The Replacements, Part III

Between what was going on with our livestock guardian dog situation, and Rohana's goat questions, the two of us had been chatting quite a bit over the course of several months.  So I was aware that Mroot, Mini's dam, had been bred in December and that she was expecting a litter in February.  And we knew when she had her litter that there were plenty of females available.  Andy and I had discussed whether we would go ahead and get a puppy from this litter in addition to keeping Cassie, or if we would wait another couple of years before getting another LGD so that the older dog would be able to help train the younger dog, and that there would be more space between the two age wise so we wouldn't be dealing with two older dogs at the same time.  When we decided that Cassie wasn't going to stay, we knew that we needed to find the time (in the middle of kidding season, no less), to take a little road trip to pick out our new puppy.  It felt right going back to the breed we knew something about, and getting a little sister of Mini's seemed like a good call as well.

I have never had a puppy who was less than five months old.  This was not by design, life just happened to turn out that way, which is not unusual when a couple of your dogs have come from rescue, and your first dog was a year old when you were born.  Not having had a really young puppy before, I was not altogether prepared for the intense amount of cuteness involved in a two month old.  That soft little belly! The puppy breath! It was almost overwhelming.

We spent the whole drive home trying to come up with Armenian or other European names as a tribute to her country of origin, and settled on Anush (which can also be spelled Anoush, and is pronounced AH-noosh), which means "sweet", and seemed fitting as she was born on Valentine's Day.  While she is sweet, if we'd had a few months to get to know her, we might have gone with Exuberant as that describes her very well.

*Looks up Armenian word for Exuberant....it's Hord...nope, that would not have been her name after all.*

Someone was not quite as happy about the puppy on her first day home.

Lalalala I refuse to acknowledge the existence of any so-called puppy

Nope, no puppy in this direction either.

 The puppy, on the other hand, thought Stella was fantastic.

Imma be just like you when I grow up!

See! I'm doing it now!

Stella seemed a bit annoyed with the attention from Anush.  It could have been that she was just annoyed that there was yet another new dog here, though since we have had her, she had dealt with the arrival and departure of six other dogs.  It could have been that she just didn't believe this one would be staying for long and didn't want to bother getting to know her.

After about 48 hours of either pretending the puppy didn't exist, or, if she did exist, that she was annoying, we finally saw:

Woot! Stella inviting Anush to play!

We were back to having dogs that got along, and who could exercise with each other twice a day.  The nice thing about getting Anush so young was that the goats did not feel intimidated by the new dog, and let her know that she was to respect them.  Being young during kidding season was also good for us because there's a bit less shaping that you need to do, and less trouble they can get in.  We mainly tried to let her know that she didn't need to be around people ALL the time, and that when we say "Go On!", we mean that she needs to give us our space.

Anush is definitely quite different than her sister.  Where Mini looked worried all the time, Anush is alert, but confident that should anything come up, she'll handle it, no worries mate!  When greeting her at the gate, she will often get all four feet quite far off the ground, so excited is she to see you.  When I would get upset with Mini, she would stay far away from me until I had calmed down, but Anush will still come to me with "I'm sorry!" written all over her face.  Mini would hang out for a couple of minutes and then wander off to keep an eye on things.  Anush wants to sit on my feet and slide over onto her back for a belly rub.  I'm pretty sure she would crawl into my clothes if I let her, but still manages to keep her eye on everything.  We know we've had mountain lions in the area and coyotes, and they appear to be uninterested in coming onto our farm.  She doesn't bark as much to hear her own voice, which is really nice.

We're pretty sure this one is here to stay.

The Replacements, Part I

In Mid-December of 2012, as you may well know, we lost our livestock guardian dog, Mini.  In addition to the sadness of loosing a dog, there was also the matter of what to do about our livestock guarding needs in her absence.  Our bucks have their llama, but our does were in need of some protection, and I could clearly hear a good deal of coyote activity not too far from our farm, and there's always the threat of neighborhood dogs finding their way here.

Enter Zulum

He was the dog we had bred Mini to, and like her, he was an Armenian Gampr.  I already liked many of his traits, which is why I had picked him to sire Mini's puppies.  Rohana, from whom I had obtained Mini, generously offered to let him stay with us, either to fill in until we got a more suitable replacement, or he could stay on permanently if he was a good match.

Stella did her part to show him the local customs

So, that's, uh, considered a delicacy around here?

 And he seemed to get along pretty well with her, though he never quite got used to her laser beam vision

What the????

Stella seemed to think he was alright, if a bit of a kiss up to the management

I luff you!

Previous to being with the breeder, Zulum had been in a situation where he learned to distrust men, especially around food.  As a result, he was a huge love muffin with me, but very suspicious of Andy, which was not ideal.  We worked for several days on the two of them getting to know each other better, and Zulum started to relax and become less wary and growly around Andy, which was quite encouraging.

Then on Christmas Eve morning I came out to the barn, and he was gone.  Just-- poof-- no more big dog.  AAAARRRRRGGGGGG!  Great, this dog isn't even mine, I have him for about a week, and he disappears.  That'll teach Rohana to trust me with one of her dogs!  I looked all over the neighborhood for him, and for such a big dog, he was very good at disappearing.  I called Animal Control to let them know about him, especially since he was not fond of men, and because he was about the size and coloring of a mountain lion, which would probably freak out any number of people.

His wandering did emphasize why I would rather not keep an intact male on a property our size- once a dog gets an idea of what breeding is all about (and Mini was Zulum's first experience just two months previous to this), he is much more likely to go in search of breeding opportunities.

