Changes and rearranging down on the farm

             October found things on the farm needed changeing.
    One afternoon I realized Susie was dragging her hind legs, a visit from the Vet and a heavey course of worming and anti-inflamatories, pain med and vitamin injections and she slowly recovered from deer meningeal worm.
     After 4 years with Ella I realized she was just too much horse for me, I had so much time, money and emotional stress invested in getting her healthy and trained to drive but the realization I was never going to drive her because she was just too strong and powerful and I felt like I just couldn't keep up with her.
I had been trying to find her a person of her own, and finally reached out to everyone i could think of for help.  I realized the worst thing I ever did was to trade my precious pony for her, and that If I ever owned a horse again I was going back to miniatures, and needed to find healthy trained ones with the fewest number of owners previous to me, the total opposite of all  I have done before. Everything with Ella ended very sadly and I learned yet again that I am not good at reading people.
       As we entered winter in late november I  became acutely aware that I may not be a good goat farmer, I really didn't like keeping a buck. and after giving him a couple opportunities with Dolly and a couple weeks later both Dolly and Sue he turned really nasty and started ramming me knocking me down, later a fall at work and my knees were in so much pain I couldn't take it. He found another herd to join. Dolly appears to be pregnant, Susie I'm not sure. Dolly still causes an uproar at every feeding racing around ramming everybody and it's particularly hard on Dharma. Dharma and Dougie got sheared, I love their kid mohair quality fleece and I took it to be proccessed into yarn, I must learn to crochet as I want a scarf or shawl and hat from it. 
     With Ella re-homed I really did miss having a horse, and brought home an adorable little Palomino mini.

 As adorable as Jasper is he is so small, and really hates the goats as it turns out, he is quite unwilling to share the pasture with them. Then I came across a mini who seems to be exactly what I wanted, well trained to drive, a large mini gelding, but I am back to a bay horse,of course I have always loved a bay, and this little guy has a carriage horse build in miniature, sweet and easy going he will stand as long as necessary for harnessing. I fell in Love!

    I really do like how easy mini's are to keep, easy to clean, my hay is down to half of what it was last year, even with all the goats waste, shavings are a quarter of what I used for one horse,they don't punch up the ground any where near as much, I am never worried they are too powerful for me, they have sweet gentle personalities and  I still have a horse I can drive, and a cart that's truly easy to get in and out of, I'm sold! The really neat thing is Vision (honestly I think he will get a nickname soon) is totally trained to drive single and double and I am dreaming of driving a pair, Totally!
                  
                      The Collies are well, although we all have cabin fever from this miserable cold nasty winter, Roma is still happy and active though arthritic, Savi and Ripple have so much joie de vivre that they keep all of us entertained, and Derby, Halle and even Inca playing along with them!

        Spring, Spring we await your arrival!! Please come early!

Welcome Wild Wind Hylights Savoir Faire

snuggle bug

Ripple plays with Savi

That sweet Face!

I brought home another bundle of Joy!
Many thanks to Shelley Bergstrasser of Wild Wind Collies for my "Savi" girl!
Ch C & J White Tie and Tails X BISS RBIS Gold GrCh Bit O Heaven's Sorceress CD RA PT
2 or more years ago I contacted Shelley, I had Roma from Michelle Tennis, Roma's dam was Ch WildWind On a Stormy Night CD, and I wanted to see if I could be wait listed for a puppy from Tegan (bred by Michelle Tennis, and now a Wild Wind member)  Roma was 10 then and I wanted another puppy with a similiar heritage.
    Tegan had complications with her next litter,and I lost my sweet Keyna after she was diagnosed with Lymphooma, needing a  connection to my sweet
  Keyna I brought home her cousin

                                           Ripple. So when Shelley announced the puppies were born and I saw who she 

puppy class

 had chosen as the sire, I tried to tell myself not to get excited, I had enough dogs, I had Ripple who  I am sure is going to be a fantastic performance dog, and will be shown in the breed ring. That worked until the day the litter was 7 weeks old and Shelley contacted me to see if I was still interested!!

