More About Rusty

It was a week ago that I wrote the blog post that started the story of Rusty’s life here and two weeks since he died. Here are more photos of him the way I like to remember him.

In that last post Ginny was just a baby. As she grew up she became obsessed with The Ball. Rusty never stooped to playing with a ball or toy but he sure liked to chase Ginny when she chased the ball. In fact that was the only thing that perked him up in those last couple of months.

Rusty knew that he had important roles to play when we had school field trips and our spring open house, Meet the Sheep. He had to keep track of the small animals that were not where they belonged (bunnies in this case,)

And a chicken here. I never had to worry about him grabbing one of these animals, but he thought it was very important to watch them.

Another bunny on the loose.

Rusty was always patient during our field trips.

He also paid attention when I warned him to “leave it”.

Rusty took on many roles here but the original idea was that I needed a Border Collie to help with sheep. He was my pathway into learning about sheep herding. He and I went to lessons at Herding 4 Ewe, just a mile from here. He wasn’t the one who needed the lessons but I needed to learn how to help him be successful and develop confidence and how to not get in his way. It certainly helps when starting a dog to use sheep that are already “dog broke”. It is also important to not try and start a dog using ewes with lambs, especially when those ewes have horns.

My sheep were a tough crowd for the dogs, and Ginny didn’t get as much early work as Rusty did, but that’s another story. I am trying to make that up to her now and weaned a group of lambs so that she and I have a group to work with. (That’s also another story and maybe a blog post coming up.)

Rusty excelled at this very important job. That was to keep the rams away from me when I had to do something in their pen.

I could talk about how all work and no play isn’t good. But remember that for a Border Collie the Work is what they want to be doing. Sheep work (or watching bunnies or whatever) will always take priority over anything else. But if we weren’t going to do any sheep work, then going Across the Road was the next best thing for Rusty.

He always watched and chased after Ginny while she focused on the Ball.

I won’t say that Rusty especially liked water but he wasn’t shy about cooling off when he got the chance. And as his hips got more sore over the last several years I think he liked to walk in the parts of the canal where the water was just deep enough to support his body weight.

I think this is the look of a content dog.

Other important jobs included harassing ground squirrels. The chirping under an old wood pile kept the dogs focus for what seemed like hours.

If we weren’t Across the Road then any puddle would do to cool off.

This was taken in 2018. Maggie is now gone, but Finn and Sawyer still live right next door with my son and DIL. That’s Kirby in pink, the granddaughter from Texas.

The pack.

Have you ever seen a Border Collie smile? I never could get a good photo of it but Rusty had a great smile when he was pleased with himself.

Rusty knew that if I was cracking walnuts it was treat time for him. He heard me scooping them out of the bucket and would come choose one.

In the last year I encouraged Rusty to help herd the chickens. He got to use some of his herding skills but wasn’t at risk of being beat up by a ram. He complained about this in his later blog posts (here is one), but I don’t think he really minded.

Rusty really was The Best Dog Ever. We can’t replace him.

The Best Dog Ever - Rusty -2006 to 2021

It’s taken me several days to get to Rusty’s obituary post. The first few days it was too sad to deal with and after that I couldn’t find the photos that I was sure I had taken when he was much younger. There are big gaps but I found some of my favorites. And then I found enough later photos that I may fill two or three blog posts. I enjoy seeing these photos because they help me remember Rusty as he was most of his life with us instead of how he had become in the last several months.

Rusty is (was?) a red and white Border Collie. “The Best Dog Ever”—that’s what Dan would always say to Rusty when he came in the house with his lips pulled back in a smile—the only dog I have had that would do that. He was about six months old when he came to live here in the fall of 2006.

Rusty’s littermate, Jake, lived with a friend of mine about a mile away. I don’t think they remembered each other but we got together occasionally.

Rusty had less interest in other dogs and was more focused on an animal that might need to be herded or seemed out of place—like the cat he has his eyes on just outside of this photo. Those two photos are not dated properly so I don’t know how old Rusty was there.

I know that Rusty was only about a year old here. These are Toggenburg kids, offspring of my son’s goats.This was taken in 2007.

I never had to worry about Rusty with the kids or lambs.

I don’t remember what Rusty had done but he put up with Farm Club members giving him a bath (2010).

Rusty knew that the chicken belonged in the chicken house and not in the spinning circle, no matter how much Shelby was in control of the situation (2011).

He also knew that there were treats to be found in the wheelbarrow during lambing time. (2012)

Rusty had the kind of coat that caught everything—weeds, hay, grass. I had to keep his feet trimmed through the summer because the soft fuzzy hair was a foxtail trap.

Looking back through old blog posts I found this one (2013)of trying to get dogs (and sheep and the donkey) into the holdiay spirit. Rusty was never one who liked dress-up. I knew I took lots of photos back then, but I just can’t find them.