The day after Christmas, we got a call from Animal Control that he had been found, and were able to go collect him from some people just a mile and a half away (as the dog roams).  They told us that they'd posted a sign at the local country store about him, so we went to take it down, and it was a little piece of paper that said "Found: Brown Dog" and a phone number.  No size, gender, location, or any other details that would have narrowed it down from approximately half the dogs in our area. The only way it would have been less helpful is if it had said "Found: Dog".

We put him back in the barnyard and watched to see if he'd try to get out again, and it turned out that he was going under the fencing, as opposed to climbing over it, as we had seen Mini attempt.  This huge dog was like a mouse- if the head fits, the rest will find a way.  Sigh.  A day or two after his return, Andy accidentally nudged Zulum while he was eating, and we were back to square one with the trust issues.  The next day, some friends came over to breed a goat, and I had to put Zulum in a stall because I didn't trust that everything would run smoothly otherwise.  He barked for over an hour straight, which gave me a headache and freaked out my friends' doe who wasn't used to dogs at all.

I figured that I had the time and energy to fix either his trust issues, or his wandering the neighborhood issues, but not both of them.  I also worried that he was an insurance claim waiting to happen since we have a good deal of visitors to the farm and not all of them have been blessed with common sense.  If I lived alone on a large, remote property, he would have been perfect for me.  But I have a spouse I am pretty fond of, and we live in an area with lots of neighbors, so I reluctantly returned him to Rohana.

Which meant we were back to not having a livestock guardian dog, until I got an e-mail from a fellow small farmer...

Happy Halloween!

What are you dressing up as for Halloween?

Stella has decided to be a vampire this year:

And Mini is apparently going with the "unsuspecting victim" look. 

Whatever your plans are, I hope you have a happy and safe Halloween!

Play Time

Several months ago, Mini showed a marked change in her attitude towards play, as in, not interested in it at all.  She'd sort of humor Stella for about 30 seconds, and then get an attitude of "I'm a serious working dog here and must intently stare into the distance now.  Please show yourself out." I figured it was due to her maturing, since this change in attitude happened right around her second birthday.

That phase seems to have passed now.  I mean, Mini is still serious about her job, but for the past couple of weeks, she and Stella have been playing every morning while I feed the non-milking goats.  I find them rather amusing to watch.

First, Stella puts on her best "Let's PLAY!" face:

Which Mini cannot resist

Chasing ensues

Catch me if you can!

Then the wrestling starts

And while it may look like Stella is taking Mini down, I can assure you that Mini takes more dives on the field than a professional soccer player.  It's almost like having my own dog version of the WWE out there.

Back to chasing:

Click to fully enjoy Mini's facial expression

Let's zoom in on what is happening up in the buck pasture in that last picture, shall we?

They are very good at avoiding the goats while cavorting, and the goats generally ignore the dogs when they are running around with each other.  Sometimes though, one of the older does will start looking a little judgey at the dogs' shenanigans:

I love those happy dog faces! 

Refreshingly not goat related

Looks like someone is under the impression that she's found some fresh hay before anyone else did.

It's all mine!  Mine I tell you!

Every so often, someone will leave the man-door to the barn open, and some of our free ranging hens will take the opportunity to go where few hens have gone before.  The discovery of one (or more) of these hens manages to surprise me since I'm really not expecting to see a chicken in this particular part of our barn.

You look puny from up here!

It took a little while to convince her that she was not, in fact, a fifteenth century explorer who could lay claim to something just because she "discovered" it.

Ha! I told you we weren't allowed in there!

 A bit later I found the same hen trying to lay claim to a new piece of real estate, which did not please the hen who had already made herself comfortable in that space.

It's too bad I wasn't able to capture sound with this picture- our explorer friend next tried to move into this nest box (also known as a corner feeder), and the Maran fluffed up and let out a steady growl in an attempt to intimidate the red hen. 

Have you ever heard a chicken growl?  It's kind of a funny sound, unless you hear it while you are trying to remove eggs from under a hen.  Then it is a sound that means your hand is about to be attacked.  And can I just say- for those of you who want broody hens so you can hatch out your own chicks- please contact me.  I seem to specialize in getting broody hens, and while they are fantastic for hatching out your own eggs, if you don't want to hatch eggs yet find yourself with a hard-core months-on-end broody hen, it makes daily egg gathering very unpleasant.  Unless you are in to collecting new beak scars on your hands every day.  And if you are, man, do I have an opportunity for you!

Seriously? You're talking about chickens?

 Yes, well, perhaps if you didn't usually close your eyes when we pull out the camera...

I'd have more pictures of you I felt like posting.

At least someone kept their eyes open while the camera was out...

Weighing in at almost 100 pounds, Mini is looking much more like an adult.  She and Stella get along very well, and for quite a while, they were enthusiastically playing together during chore time.  Now though, Mini has gotten more serious about her job and play holds less of her interest, which seems to be sort of confusing to Stella who had gotten quite used to play time.

She's transferred that play energy into following me from room to room while I try to do work.  Sometimes she just stands and stares. Which isn't at all unnerving. There's nothing I love more than having my own entourage of one.  All the time.
 
---------------------------------

My plan to have the blog updated more regularly with a guest writer has, for now, fallen by the wayside.  Katie had some family matters that needed immediate attending to, so her stay with us was unfortunately cut short. I hope to have other guest writers in the future, and will let them introduce themselves as they accept the invitation to blog. I am still hoping to get a few more posts up in the near future about native plants, and the benefits of finding space for them both on and off farms.  I am hoping this partly because more time for writing means I'm probably finally getting a break from milking.  I just need to get one more milk test done, and then I'll be able to start drying off more of the girls.

But, that is a subject for another post...