For The Love Of Dog: Still learning how to bend

It seemed like a really good idea to pasture all the animals together. It was easier to feed and water and monitor. It seemed like less of a good idea when Molly died. It seemed like a damn terrible idea when it came to separate.

For the last two days Dylan and I have been working on getting the sheep into pens in preparation for shearing and lambing. We only have four sheep.

Day 1: We got Calpernia and Scout in with relative ease. Then we tried to catch Polly. Molly and Polly were not quite as tame as Calps and Scout (which is saying a lot). Calpernia was a good mom so she didn’t let the lambs too close to me and if I got too close to them, she was sure to let me know with a horn or two. So Polly ran from us.

She’s a smart little lamb, she runs alongside the yaks or cows knowing that we won’t dive on her if we’re likely to take a yak hoof or horn to the bod. The oats didn’t work to lure her either, it only lured the Highlands and the yaks. Polly hid under/between them. We ran around the pasture like maniacs for a while trying to catch her. We did not. We set up a kind of run from the gate of the barn to the lambing pens, hoping to chase her in. She did not fall for our trickery, Bridget did. I didn’t anticipate that. The run was not big enough for a cow, nor for a cow and a person at the same time. She finally wandered back out and the chase was on again. Then I slipped and fell directly into a puddle of melted snow and yak/sheep/cow poop.

The old me probably would have cried a lot and screamed. New me however just screamed and said the F word a few times. Much improved. We did a couple more chases before finally giving up.

Day 2. I decide I’m going to shovel out the gate to the second pasture and try to separate sheep from yaks and cows. Cool, there’s only about six feet of frozen snow on both sides of the gate. Dylan told me that it wouldn’t work, but I felt like we had to at least attempt a different technique than the day before. It didn’t work. I couldn’t get the gate open after an hour of shovelling and turning my arms to painful jello. I am not farm strong.

We go back to running through the pasture. This time we focus on separating her from the herd and getting her into the deep snow to slow her down. That also slows us down. We have a number of unsuccessful attempts. One of which breaks one of my witch nails and finds me doing a belly flop into the poop puddle. Finally, we’ve got her and Walske seperated and in the deep snow. Turns out Dylan has learned the art of fully committing. That man of mine took three giant leaping steps, in his socks, (the boots were lost in the first step) and dived down onto Polly. Success!!!!! We got her in a pen. Now for Walske.

We got Walske cornered and seperated, he’s a bit more difficult to chase because he puts his three foot vertical horns down and chases back. No diving onto that. We chased him, once again I slipped and fell into the poop puddle. More swears. I am prepared though, I have dressed in layers to be removed as they get wet and smelly. Brilliance. We carried on. Poor Walske’s big horns are both his best asset and biggest downfall. They are large targets for us to grab. Dylan was finally able to get hold of his horns and the two of steered/forced him into a pen. He’s not a big fan of the pens, the girls don’t seem to mind, but he never gives those accommodations a good review.

We spent three hours chasing sheep. Which was less than the previous day, but more time than I want to spend in poop and hip deep snow.

Once they were all fed and watered I went to the house. I had to scrape the manure from my engagement ring. My life is one glamorous event after another.