OMG It's wet down here! See the pic!

Well, we've finally tipped it for 10 inches of rain, that's around 250mls, which is about 220mls more than I think we need right now!

Once again, my drain is flowing like a flooded river, with rapids and white water throughout, and it is continuing to rain. By the look of the radar, it isn't going to let up any time soon either!
Check out the latest radar photo.

Needless to say, none of us are impressed right now. Not only do the dogs not want to stand out in the rain to eat their breakfast, but I'm not too wrapped with the idea of standing out in the paddock waiting for them to go to the toilet!
The joys of being a dog owner I guess.

Now that Jock has decided water is fun, I'm going to have to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't jump down into the drain. I wouldn't put it past him, given how he loves to explore lots of new things, but if he did get into the drain, I'd have to retrieve him from my neighbours place about a kilometre down the road!.

Plans for the day include a lot of sitting down and watching DVD's with Jock on the floor at my feet. Should be a good day I think!

What a night! Earthquakes!

At about 8.30pm last night the house was starting to settle down. Most of the kids were in bed, the dogs were sleeping in their pens and everything was ticking along as usual.

8.55pm all of that changed with the house beginning to shake! For about 40 seconds everything was shaking; we were experiencing another earthquake, with a small aftershock around 5 minutes later.

The kids panicked, and I must admit, I wasn't really happy either. Poor Jock was horrified, and the old Boxer looked on it all as a huge inconvenience!

The epicentre was about 10 kilometres from where I live, but it shook houses hundreds of kilometers away. No damage done, that we can see at the moment. The barn is still standing, and all of the sheep are fine.

This morning, however, we were blanketed with white. Not snow but frost. The grass (and mud unfortunately) was crunchy underfoot. I shivered through it unhappily, however, Jock decided that it wasn't too cold to play with his watering can.

Ahh, to be young and innocent again!

Babies on the way!

Well, I wandered down to the barn this morning to check on our sheep and realised that the dates I'd written down for when my ewes are due to lamb might be off by about 2 months! At least 5 of them are heavily pregnant to my bottle ram lamb. By the look of the ewes, they are most likely carrying twins, so it's going to be double the fun again this year! Hopefully this year we'll get some ewe lambs.

For the last two years, we used a ram that I had called 'Cec' as in 'Cec the stud ram' from the NZ Animated movies 'Footrot Flats'.

Every ewe that Cec covered produced ram lambs! His son (Reginald) also produced ram lambs, so this year we hope to strike it lucky by getting a ewe or two. Either way, if the mums rear their babies, rams or ewes, I'll be happy. The last few years we've had a lot of bottle fed babies (usually given to us) so it would be nice to see our girls take care of their babies and leave my kitchen free of lambs for a season!

Ram lambs will be marked (turned into wethers) for future dog training, and hopefully the ewes will be of a suitable quality that we can retain them and breed on. My old ewe (Violet) will probably be separated from the ram after this season as I believe she's getting a bit too old for breeding, and would probably appreciate retirement.

I'm not too sure what Jock would think about having lambs running around his kitchen either.

On another note, Dog Day is happening today, the one I mentioned in an earlier post, and I was right about the weather. It hasn't stopped raining since I got up, and if you go out from behind shelter, the wind drives the rain straight into your face. I'm not adverse to working in the rain, but trying to do it whilst fending off something like pneumonia is beyond me. I think that although Jock would probably benefit from training in a different environment, we made the right decision to stay home today.

It seems, however, that no matter how bad the weather is, he will still happily play with his watering can. I didn't get any photo's of him romping around the paddock this morning, I spent all of my time trying to walk without slipping over. If the weather fines up (I doubt it will) I'll do a bit more obedience training today. Key points to work on will be 'stay close' (walking at my leg), 'stand' (stop and stay stopped!), and 'steady' (slowing pace when required). I'll let you all know how we go!

The 'stands' are coming!

Well, late yesterday afternoon I took Jock for a run in the paddocks. He's desperate to work the sheep, but after a session later on today, he's having about 6 weeks off.

