new homes for Fly’s pups

added by David on Sunday April 24, 2011 at 11:01 pm

It only seems a minute ago that I wrote about the arrival of Fly’s pups. It was in fact seven weeks ago, and  since then we’ve been busy with the lambing and the lambing open days. The weeks have gone by in a flash and the pups are now nine weeks old, more than old enough to move onto their new homes.

All seven were given names by my family so that we can identify them. Kate was the first to go at the beginning of  last week. She has gone to Tim, a local friend of mine. I’ve been helping Tim to train sheepdogs since he was 13. Now, 14 years later he’s rather good at it, and he visits with his dogs every week, so we’ll be seeing plenty of Kate. Fred is going to another friend Chris, a little further away. Chris had a puppy from me twelve years ago… Fern’s brother!!

Pup 3 Betty has gone to work on a farm on Exmoor, with nearly 1000 sheep, and pup 4, Buster will be going to another local sheep farmer, Richard (his wife Jo is our dogs vet, so he should be well looked after!)

That leaves 3 pups. Zola, Budd and Colin. I want to keep a couple at Borough Farm to start with, so that I have the best chance possible of keeping a really good worker. One of those to be kept will definitely be Zola, but there is much debate in our house as to whether Budd or Colin is to be the second. Budd looks a lot like his father ( a good thing I think) but Colin is the soppiest, cuddliest, sweetest looking pup of the litter. So the rest of the family have decided that he must be the one to keep!

I’ll let you know what has been decided in a couple of weeks!

here’s Zola and Budd

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welcome arrivals

added by David on Thursday March 10, 2011 at 10:56 pm

Last week saw a long awaited event, the arrival of Fly’s first ‘proper’ litter of pups. I say proper as, you might remember that last spring Fly produced a single pup Alfie much to our surprise.

But this time it was no surprise as I’d taken Fly away to be mated back in December. The father called ‘Laddie’ belongs to a friend of mine, Derek Scrimgeour. Laddie is Jakes full brother and was English National Sheepdog champion in 2008.

So we were all delighted at the arrival of four dogs and three bitches, all with beautiful black and white markings. Fly is being a great mum, although she is already deciding that she should return to work part time.  At present they are all keeping warm in the kitchen, where they get plenty of attention from the family. They’ve all been given names Bet, Zola, Jen, Gus, Bruiser, Bud and Colin (you’d have to ask my daughter where the name Colin came from!) They’ve all got a lifetime of work ahead of them on farms in North Devon, but for the moment, we can just enjoy the very special new arrivals.

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Alfie’s shoulder

added by David on Friday February 18, 2011 at 12:04 pm

It’s been over 2 weeks since I wrote about the problems of Alfie’s shoulder and although I don’t want to tempt fate, I thought that I could afford to write that we are all feeling cautiously optimistic. He’s now back in training and although I’m only taking him out to sheep a few times a week, he’s doing plenty of running on his daily walks and so far he’s not showing any sign of further lameness in his shoulder. He is however, showing all the  signs of being just as eccentric as his father, he has an obsession with the yard broom and yesterday he took the broom with him on his entire walk around the field. So even if he can’t round the sheep up, he should be able to sweep them up!

Fingers crossed that Alfie’s shoulder problems are behind us!

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an Alfie crisis

added by David on Thursday February 3, 2011 at 5:16 pm

Alfie is fast winning the heart of everyone at Borough Farm, he’s got loving eyes, a fantastic nature, he’s clever and obedient, and although he’s only eight months old he’s showing an amazing ability with the sheep. He seems to have a quiet authority and he picks up his commands in just a couple of lessons. All in all he’s a bit of a dream!

So imagine the panic when he seemed to be developing a chronic lameness in one of his front legs. Not the sort of lameness caused him to carry the leg altogether, just a tenderness that reappeared three or four times over the period of a fortnight.

My real reason for concern was a condition called Osteochondrits Disseans (OCD) It’s an inherited condition whereby a piece of cartilage protrudes into the joint socket. We’d had a pup with the condition several years ago, and despite an operation on each shoulder, he eventually had to go to a pet home, as the stresses of work would have proved too much for his joints.

So with some trepidation I took Alfie down to Argyle vets in Braunton, where Jo Dyer is usually pretty good at dealing with any sheep dog dramas.

