Looking for love in all the wrong places

 

It's been a long week. Our little ankle biter dog the Sproutmeister died. It was fairly sudden over two days. He was never in pain and now has a forever place under the lilac bush in the front yard. 

Between AnnMarie and I we chose to get another Brussels Griffin. They are not easy to find and we are fortunate to have a good breeder locally in Hermiston. She had a couple ready and we went over and picked up Gizmo on Friday. He was 16 weeks old. He has the head of a rough coat and the body of a smooth coat. He is an idiot. So we are now working to teach him the basics. We are trying to create a safe zone for him in his kennel area. He weighs 6 pounds. He is slurping up our free time. 

It rained all weekend so I could not mow the lawn. I will try and get it on Monday I managed to get out on Sunday and get the tractor working again. I hooked the sprayer up to the headlight switch. I forgot to turn off the headlights and ran down the battery. I had to pull the battery and charge it this week. The tractor actually starts better with a full charge on the battery. That is the original battery over five years old will be six this fall. I was cleaning horse poop out of the barn lot. AnnMarie called me on my cell phone. I have started listening to my music over my phone so if someone calls I actually hear it. She said that Packy had called and said our bull was down at his house. I told her let me go look on the tractor. I counted 11 cows but didn't see the bull. I texted AnnMarie, we have 12 cows. I found the hole while talking to AnnMarie. There is high tension wire fence running up the hillside but down by the schoolhouse it had to terminate due to the uneven terrain. The opening is about 24 inches wide and I had boards nailed across it. He picked the boards off with his horns. The neighbor was moving his cows on the back roads.  We are pretty sure this prompted him to go after more females. Packy was out spraying and ran him into a pasture, lent us a trailer and helped us load him up!  We are always grateful for all our neighbors. It helps having a pretty distinctive breed everyone knows they are ours. 

 

We let him out in the barn lot and then I grabbed tools and a panel and walked down to fix the opening. Guess who was already down by the hole?  The bull had jumped down into the back creek and eased through the the water and under the fence to get into the schoolhouse pasture. I have not dropped the fences down into the creek yet as it just snowed again yesterday in the mountains!   It is a runoff creek that dried up in the summer. It's pretty low now but I am not ready to trust the runoff quite yet. 

I placed the panel across the hole. I managed to smack myself in the upper lip with a springy rose branch and gave myself a fat lip and abrasion. This caused some swearing and ungracious thoughts toward the bull. I got it nailed in and wired to the existing fence so he cannot just pop the staples out. I walked up the road and ended up fixing the fence from four corners to our driveway entrance. I spent about 1.5 hours just before dark getting it all repaired. 

 

We have a new resident in the barn. This large orange tabby tom has been living there for almost three months. The dogs all know he is there but they cannot seem to find him. I am not sure how this is going to affect us getting kittens to live in the barn. We may just have to raise them in the backyard. Maybe we can only get three. 

I need to get the forklift forks installed so I can install the 4x8 foot window in the upper part of the barn. I am going to use the tractor as a man lift.