Puppy Play Time

On Sunday, Susan and Dean picked up our two newest additions to our farm...

They are Great Pyrenees puppies, and will soon be working as guard dogs. Right now, they're in a makeshift pen in the chicken area, where they can get to know the chickens and Ben, one of the other guard dogs.

Their names are Luke and Leia - my suggestion, incidentally. Thank you, thank you.

Leia is definitely the more adventuresome of the two, while Luke is calmer and more serious.

But both of them are pretty mouthy.

Anyways, I just thought some puppy pictures would help enliven everyone's day. Playing with them certainly made mine.

  

The Passing of a Friend

Charlie, one of the guard dogs, died very suddenly last night. Brian and Autumn were about ten minutes away from the animal hospital in Charlottesville when he passed away.

Although we didn't know it until talking to the veterinarian, Charlie had canine bloat, a very serious and often fatal problem that usually occurs in deep chested dogs, which Charlie was. Basically, the dog's stomach twists downward, which makes the dog unable to vomit or get rid of anything in its stomach. Gasses build up, and within a few hours the dog dies.

We first noticed something was wrong at noon, when we were heading into lunch. Charlie had jumped the fence and was panting pretty hard. Other than the panting, he seemed fine, so we took him back to his area.

That evening as Brian was doing wrap-up, he noticed that Charlie was gone. When we found him, his mouth was dirty, his tummy distended and hard, and he was still panting a lot. He wouldn't eat or drink anything. We thought he'd probably just eaten something bad, but decided to take him to the vet anyways. Brian and Autumn drove him, since I was getting up at 4 for the Charlottesville Farmers Market.

Charlie died on the way to the vet's office. Even if he'd gotten there before he died, there wasn't anything the vet could have done by that point. We need to keep an eye on Ben, Charlie's brother - apparently canine bloat is hereditary. Susan is thinking about having a preventative surgery done where they would tie down Ben's stomach so it couldn't twist - a fairly common procedure, it seems.




Bye, Charlie. You're a good pal.

Life on the Farm - Let's meet our contestants!

Who doesn't picture a farm without a some chickens, a cow in the distance, and a few cats killing mice in the barns? Although Brightwood Farm doesn't have all the most stereotypical livestock wandering around, Susan and Dean do have plenty of animals roaming their gently rolling hills - in fact, they were featured in a local paper today about raising heritage breeds. (Check out the article to learn a bit about the farm and to see a great picture of Susan with her heritage Indian Runner ducks.)

So without further ado, allow me to introduce the players - give it up for the inhabitants of Brightwood Vineyard and Farm!



From Left: Sadie, Izzie, Rosie

The donkeys - Sadie, Rosie and Izzie - are used for what Susan calls "fertility" (a euphamism meaning "manure"), which is used in their compost. Izzie is also Rosie's daughter - when Susan and Dean bought Rosie, they thought she was just getting fat. Au contraire, as they discovered one morning upon finding a slimmed down Rosie and a baby donkey with enormous ears.

Next up are the sheep. They are friendly. Very friendly. (PS: That is Isaac, the friendly WWOOF-er).

And what are sheep without goats? Feeding them is Caitlin, who works on the farm a couple days every week.



Juan the goat.

Naturally with all these tasty treats practically laying around for the taking, something must be done to protect them. That's where the guard dogs come in.



Charlie the dog.

Charlie hangs out with the sheep all day, in a field adjascent to a couple goats (Juan and Phil, a bottle baby goat) and the donkeys. (Charlie is also camera shy, so I had to be covert while lurking about shamelessly.) He is a Maremma Sheepdog, a breed of livestock guardian dog originally bred in central Italy.

Charlie has a brother, named Ben.

Ben guards the chickens.

And while we're on the subject of birds, let's not forget the ducks and Guinea fowl.

They might eat ticks, but Guinea fowl are still one of the most obnoxious birds on the planet.

Duck eggs - apparently great for baking.

There are actually more, but I won't make this entry any more unwieldy than it already is. You will have to wait to meet the rest until later.

Until next time...

On The Road Again...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single dog in want of a good adventure will jump into any open car he sees.

So, after I packed my car and hugged my parents and went to the bathroom one last time*, I went outside to actually leave. And what did I find? A stowaway, of course.

...and a stowaway wannabe.

Any-hoo. I'll stop posting pictures of dogs now. I swear I'm not one of those people.*

I'm currently in Beckley, West Virginia, a bit over halfway to Brightwood Vineyard and Farm, where I will be spending the next eight months (approximately) of my life. I should be arriving sometime in the afternoon tomorrow, and starting work on Monday.

And - of course - I will be transcribing my many new experiences here. So stay tuned!


*I still had to pee half an hour later. I have a bladder the size of a grape.
**Cross my heart. We don't have a dachshund-sized Santa Costume. Would I lie to you?