It was a very busy and productive weekend. On Saturday I helped Wally worm, trim hooves and retag all the ewes with lambs. It got a bit rough. Some of the ewes wanted to fight. The St. Croix behaved, but one of the blackheaded Dorper ewes decided she was not going into that barn and was going to run down anything that tried to bring her in (including me). She gave Gel a bad time and he used his teeth on her, more than he’s ever done. When we got her in and up on the stand we had to doctor a few bite wounds. I don’t like my dogs to injure sheep, but when the ewe is running him down as she was, Gel was justified in using his teeth this time.
The rest of the weekend was spent preparing my garden, which included putting up a fence around it and then planting it. It is extremely therapeutic digging in the dirt. I also spent a good deal of time in the house organizing, throwing out things I haven’t used in years and beautifying my back porch. It looks so nice now, it’s a lovely porch, that I hardly ever use, but that is going to change. I hung chimes, planted some impatients in window boxes and cleaned out the crap that had accumulated back there. Then I went down to my sitting area and worked on cleaning out weeds and then hung my air chair that I’ve had for over a year now and never hung. I cooked, I scrubbed my kitchen floor and cabinets. I went for long walks with the dogs. It was a restful weekend.
It’s raining today which is a good thing. We need it. I took advantage of the forecast rain and planted some seeds this morning. I’ve got two more sets to plant tonight. Not only is my garden going to produce vegetables, but it’s going to be pretty to look at too. I planted Morning Glories, Fox Glove, Lupine, Sweet Pea and several other varieties of perennials. I also put in quite a few different flowering herbs. The project this weekend is the plot behind my house where I had a cat run built which I’ve since taken down. I plan to plant herbs and wildflowers there, if I can manage to work the soil up. It’s pretty hard right now.
The dogs seem to be enjoying the down time. I brought the sheep and cattle back to my property on Saturday. I finished setting my ElectroNet for them yesterday. They’ll be okay where they are for at least a week, if not more. As soon as the back field is cut, I am going to start working the sheep hard with Gel (to tire them out) and then putting Fern on them in the fenced-in area. She’s extremely keen to work and it’s time to start doing some training on her. Not sure where we’ll go from here as far as competition goes. I do want to focus more on agility for a while. My agility field is mowed and the equipment has been set up (did that this weekend). Did a bit of double box work with Gel. He remembers. It’s soon going to get too hot to do much training and I’m not going to push it in the heat. The summer is time to relax and take it easy. There’s plenty of time for training and trialing in the cooler months. I was incredibly glad not to be in Lawndale trialing this weekend.