Dogs

This past year has been one of breaking rules and of reiterating how little I know guardian dogs.

Every day, twice a day, I head out for a walk with the Kelpies. Six of them zipping here and there. Cajun, now the eldest dog on the place, doing his usual stint of barking as we pass through the yard. These days two big white dogs also join us, one a guardian dog drop out and one a guardian dog juvenile delinquent under restricted duty. They too are full of energy as walks have become a regular thing for them.

As we leave the yard proper and head down the grid road, our sole walking path at this point in the winter, a third white dog blows in from the rear. Birdie, popping out from around back to join us. The first couple times she did so I sent her back to her flock but I didn’t keep it up. It’s late winter, the work load for the guardian dogs is pretty light right now.

So we look like quite the sight me and my pack of herding dogs and guardian dogs, heading for a walk in the still full winter, prairie landscape. This breaks all the rules I established for guardian dogs when I started out in this sheepish venture. I’m not sure if it speaks to our growth and willingness to bend or something of the opposite – a caving in of sorts, a realization that rules are not nature’s way anyway. And just when you think you know something another dog comes along to show you differently.

I have to say I love walking with the big dogs; their way of silently padding along beside me, easily keeping pace. Then moving off to the ditches to investigate and play and mark territory. Then back up beside me for a few paces again. Their energy is big and yet so different from the Kelpies. It brings up a strong desire for a large sight hound type dog again. A type of dog I foresee having if ever there are less sheep (and less other dogs) here one day.

I’m pretty comfortable being in my prairie space, but there are occasions when I feel that spine tingling, heightened awareness of being a solo individual in a very vast space. This is a photo from such a moment.

I was kneeling on a hilltop, taking photos of the ewes who just a moment prior to this photo were thick in those trees and venturing across the interior space of the abandoned yard – a space they have not been into before. It’s lightly foggy and any sound of sheep milling about is muffled. The ewes on the closest edge were knee deep in tall, golden coloured grasses and I loved the look of them against the naked trees in the soft air. I used one of these photos in the last post.

one photo, another, and another, one more, but then the ewes are on alert and filing out of the trees with quick purpose, the animals at the rear running to not be left behind as their mates pour out of there and move into the open space of the pasture.

None of the guardian dogs alert but Oakley rises and walks toward to investigate. It is very quiet and spine tingling still. I have a moment of tug-o-war; stay with the stillness, take the photo, or rise, call the dog, take the ewes lead and leave.