June 25, 2009: One Way to Meet the Neighbours
Another week, another adventure. This week we met almost all of the neighbours we have not previously met. This was by way of some escapee sheep. Our main group of training sheep took a runner out the front gate this week and onto the road. No, we do not live on a main road so we had no casualties. Of the 10 sheep, 3 did not take to freedom and decided grass was greener at home so they kindly made their way back OK. One visited the bungalow next door and was rescued from the front lawn before any prize perennials were trampled or eaten. Five decided to make an unscheduled visit to the farm just up from the bungalow - a place they know well, as this is where we took them for shearing. These five were quite cooperative and came home quite nicely. But one ewe, and there's always one in the bunch, decided she liked freedom. She particularly liked the neighbouring farm on the other side of us, more so because they had just cut her a field of fresh, nice smelling hay. Actually, we should say, they were just turning the hay in this field so all activity stopped thanks to this one ewe.

It took us a while to figure out where this ewe had gone. But, two tractors stopped in the middle of turning hay was our first clue. Yikes. This was one of the busiest days of the year for silage and haying so two stopped tractors was a major inconvenience to the neighbours but they were quite good spirited. Phew! Jamie was quickly fetched to see if he could get this ewe home. It was going to be quite difficult as this ewe was not happy about being out there on her own, and especially not happy to see 4 people and a dog trying to take her away from her new found feast. After some quiet work, Jamie was bringing her home nicely and then all of a sudden, she changed her mind and decided "no way." We tried everything from flinging ourselves at the ewe to catch her, Kelvin even landing in a hedge full of nettles, to cornering her but each time she evaded capture. We decided to stop, go home and let the ewe calm down before trying again. Just as we made this decision, the ewe jumped a ditch, and ran uphill to join a herd of cows. Just our luck.

A couple of hours later we had hatched a plan to trailer 4-5 of her training buddies over to the top of the hill, where we could see this ewe taunting us! She was in amongst the cows so this was not going to be easy. The cows were quite stroppy. We could see them harassing the ewe - or perhaps they were all playing tag or some other game with her.

Meg very aptly put the sheep in the trailer and off we went. At the very last second we had a change of plan. We decided that Kelvin would go to the top of the hill from the road and with Tina, try to push the ewe down the hill a bit without us having to unleash the sheep in the trailer. Angie went to the bottom of the hill with Meg and Jamie. We were going to try again from the bottom of the hill to get this sheep down, hopefully without the cows. Now this all sounds quite easy. The one BIG problem for us was that there was a line of huge trees halfway up the field - about 250 yards away - and the sheep and cows were above the tree line. The field was also about 1200 yards wide with 700 yards of that being off to the right but a difficult left hand side made a right hand outrun the only option. Gulp. In addition, Kelvin could not see Angie from the top, and Angie could not see Kelvin or the sheep and cows from the bottom. All we could do was hope - and pray that the neighbours weren't watching.

Of course we had no radio communication between us, and even the loudest of shouts could not be heard. The only thing we could hear was each other's whistles. Tina was sent in amongst the cows to try to push the ewe down. Thankfully the cows are used to dogs, but whilst they are used to dogs, they did try to run Tina away (or were they playing?). Tina paid absolutely no attention to the cows. She managed to get the ewe started down the hill. Angie sent Meg and Jamie up the hill and hoped. Both were being navigated blind to the sheep, and Angie was not a good navigator as she had no idea where the ewe was above the treeline. On the first attempt, both Jamie and Meg came back empty handed. Since both of these dogs are on the same whistles, Angie decided to send only Meg on the second attempt. With a bit of direction, Meg got above the treeline and then all Angie could do was wait quietly - and hope. A few anxious minutes ticked by and no sight of Meg. Angie glanced off to the left and right to see if she was at either end of the field. No sight of her. All she could hear was Kelvin starting the truck and coming back down the road with the stock trailer. Another minute went by - well, at least it felt like that - nothing. Then all of a sudden, Angie caught sight of the ewe coming through the trees...Meg quietly in behind. The ewe was not happy and she was trying to zip off to the left and right but she wasn't messing with Meg. Quickly Angie tried opening the gate. It was tied tight with various pieces of string. Angie had to turn her back on Meg and as quickly as possible untie the knots to get the gate open. A few glances back reassured Angie that Meg was still coming, with the ewe doing a good rendition of the quick step. At last the gate opened and just as it did, the ewe decided she was definitely not going through it and she tried going over the top of Meg. Ha! No chance! Jamie was sent out to help as Angie didn't want the ewe in the ditch. Between the two of them, Meg and Jamie convinced this ewe that going through the gate and not into the ditch was the best option. As soon as she was through the gate, the dogs were told to lie down, the gate shut and fastened, and the ewe given time to rest.

