This year Lady, as spokessheep for the flock, says they resolve to eat more treats.
“Especially the flock queen! The queen should get the MOST crunchies!”
The rest of the sheep voted unanimously in favor of the idea, except for the bit about Lady getting the most. They always press around my legs, so impatient to be let in at night for their bedtime snack that it’s sometimes hard to bend down to unlatch the door for them.
“You’re late! Again! We almost starved without crunchies!”
It’s not my fault they start hanging around the barn door looking hopeful as early as four in the afternoon. I think the second six months of the year gets them so used to bedtime being a few minutes earlier every day that they think the pattern should continue indefinitely, and then when bedtime starts getting later it’s very annoying to them.
The boys have a slightly different goal, they are demanding more fairness in the treat distribution. Every day they have to wait outside, hungry, and watch while the girls get treats for coming in!
“Unfair! Favoritism! Left outside in the cold! ShepherdPerson is so mean!”
(After the girls are put up, it’s the boys’ turn to come in and get treats while the girls complain about unfairness, but that’s beside the point.)
Blue plans to beat his own time at sprinting across the yard to the back fence.
He still doesn’t so much escort me to the fence as run ahead and announce I’m coming, but so far I haven’t managed to get lost on the way. Ideally he’d like it if the sheep listened when he barked at them, but they’ve all been ignoring dogs barking at them for longer than he’s been alive, so the chances of that are slim.
He would also like to convince the humans that the living room isn’t too small for playing running games when it’s cold outside and he’s totally not going to run into walls or knock anything over in his excitement…
“Playtime? Play? Play?”
…and perfect his completely spherical position on the couch for naps between playtimes…
“Think smooth, round thoughts…”
… and maybe find a sneakier way of pretending he isn’t chewing on the rug.
“I have my nose UNDER the rug where they can’t see me nibbling!”
Rugs are not for chewing, Blue.
“Who me? Chew a rug? I’m innocent!”
He has a very ambitious set of goals for the year.
My shepherding goal this year is to get as many of the Soays as possible cleaned up of their leftover wool that didn’t shed, since the shedding didn’t go very well this past summer and some of them are starting to look pretty shaggy. Even if they do get most of it off, I try not to let them skip more than one year in a row.
I’m sure this goal will prove immensely unpopular when the sheep learn about it.
“No haircuts! We like being shaggy! It’s a fashion statement!“
So at some point “avoid being sheared” will likely be added to their list of goals. We will have to wait and see who wins.
Every year I think about going out to the barn at midnight on Christmas Eve to see if the animals really talk, but I never do because 1) I like my sleep, 2) the sheep never seem to have much difficulty getting their point across without words anyway, and 3) they don’t like artificial lights or disruptions to their routine, so all they would say to a midnight visit would be variations on “Aaah! Scary light! Not breakfast time yet! Must be here to torture sheep! Torture him not me! Aaah!” so there’d be no useful information gained either way. So I decided to leave them to have their visions of treats uninterrupted.
I walked out to check on the sheep mid-morning, and all was business as usual for a warm winter day.
Soays in this corner…
… and Shetlands over in the opposite corner.
Since sheep, contrary to popular opinion, have excellent situational awareness, my approach was swiftly detected. An unscheduled visit from ShepherdPerson can be very good or very bad, so Lady, the flock matriarch, came to demand tribute investigate the situation.
“Is this a ‘give sheep crunchy treats’ visit or a ‘torture sheep with haircuts’ situation??”
Once Lady had established that no torture was planned, the rest of the Soays had to come running to make sure they all got a share of any crunchies that might be found in my pockets.
The Shetlands are more suspicious in general and stayed down in the bottom corner of the field. They sleep in their own stall so I can give them extras tonight at bedtime when they’re usually expecting it and less suspicious.
“Hey! ShepherdPerson! Wait for us! Don’t give Lady any crunchies until we get there!”
If they didn’t have visions of sugarplums before, they were certainly having them now.
“Ok now we’re ready!”
Lady in front (of course) with Holly, Mira, Dandelion, Neo and Duke in a line behind her, and Angel heading off the rest of the flock behind them. Holly, Dandelion and Neo are all Lady’s lambs. Will Scarlet, the middle son, is the only one of her babies missing, but he lives in the boys flock with the Dukelings due to excessive hooliganism.
