Sunday Stills ~ canine companions

Challenge this week is for all those lovable pooches we have. They can be new (preferably) or archive pics of pooches past, or in some cases doggies met on merry travels.

I thought long and hard, about posting all the canine's that hold a special place in my heart. I decided one picture of Tania and Timber, or Maverick and Cheyenne, just wouldn't do them justice. This post would be forever long, if I got into each special memorial story. They will weave into this blog eventually. For the challenge I decided to focus on our two living canine companions, Mack and Sam. We adopted the brothers from Angels Wish (half Lab, half Australian Shepard) when they were puppies:

Sam is brown, an alpha male. The smartest, and hungriest, dog we've ever owned.

Mack is black, a huge chicken. He's a grinning fool, and the fastest dog we've ever owned.

They run like the wind.

They have a love-hate relationship.

Mostly love.

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a little extra

Our horses, dogs, koi, and wild birds all need a little extra food and watchful eye these days for things like frozen water. The ground has become crunchy, hard, uneven and slippery - making it difficult to walk on. The wooded pasture area looks like a skating rink. Our horses are moving very slowly, and thankfully stepping with care.

After morning chores, I re-filled the bird feeders and had a little help cleaning up whatever spilled from our aussie-labs Mack (black) and Sam (brown).


Oddley enough, the ground is clear and not icy around the bird feeder/pond area - but the mini-icebergs that formed on the floating de-icer speak volumes about our weather. That's not snow. After all these years it still amazes me our hibernating koi survive underneath all that thick ice.


And then there's our cat Sydney...what a life. I woke him up from his morning nap, which comes right before his afternoon nap, that is shortly before his evening nap...lets just say he doesn't know the meaning of the word cold.

mini-adventure

Last weekend we took the boys on a mini-adventure…it was probably a good thing I didn’t know we were taking one ahead of time. A change in the weather pattern found us with a cool, crisp breeze that morning – the kind that gets the horses all wound up over nothing. Add a trailer, and hungry horses – and what the heck, lets go for a short walk first to get them listening?! But hey, the walk worked and got them to focus.
Trailer loading went well, feed had never tasted better. Doors closed, lets take ‘em for a ride…something they have done only once - last Labor Day to be exact, when we brought our boys home. We didn’t go far, destination was…..our house - not exactly a location frequented by horses. I was impressed; Koda & Nemo were handling everything so well.
Did you know our mini-adventure was going to include our dogs? Me neither. We have two ½ Australian Sheppard and ½ Labrador (read as wound-up) brothers, Mack and Sam, with complete opposite personalities. We let our dogs out of their kennel, but kept Sam on a leash (even though he met the horses once before) it was a good thing, the “giants dogs” arrived on his property and he didn’t know what to make of it…“can’t they just stay down on the scary farm”? Before you think we are completely crazy, know that our horses are frequently exposed to two other dogs that live on the farm. Mack had never seen a horse, but did really well with them. After running circles and exchanging nose-to-nose greetings, Mack didn’t want to leave his new horse friends, or us - so he came with us when we took the horses back to the farm.
Wish I had a better conclusion to this adventure, but just when we thought all was a success - Koda had his second trailer meltdown (yes, I’m counting) while backing out of the trailer, down at the farm. It really wasn’t his fault (human error) he panicked, and ended up with a couple minor leg scraps. Nemo however regained his composure, and exited like a champ. Of course we felt terrible, but ended on a positive note. Koda reloaded several times. Shortly after, Mack escaped from the truck and ran around the pasture before joined Koda and Brad in the trailer…maybe he thinks he’s a mini-pony? Note to self; work with Koda on “pulling-back panic-mode” before going on the next mini-adventure!