Whilst he was tearing around the paddock, I called out 'Stand' and he stopped in his tracks and dropped! We did this a few more times, and each time he didn't disappoint. He was quick to stop, drop and then wait until I gave him another command.

This morning I thought I'd check to see if it was just a fluke or not, so we did it again. As with last night, he hit the brakes and stopped. I threw in a 'come-bye' and 'away' just for good measure, and stopped him when he was about half way round the circle, and again, he stopped.

It seems it wasn't just a fluke after all.

I wonder what will happen when there are sheep involved though?

Will update again this afternoon (hopefully with photo's) on how the session went.

Photo's from out and about on the farm

Putting a stop to training for the time being has left at a little bit of a loss, so I decided to cruise around my computer looking for photo's that I could share.

Below are random photo's, complete with explanations.

This Koala decided that this was a pretty good tree to sit in. Although not common on our property (due to the lack of trees), we have been visited by two koala's in the last two years. An hour or so after this photo was taken he had moved on.

The water is just a small hint of what it can get like on this property after a decent downpour. This property doesn't appear to have a 'name' so I'm now calling it 'The Basin'!

Note the old shed in the background, this is our barn, and the sheep love going in there to get out of the weather.

A couple of bottle fed lambs from last year. This was their first afternoon out of my kitchen and into the sunshine. They don't exactly look impressed!

"Sheldon" coming in for a close-up!

This is not a black and white photo, just a picture taken late in the day, with the sky looking rather unsettled!

Same bottle babies, playing this time!

Gabby, now one of the ewes that I work Jock on (she's brown these days though!). She has the white patch on the top of her head, and also has a white top lip! Kind of cute I think.

We are very lucky on this property. Not only do we have the occasional Koala and Kangaroo, we also have a large family of Hares, the occasional fox, wood ducks on the dam, and our old hedge is full of blue and yellow wrens. We have a resident Tawny Frog Mouth Owl in the barn (who is busy building a nest), as well as Two Wedge Tailed Eagles that float over almost daily, and a couple of hawks that find the pickings rather good. Oh, and in the off season (now) we have lots of little frogs in, and around, the swimming pool!

It does't get much better than that. Actually, get the tiger snakes, brown snakes, red bellied black snakes, and copperheads off the property and I'd be much happier!

A morning run...... with photo's!

This morning it was absolutely freezing, so after feeding Jock, and letting him digest his brekkie, I decided to take him out for a romp in the paddock. I took about 20 photo's, but only one of them shows him actually holding still! He has way too much energy for that hour of the morning lol

This is fun mum!

Finally, I get a shot of him holding still! And no, I didn't have to tie him to the post to do it either!

"What's this white stuff mum?" - "Can I eat it?"

It's amazing what he can find fun in. This is part of a drain that runs the entire length of the property. About a week ago there was a lot more foam there, and he showed absolutely no interest in it. Today, however, it just screams to be pounced on, bitten and played with.

Training day yesterday

Yesterday the weather was kind to us so we managed to get a little bit of training in.

With all four lambs in the training pen, I set about widening Jock out to give the sheep more room. I'm very pleased to say that the advice Andy gave me worked beautifully. Jock is now running right out wide (as much as the pen will allow) to get around the sheep, but he is still ducking in at the last minute. Also, he has gotten very slack on his stops, tending to creep up behind the sheep. He's also ignoring the command to 'stand' and will get within touching distance of the bum of the sheep. It's proving to be very annoying!

Maybe Andy will have a suggestion or two for me on that one?

All in all it was a fairly good day, but the state of my yard suggests that I've done my last training session in it until after winter is over. It's turned to slush and is very slippery, making walking difficult. Also, with the weather getting so cold all of a sudden, I don't want to be running condition off my sheep. They are only young, and although they have plenty of wool on them, I'd like to see them with just a little more covering for the winter.

So, after a quick training session on Saturday (where we'll be working on stops, in the barn yard) we are taking a break for the winter months. Jock will undergo obedience training in the meantime which will hopefully get him a little more responsive when out working. If nothing else, it'll be something for him to do, and give him new things to learn as well!

More updates coming in the next day or so!