“I should get the most crunchies, I’m the queen!”
Of course Lady should get treats, she is such a good mama and a very level headed flock leader. Or as level headed as my sheep get, anyway. She’s the only mama in the flock who stayed attached to both her sons and her daughter, most of my ewes only stayed attached to their daughters.
“I need extras too, I’ve been extra good this year!”
Of course Duke should get treats, he’s as old as the hills now (going on 15!) and has been the very model of everything the ideal ram should be his whole life. His only fault was sometimes doing his job (making lambs) a little too well. And beating up Barney a lot when they were young and Duke needed to show off his fighting prowess for the ewes, but one can hardly hold that against him now. (Unless you’re Barney.)
“I’m your baby, I need ALL the treats!”
Of course Mira should get treats, she’s always my baby no matter how old she gets. It does look like she’d maybe been eating mud again from the evidence on her nose, but I can’t really put her on the naughty list for that. I do think she’s putting ME on the naughty list though for my insistance on giving treats to sheep-that-are-not-her, since of course a GOOD mama would only feed her own baby. Alas, the hardship of one’s mother also being the ShepherdPerson.
Once everyone was satisfied that no more treats were coming, they started to wander off back to the important sheepy business of grazing under Lady’s watchful eye.
“Alright you guys, party’s over, back to work!“
And of course eating mud.
“Mooom, Clover’s eating mud again and won’t share!”
I still have no idea what’s in the dirt there that they like so much, but it doesn’t seem to do any harm beyond deepening the hole in the middle of the yard.
Blue had fun this morning playing with his new stuffed elephant toy he got for Christmas, and now he’s settled down on the couch with it for a long winter’s nap and his own doggy equivalent to visions of sugarplums.
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!“
Very seasonal, the first snow on the second morning of December.
Blue is having a blast running around in his heaviest coat.
“Snow is a Splendid Game!”
“Why is my nose cold all of a sudden?”
The sheep are not so happy about it, all the grass having disappeared, possibly forever.
“We might starve!”
Until I pulled treats out of my pocket, at which point it became rather less like Christmas and more like Black Friday. I tried zooming out to get the whole crowd around my legs, but it just stretched the edges out weirdly.
“We’re saved!”
“Quit shoving!”
“We’re so cold and hungry!”
Bran is still Bran the Brawny even allowing for his 8″ of wool. He’s not starving and he’s definitely not cold. I still don’t understand how he came out so much bigger than either of his parents.
Speaking of Bran’s parents, his sire Liam, usually allergic to both crowds and coming within grabbing distance of humans, came toddling over and shoved his way in to get his share of the impromptu party snacks.
“Treats for me?”
He got a lot of treats for being brave.
“Hey, be careful! You keep accidentally giving treats to sheep-that-are-not-me!”
Mira, of course, objects to her mommy giving anyone else treats. Mommies should only feed their own lambs, even if the lamb is ten years old!
“Hey, be careful! You accidentally closed the gate before I could follow you!”
And Blue, of course, objects to all these sheep crowding one of his humans without him to referee. Only Blue is allowed to jump up on his humans!
“Zzz…”
And no matter how much fun the snow is, it’s always nice once the party is over to come in and warm up by tucking in your frosty toes and taking a nap on the couch.
Technically the dog days of summer were over a month ago, but it’s really hot again after a week of cooler temperatures, so I’m defining “dog days of summer” as “days when the dog says it’s too hot.”
“Too hot, too tired, I can’t move…”
It’s official, it’s one of the dog days.
Tiredness, for Blue, is a highly temporary state and after a brief sprawl in the shade he was ready to play fetch again. Blue is the best at playing fetch of any of our collies, in the sense that he does usually bring the toy back and give it to you to throw again. He just has to take the scenic route and run back and forth by you with it in his mouth a couple of times before he brings it back. Sometimes big circles. Sometimes he drops the toy while running and then has to go back and find it again.
It was very hot and this was the third game of fetch punctuated by a brief rest for this outing, so his running was not quite as fast or as far as usual. I also couldn’t throw it very far because I don’t recover as quickly as he does and I was still sitting on the ground in the shade.
