We have undergone lots of changes since last I wrote. We have two new dogs, lots of bunnies, some new and also missing faces among our goats and chickens and even pigs. Some things have continued; for instance, we still have our same four horses: Arrow, Jaz, Shorty, and Tamaya.
We also continue to welcome apprenticeship families who come one morning a week to experience farm life, learning to feed and care for and handle our animals and become familiar with our homesteading system.
Summer before last, our rescued Golden Lab/German Shepherd, Lacey, passed away. Even years after her coming, she had continued to be wary. As age slowed her down, she appeared less and less often to wag and receive attention. Still, she almost always showed up to greet the children who came to visit--until the sad morning when she didn't.
For long months, our son's dog Jewels, a Border Collie/Mastiff cross, now getting grey around the muzzle herself, took on daytime guard duties by herself. At night our two Great Pyrenees /Anatolian Shepherd livestock protection dogs (LPD's) relieved her.
Meanwhile, I kept an eye out for just the right companion for her. Introducing a new animal to the farm is not an easy proposition, and the wrong dog can create havoc. Overwhelmed by Covid-induced family crises in 2021, for instance, we missed critical training steps for our first two LPD's. They bark ferociously at our cats, and I still image seeing Sully trot by me, a hapless chick in his mouth, and finding our pet rooster's headless carcass in their favorite chew spot the morning I overslept and didn't get the dogs in before daybreak, when our free-range chickens start stirring.
Things have become easier now that our cats are in the habit of coming into the house every night, and all of our chickens trained to go in their coops in the evening. Each night I count the chickens in their coops when I feed them, and hunt for any strays before letting the big dogs loose.
Still, a new daytime guard would need to already be trained to free range chickens, cats, goats, pigs and horses. In addition, it needed to not bark at or scare our rabbits, safe though they might be in their hutches. I thought a female would be the easiest to integrate, rather than a male that might challenge our big dogs. Although fierce with predators, the dog must welcome our trainee families and be gentle with children of all ages. The dog must not be an escape artist nor suffer from wanderlust. Also, knowing how hard it can be to deal with the heavy coat of the LPD, and the “hot spots” that often develop in the Alabama heat, I was determined to find a relatively short-haired version like our males.
It's not surprising it took so long to find a suitable dog. Rather, it is pretty amazing we ever did. Finally, though, last June I ran across a notice about Lucy, an 18-month-old LPD, also a Great Pyrenees/Anatolian cross. She was used to babies and preschoolers, cats and chickens, sheep and horses, and also seemed to have shorter hair. She lived some distance away but her family, already dealing with an overabundance of animals, agreed to drive halfway to meet us.
Our beginning was not auspicious. I had spread a tarp in the back of our Blazer and tied Lucy there. Nervous with the unfamiliar circumstances, first Lucy scrabbled around, trying to leap the front seat as I drove on the interstate. Failing that, she vomited all over, completely missing the tarp which had gotten shifted with her movements.
Nonetheless, Lucy quickly endeared herself to us with her innate sweetness and patience. At our next horse club meeting, she gathered in our circle, and everyone petted her while toddlers wrapped her with hugs. Instead of frightening the rabbits, she often curls up under a hutch for a snooze.
Normally it takes at least two years before a livestock protection dog can be fully trusted with livestock. Thus, we weren't too taken aback to find her romping after the miniature dairy goats or play- mauling a cat. We would gently redirect her, and nothing was actually harmed.
That is, until the day I opened up our chick pen to try to integrate our half-grown chicks with the rest of the flock. The fluttering feathers sparked Lucy’s more-than-playful interest, and I barely rescued the young birds in time. I had to return them to the pen to get bigger. Even months later, a young frightened hen could set her off, and I learned to secure Lucy before trying to relocate one.
However, we found that securing Lucy is not an easy task. Although she will walk alongside us easily as we go about farm chores, if we snap a leash on her she sits down and refuses to move. If we tie her up, she will do her best to escape and twist out of her collar. Before her arrival we made sure our electric wire topping our perimeter fence was working, and as far as we know, she has never tried to go over it. However, if we shut her in the barn she will attempt to dig out, or jump over the gates and reappear within a few minutes.
