Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Making hay, crown of thorns, pup

Weather looking good for hay; doing my 2nd cutting today.  Takes me about 7 hours of tractor time to cut the hay, about 3 hours per pass for tedding.  

Found some fence wire where it shouldn't be; not sure how it got there, but the mower found it, and made what looks like a crown of thorns
the wire

the part of the mower it wrapped around
the pup, enjoying the farm dog life
When I get a new pup I try to spend as much time as I can with it in the first six months.  For me, that's most of my waking moments.  So this pup got to ride in the cab of the tractor, and then swim in the river when I soaked my shirt, and the back into the cab.  I've never owned a border collie before, so it's interesting to see the differences between this pup and the airedale pup that I'm raising it with.
It's a pretty intelligent dog, and "soft" - tone of voice is pretty effective for correction.  Very different than an airedale, where you sometimes have to physically intervene to get them to stop doing something - like killing a littermate, or dragging the cat off with puppy enthusiasm.

3 comments:

grasspunk said...

gorgeous dog, really happy you got it back.

Chris B said...

Terriers tend to be driven by enthusiasm for their current project (good or bad) without much regard for your opinion on the operation. Border collies are tuned in to your emotions moment by moment so you have to be gentle in training. Plus they will remember every mistake you make in training and call you on it if you are inconsistent.
Also my dogs would love to spend an afternoon lounging in your stinky stock trailer.

Bruce King said...

I'm glad its back, too Grasspunk

Chris: you've clearly had terriers before because you're spot-on. The border collie is certainly a different personality than the terrier; raising a pair of pups, one of each, side by side is pretty interesting. They approach things completely differently.