Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure

Daks and Drama Queen ponder the changes in their relationship*

Daks and I just had a wonderful weekend attending a stock dog training clinic run by Brian Abingdon, a breeder and trainer of prize-winning Border Collies. Daks' exact ancestry is a matter of speculation, but eveyone agrees that he is mostly Red Heeler, also known as Australian Cattle Dog.

This breed is famous for their intelligence, endurance, and ankle-biting – and Daks is no exception. The phrase you'll hear about them most often is "they NEED a job to do." Without a few hours of active outside time every day they turn into fanged tornadoes.

Daks was the only mutt in the class, and I know almost nothing about all this stuff, but everyone was extremely friendly and encouraging, sharing helpful tips and stories, and I'm already looking forward to attending the next clinic in August.

We all pulled up folding chairs with a view of a 70' square arena, and Brian brought each dog/person pair in separately for 10-15 minute sessions of 1-on-1 training with three extremely patient goats. The advanced dogs were quite inspiring to watch, and every moment was absolutely packed with things to learn about how herding dogs work.

Nikabrik getting into
the spirit of it

Despite the relaxed, friendly atmosphere, I was nervous bringing Daks into the arena for his first session. Would he completely ignore me? Nope! Maul a goat? Nope! Stop to poop in the middle of it with everyone watching? Oh yes indeed.

The first task with a complete beginner is to get the dog "hooked in" – ie, get him interested in playing with the stock and activate his herding (really hunting) instinct.

Unfortunately, Daks has had a year and a half of us chiding him for chasing goats, so he was a bit inhibited, but with encouragement you could see the instinct kick in as he began to race around, nudging goats with his shoulder and moving a reluctant buckling around by the extremely effective method of dropping his head and pushing on his nutsack(!)

Australian Cattle Dog
from the film "Mad Max"

The training method is very different from what I'm used to.  When teaching a dog to sit, or come, or give paw, you can show him what you want him to do and reward him with a treat when he gets it. With the stock dog training, it's their natural inclinations that get them moving, and early training seems to be largely a matter of giving the command for whatever he's already doing (assuming it's something desirable!), eventually building up an association in his mind between the sound and the action.

That may sound like a very slow process, but after a total of less than an hour in the arena, Daks began to understand "go get the goats" and even "bring me the goats." The whole way of working with the dog was wonderfully intuitive and made it seem as if he was starting to read my mind. I would recommend this training (and this trainer) to anyone with a herding dog – even if you don't have livestock and just want to learn how to work with their particular traits.

Obligatory cute photo of Koko!

One caveat: I was repeatedly warned that once these dogs have the instinct activated, small animals like chickens are at greater risk of becoming dog snacks. Daks is so far fine, still gentle and protective with the chickens, but we'll be keeping a closer eye on him for a while…

* This is actually an old photo I recycled for this post, but it seemed very fitting; Drama Queen is a tough girl and Daks is still very reluctant to try anything on her.

Aberdeen has built-in pacifiers – yes, her kids both suck on her wattles when they aren't nursing. Her wattles are almost always wet.

And these tiny vultures (AKA four-week-old chicks) will soon be on their own in this big, bad world. Mama Leo is getting ready to stop mothering, probably within the next week. How do we know? The biggest tell-tale sign is that she is once again letting at least one rooster (or roosters?) mount her. She'll likely start laying again any day now, and stop mothering her babes a few days after that. This is our second batch of chicks hatched this year (out of three, so far).

These photos are just a teaser…

…video footage of Babies' First Day Out is coming in a couple of days!

Two beautiful little babies arrived this afternoon.

After being up every hour or two to check on Aberdeen during the night, I had been up in our loft bed grabbing some more shut-eye. Peter had just come in to say that she was still the same (laboring in first stage, contractions but no pushing yet) and I was trying to convince myself that I should get up and have some caffeine so I'd be ready when the time came, when through the open window I heard what can only be described as a bellow.

Peter went running out to check on her, while I fumbled my bleary-eyed way down the ladder and threw on some farm clothes. Peter yelled "NOW!" and I went running out to find her laying on the floor, with a "bubble" containing two tiny little hooves making its way out.

The birth went smoothly, if a little haphazardly (on our end – we'd been convinced we still had a ways to go; Aberdeen was amazing). While we fumbled around trying to get an empty feed bag under her to catch the messy baby, she pushed her little boy right out (with a few more bellows).

Her little girl followed not fifteen minutes later.

We helped as much as we could to get them cleaned off and dry (mama did most of it), and watched to make sure they both stood up and found the teat. We tied off and cut the umbilical cords, and dipped each one in iodine to prevent infection.

We brought mama goat a bucket of molasses water (which she sucked down), along with some grain and alfalfa. I gave her a couple of homeopathic arnica pellets to help with healing, and also mixed some dried herbs (mostly red raspberry leaf and nettle) into her grain. Then we sat back to enjoy the new babies while we waited for her to pass the placenta.

Aberdeen's little boy:

And her little girl:

New mama, after a job well done:

Oh yeah, Daks was on the clean-up crew:

Off now to take a nice hot bath before dinner, then check on the new babies one last time before bed.

It's very early yet: her ligaments have been playing peek-a-boo (the ones that disappear when birth is imminent), but she's been keeping to herself and breathing differently (rhythmic and heavy, like when she was in labor last year) all day.

And when I just checked on her about half an hour ago, her ligaments were gone!

We've probably still got another 12-24 hours to go, so it's going to be a long night of dozing for a bit and taking turns checking on her. (And last year, she ever-so-helpfully labored for a day and a half in first stage, then QUIT – as in totally back to normal – for a day and a half before starting over again and finally – FINALLY – having her babies. So we'll see.)

Back when we have more news (and cute baby photos)!

I made up a poem today. It goes like this:

Chickens, chickens, everywhere;
Chickens, chickens, in my hair;
Chickens, chickens, with plenty to spare;
Chickens, chickens, everywhere!

(Note: The photo was actually taken around the end of January – I just hadn't gotten around to posting it. The "poem" is from today.)