I adore her already, such confidence, such sweetness, I just keep picking her up to hold her...

Ripple also adores her, and she now has an active playmate, and the old dogs are very Happy Ripple has a younger playmate!

Ready to start Perch Training

In the Pasture with Roma

Goats are settling in

As summer is winding down we are starting to get the routine down with the new goats and the horse returning.The baby Pygora's who are heavily Angora and such little dolls

The goats have eaten down the brambles, weeds and briars pretty well. The dogs keep close watch on them

Goats! and more Goats!

 I ended up with deposits on goats from 2 different states! Now I have to figure out how to get them home!
The little PCA doeling on the left is Dharma, I have wanted her since I first saw her, I waited and they only had 2 more Pygora does born and they both were very ligh colored, I so wanted reds and browns, so I am going to get both of these kids, the boy with the white spot on his head is wethered.
 
   But I was looking for a PBA  buck to breed Mocha this fall/winter, I wanted a heavy Pygora (more than 50% Angora)who had been disbudded (no horns)  Alas I found him!

 He is coming with 2 Pygora does who are Caramel and over 60% Angora. I can't wait to bring them home!

Fencing, fencing, fencing!!!!

I will have 3 does to breed this fall/winter, and so much Pygora fiber! I better start taking those classes so I can use it!

Every farm needs a cat......

I met someone back in May who's cat had just had kittens, she wanted homes immediately, I gave her my number and told her to text me if there was an orange long haired one, never heard from her and had pretty much forgotten all about it. Then I received a text telling me I had to get my kitten by 3 that day. So welcome Tuuka Rask-al!

 It is going to take some time to integrate her into the house, she came with fleas and worms and weighing 1 lb 3 ounces. The fleas and worms have been dealt with and she is eating very well, Orijen dry and Stella and Chewey's freeze dried, gaining weight and slowly meeting the dogs. Inca and Ripple will take some time to learn how to be gentle.

Dog food snobbery

Yes I have to admit, I am a dog food snob, and yes I believe there is something to the slogan you are what you eat. So when my dogs develop any issues I do look at what they eat. Twice a day they get a bowl of dog food, often with extras added. They also love fruits and veges.

       So when Inca had a weird episode a week and a half ago I questioned my dog food, she had not had any recent meds or insecticides. I have been feeding mostly Canidae for more than 10 years, I raised two very healthy litters on it, until we had issues with horrible mucous wrapped stools and found Canidae had changed the grain portion of their foods without changing the label, we switched to Earthborn holistics, that was about a year, but I noticed Roma just looked a bit rough, so I went to Taste of the Wild. Eventually when Canidae came out with the single grain I went back  to that, remembering the healthy years. Each change brought the cost of feeding my dogs up, and I thought I  had hit my ceiling for costs.  After reading in Whole dog journal and Dog Food Advisor about rice and arsenic I moved to the grain free pure elements, at $55/ 30lbs I really was over my ceiling, but if it was the best I could feed, and keep them healthy, I would give it a try.
  The morning after the episode I called Canidae, I decided I needed to know that the food was produced in their new Ethos mill and not the Diamond plant in SC. To my surprise they told me no that the Pure Elements was still being made in SC. A plant that has been the source of so many recalls, I was spending this much to give my dogs the healthiest meal I could, and was very uncomfortable with where it was being produced .
 So I decided I needed a new food and set out to make a list of what I wanted.
I started by looking at the foods who had received
5 stars from dog food advisor and were
on WDJ list of recommended foods, looking into those foods further I added;
Made by a company that only makes pet or animal feeds.
Made by the company not outsourced.



Ripple won't let go! She sleeps with a cow hoof in her mouth!

That became a very narrow list.

So my dogs are eating  Acana wild prairie now, the dogs are crazy about it! Inca is obviously feeling and acting better. Her bloodwork came back with odd results and will have to be repeated in a couple months, I may start her on meds, the vet left it up to me, she said with the bloodwork it could go either way but we will retest either way. I'm still contemplating. I also ordered a bag of  Orijen.