An initial examination only confirmed a tenderness in one of his front shoulders, I had to book him in for an x-ray a couple of days later, and returned home.

Things were tense on the day of the x-ray. So when Jo rang late in the day I was mighty relieved to hear that although not 100% sure, she thought that his shoulders were probably ok. He was prescribed two weeks rest and a course of anti inflammatory tablets. If there was any re occurrence of the lameness after that, she would need to make further investigations. A couple of weeks have passed and this week Alfie has returned to light training. I’m on tender hooks, delighted with the way his work is progressing, but anxious about his shoulders. It’s so far so good, but i won’t really feel confident that the lameness has passed for several months. We’ve all got our fingers crossed at the moment

 

Alfie’s shoulder x ray

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there snow dogs like sheepdogs

added by David on Sunday January 2, 2011 at 8:02 pm

Whilst us shepherd’s were shivering, and the flock sheltered from icy winds,  it’s good to know that not everyone on the farm is bothered by the recent sub zero temperatures. The Borough farm sheepdogs seem to be completely unaffected by the bone chilling cold, in fact they barely seem to notice. When old Gail was turned out of the kitchen after the first night of snow, she treated the new white world with complete indifference. She clearly thought that she’d seen it all before, which of course she has seen snow before, but only a couple of times so you would have thought that she might show some excitement.

For Alfie (six months old) the snow was a new experience, and he briefly raced happily around the yard, but after biting a couple of mouthfuls he convinced himself that snow was of limited entertainment value, and carried on the rest of the day as if nothing had changed.

But for Jake  the snow did provide a particular problem. Ever since he was a puppy he has been obsessed with the excavation of mole hills. He dives on them, digs them, or attacks with his nose at high speed. I have always lived in fear that he will one day attempt this particular trick on a frozen mole hill, so the covering of snow did at least cover the earth mounds and protect Jake from a painful nose related accident.

But any thought that the snow would also deprive Jake of his favorite pass time, would be to underestimate his devotion to this particular duty. As Jake would say ’snow or no snow there’s some jobs that just have to be done’ …. the picture says it all!!

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Alfie starts work

added by David on Tuesday December 7, 2010 at 11:29 pm

There comes a point in a sheepdog puppy’s life where it has to be tested for interest in work, and with Alfie now over five months old I’ve been keen to find a moment to give him his first training session. He’s already showing plenty of interest in the sheep, each morning for the last month I’ve prised Alfie out of the kitchen (he’s managed to charm his way into spending far too much time there!) and he’s joined the rest of the dogs as we feed a flock of lambs. Slowly his interest has grown, so this week I found a few minutes to take him to a small flock of ‘training sheep’.

The result was really encouraging. His calmness and quiet authority was far more akin to a dog of five years, not five months. Although he looks just like his mother, Fly, his style is much close to that of his father Jake, I’m just hoping that he doesn’t share the interest in jumping on mole hills! My only concern is that he’s a bit on the slow side at the moment, but he’s got a lot of growing up still to do, so I’m hoping that Alfie is going to make the grade as a Borough Farm sheepdog.

Alfie now

Alfie five months ago!

 

 

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Mist almost wins a trial!

added by David on Friday November 12, 2010 at 7:34 pm

During the summer there are sheepdog trials to be found somewhere i the south west of England almost every weekend, and although I don’t find time to get to many, I do manage to compete at half a dozen each year.

In early October, we made the trip to a trial at Bishopstone near Salisbury. It’s a trial run by a friend of mine, on a good big field and the sheep are always pretty well behaved. The competition at such events is fierce, and there were many of the best sheepdog handlers from across the south of England, so I knew that we would have to be on best form to stand any sort of chance.

Jake is now seven years old and I’ve noticed him beginning to slow down over the last year or so. To do well at a sheepdog trial the dog really needs to be at his peak of fitness, and I wasn’t surprised to find that  Jake found the course rather tough. Even so he managed to finish with 72 points out of a hundred, which wasn’t bad going.

Mist has been on pretty good form at the trials trials that we have been to this year, so when near the end of the day it was her turn to run I had some hope that she would put in a good performance. So it turned out, she put the sheep in nice straight lines between the three sets of hurdles, completed the shed and even managed to pen the sheep, which few other dogs had done that day. With a score of 87 she went to the top of the score board, and with only a few runs left, I really thought that we were in the with a chance of winning.