He brought that orange squeaky toy with him when he came here, and it has to stay in the closet unless we’re ready to play with it outside because he gets so wildly excited every time he sees it that he starts running into the furniture if we let him have it in the house. On the plus side, being a “special treat” toy has probably extended its lifespan, judging by his “everyday” toys.
(He heard the toy squeaking in the preview that played when I attached the video to this post and came running all excited.)
The cooler weather we had for a few days reminded the sheep that autumn is coming and they should be trying to kill each other. As you do. Then it got hot again, and we had to rearrange what fields they’re in ahead of the fence work, and the combination has, for the moment, distracted them from the annual murder breeding season.
“Hey ShepherdPerson! It’s hot! Why am I in the little field? I didn’t do anything bad!“
Cute, silly Apple Stop That. One of my especially favorite sheep (even though he likes to bite.) He still pauses in the door of the barn every time and waits for me to cup his face with both hands and say hello to him personally. Sometimes his twin Ash or younger half-brother Drake will come with him to say hi, but Apple always wants his special greeting.
I don’t know if he associates being stuck in the little field with being in Naughty Sheep Jail, but he and various of his fellow Dukelings have been locked in there before as an intervention when the fighting gets too intense.
He definitely came to the fence with an air of “Oh thank goodness you’re here, there’s been a terrible mistake with the gates!” And I felt bad I didn’t fix it for him. I’m sorry Apple, it’s not Sheep Jail this time, we just don’t want you escaping when the outer fence gets taken out!
The girls were also grumpy, even though the boys’ field is plenty big enough.
“Hey! We’re in the wrong field! What’s going on around here?”
Duke and Mira were the spokessheep of the complaint committee. Duke claims privilege as the oldest sheep on the farm (14!) and Mira of course has bottle baby privilege. They quickly wandered off when I didn’t have treats or open the gates.
“Ugh, we’re stuck over in the boys’ field, we don’t even have any shade!“
Too bad there’s not a hoop house right there they could use. Mira at least figured out she could use the covered hay feeder as a personal, individual shade shelter.
“These are NOT acceptable conditions for baby Miracles! I know you can fix the temperature, Mommy, I remember air conditioning!”
I bet if she could get to the dog door, she’d be trying to go through it again like she used to.
Unlike Blue, who could use the dog door but doesn’t because he always prefers for someone to go outside with him. He’s fine outside by himself once he’s out there, but he won’t voluntarily go alone. It’s part of his firm belief that all four of us should stay together at all times. His herding instinct, I assume, he always wants everyone rounded up and under his supervision.
“NOT acceptable to expect baby Blues to go outside alone!”
Humans are best supervised when you can keep an eye on them from the couch with a nice big pillow, says Blue.
Out first collie, Buddy, also always wanted everyone in the same room. He’d pace from one room to another and wouldn’t settle down until he’d rounded us up. Must come with being a collie with herding genes who’s more human-focused than sheep-focused.
The highs are going to stay in the upper eighties and low nineties through the weekend, then it’s supposed to “cool down” by a few degrees to the lower eighties. I’ve suggested to the sheep that even though fall is coming they don’t really need to start fighting again once it cools off enough to do so, especially since none of the boys can make any lambs now anyway, but I don’t know if they’ll listen. They haven’t listened to me telling them not to fight for any the past thirteen autumns, but maybe this one will be different.
Angel has always been a conundrum because going by her behavior she should be over in the boys’ flock (despite the name, nowadays it’s more accurately the “too rough for polite society” flock, and less than half of the male sheep are in the boys’ flock,) but she can’t actually go over in the boys’ flock, because she’s the only ewe who’s both mean enough and strong enough to get kicked out.
“Let me at them, I’ll show them who’s boss!”
Not just for the obvious reason you can’t put one ewe in a field with seven wethers, but also because I’m convinced she would kill herself trying to outfight them. She escaped into that field once while I was filling hay racks and in less than five minutes damaged both horns so badly half of both of them ended up falling off, and I still had to drag her away kicking and screaming because she wanted to keep fighting.