In 2013 I thought it would be a good idea to get another dog so Rusty would have a companion. I found Maggie in a foster care situation, but I don’t have photos of the earlier years. I was looking back through old blog posts and found this one with a photo of Maggie. That led me to thinking about Rusty’s blog. Did you know that Rusty wrote a blog from 2011 to July, 2019? It still lives out there on Wordpress and the photos I was looking for and can’t find on my computer are there. Rusty’s blog is called “Perspective of a Border Collie”. I should probably just let Rusty’s blog tell the rest of the story of his life—he was an amusing writer with a perspective of farm events that was different than mine.

I’d forgotten that he also tried his paw at photography. I found this photo in an old blog post of mine.

In 2014 Ginny came to be part of our lives.

To be continued…

Ginny in Pink

I was throwing the ball for Ginny a few days ago. She yelped and ran for the house, getting caught on a gate as she went around it. I still don’t know what happened to cause her to yelp—maybe she jumped and landed wrong—something made her run for the house. But it was when she got caught on the gate that she injured herself. I didn’t that she was injured until the next night because her long hair covered the wound.

That was two nights ago that I was petting Ginny and discovered an injury that I knew should have had stitches the day before.

This is a not-very-good photo of the gate that was the problem. The tips of those horizontal pieces stuck out and inch or so longer than they are now. Dan cut them off so they don’t extend beyond the pipe border now.

We took Ginny to the vet and left her for the day. When I picked her up she was wearing a cone.

The actual wound stops about half way down that shaved area and there was a flap of skin and tissue about 2” in diameter near the top.. The bottom part of the red part is drainage from the wound. The vet had to trim away the edges of the wound so that there was fresh tissue to heal together. Now it is stapled and Ginny has to wear the cone so she doesn’t lick the wound. She started to scratch it with her hind foot so I covered it with a t-shirt.

I cut about an inch off the outside edge of the cone because I didn’t think it needed to be quite so big. Now she can reach the floor and her food dish.

Ginny was a bit distraught last night—probably still from the effects of the drugs she had, but also not happy with the cone. Today she seems to have bounced right back. While we were working in the barn she was right there wanting someone to throw a ball.

No running or jumping for 10 days? That may be a problem.

Ginny Entertaining Herself

I took Ginny Across the Road a couple of days ago. I did not take the ball thrower thing but she knows how to entertain herself with the ball. She drops it over the edge of the canal into the water and then goes after it. There is a video here. I wasn’t thinking in terms of a blog post at the beginning of this little story so I didn’t take photos to explain this. The photo below shows what this canal (more of a a cement lined ditch) looks like at a different point in our walk.

Most of the time it is fine for Ginny to purposely put the ball in the canal because she gets it out herself but this time she put it in a part of the canal where the water is backed up be a dam and then flows through in a kind of waterfall. That is what is shown at the end of the video.

At that point there is a drop off of a four or five feet and the water flows quickly and swirls in continuous eddies. Ginny is too smart (or too timid) to go in after the ball at that location. That’s a good thing because I think it would be dangerous for her. However I couldn’t get to the ball either. This is the tail end of the “rapids” but doesn’t really catch the swirling action of the water. And the angle of the cement wall is such that I couldn’t keep my feet under me and try to reach. There is are wood planks over the ditch but they are too high from the water for me to reach. I was sitting or kneeling here at the edge of the ditch to try and get to the ball but couldn’t reach it. Ginny doesn’t understand why I don’t just get it for her.

I found a stick and could reach the ball some of the time when it appeared but the water was swirling too much to be able to make any progress getting the ball closer to me with the stick. I found a forked stick thinking I would maybe have better luck. That still didn’t help. I needed a net. I had a leash with me.

I made enough of a net with the leash that I was finally able to drag the ball close enough to the edge where I could get it.

Then we continued our walk. I was proud of my newly made tool.

Here is the next obstacle. There isn’t a steep drop off here but there is a culvert where the two roads connect. Notice where Ginny is.

She dropped her ball there and it didn’t take long for it to disappear into the culvert.

You’d think it would be a simple enough thing to get it at the other end.

We waited. ..

…and tried the other end again. I dropped a few sticks in to see when they would come out. The sticks and the ball never appeared. That’s the second ball we’ve lost to this part of the canal. I don’t know if there is a whole cache of balls there but they are stuck in there somehow, along with the sticks that I dropped..

We continued the walk.

I found this a ways down the road. They had just disked the filed and I wonder if this turned up and someone threw it out of the field onto the road. Between my dogs and C&M’s dogs we have lost plenty of balls out in those fields.

This ball has seen better days.

This was the next place that Ginny rolled the ball over the edge. This time it didn’t go very far—just to the rocks a few feet down.

Ginny took the newly found ball down into the big canal where she got a drink of water and the ball didn’t make it back. I think that one probably sank.

Most of you have seen this view before. That’s our barn on the right and the house is hidden by the trees. What is remarkable about this photo is the view of the hills. and the blue sky—such a refreshing change after what seemed like months of smoke-filled skies that completely hid those hills.