No More Lies

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." ~Rumi

"There are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going to"


I trained my first dog for Competition Obedience while a sophmore in College, he earned a CD and I joined an Obedience club, I continued training him and when he was all trained for the Open excerises I entered him , but we didn't qualify, he had trouble after the jumps, x-rays showed grade 2 dysplasia. He retired, I later got another dog and again we earned a CD we continued to train in open, I didn't do a good job with the ear pinch retrieve, because I couldn't pinch a Cattle Dogs ear hard enough to make her yelp (thereby opening her mouth so I could shove the dumbell in)
I went to a lot of seminars in those days, Michael Tucker the Aussie Guide Dog trainer, Diane Bauman, Bernie Brown, Patricia Gail Burnham, others I have trouble remembering now, But I do so remember how "proofing" for the Obedience ring really meant setting your dog up to be wrong so you could get a good strong correction in.
Then there were changes happening and I went to seminars by Chris Bach, Dawn Jecs, and others who were the first wave of more positive training with food rewards. At the time the Obedience club I belonged to's Head Trainer forbid food in the club, and as what I was seeing from people at match's was food being spit at dogs, uugg, not something I wanted to start doing.
   I was in a quandry, I wanted to train, I wanted a better relationship, but I wasn't competitive enough to need titles.
        At this time I started training my horses in Natural Horsemanship, this taught me more about the relationship I wanted to have with my dogs than most of the seminars I went to.
 I went 15 years, the lifetime of the most special Cattle dog ever born :-), without earning an Obedience title, and yet I had a dog I adored who would have done anything I asked of her and done it happily, I am certain she was the best trained dog I had to that time.
I never lied to her.
I never set her up to be wrong.
She went everywhere with me.
She trusted me implicitly.
 I was never going back to the correction and lies of the old ways.
    Dog obedience continued to change and more positive methods infiltrated even the club I belonged to, I went to seminars with Leslie Nelson, John Rogerson and Chris Bach again. I decided I wanted a dog who was a bit softer than my Cattle Dog, a little less intense, and after having the most perfect dog of a breed it's too hard an act to follow for another dog.
     I got my first smooth Collie, sweet and sensitive, I started training her in Obedience, but she took off in the breed show ring and for years I enjoyed that. Then one day I had a litter, in that litter a little tri girl glued herself to me from the time her eyes opened and I knew she would be my new obedience dog.
  I joined positive classes with her and she earned her first title in Rally at 8 months of age.
Unfortunately I learned that some places were using Positive in their names but were still using Positive punishment for "proofing" this was not for me or my sweet sensitive dog, so we often dropped out of classes because I felt we were lured into them by false pretenses of "positive"
 Then I entered a class called "Motivational" by a trainer who called her school "Positive" something. and found out Motivation meant Compulsion! Dropped that class before the first session was over. The way to teach heeling was to have the dog in heel position, and with a piece of hot dog in hand, leash tight, jerk straight up hard and fast as you take a step, so the dog jumps forward and you stuff the food into their mouth.
I spent many years using luring to train my dogs, then had to learn how to be effective at fading the lures, I didn't think I would ever get into shaping. but took a couple workshops with Dee Ganley and my Mudi and found I could do this.
  A year or so ago I found this Blog by a woman named Denise Fenzi, she had OTCH dogs and she was training without lies and corrections, I started following her Blog and she talked about a combination of lureing and shaping, oh, maybe I could do this!
   I signed up for an on-line class in how to play with your dogs as a training reward, to make treaining enjoyable and fun, breakout from training, play go back ot work. Unfortunately at that time Keyna got sick and before the class was over I lost my dear girl.
   But I had learned the importance of play and integrating it into a relationship from the start.
Now my young Ripple and I play lots, I have done some shaping (clicker style) training and am now taking another on-line class at the new Fenzi Sports Academy in Heeling Games.
Even if we don't earn titles we are having fun, but I think those titles will be coming too.