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Alfie’s new best friend
added by David on Thursday August 19, 2010 at 12:46 pmIf you have followed ‘Mist Sheepdog tales’ on Channel Five, you might well have spotted that Fern is far and away the grumpiest sheepdog on Borough Farm. She does what she pleases when she pleases and now that she’s almost eleven years old, she has decided that she wants to retire to the kitchen. However, Alfie has been living in the kitchen for the past month or so, and we’ve been a bit worried about the grumpiest dog on the farm joining him…… but perhaps we’ve been worrying unnecessarily.
Fern seems to have decided that she will take on the role of ‘Great Aunt’ and spends her time playing with the young pup, allowing him to pull her tail and bite her ears!
So we’re not quite sure at the moment if Fern has really turned over a new leaf, or whether she has just decided that the only way to achieve her ambition of retirement in the kitchen, is to pretend to be a great babysitter!
fly’s first outing
added by David on Thursday August 19, 2010 at 12:26 pmLast week it was time to wean the lambs away from the ewes on Morte Point, and with Fern nearly eleven years old, it was time to give Fly her first taste of gathering the sheep on the coastal ground.
I’m always a little worried when working a young dog amongst gorse and bracken and near the cliffs for the first time. Up until now Fly has been trained and worked in fenced fields, and would have no understanding of sheep grazing near the cliff edge. So I kept her close at hand for most of the time and didn’t let her go any where that I couldn’t see her. She did try to run through a patch of solid gorse and seemed surprised that she just bounced off! But for the most part she did pretty well, and I was particularly pleased that she was beginning to run wide through thick patches of scrub, in order to head off the sheep. It’s a long way to go before she’s up to the standard of Jake and Mist, but it was certainly another positive step on the path to becoming one of my top sheepdogs.
fly’s surprise
added by David on Sunday July 25, 2010 at 10:23 pmWe have lots of arrivals on Borough farm, mainly expected, some unexpected, like the lamb that was born on Morte Point this week (in the middle of July!) but when I opened the kennels one morning a few weeks ago I had a surprise to beat most…..
Fly failed to materialise so I poked my head inside the door to be greeted by the unexpected whimper of a single tiny black and white pup (the result of a brief dalliance with Jake when he’d been returned to the wrong kennel for ten minutes). I admit that I did groan a bit, as Fly having a puppy in the middle of the summer wasn’t really part of my plans. Fly wagged her tail and seemed unsure as to whether she was to be a working or stay-at-home mother. Jake wagged his tail, tried to look innocent and gave me that “wasn’t me” look that he usually saved for a when he’d been told off for barking.
My wife and children quickly arrived at the scene and whisked puppy ‘Alfie’ and his mother off to the post-natal ward in the kitchen. Leaving me to contemplate how long it would be before my youngest member of the team would return to work.
I needn’t have worried, by lunchtime Fly had decided that Alfie was in good human hands and wouldn’t miss her if she popped out to work for an hour…. such is the life of a working mother!!
Alfie
the old timers
added by David on Wednesday June 30, 2010 at 1:05 pmAs I always seem to write about the younger members of the sheepdog team, I thought it was about time that the old timers got a mention!
Gail is now over 11 years old and moved into the kitchen several years ago. She spends most of her time sleeping, and eating just about anything that she can find, but still can’t resist the opportunity to come and lend a hand at work. She often arrives half way through a job, sometimes even deciding to gather the sheep in a distant field. The problem is that she now runs at not much more than a walking pace, so for some of her more ambitious outings she needs her overnight bag! Ernie is over ten, and is still quite active despite his poorly front leg. He loves to come on every outing riding on the quod bike, and helps with the work as and when he pleases. His real forte is still helping with the training of the young dogs, and he will appear whenever I take one of the youngsters from the kennel, heading off to the field on front of us.
They have both been feeling the heat this summer, and with the ponds drying up in the recent dry spell, Gail in particular has been prone to taking a bath in the sludge at the bottom of the pond. This makes her most unpopular when she returns to roost under the kitchen table! I’ve provided a shallow water bath in the yard for the pair of them, which they both retire to after any brief attempt at work, it may not keep them completely clean but at least Gail doesn’t leave a trail of mud across the kitchen floor!
the joy of Roy!
added by David on Tuesday June 8, 2010 at 2:22 pmIt seems a long time ago that I last wrote about Roy, and I guess that the reason that I haven’t felt the need to update for so long, is that his progress has been so very slow!
He’s now over 2 years old and some but not all of his puppyish over enthusiasm has gone. He can now perform simple jobs of work, he’s good in the sheep pens and in the evenings he has his training sessions. He knows his left and right, his stop and go, so he’s a long way down the road to becoming a proper working sheepdog, but whether he will ever be up to the standard of the rest of the Borough Farm pack remains to be seen!
The end of an era
added by David on Tuesday June 8, 2010 at 2:09 pmIt was with the greatest of sadness that we said goodbye to Swift a few weeks ago. She was over 14 years old and had spent the last few years living in the farmhouse kitchen, where she loved to be fussed by us all.