After deciding we weren’t up to training puppies, however amazing they would be, even before her arrival we had signed Lucy up for an appointment at the Spay and Neuter Clinic. During the intervening months, the only way we could secure her from the attention of male dogs when necessary was to shut her in our livestock trailer, where she would cry and howl in misery. I also learned that for short periods of time I could fasten her with a chain leash to our tire swing. However, getting her near enough to the swing to snap on the chain was often too much trouble. Despite the awkward load of her 85 pounds, DJ can actually pick her up and carry her, but I have to drag her inch by inch. As she grew to suspect my purposes, she became hard to lay hands on.
Thus, we came near disaster one evening last fall while still training the young hens to go into their coop at night. Instead of going into their coop, the chickens had settled on top. Looking around and seeing that Lucy wasn't near, I made the mistake of trying to move the chickens into their little coop without tying Lucy up first. I got two moved in, but then another squawked and escaped, running across the yard. Before I could stop her, and egged on by our little Corgi who should have known better, Lucy materialized and grabbed it. She settled down, chewing at its head, and by the time I could reach her a minute later, its beak was askew and blood running down its breast.
I was able to get Lucy tied. Then I rescued the frightened young hen and popped her twisted beak more or less into place. I put her in a covered cage by herself and she survived, although her beak still looks a bit odd. We gave her to a friend and she now lives a life more akin to that of a pet canary than a country chicken, perching on their shoulders and eating from their hands.
However, the troubles are not over. Currently, we are dealing with dominance struggles. When she arrived last summer, Lucy was content to follow the older dog’s lead as Jewels trained her to our farm duties. However, Jewel's Border Collie-dominance eventually has become irksome to her. She resisted Jewel’s attempts to “mind-control” her into a state of near paralysis. Now, even when Jewels seems to have learned the difficult lesson not to try to nip at Lucy nor attempt to hypnotize her, Lucy seems to resent Jewels' presence and periodically lashes into her, seeming intent on wiping out Jewel's very existence. More than once as I struggled to separate them in a fight, I feared Lucy would kill Jewels before I could part them. Most of the time now, we have to keep Jewels separate inside the house or in a small outdoor pen. I had begun to wonder if Lucy was going to work out for us after all.
Then, last Friday afternoon as I was in the barn measuring out the horses' rations to be ready for evening chores, I heard a rustle. There, almost at my feet, was a bright white baby bunny.
Shocked, I managed to scoop up the kit. Last week, before the Artic front dousing Alabama with rare low temperatures arrived, I had moved Black Eyed Susan and her babies to another cage in a more sheltered position. Apparently, however, it was not baby-bunny-proof. Holding the adorably cute three-week-old baby in one hand, I transferred the current occupant of their original cage to a carry cage, plopped the baby back into the cage where it had been born, and looked for the rest of the family to add them back as well.
One of the babies was missing. Shooing away our newest dog, an Australian Shepherd who was seeming way too interested in the rabbits, I searched through the barn, behind cages and equipment and everywhere I could think of. It seemed hopeless. One small bunny in the midst of a world full of potential predators. Who even knew how long it had been lost; I had been inside for some hours after finishing morning chores.
Then I noticed Lucy lying in the middle of the yard about 10 feet from the barn, head alert in on-guard position. Beside her was a small blob of white.
"Oh, no," I breathed as I hurried through the gate, remembering Sully and his mouthful of chick.
Yes, the small white mound lying so still was the missing baby. Hardly believing what I saw, I snatched it up. It was alive and seemingly uninjured. Lucy looked up at me with dignity and I made haste to praise her profusely. The bunny was dirty and slobbery; evidently Lucy had found it somewhere and carried it to that spot and then proceeded to guard it. From the cats? Other dogs? I returned it to the cage with its family; it huddled in the nesting box for some time, but finally started to eat a bit. Within a few days it was hard to tell it from its siblings.
I wish I had a photograph of the two lying there, the small white bunny and the big white guardian dog. I can still see it clearly in my mind's eye. I hope I never forget the wonder of that moment.