There are several boys in the “girls” flock who are just as big or bigger than the Dukelings, but their size isn’t a problem because everyone on the girls’ side just runs away when they see Angel charging at them.
Except this guy. Clover is actually a pretty big wether despite his perpetual babyface and stubby scurrs, but he and Angel don’t seem to have ever injured each other despite many many many attempts at homicide. Sheepicide? Anyway, they’ve spent years making very convincing-looking efforts at killing each other without either of them succeeding, so I genuinely can’t tell if they actually hate each other or just enjoy fighting each other.
“She started it!”
I don’t know who originally started it, I just know they both seek each other out specifically to pick fights when they’re in a bad mood and the rest of the flock clearly thinks Clover is a bit crazy for it. The other night there were SEVEN sheep trapped outside the barn when I was trying to put them up for the night because Angel decided Clover wasn’t allowed in, and no one else was brave enough to go past the resulting battle in the doorway about it. I had to wave a rake around to break it up.
For clarity, nobody’s really scared of me waving a plastic leaf rake around or even me tapping them on the back with it, but it does usually distract Angel enough for whoever she’s keeping out to sprint past her while she’s looking at me. She’ll fight like crazy to keep someone from coming through the barn door, but once they’re inside she usually doesn’t care or try to chase them back out, for reasons known only to Angel.
I’m ok with the two of them fighting, it looks intense but I’ve never seen either of them get injured from it, and and I’d rather her pick on Clover who gives as good as he gets than Liam, who’s getting too arthritic and wobbly to deal with her trying to chase him.
Over in the yard closest to the house, Blue is repeatedly engaging lately in a much less energetic chase with a toad that lives in our landscaping. He’s just curious and I think he wants to play, but the toad sadly doesn’t want to be friends.
“Hi! Hi! You wanna play with me? Where are you going?“
Despite the toad snubbing him, he gets plenty of exercise playing with us. His favorite game is for us to throw a toy, which he completely ignores in favor of running in big circles at top speed, then he stops and waits for us to throw the toy again so he can not grab it and run in more big circles. Whatever burns off all that energy is a Splendid Game, I suppose.
The other losing battle on the farm is the fence. It’s twenty years old and not in great shape.
The fencepost the upper gate latches to is rotted through at the bottom and pretty much only being held up by the gate latch and a t-post reinforcing it from behind. (It is actually rotted, though it’s a funny mental image to picture Angel cracking it off at the base with her head like a black belt breaking a stack of boards with their hands. She’s still intermittently trying to knock down the utility pole by the barn.)
The new fenceposts and wire to replace the fence around the yard perimeter have been delivered, and hopefully they’ll be able to get started on it soon. It will mean both the dogs and sheep will be temporarily restricted to smaller areas while the old fence is torn out and the new fence isn’t up yet, but it should look a lot better and be more secure when it’s replaced.
The last thing we need is for any of these hooligans to get out and decide to take the show on the road!
Even though he was the most sedentary of our collies, Echo continued to run energetically in his sleep long after arthritis and spinal degeneration made it increasingly difficult for him to walk while awake. During the last year he sometimes looked around like he was confused when he woke up afterwards, and I wondered if he simply didn’t understand why moving was suddenly hard and painful again when he thought he’d just been running, or whether he dreamed he was playing with Watcher again and didn’t know where Watcher had gone when he woke up. Possibly it was both.
I don’t think he would have lasted as long as he did without Blue to keep him company and encourage him to keep trying, but I know he must have missed Watcher since they were never apart for the majority of their lives. I hope the heaven where all good dogs go looks like this today.
Yesterday was supposedly the last swelteringly hot day for a while. I hope so, I like summer but the humidity has been brutal.
The sheep have decided watermelon is good, actually. Especially Duke, Duke now comes running when he sees me coming with a rind in my hands.
“My watermelon. Mine. All this watermelon is only mine.”
Maybe he’s the only one really enthusiastic about watermelon because he’s the only one who gets any of it.
“Can I have some?”
“No. Only mine.”
Danny did something to his right ear, I’m not sure what, but it’s all crumpled now. I thought it was maybe an abscess, but there’s no lump or swelling, the cartilage is just kind of crumpled and rigid like scar tissue. My guess is somebody just punched him wrong while head-butting and crushed it.