By this time Kelvin had driven down the road and onto the neighbour's field above where Meg and Jamie were holding the ewe. He quickly got the other sheep out of the trailer and put Tina in behind to push the sheep down onto the hayfield in sight of the escapee. Meg and Jamie then started moving the ewe toward her buddies. Once she caught sight of this group, she was quite happy to rejoin them. We quietly walked them home from here - without incident!

That was our excitement for the week. We didn't hear any applause from our neighbours but had they been watching, you could not help but be impressed with Meg, Tina and Jamie. Angie learnt a few things this week about what Meg can do - things she did not know she could do, and has not trained her to do. What an impressive animal! Now if only Angie was as good at handling her...

Other than this wee adventure, it has been a quiet-ish week. Kelvin has made yet another bark-chip garden path by clearning an area that was full of weeds. This path is right beside the stream that runs through our garden so now we can see the stream. Between the bark-chip path and the grassy path is a new terraced garden where he has planted some of his pumpkins. With the polytunnel full of goodies, we are now transplanting some things outside. Our garden has burst into colour! We still have a lot of pruning to do but we have to wait until the right time of the year for some plants to give them a good cut back. We are in the process of making a new garden near the small fish pond right outside the house. Finding time to complete this has been challenging.

Yesterday we finally packed all of the rubbish/garbage that was left behind in the shed from the last owners and trailered that off to the landfill site. It took us hours to clean up this rubbish. There must have been thousands of rusty bolts, screws etc that had to be cleaned up, along with bicycles, rusty exercise equipment, and various other things that one shoves in a shed and forgets about. We still have the wooden things to burn but at least things are a bit cleaner now. In the garden we have found literally hundreds of the plastic plant pots. These have been tossed just about everywhere. It seems that when shrubs were planted, the pot that it came in was just tossed into the weeds. Now that we have cleared the weeds, we have discovered these pots. Some must have been there for years as they were degraded. Many we could use in the polytunnel but we still recycled a couple of hundred pots.

Oh, we have finally got our kennels installed. Well, we shoud say we have 10 of the planned 12 kennels installed. We have one kennel yet to install but we have to replace a post that currently supports the roof. The existing post is in the wrong position. The twelfth kennel is not to be. When we measured the shed, we measured at chest height. As we were installing the kennels, we quickly realized that at one end of the shed, the wall leans inwards. The bottom of the shed is a few inches shorter than where we measured. Argh. Unless we purchase a narrower door panel, we will have to stay with 5 kennels on one side and 6 on the other. At least we now have a space to store dog food and sawdust. The dogs are loving their new space!

Angie had a trip over to Kevin Evans' place this week to watch him train some young dogs. She took along Bee and Steffi for a wee go on his sheep. It is interesting to see how these young dogs go at a different place and on different sheep. They sometimes do things away from home that they don't do at home. But, it is good experience for them. We took some photos and videotape of some of Kevin's young dogs. My favourite is still his young dog, Roy, which we did not photograph. Roy is sharp! A dog to watch for the future. It was a hot, hot day! Kevin is always so gracious about showing his dogs and giving Angie tips on training and running dogs. There are few people as generous with their time and tips.

While Angie was at Kevin's, Kelvin removed a chunk of gorse near the training field that was blocking a ditch that drains water from one of our natural springs and into the stream that runs through our garden. With the ditch blocked, the water had been seeping into the sheds and not along the ditch and through a pipe to the stream. That has now been fixed.

Well, that's about all for this week. We've already been up the hill with the dogs this morning. The top part of the hill has some excellent training ground with some good variety of outruns, long drives and even a flatish part for shedding practice. Of course the views are superb and the walk up the hill good exercise. This morning Angie took Meg and Jamie (and Bailey), and Kelvin finished his run on the hill as well. He had been out running with Tina, Blade, Sioux and Bee. Each dog then had a short turn on the sheep before Roy was given the task of taking the sheep back to their main grazing field. Now we are off back up the hill to remove a tree that has fallen on the fence that borders our farm and the Brecha forest. This tree might just become our new post to support the roof in the kennels. We hope, anyway.

Before we forget, we did go trialling last weekend. Jamie did the best of our lot. He was having a cracking good run until Angie made a complete mess of the drive gate. All Angie's fault. Meg did not outrun well, which is unusual for her. A wake up call to start training this again! But, there were things about her run which were very good. Tina and Blade did not outrun well either. All three of these dogs were retired. Hopefully we'll have better luck this week...that's if we can get our act together on the handling side of things!