If you’re a regular blog reader then you probably know the dogs who live here. Rusty and Ginny are the Border Collies and Rusty wrote his own blog for several years until he got too tired to do it. This post is about Maggie, who came here in 2013 and died today. Rusty was the only dog here in 2013, and I thought he could use a companion. I searched the rescue and foster sites until I found Maggie who seemed like a suitable companion. She was about his size and, although timid, did not have any aggressive tendencies—important since so many people come out here to visit the farm. The only thing I knew about her was that she had been rescued from a hoarder (almost 200 dogs) and had lived at this foster home for at least a year. She was extremely shy and timid but eventually overcame most of that.

Maggie had lived here a couple of years when I got Ginny as a puppy. Here is a blog post with photos of Maggie babysitting Ginny when she was a puppy.

It turned out that Maggie wasn’t as suitable for a farm dog as I would have liked. She was completely overstimulated by activity with sheep and she barked frantically at them when we worked with the sheep. That made it difficult to teach Ginny appropriate sheepherding manners. To this day I think that Ginny’s habit of barking at sheep who defy her authority when she is trying to herd them came from Maggie. Nevertheless I tried to give Maggie a decent life here. She liked it best when we all took trips Across the Road.

I’d take all three dogs Across the Road on leashes.

Once there I’d let them off the leashes. Ginny mostly wants to chase the ball and Rusty wants to chase Ginny. Maggie was usually off on her own just doing dog things.

Maggie didn’t see any point in playing with a ball or chasing a stick.

She wasn’t thrilled about swimming either but would use the canal to cool off on particularly hot days.

She would have been a good dog for someone who wanted a running companion but she got me instead. We used to go Across the Road several times a week, a mental health time for all the dogs.

None of the dogs are big fans of car rides even though we did get up to the mountains for occasional hikes.

But sometimes a car ride meant a trip to the vet.

They were never happy about that.

There was the time that sheep panels leaning on a haystack fell over on Maggie and broke her foot. She needed a vet visit that day but fortunately the wound healed well.

Overall Maggie did OK here. She put up with the people who came for field trips or on shearing day. She didn’t mind being out in the barn with us as long as people mostly ignored her. She presented a good lesson for kids on field trips because I could use her to teach them to think about what a dog was telling them with her behavior and body language.

The dogs always have been able to sleep in the house at night but during the winter Maggie didn’t mind sharing the dog house to keep dry during the day.

She was OK with other dogs, mostly leaving them alone. Finn and Sawyer are my son and DIL’s dogs and live next door. This is how dogs celebrate a birthday when they have wait their turns for the puppy cake.

One of Maggies’ traits was her obsession with small animals. Ground squirrels chirping in a woodpile set all the dogs off

Maggie’s method of attack though was to chew her way through, whether it was a pile of wood or the wall of the chicken house. I’m surprised that she never had teeth problems.

Speaking of chickens, I always had to be careful if I had let the chickens out for the day that I didn’t let Maggie our on her own near the barn. She occasionally ended up with a chicken in her mouth—usually I got to the scene before the chicken was killed but I could never trust her with the chickens. During “baby bird season”—the time when baby birds seem to fall out of the nests in the barn almost daily—I’d see Maggie trotting by with legs sticking out of her mouth. I guess I couldn’t blame her for that one. We called her the Dingo—listed as an opportunistic predator on a sign seen at a zoo in Australia. This is a blog post that Rusty wrote about a chicken escapade that had a happy ending.

We were never sure how old Maggie was. If she was 3 or 4 when I got her then she was 10 or 11 this year. That’s not that old for a dog but over the last few months she had started to look old. Her coat was rough, her hearing was poor, and her hips were getting weak. She just didn’t look good and over the last couple of weeks I thought that she didn’t seem as aware of her surroundings or activity as she used to and didn’t seem especially happy. This week we noticed that her belly looked fluid filled, her throat seemed swollen, and she wasn’t eating well. The vet I’ve known and respected for years once said in a discussion about euthanasia that “it’s better to be a week too early than a day too late”. This vet has shrunk her practice and works mostly with large animals now so I’ve been taking the dogs to another clinic. But when I called that clinic with my request for euthanasia I was told that there would need to be a consultation and they might determine that the dog wasn’t ready and they wouldn’t do it. I respect their rule and there have certainly been times when I’ve wanted to extend an animal’s life for a positive outcome. But I also have worked with animals long enough to have a pretty good feeling about when the outlook is not so good. I am not saying that I could look at someone else’s dog or sheep or whatever and tell them what is wrong with it, but I think I have paid attention to my own animals to be able to read the signs and pretty much trust that I am making the right decision. Besides a dog here and there, I’ve made decisions to euthanize a goat, a donkey, a sheep, and a horse—these were never easy decisions, but I still believe that they were the right decisions at the time.

I knew that my previous vet would trust my decision and I called to see if she was available. She was in the area and able to help. I took Maggie to her barn office and Maggie didn’t even have to get out of the car. Like I said before, she seemed unaware of her surrroundings and not even stressed to have been put in the car. The doctor at a glance agreed with my assessment of Maggie’s condition. She said that the swelling I saw in her throat was likely cancer and this was definitely time.

Maggie is now buried at the edge of the pasture near a friend’s dog who we recently buried when his time had come and not too far from the pet goat.