You win some, you lose some

I'm no dog training expert. That is not false modesty, believe me. When I married Mike, my new wifely duties included responsibility for our 8 dogs. I'm learning on my feet.

I read books, and get advice when I'm stuck, but I inherited a pack of full-grown, half-wild spaniels, many re-homed to Mike with behavioural "quirks". Jazz is afraid of people (unless it's a shoot day), Nellie simply walks home if she doesn't like something, or she feels she's done enough for the day. Pip smiles, Dakota likes to body check other dogs when she meets them, Podge had terrible recall. I could go on.

Most of my dog training has been behaviour modification and re-direction. Trying to fix problems rather than prevent them. A certain amount of acceptance goes along with this kind of training. Does the spaniel work in the field? Does she reliably bring back game? Does she come back when you call her? Good enough. Ok, so she pulls on the lead a bit, or she doesn't sit to the gunshot. Or she works a bit farther away than you'd like. The birds are found and counted, and the dogs are happy in their work.

Spud the flatcoat is my first puppy, bought and paid for new out of the showroom. She's 13 months old now and I've been working on just obedience training with her. Now she's ready for the next stage, and the start of her working training. So when I was invited to join the local Flatcoat Retriever Training Group (we have small specialist groups for everything in England) I jumped at the chance. Especially as the email said "all ages and levels welcome".

There were 10 participants plus dogs, and we met yesterday evening in a farmer's field. Having never trained a puppy from scratch I had no idea of what to expect. I was the least experienced, and Spud was the only puppy - it was the ignorant leading the young. With an audience.

A flatcoat party (with a few cocker crashers)

Well, Spud did wonderfully. A dummy was thrown, she marked it, retrieved it to hand and even held it until I took it from her. When I whistled, she came back and sat next to me. There were lots of ohs and ahs and well dones all around. She practiced this exercise a few times and seemed to enjoy herself. The group gave me some coaching and ideas for improvement, but Spud got an A for her first class. And, she didn't get car sick on the half hour drive - first time!

An experienced dog and handler show us how it's done

But it's never that easy. I woke up this morning and before I'd even had my first cup of tea, Mike came in to tell me Hazel had run off. Hazel only ever runs off when Mike walks her. So I had to pull on some clothes and get on the quad bike and head off in the direction of 'last seen running'. I bumped into neighbors walking dogs, driving tractors, and trimming sheep and asked them to keep an eye out.

Two hours later, farmer's son shows up at the back door with a happy, dirty, and tired Hazel on a piece of rope. I think some more behavior modification training is in order - fetching, recall, praise. But if I get an invite to the local Spaniel Training Group, I might have to decline for awhile. All ages and levels is fine, but only if you can find your spaniel.

If I had to write a dog training book, here are some appropriate titles:

"Bloody dog, would you come HERE!!" - Training the Montero Way

Coming Back from Your Walk with As Many Dogs as You Started With

"Seriously, I'm Going to Tie a Log to That Thing to Slow Her Down" and Other Hints to Get Your Dog to Listen

Number Your Dogs and Name Them All 'Oi!' - Top Tips for Organising Your Kennel

It all comes down to eggs

I thought this post was going to be an unconnected series of little events and updates. Then I realised most things I did today involved eggs - what comes out of them, what will come out, making them and eating them. If it's April then it must be eggs.

I wanted to post a picture of Barbara and her ducklings, but she's being such a good mother that she gets between me and her babes whenever I try to take a photo. This is my best one:

If you look hard, you can see them sandwiched between Mom and the drinker. I moved them to bigger premises and the family is doing well.

We collected pheasant eggs today. Here's our haul -

The weather's picked up so the eggs are cleaner, but they still need washing -

I can only reach to wash the eggs if I stand on a bucket. Or maybe I need high-heeled safety boots.

Podge has been keeping Mike company in his truck today. While I was cleaning eggs, she helped by clearing up any broken eggs she found laying around.

That's her dinner sorted then.

One of my regular Spring jobs is taking down the peanut feeders and replacing them with seed feeders. Maybe someone reading this knows for sure, but I was told that I shouldn't feed peanuts in Spring when baby birds are hatching. Mothers will feed whole peanuts to their young, which can then choke to death.  I err on the side of caution in case that's not an old wives' tale.