However, it wasn’t to be, with the second to last run another shepherd, Robert Putnam had a cracking run with his dog Seren, and took the first prize. I don’t think Mist was too worried, she won a bag of dog food for second place, and I was just pleased that with so little practice we’d put on a good performance!

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another summer over

added by David on Friday November 5, 2010 at 2:33 pm

It has been a great year for the shows at Borough Farm. The weather was good in June and early July. The new undercover seating proved a success and meant that we were able to carry on even on those occasional damp evenings!

As for the dogs, I think that they performed pretty well. Jake seems  to have done more than his fair share of the displays this year, he’s a star working with the ducks and switches easily to rounding up hundreds of sheep. Fly made her debut  this year and is showing great promise, and even her son Alfie made an appearance once or twice. But as ever Mist is the real star of the show, she’s not only a great hard worker, but just as keen to meet the children afterwards signing paw-prints and posing for pictures.

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Jake and Mist in print

added by David on Wednesday October 6, 2010 at 9:33 pm

Last May I spent an interesting day in the company of photographer Tim Flach. He was looking for a picture of working sheepdogs to feature in his forthcoming book. Jake and Mist, being used to posing for the camera duly obliged and after many hours spent working the sheep to and fro past Tim’s camera, he had an image that he was happy with and departed with some haste as the deadline for the book to be finished was drawing near. The result Dogs Gods was published this month and contains some of the most remarkable images of dogs (of every shape and size) that I have ever seen.

Tim had spent over a year traveling the world to collect the pictures and this book provides an amazing insight into the lengths that people will go to for the appearance of their dogs. However, in the sheepdog world the phrase ‘brains before beauty’ has always been the motto, and the working Border Collie has great strength in its genetic diversity. So none of the sheepdogs in the Borough farm pack look alike, I judge them only by their working ability.

But when it comes to both brains and beauty, I have to admit that Jake is loaded with both!!!

Jake at work on Morte Point in Tim Flach’s ‘Dogs Gods’

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Eddie gets lost in the fog!

added by David on Wednesday September 22, 2010 at 10:14 pm

Eddie has always been a highly functional sheepdog, he’s good at working in the sheep pens, rounding up big flocks and he works very hard. But there are some things that Eddie is not so good at, like remembering his left and right!

But this week Eddie had a problem of a completely unexpected sort. on Tuesday morning we had set off to check on the sheep on a hilly bit of ground in Mortehoe. It had been foggy for most of the morning, and as I drove up the hill on the quad bike the fog got thicker, and I had only gone a few hundred yards when I noticed that Eddie had gone missing! I didn’t  think much of it, as even in thick fog a sheepdog should easily be able to find his way back to the starting point (in this case the land-rover) So when I returned to the land rover ten minutes later and found he wasn’t there, I was a little surprised. I retraced the route that I had taken, but still no Eddie, so after a bit of calling and whistling I decided that I’d better check that he hadn’t tried to walk the mile and a half back along the road to the farm.

But there was no sign of him on the road and when I returned  to Mortehoe fifteen minutes later, I was beginning to get a little worried. Just then Heidi from the village came running over ” have you lost a dog?” Somewhat relieved I said that I had, and was told the story of Eddie’s morning wander. Once lost in the fog, he must have wandered back to the land rover, but instead of waiting there he jumped the gate into the car park. Then smelling the morning bake of croissants in the village shop decided to pay a visit. Once inside Mel, the shop owner thought that she recognized him as another dog in the village. so put a lead on him and shut him in the stairwell of the next door flat. However, once Mel had locked him in, Eddie spotted an open window on the first floor landing and jumped through it, landing on the flat roof of the kitchen next door! Here he was completely marooned until another neighbor was summoned to rescue him with a ladder. The rescue which was just in progress when I arrived.

He didn’t seem at all embarrassed at being passed back through the  window into my arms, I put him on a lead and he walked, presumably putting it down to ‘just one of those things that happens when you are an Eddie!’

Thank you to Mel at Mortehoe Village stores and to Heidi at Town farm house b&b for their help in the rescue of Eddie

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