grower and won't get that big again for a while.  I have no idea what it is. 

Here's a picture of it from July of 2008 ... a photo I took about 4 months before I closed on the house.

And here's that little area in front of the deck.  I cleaned it up a bit after taking this photo, but haven't re-taken the photo yet.  This bush has been cut back to the ground, the leaves got raked, and those large fallen branches carried off to the burn pile.

The chickens have decided they can now roam wherever they'd like.  A couple of them came around to the front of the house to keep me company.

Actually, they found the bird seed I put out this morning.

This bush is also on the immediate list of stuff to get done.  Pretty soon, people will need to drive around this thing if I don't cut it back.  My neighbor is going to bring his chainsaw over at some point and help me cut it to the ground, or close enough thereto.

Seeing how quickly spring is moving in reminded me that I need my mower fixed ... like now.  So I put an ad up on Craigslist to see what people have or do.   I hope I can find a good deal.

My entire body hurts from the faceplant at Couch's I took yesterday.  Yes, faceplant.  Full on.  I was petting Kahlua (one of the mares who I created a name for), and then I went to pet the gelding in the stall next to her, and my leg was up against something, so my foot did not move forward, but my entire body did.  I went down like a tree.  I am way too old to be landing on my face.  Geez.

So now that it's starting to stay light out later, hopefully I can get some of the raking and burning under control and out of the way early in the season.  I really want to get the vegetable garden under way.  And get Reese on stock consistently.  She's ready.  And I'm ready to work a different dog for a while, I think.  And Reese ... she's definitely "different."

My ice maker is cranking out ice.  I'm making ice tea like it's going out of style!  Ha!  Take THAT ... you beast!

Oh and if anyone is interested, I have a Great Pyr / Akbash mix up for adoption.  His name is Ben.  He's a bit exuberant with the sheep and would do better in a pet home.  He's a large dog, neutered, and ready to be someone's buddy.  He's very sweet, and does not offer to jump on me.  I don't know if he's ever been in a house, but I doubt he's house trained.  I am sure he'll pick that up fairly easily.  He's wants to please very badly ... a very good natured dog with a great big, scary, very appropriate bark! 

My Big Sucksess

I have succeeded in fucking up my dogs outrun to the point of not being able to trial ... at all.  You're welcome, Echo.  You know you can always count on me.

I did it!!!

Yeah, I know.  Sounds like it should be something fabulous, right?  Wrong.  But it's something that has been bugging me since I moved into this house.

When we moved my fridge, something broke.  We hooked up the ice maker, turned the water on to it, and it leaked ... big time ... all over the floor.  So, I never dealt with it.  Well, when the plumber was here fixing that plumbing nightmare a few months ago, I asked him to look at it.  He figured out that the pump cracked and I needed a new one.  So I pulled the schematic for this fridge, found the part, confirmed with the plumber, and ordered it.  The part came in in January, and the plumber came out a week ago Monday and replaced it.  Then you wait a couple of days to see if it works. 

Nothing.  No ice.  No water to the ice maker.  No filtered water to the fridge.

I called the plumber.  He had me try replacing the filter (I just happened to have an extra one).  Well, the filtered water to the fridge started working right away.  I waited till the next day to check for ice.

Nothing.  No ice.

The plumber had me do something else (I forgot what), and then we needed to wait again. 

Nothing.  No ice.

So yesterday, I took the day off from work (not for this, but ...) and the ice maker was really bugging me.  My contractor happened to show up so I asked him to look at the water line on the back of the fridge for me.  I noticed it was green.  So we took the water line apart, snaked it out with a piece of bailing wire, and cleaned it out with bleach and put it back together.  I came home from work today and ...

Nothing.  No ice.

Damn it!!!  So I pulled the water tubing off the back of the fridge where it goes into the ice maker, and used the wire to clean out anything that might be blocking the water from getting in there.  Nothing seemed wrong.  So I emptied all of the freezer contents and put them in my chest freezer, then unplugged the fridge, opened the freezer door, and went over to the neighbor's for a drink.  When I got back, the freezer was just about warm, and there was a couple of drops of water at the very back of the ice maker.  So ... I plugged the fridge back in and checked back in about an hour.

There was water in the ice maker! 

And now it's cranking out ice!  I am so glad I don't have to fill ice trays anymore!!!  Woo hoo!!!!!

I know I know ... what a stupid thing, right?  Well, I'm a bit of an ice fanatic, and this will make sense to a couple of people.

