More cheap labor.



New worker added to family.

Well we did it, we have a new puppy!  Annmarie drove 7 hours each way to pick him up on Saturday, November 28, 2015.  He is a purebred Border collie from working parents.  The breeders were going to hold him back for themselves but had things come up.  They will only sell their dogs to working farms and say they can work both cattle and sheep.  The biggest thing is being able to differentiate between cattle and sheep, they are not herded the same.   He is silver in color, bright blue eyes and only eight weeks old.  We had been talking about waiting until spring but Annmarie has more time available now and hopefully Sarah will be home soon.  This will spread out the puppy duties to ease the burden.  They are so much work!  The first couple of days our dogs didn't want much to do with him.  Now Zeke will play with him and not growl at him nonstop.  Zeke playing with him has helped ease the burden a lot.  Otherwise, he needed a human play toy incessantly.  We did the math and with Zeke being 5 years old and it taking us 2 years to really train the puppy well. We will need a new dog every 5-7 years.  I would like to wait until the old dog has died before getting a replacement.   His name is Mouse, its color appropriate.  I needed a name I could holler out easily.  No multiple syllable names were allowed in the choosing process.  No names that started with a S or Z were allowed either.  Oh and nothing that sounded like one of our commands.  I really wanted a single syllable name, hence the choice Mouse.   It was Annmarie's idea to call him Mouse.  He gets to sleep with us for a couple of weeks until we are sure he can hold his pee through the night then we will crate train him.  The first three nights of the crate are the worse.  The nice thing is both other dogs are crate trained so it won't seem so foreign to him. 
He is already showing an interest in the livestock.  He tries to chase the alpaca out of our yard and he loves watching the chickens through the fence.  He just needs to not get rolled by the sheep!  The plan is to just keep him near Zeke when we go out to the barn.  Zeke is generally avoided by the sheep and he will protect both of them.  Mouse is constantly trying to grab Zeke by a leg when they play. 


Sprout is not taking to the puppy.  Its interrupting his desires and needs.