Friday, February 17, 2012

Weekend with friends and chores

The long weekend continued early Sunday morning when the first student arrived. We worked dogs all morning with the students and it was a blast. I could see that some of them were ready to go to the next level. It rained off and on but overall it was a cool and cloudy day. I had my heated vest on and when one battery ran out, I switched it out for a freshly charged one. It made the day a lot nicer and having your core body temperature stay warm makes al the difference. My friend did the sorting of the lesson sheep with his dogs while Rainey pouted as she normally does that. After the lessons, we wormed the sheep and I marked a few that needed to sorted but we ran out of time as lunch was ready.

My mom and aunt came over and made me lunch. We had beef yakisoba, gyoza, shrimp tempura, green beans and beef, veggie shrimp spring rolls and lots more delightful side dishes. I barely managed to push myself away from the table and then decided to take a nap. The flurry of activities got to me and when I crash, I need to take a nap. Meanwhile a friend went and did the sorting for me and then after a 20 minute nap I woke up refreshed and we went to Josh’s place to help him worm his sheep.

I used Maid the gather the sheep and she was quite eager and brought them to me smartly. My friend wanted to use his dog as he needed some seasoning so he got to put them in the worming chute. Maid was miffed but she got over it and watched us from the van. Another friend was with us so we had a good tag team for worming. One person  stuffed the chute, one gave the worming subQ shots and Josh held the ewe. I reloaded the wormer and marked the sheep. It was very good work for the friend's dog, doing something he had never done before. He did it quite well. I take it for granted when I do this type of work with my dogs all the time but a lot of folks do not have access to so many sheep or chore situations.

We got done and the dogs had it figured out by the end and it all went smoothly. Then weI did outruns with our dogs. I changed the away whistle on Maid and she seems to have it down somewhat. She did blow through her downs a couple of times so I got on her then she was quite obedient. A couple of times a single ewe would try to hide in the pack of llamas but Maid would solo the ewe out and march her to the flock. I was quite pleased on how she figured it all out. She will not back down and has a clean face grip. Tremendous work ethic and a huge desire to please. By the end we were really harmonious and her eyes would gaze upon mine and I would see a blink of approval. As the evening began to fall, we walked up to the van and we felt like we were really coming together as a team.

It was a fun filled weekend and a good way enjoy my last few hours of freedom before I would get up at 5:00 a.m. to go to the hospital for my heart procedure. I enjoyed my self and As the night came to a close, I was thankful for family, friends and good dogs. Life doesn’t have to have expensive items and sometimes the simple items bring you the greatest pleasure. Seeing the partnership that I got with Maid was one of the greatest pleasure that I had that weekend. Our journey is beginning and for her only being here three months, it has been a wonderful journey. Additionally, it is good to have such good friends who helped me out by taking some of my dogs for a week, by helping me do chores…..just being there. The dogs got great pleasure by doing chores that made sense and all of the training we had put on them, made them realize there was a means to those long hours of commands.

1 comment:

An English Shepherd said...

Glad you had a nice time. good luck with the operation :-)