Just at the time when birds are building nests, Dakota sheds her thick undercoat of fur. I brushed her and collected all the fur, then hung it in the tree for them.

I have found more than one nest in the hedge where the inside is lined with Dakota's fur. That will be empty in the next week or two. I can see where birds have been picking at it already.

The egg stage is lots of work, but it's anticipatory. Wait until the chicks start coming!

A Surprise

It was a gorgeous evening, so I decided to get togged up in my warm clothes and try my luck in the high seat again. I left two hours before dark, and saw nothing until it was nearly too dark to shoot. Then, as luck would have it, a young roe buck (a primo meat animal) came out of the woods and hung on the margin of the field. He was just out of my sight line for a good shot. When it got too dark to see, I gave up. We'll both be back for a rematch.

I came home, fed the lambs, stripped off to my long johns and sat down to dinner in front of the TV (if Easter candy and a cup of tea counts?). It's all about the glamour here.

Dulcie our self-appointed kennel guard started barking. Mike got up to see what stirred her up, and called me outside. We could hear a vixen fox yowling, which is usually a mating call though it's late in the season. And it sounded like it was coming from the back field.

Mike has a gift for calling foxes in by making a squealing noise meant to imitate an injured rabbit. A hungry fox can't resist the sound. My gun was still propped in the corner, so I grabbed it and Mike grabbed a flashlight, and we hung out the bedroom window trying to catch a reflection of the fox's eyes in the light. Mike started squeaking, and a fox appeared right on cue about 80 yards away. I hung the barrel of the gun out the bedroom window and dropped the fox in the field.

I probably should have put some trousers on before going to inspect the fox, but that's another plus side to living in a rural area: Pants are optional.

It wasn't the vixen, but a dog fox. And a small one at that. When I had a look underneath, I found it had underdeveloped testicles. I have no idea why this is, perhaps just another of nature's oddities like the hermaphrodite pheasants. He seemed healthy enough otherwise; no signs of mange (common in foxes) or external parasites.

So, two hours in a cold high seat produced less than two minutes kneeling on my bed in a warm house and taking a quick shot out the window. I grant you, the last option is less sporting but at least I know he won't be feasting on any of my chickens. Speaking of chickens, I think there might be some 'Peeps' left in the Easter basket...

Fire and Water

We're having a few problems with both.

The winter was colder and more prolonged than expected and I grossly underestimated how much wood we would need. I often think I should go cut more wood, then I think I'll put it off til the weather clears up a bit. Which, this year, was never.

There's a small pile of applewood in the garden that just needs cutting and I'm trying to ration what's left. Because of the constant rain, the ground is so saturated that it's impossible to get to our log stashes in the woods, even with special all-terrain vehicles (though 2 out of 3 of those are in the repair shop - they get a tough life here). This is what's left for now:

Dakota is making the most of the heat while it lasts.

On the water side, we just had a note from the estate which told us that our water (which comes from a well) was tested and failed. Contamination from "bacteria". Coliforms probably, from the feces of cattle and sheep. Not very specific, but maybe I don't need to know exactly what I've been drinking. This is likely a result of all the rain too. Contaminated run-off is probably getting into our water supply. The note says in bold capital letters - BOIL ALL WATER BEFORE DRINKING.

I timed it right then, sticking myself with the sheep injections when I did. The course of antibiotics I'm taking should work on coliforms too. But I'm boiling water anyway,  in the red tin coffee pot on top of the wood stove. I'm getting as much out of our dwindling wood supply as possible.

But the worst side effect from the cold and rain is the lack of grazing. The grass will be slow to grow until the soil warms up sufficiently, which is at least 3 weeks later than usual this year. And the wet grass is easily churned up by animals' feet. We're in a cycle of moving the horses and the sheep around to make sure they have adequate food, and to protect the grass itself. I did get the sheep moved this morning, but the horses will have to wait until the rain stops and the ground dries up. Grazing is very limited, and I am almost out of hay which has doubled in price if you can get it. Everyone's in the same predicament as me.

Damn rain.

