This morning I was out walking with Fern just as it was getting light. There was a light frost on the grass so with the low light, most of the landscape was light grey in color. Some of the bushes out in the field were darker in color and to the eye of a puppy (and even my eye) they could have been evil gremlins lying in wait for tasty puppies to walk by.
I watched Fern as she kept an eye on the possible gremlins. I know some puppies would have reacted by charging out into the field barking with hackles raised. Not Fern. She was alert, but she didn’t react. Should something have moved out in the field, it might have been different.
So far she hasn’t shown any interest in the sheep and in fact, if they come near her, she retreats to a safe distance away. I am not concerned about that. In my opinion, little puppies should have enough sensibility to know that compared to a sheep, they are very small creatures who could easily be injured if they get too close.
My ducks used to come up from the pond every night and go back down in the morning after I let them out of their pen. All of a sudden, they stopped coming up. I believe they went wild. This weekend I plan to go to the local flea market and hope to purchase a couple of female ducks to put in the duck pen. The strange quacking of the new ducks will hopefully lure my ducks out of the pond so I can corral them and keep them up. I hate to take them away from the pond, but if they continue to stay out at night, I am going to loose them to predators. Once the ducks are up and I clip their wings so they can’t fly, I play to bring Fern in to see if she’ll show any interest in working them. They are more her size.