Jodi

Just Working Dogs ...

Several of us have been going out to Couch's on the weekend working dogs.  Phyllis, Glenda, Janet, etc.  Glenda and Phyllis are good at bringing goodies.  Here are some photos from last week.

Handing off the scary cape ...

Glenda, Bud, and Dawn Marie ...

Ruben.  He's a Peg x Riggs.  Yes, Riggs.  The 2010 NATIONAL FINALS CHAMPION!!!!!!!

Here's the Cash man ...

And Echo making a fool of herself ... trying to convince Shay that she's worth a second look.

Lie down, hussy, and pay attention...

Echo!  Knock that off!  Ruben is from royalty.  He doesn't want anything to do with you.

Here's Glenda working with Ruben.  He's a bit hesitant to walk in and prefers to flank off the pressure, but is getting more confident.

Here's Dawn Marie beating Cash for violating the code of silence.

Last weekend, I worked with Echo on the top of her outrun.  She really wasn't liking going in and picking sheep up off of anyone, but we worked through that. This weekend, I was back out at Couch's and just Don and I worked with her.  I got her (albeit slowly) way out and behind the sheep, and coming in straight on the lift, and having the come right between the pressure of Couch and Cash.  She did well.  Now I just hope we can translate that success over to next weekend at the trial at Patrick's.  If not that problem, I'm sure some other problem will rear it's ugly head.  But ... that's why we trial, isn't it?  To find those lovely potholes in our training. 

I haven't done any painting, even though I should have.  Reese has already excavated her dog box, so it is being repaired, and reinforced.  Little wench.

J

White Ain't Working ... I know ...

I tried changing the background to white in hopes of brightening up some of the photos, but it didn't work, and I don't like a white background.  So I'm going to change a bunch of stuff around soon.  Not sure when.  I have all kinds of little projects going on.  I still need to publish the results of the Big Freeze trial, and post photos from last weekend when we went out and worked dogs, and finish painting the dog room, and whatever else I've got going. 

I haven't had a Diet Coke since last Thursday.  This ... is basically a miracle for me.  Now that I muscled my way through that, I am not inclined to drink it ever again.  If I got up in the morning, and I didn't have a soda, I had a headache like nobody's business.  I don't have that anymore.  Woo hoo!  I've also cut way back on carbs (although not killing myself with a "diet") and my clothes fit better.  I'm trying to look at it as a new way of life, but man, do I miss homemade bread.  I don't miss it all that much when I just slip right into my jeans though.

The last trial bothered me a bit.  It's one of the reasons I don't like running one dog.  There is so much pressure on that dog to do well.  But after looking at it, how badly did we really do?  I bought her as a pup dirt cheap, I've done all of her training, and she's one of the best dogs I've ever owned.  We got around the course on Saturday, she took every command I gave her for the most part, and all of those mistakes were mine and mine alone.  On Sunday, we got stuck at the top of the outrun.  If that's the worst that happened, I think we're ok.  A top-of-the-outrun training issue is fixable.  And the rest of it just needs miles.  My timing ... eight years in ... is still off.  I can feel it.  But all of her training is mine, and I am proud of how far we've come.  It's just recently that we're getting around a course without gripping off, or splitting one off and chasing it through the fair.  Or looking for a boyfriend while on our way to setout on the outrun.  So yeah.  We got around the course on Saturday.  There's solid improvement in and of itself and I'm happy with that.  And we actually got numbers instead of letters.  So there's that!

I've come to realize how often we set out own sheep and do outruns with no one at the top.  Last Saturday, Phyllis, Glenda and Dawn Marie set sheep for us, and Phyllis was wearing some type of scary cape-like thing, and I practiced sending Echo into that environment.  The first time was a bit tough.  She wanted to come in front of everyone and just sort of sneak around and get behind the sheep enough to peel them off of the scary people.  I got after her and kicked her waaaaaay out and way back behind all of the commotion, and asked her to come right into it.  She was pretty unsure about that, and it took a lot of positive encouragement on my part to get her to trust me.  But she did it.  Finally.  From there, it got better and better, and the last time of the day, she was pretty confident, although still a bit wary of Phyllis' cape.  But a huge improvement.  Good thing people don't normally dress up like Batman when setting sheep.

Brrrr ... it's a bit chilly this morning.  I hope my truck has warmed up.  Off to work.

Jodi