Last week was a roller coaster, we are still reeling from it.
You see we were pointed in the direction of a homeless livestock guardian dog. We’ve known we needed one since our beloved family dog lost her life last fall.
Luckily we’ve only had one farm predator issue since losing our farm guard dog, Dixie. You might remember my post about the mink killing my birds just before Easter.
We still have our herding dog that we are trying to train (she might be pregnant!) but we know she’ll never be a dog we can trust with our baby poultry… and she’s not a guard dog.
Anyway, over the weekend we just became more farm legit! We picked up Winnie, a 4 year old Great Pyrenees from a shelter. We knew she could have past life issues that could make her unsuitable for our farm setting but the shelter offered to let us foster her while we test the waters and after four days I’m pretty confident she’s a keeper (so is Adalyn!).
She’s huge but so gentle and submissive. She’s not shown any aggression to any of our family farm residents and she’s been introduced to everyone, cats, ducklings, ruminates, chickens, kids, herding dog, the neighbor’s Great Pyrenees…
Also, we put up an electric fence to attempt containing our barnyard creatures. The grass is always greener on the other side of the road, according to our goats, and we’d really like to avoid having one hit by a car…
Speaking of running over ruminates- I ran over a lamb last week! It was horrible but lucky. Little Sam the lamb was asleep under the back of our Prius Friday afternoon as we piled in the car to get to the girls first softball practice. My rear view mirror and backup camera were clear so I backed up… Heard this knocking sound under the car. Immediately stopped to investigate and found my lamb underneath the center of the car, pinned, bloody nosed and freaking out.
OMG I ran over my lamb!!
I was having a heart attack, the kids in the car were very concerned and needy, the lamb was being squished by the car… but somehow I managed to successfully drive the two front tires up on a couple split logs of wood, to raise the car up enough so that I could free Sam the lamb. Had to pull him out sideways by his fur.
While I freed Sam Everly was tasked with calling her dad home to help out…
“Dad, come home now a lamb has been run over!”
We had to leave for softball right away and someone needed to stay with Sam and assess the damage… Luckily Sam didn’t get run over with the tires of the car, just grated a bit beneath the middle of the car and the gravel drive. He knocked his nose hard in the freak out.
After he was freed he was up and walking fine, bloody nose stopped after applying some pressure and an hour later he was out munching grass with his lamb you girlfriend Holly.
Lambs sleeping under the car is another reason we ran our electric fencing… and I’ll always look under the car before getting in and driving. OMG!
