Snow and airedales

I was walking the 9 acres that I purchased, and the dogs were having a great time.

This is my fifth generation of airedales. All of them, without exception, are thrilled by snow. It smells good, it is fun to run in, you can dig in it easily... what's not to love? That's monster with the snow on his nose. he's the dad.


Cat, the mom, is on the right. Her three pups are growing fast. They weigh about 30lbs now. they'll mature at 55lbs or so.

Airedales are a large, active breed. They like to run. They are terriers, and love to hunt. Rats, mice, shrews -- grizzly bears that time in Bella Coola... just about anything. My life with the airedales got easier when I trained them all to run on a treadmill. 6 miles of good running once a week, and they're good.

Woosh! they're by me, in search of something good to chase, or smell, or investigate, or pee on.

These three are littermates, but they're not identical. Tiny is the runt of the litter, and he's a little tentative, still. he's coming back to me. The other two are thinking about coming back, but they're torn between coming back, or continuing on to see what dad is digging up (in the distance on the top left of the photo)

having fully investigated, they return at a gallop

This is the greatest dog adventure EVER! THANK YOU MASTER!

Pregnancy watch

Tank is looking pretty darned big. her belly is so big it's almost dragging on the ground. She's a pretty tall sow, usually has 10-12" of ground clearance. I'm going to rub some bag balm on her tommorow. Walking around with her belly so low means that her udders get scraped by the grass and ground, and get red and tender.

You can see the grass hits her even when it's pretty short.

The pups are growing like weeds. They've discovered that sleeping in the hay is pretty darn warm and comfortable.

They weigh about 25lbs now, of an adult weight of about 60lbs, so we're halfway. They spend their day hunting fieldmice. Monster and Kat actually find the fieldmice and kill them. Monster eats them, but kat gives them to her pups who spend an hour or two tossing them around. They're interested in the live mice, just haven't figuried out the killing part yet.

Kat, their mom, is showing more promise as a herding dog. She helped me recover a chicken today that got out of the coops -- ran in front of it, cut it off, and then herded it right back to me. I'm going to look for a herding trainer around here.