Out Standing In Her Field

Iris, our Border Collie, is not a traditional herding dog. We don't know her background - she was around two years old when I picked her up from where she was huddled just off the highway near our farm. As I led her up to the barn to put her in one of the stalls overnight until the humane society (we'd hoped) could take her, she spotted our sheep and immediately got down into that classic Border Collie crouch. She knew she was supposed to do something with those sheep; she just wasn't sure what.

The humane society told us they already had four Border Collies in the shelter and asked, as we had a fenced yard, would we be able to foster her? That was almost six years ago. You can figure out the rest of the story.

She's still not really sure what she's supposed to do with the sheep. I know she has some ideas of what she'd like to do to the sheep sometimes, but we all have those thoughts on occasion ;-). Where Iris has been most effective is border patrol. While she can't run off the "intruders", she can definitely sound the alarm and call for backup. She is also a patient babysitter for our bottle lambs.



You can't hear it, but a neighbor's dog barks off to the left. Keebler looks over, Graham is busy and Iris is watchful. Thank you Iris. You are a good dog.





After dinner last night, I went out with the boys and watched them show off their hops and then played sheep bed. These pictures were taken with my cell phone (unfortunately), but even with low resolution I'm glad to have them. Won't be too long and the boys will be all grown up and wanting to drive tractors and hang out with the big kids and I'll be momma-who?

Maybe not. Ewen McTeagle would probably still take a nap with me. Now that he's forgiven me for getting the "new" babies.