No pigs, just potholders

I was hoping to have some pictures of wild pigs or fallow deer, and a great hunting story for this post. Sorry - no luck. I sat in a high seat in a field where there are alot of pig workings (dug up turf, footprints). I sat there for a couple of hours and saw nothing. I gave up when my fingers were too cold to take the magazine out of the rifle, and my toes were numb.

I did get to test drive my new thermal overalls -

Fetching, no? They are warm and have good-sized pockets for all my gear. Probably because they are men's not women's. Look on Women's Hunting Journal for a more in-depth discussion of women's hunting clothes. While you're there, try and help me convince Terry to design a line of suitable clothing specifically for women hunters - we're an under-recognised niche market!

On the up side of buying men's clothes, we ladies tend to fit in the smaller sizes which are what's usually left in the sales. Hence these were a real bargain.

Though my hunt was unsuccessful, my attempt at learning crochet went better than I expected. My friend Colette brought her yarn and her infinite patience over yesterday, and under her tutelage I was able to make this before I ran out of yarn:

I don't need a new hobby, or an unlimited supply of potholders, but the actions of using a hook instead of knitting needles was incredibly relaxing. Compulsive, even. And cheaper than therapy. All you need is a hook, some scrap yarn, and a good teacher like Colette who exchanges her skills for cake.

If the weather improves this weekend, I'll be building a new high seat and moving the lambs and horses to fresh grass. If this rain keeps up, I plan to work on the jumper I'm knitting. (If I finish it before the end of April, I win £20 from the husband who bet me it would take til Christmas. Sucker!)

In the meantime, if anyone needs new potholders let me know. I can hook you up.

Stupid is as stupid does

This is my 100th post, and I was planning on writing something 'deep and meaningful'. Instead I'm going to write about something stupid and embarassing.

You know those injuries, always self-inflicted, where the pain hurts less than the embarassment of telling someone what you did? Well, I was giving the lambs their first set of worming treatments and vaccinations this morning. I was feeling proper farmer-like, doing my own basic vet work, practicing my sub-cutaneous injections (yeah, I'm totally down with the lingo). And while daydreaming about how self-reliant I was being, I accidentally injected some lamb vaccine - which includes a dose of Clostridium bacteria - into my own hand. After I'd already stuck it in the lamb's neck once. That's two chances for infection then.

Well done farmer Jen.

The long and short of it is it's not life-threatening. The doctor gave me a week's course of antibiotics and my tetanus is up to date anyway (If you've read my blog before, you will know that this is not the first stupid thing I've done). But calling the vet, who's a friend of ours, to ask him what the procedure is if you..um..accidentally...inject yourself with..ahhh...lamb vaccine? I am never going to live this down.

And the worst part is that I can't drink while taking antibiotics, so no evening 'Brandy and Ginger' for a week!

We started egg collecting today, and as we walked down the rows filling our baskets it started to snow. We've just stoked up the wood stove and dinner's in the oven. We're due a cold snap and temperatures of -1C overnight. The wind chill is making it worse.

Duckling update: Barbara is being a super-duper mom replacement and the ducklings are being well-tended. At least someone around here knows what she's doing .

The transplant was a success...

I swapped Barbara her dummy egg for a pair of ducklings, and she settled right down on them. No questions asked. I've been checking every hour in case of 'rejection' but both parties seem happy with the arrangement. I even tried to feel under Barbara, and found a tiny head poking up from under her wing, and was given What For by the new mother. So far so good.

The incubator was quickly washed out and a new batch of eggs set this morning, as a favour to a neighbor. She'll take delivery of those day old chickens, and I expect I will have some of my own Pekin and Barbu d'Uccle eggs to put in there next.

Mike finished catching up hen pheasants for breeding stock yesterday. And just in time as the first eggs are appearing in their enclosures. I think there's about 2,000 breeding pheasants in there this year. We're going to start collecting the eggs this week, and every day for the next few months.

Pheasant breeding pens, in the middle of summer and a nice dry spell

Unfortunately, this year egg season is coinciding with mud season, so we'll have to wash all the eggs before setting them. At peak time, we pick up 1400 eggs a day.

A few day's worth of pheasant eggs, trayed and ready for incubation

That's a lot of washing. I really hope the weather picks up soon.