Swift has been a very special dog for me, in her prime she featured in my first diversification project,’The Year of the Working Sheepdog’. Together with her working partner Greg, she represented England in the International sheepdog trials of 1999, and of course was a major part of the displays at Borough Farm. More recently she was the matriacal figure in Mist’s adventures on Channel Five.
For many years she accompanied me when giving evening talks on travels far and wide. She would sit on a chair studying the slides on the screen, before rounding up the pictures of sheep, or any other sheep substitute that she came across. On one occasion, with no pictures to focus on, she demonstrated her working abilities by rounding up a suit of armour to command.
But above all I’ll miss her fearless working abilities, utter devotion to duty and perfect character, qualities that live on in her grand-daughter Mist.
Swift 1996-2010
Fly
added by David on Friday April 30, 2010 at 11:54 amThis March Fly reached her second birthday, and it’s an age by which I usually hope that a sheepdog is ready to take on it’s responsibilities as a working member of the pack. So this spring Fly has been with me on the daily rounds, gathering and moving flocks and helping to catch the odd lamb. She’s not quite fully trained, she can still be a bit too keen to hold up a sheep, and sometimes forgets to stop when she’s told, but overall I’m pretty please that I can now call her a working dog rather than just a pup in training.
roy of the rovers
added by David on Monday October 19, 2009 at 11:20 amYou may have read about ‘Roy’, my recent recruit to the pack. He arrived at Borough farm back in January and although he show great potential, he’s certainly a challenge! Roy is never unhappy, even when he’s being told off for gross misbehaviour during a training session, he just wags his tail. To look at him you would think that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth
He gets frustrated when he’s not the one out and working, sometimes he just barks to show his frustration, but on one occasion during the summer he showed his dis-pleasure at being left behind by eating my crook! However, worse was to come….
A few weeks ago he was left in the truck while I was out training with Fly, I heard a crash and a bang coming from the direction of the Land rover, and looked around to see Roy looking out of the hole where one of the back windows should be. He’d ripped the rubber mounting from the window, the glass had dropped out and there he was with his head through the hole, wagging his tail!
fern’s unforgettable day
added by David on Friday September 18, 2009 at 11:25 amThis summer hasn’t exactly be memorable for the days of hot weather, but surprisingly there have been an awful lot of wasps around as Fern found out at our last Dunster castle display of the summer.
Each year we hold six sheepdog and falconry displays at Dunster Castle in Somerset. It’s a beautiful setting on the sheltered ‘lawns’ below the castle and audience numbers have been growing each year.
When we arrived for the last display, I sent Fern to gather in the 10 sheep that we use for the display, but on her way to gather the sheep Fern must have run through a wasp nest, for when she returned with the sheep she was plastered in wasps. I started trying to brush the wasps from her coat with my crook, but they were burrowing in to her fur in order to sting her. Within a matter of a couple of minutes Fern was unconcious, and I loaded her into the front of the Land rover and raced her off to find a vet. Fortunately Chris, from the National Trust knew of the nearest vet in Minehead, and he was able to take her straight there, while I carried on with the show using the other dogs.
The vets put her on a drip and gave her steroids and pain killers, and thankfully within a couple of hours she was on the mend. Although she spent that night in the vets, the following day I picked her up, and she was well enough to perform at the Borough Farm display the following evening!
So a big thank you to the staff at White Lodge Veterinary Clinic for saving the day! (even if Fern does still look a bit grumpy!)
mist’s puppies
added by David on Thursday July 2, 2009 at 11:29 amIf you watched the final episode of ‘Sheepdog tales’ last Sunday morning on Channel Five, you’ll know that Mist had a litter of puppies earlier this year. We had to keep them a secret so as not to spoil the surprise for the telly, but now that the episode has been broadcast we can let the cat out of the bag (or the puppies out of the kennel!)
The puppies were born on March 6th, there were 4 girls in the litter (we only showed 3 on the telly, just so as the naming of the pups didn’t last too long) they are absolutely tiny when they are first born
Although their Dad is Eddie (she was the only husband that Mist was interested in) one of them looks the exact image of their grandfather Jake. They spent the first few weeks of their lives in the laundry room. Mist was a good Mum, but like most working sheepdogs she was itching to get back to work after a week of being a Mother.
Pups grow very quickly and by the time they are eight weeks old they are no longer dependent on their mother at all. One by one they left to go to other farms to start training as sheepdogs. At such an early age there is no way of telling which will make the best sheepdog, so the first three farmers that bought them chose them on appearance, leaving just one behind……. the Jake look alike (who we were calling ‘baby Jake’ or ‘Jackie’!!)
For a couple of weeks she stayed around the house, and played in the yard, but at 14 weeks old my son Nick (11) decided to see if she was interested in sheep, and for the next three nights he took her to the training paddock on his own. He reported back that she was doing all the things that I’d most want to hear! On the fourth evening I thought that I’d better have a look for myself, and was amazed to see what she was able to do.
Since then she’s been allowed to work for a few minutes 2 or 3 times a week. However, she can no longer be left free around the yard as she heads straight for the training paddock and rounds up the sheep.
We’ve now given her a proper sheepdog name ‘Dart’ and I’ve been so pleased with her work that at the first display last night, she was allowed to take a small part, accompanied by her father, Eddie and of course with Nick on hand to help catch her.
