Winter Routines

It's been fairly routine around the ranch lately. Still plenty of snow on the ground and mostly cold although we've had a few nice days. The days are filled with feeding, chores or fixing something, and then walking with the dogs to make sure they get enough activity since they don't get as much work in the winter.

Taking the dogs out for a walk...

There they go....

and then they come back very proud of themselves.

The sheep trailing up from the creek for corn.

Who's Whistlin Now

To start the story I have to tell you that I can't whistle, never have been able to, not one little peep, and JML has had 15 yrs. teasing me about it.

So JML got a shepherds whistle about a month ago.  It took him a couple of hours to start getting some sound out if it and he's been working at it constantly (driving me crazy)ever since. He's getting it figured out pretty well but he still spends a lot of time cussing at the whistle.  Then today we were watching our favorite border collie sheepdog training video (see below) which has a tutorial on using the whistle. As we were watching JML says to me (the girl who can't whistle) "why don't you try it" and after some more teasing he gets me to try it.  So I put the whistle in my mouth just like the video says, gave it some air....and what do ya know, I can whistle! Guess he can't tease me about not being able to whistle anymore, thanks Andy :)
P.S.
If anyone out there wants to share their techniques, tips, or stories on the shepherds whistle we'd love to hear about it!

Check it out, First Steps in Border Collie Sheepdog Training
It's a beginner to intermediate video, but no matter how much you already know about training dogs there's always more to learn (especially if your obsessed with border collies like JML). One of the reasons this is our favorite video is because he doesn't just show the perfect scenario setup, he also shows when things don't go so perfectly.  Another reason we like this video is because Andy shows three different dogs that are quite unique from eachother in their personality and desire to work.  He then goes thru the processes of starting each of these personalities. It's great filming, advice, and very easy to understand. 

What happened was...

You always know people are manipulating the story when they start a sentence with "So what happened was..."

But I'll start at the beginning.  First off, JML is addicted to border collies, if there's a BC anonymous somewhere please let me know. Anyway, last week JML needed us to go to Belle Fourche for some parts. Conveniently at a "near by" ranch there were some pups JML had been researching online, and guess what, they were expecting us to stop by and check them out..."just a little peek" he says. So we looked and we left, "yes dear, nice dogs, we don't need another" I say. 

But yesterday he needed to go back to Belle to deposit a check at the bank...hmmm, I wonder why one needs an empty kennel in the back of the pickup to go to the bank?

"So what happened was," he says " I was in town just to deposit that check but I thought I'd just swing in and take another look... it was just to good a pup to pass up... you should have seen her parents work..."

So here she is, the newest member of our working team, Wick.

We got her name from the Yorkshire word "wick" meaning "lively".

At this point she was a bit too wiggly to get a good photo.

I can't say I'm disappointed she is a great pup.  She's 5 months old and her parents are incredible working dogs from very good lines. I think she will be a great asset to our operation and hopefully she'll be providing some good pups of her own down the road. Maybe you'll even see JML taking her to trial :)

Border Collie Fun

This evening Dott and Scrappy learned a fun new game...playing on top of the round bales. Dott is our 7 month old pup.  Scrappy is her litter-mate that we are dog-sitting until the end of the month.

Dott earned her playtime earlier in the day. It was her first day working sheep. It started off a little wild but she quickly slowed down and started thinking. We were very pleased how it went and are very excited to see how she progresses.