Random Farm Photos

After that last heavy post I thought I’d share some photos from today. Darn, I forgot to take some during the weaving class I taught today. I’d better get some tomorrow.

I took this photo this morning after removing the ram marking harness from Barrett. I am pretty sure there are still ewes in his group who are not bred but I was having a hard time seeing any new marks. This started out as an orange marker but you can see that all the crayon part is gone.

Here is what a new blue marker looks like in that harness.

This is Barrett—Hillside Gabby’s Barrett, to give his full name. He was born in the spring of 2021 and came here from Michigan.

He has a very nice, soft fleece.

This was taken a few days ago after I replaced the worn out marker from Townes’ harness with a new blue one. Let’s hope for some rain to wash those marks off!

Change of scene here. After today’s weaving class I took Ginny on our regular walk Across the Road. We didn’t start out with a tennis ball, but she found one somewhere along the way and then did her usual trick of dropping it into the ditch where the water is too swirly for her to go in after it. That water is quite turbulent and the cement sides of the ditch are steep. I saw her lying on the bank looking intently at something in the water. It was a tennis ball that was trapped in the eddies of the water.

I fashioned a net as I have done before by weaving her leash onto a forked stick. Even with this advanced tool it took me about 20 minutes to get that ball out of the water. I was kneeling on the wooden planks with my toes hooked over the edge so I wouldn’t fall in.

Then we finished our walk.

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…