“Dad won’t share even though I have a bad ear and everything!”
Blue was very sulky because he had too much energy, but it was too hot through most of the day to run as much as he wants to.
“Too. Hot. For zoomies. Have collapsed.”
He kept stretching that front paw out to me, so I grabbed it. Apparently he was not wanting to shake hands.
“Noooo, my toes! My toes are being crushed!”
To his surprise and mild indignation, no one came from the house to investigate this obvious injustice.
“Well? Isn’t anyone going to come do something about this?”
He’s a little bit dramatic, even by my standards. His “baby of the family” vibes are unparalleled.
“What’s that crybaby puppy crying about NOW?”
Laying on the porch with a fan and a nice cool drink within reach is more Echo’s speed.
Today is about twenty degrees cooler, so Blue was able to run off his energy much better.
“Can’t catch meee!”
I’m hoping the cooler weather sticks around for a while.
I took the sheep out a watermelon rind the other day, thinking it would be nice and cool and juicy for them in this hot weather. Only Lady and Holly could be bothered to come check it out, and they weren’t very impressed.
“Um, excuse me, but we only like CRUNCHY treats and this treat is all soggy and not crunchy at all! Someone tell the waiter this is not what we ordered!”
I moved it over where the rest of the flock was hanging out, but out of that group only Duke and Clover were interested.
“I guess this is ok… would be better if it was crunchy though…”
Duchess and Daisy might have been interested, but they either thought they were stuck or they thought they were being very SneakySpySheep and hiding from me behind a wire fence with an open gate, I’m not sure which.
“This fence is such a strong barrier, no way around it!”
I started wondering if these picky eaters were in fact the same sheep that often sprint across the hot, shadeless yard in order to crowd around the Mud Eating Spot and eat mud, so I left the gate to the yard open on my way back.
“Me first! Me first!”
Yep, those are the same sheep all right. I don’t understand the appeal, but that hole has gotten so deep that some of the smaller sheep can hide their whole head and shoulders in it like cartoon ostriches.
“This is more like it!”
The Shetlands have a more practical view of sprinting across the yard to eat mud in the sun, and stayed back closer to the shade tree by the gate.
Lady saw me hanging around watching them and decided to remind me that crunchy treats are still the best, and that she, the flock matriarch, should always get the best treats.
“Are you SURE you don’t have any crunchies for me?”
They must have gone back to the watermelon eventually, because when I went to put them up for the night it had been pretty thoroughly eaten.
I guess they decided watermelon is ok, if there’s no mud or Chex cereal to be had. I personally would prefer the watermelon on a hot summer day, but then I’m just the ShepherdPerson and not a clever Soay sheep, so what do I know about the relative merits of treats?
Nobody’s very energetic when it’s this hot. I took Blue outside, hoping to burn off some of his energy, but even he said it was too hot for fetch, so I left him on the porch and walked down to check on the sheep.
“Hey, ShepherdPerson, turn down the thermostat out here!”
The Shetlands (and Shetland-adjacent sheep) were all together in the upper hoop house. We lost the last section of the lamb-cave tree they used to lay under earlier this year and no one’s happy about it. They all bolted up towards the barn when I got closer for fear I might be there to give someone a haircut or something evil like that.
“You got any crunchies?”
The boys all came out of their hoop house, but wanted to see solid evidence of treats before walking down to the fence in the sun. I had no treats, so they decided to ignore me.
Daisy, Duke, and Angel were clearly trapped in the big field’s hoop house and unable to come beg for crunchies. Very sad, their pawing at the back wall and trying to stick their faces through. Too bad they forgot the whole front of the shelter is open. Or maybe they knew they could walk out the front at any time and just didn’t want to leave the shade. Or they thought I would think they were trapped and give them treats. With Soays, who knows what they’re thinking? I know Mira has pretended to be stuck in a fence to get my attention before.
“You went out there without me??”
Local dog who didn’t want to leave the shady porch unjustly denied access to big sunny yard, says local dog.
“Echo’s got the right idea!”
Much better all around to stay in the nice cool house and take a nap.
Shepherd Life 
