Dolly and Lulu

We lost two sheep last night. Lisa noticed that Larry T wasn’t moving around and she could only see two of the girls. She went down to look and found Dolly and Lulu dead in the creek. They had been attacked by an animal. Larry T and Lucinda are both injured too. We couldn’t get our hands on Larry but we got Lucinda cleaned up and gave her a shot of antibiotics. Larry’s back leg is hurt pretty bad, we’re going to try and figure out a way to catch him so the vet can have a look.

We also got our new horse port delivered today. They showed up at 6:30 and were finished by 8:00 am.

Larry Playing

Larry bounces around like a puppy when he sees his corn coming. A 400lb puppy.

The Last Day…

I had to work most of the day today. I was on-call and they called me at about 6:00am (after keeping me up until after 2:00am) and I got finished with the case at around 2:00 PM. I went down and took the Larry’s their last meal and marked them (with an “L” of course). We are taking them to the slaughter house in Frenchburg tomorrow. We’ll miss them, but I’m sure they’ll be delicious. I got the last of the sand out of the truck too. Hopefully it will cut down on the mud some this winter.

The big horses noticed me up by the new fence shoveling sand.

Lisa worked on painting the fences.

 

Andy came over to change his oil and have lunch. He tilled the garden while he was here, adding lots of compost.

 

The Larrys didn’t notice when I marked their backs.

Larry looked like he was guarding the hay pile.

Sheltie Fun Day

Today was the Sheltie club fun match. We went and took all the girls. There was a conformation match and practice courses for agility and rally, and duck herding!! Piper had fun with the ducks. The other girls didn't care much for it.

Lisa and Heather by the agility course.

Piper on the jumps. Paige was ranging as usual.

This puppy was so cute herding the ducks. She actually did quite well. Herding sort of comes natural to a lot of Shelties.

There were a lot of Shelties there. Nobody has just one Sheltie.

Another view of the agility course. It was in the backyard of one of the members of the club. They are serious Sheltie people and have had dogs from their kennel show at Westminster.

Satin on the jump.

Satin wasn't sure about the teeter.

Shelties inside the building.

Piper herding the ducks.

This one was not staying with the group. Piper got it in line.

Paris on the weave poles.

I liked their sign.

Moving Rock Dust

Since the truck wouldn't make it up the hill with all that rock on it I had to use the four wheeler and dump cart to move it up to the barn. It works really well in there. We had used sand from Lowe's to put in the stall near the door that keeps getting wet. It works okay but it is $4 a bag and we used 10 bags. The rock dust was $23 for the whole truck load. We'll be using rock dust from now on.

The first three trips were uneventful.

The fourth trip I had put a few extra shovelfuls in there. I got stuck on the steep part of the hill and had to back down to the gully.

Lisa and Heather went to the races at Keeneland.

Lisa picked the 7 horse in the 9th at 9 to 1.

More leaves.

Rock Dust

We finished up the last project so we got started on the next one. We went to the quarry over on Donaldson Road and picked up a load of rock dust. We got 2.4 tons, it may have been a bit much for the 1/2 ton truck. I had to take off the trailer hitch because it was dragging. And the loader operator filled our tires with air. They didn't look low on air until we got the load on. We want to put it in the barn in the low spot by the roll door. Of course the barn is on top of the hill. We'll have to leave the truck down there and haul the rock with four wheeler and dump cart.

Big loader.

Emptiness.

Here it comes.

Rock dust is quite dusty. It isn't really dust. This place calls it Class A sand. It is geologically identical to the rock in our driveway, just a finer product.

Low rider. Cheech and Chong would be proud.

That's what 2.4 tons looks like.

Barnyard Project Complete

We finished up the fence on the downhill side of the barnyard and installed the gate. The slam post still has fresh concrete. Lisa will wait to move the horses around until after the big horses drink some of the water out of their tank. It has to be moved and is a little too heavy with 100 gallons in it.

The woolly worms are everywhere and woollier than usual. They say that is a sign of a bad winter coming. But what do those old wives know?

We still have to go down the hill by the chain link. It will be 24' on that side at first. We might go all the way to the corner eventually. I can still call the fence complete because the barrier is there and usable.

We went with five boards on this fence. We normally use the four board method and follow the terrain. This was a short run and we wanted to stay square with the house so we made it level. This caused too much of a gap at the end closest to the house, thus the fifth board at the bottom. We didn't want the tiny little horses to fall through the gap.