Female Red Tri (hard to get a good picture when the puppies move around so quick — this is a cute puppie!) $300 This girl is active and will need a lot of room to run and play. Our dogs work our cattle so a dog like her is desirable for their energy. She’s friendly and loves attention. 

Male Red Merle $250 SOLD Thank you Kindra for giving him a great home! He’s also very active. He loves to play and run around. He and his sister, that looks extremely like him, usually lead the other puppies when they go out exploring. 

Female Red Merle $300 SOLD Thank you Jack, I think she’ll be real happy. She’s a lot like her brother above her. In my opinion she would be a good ranch dog. She can fit anywhere else as well, but she’ll be pretty active. 

Male blue merle $250 SOLD Thank you Shaun and Marla, I hope he shows great for you! He’s only one in the bunch. He’s a bit more calm than the previous two. he’s the biggest in the litter and will probably grow to be pretty large (only about to your knee and 50 lbs) He’s one of the friendliest we have. 

This Post is by Katie: We’ve had a few close calls with the puppies but they’re still alive and growing up. Last week I was shaving one our dogs in the barn and had left to get some scissors to cut some hair that the clippers couldn’t get through. In those ten minutes I was gone a baby skunk had made it’s way into the stall where we kept the puppies. When I walked in the puppies were barking and whining so I immediately went to check it out. There the horrible skunk was in their food dish and all the puppies huddled in a corner. I whipped them out of there after trying to get Mamma to go in there and do something, but she knew better than to mess with a skunk. After all the hussell and things were starting to calm down, I noticed that one of the puppies was bleeding. I took it to the vet and so far everything’s fine. They have really great personalities and are really friendly. You can already note some distinctive personality types. They’re 5 to 6 weeks old now. In a couple of weeks more they’ll be ready to be weaned and sold.

The puppies are making progress. This picture is when they were about 2 weeks old. It’s amazing how fast they grow up. We have 2 Blue Merles, 3 Red Merles, 3 Red Sables, and 1 Black Tri.

They’re still not as cute as they could be even though they’re still irresistible. The puppies in this picture are only now starting to see, sit up, and walk without falling down.

I was just bringing this puppy out from the house. After going to check on them in their stall I found this one caked in dirt, she was a mess. I’m still not completely sure what happened but I’m pretty confident that she fell into the water bucket and then climbed out again. I’m just glad I didn’t walk into that stall to find a drowned puppy. About a week later I had a bucket of water out there for Mamma. A little worried about how tall the puppies were getting, I stood there to make sure none of them could get inside. Lo and Behold, in about five minutes this puppy was in the water and struggling to get out. I’m glad I stayed there for a little while. Since then I haven’t kept a bucket of water where they could get into it.

Here they are running around. They’re a big hit with any one who comes to visit.

This is my favorite one. She has turned out to be very sweet. She has blue eyes and loves to just sit under your legs and be pet. If we were to keep any of them, I would want this one.

It’s not very often that you can catch any of the puppies being still, especially if you’re in view.

It’s getting pretty close to night time so they’re all going a little slower now. A lot of the puppies like to be near the water at all times. Some of them will climb into their bowl and lay down in it. Others like to lay under the faucets.

Every once in a while you can find almost all the nine puppies squishing themselves beneath this wheelbarrow. They tend to find the smallest space they can and then bury their head in it. They’ll squeeze under your legs if you’re sitting on the grass by them. It’s fun as long as you’re not planning to get up any time soon.

She’s about to climb into that metal bowl near her in this picture, she almost looks mischevious.

Here she is again just being her sweet self.

And here she is again, she’s finally looking at the camera after about a hundred tries.

One of our blue merles. He has brown eyes even though I had hoped that at least one of our two blue merles would have blue eyes, guess not. The girl that looks a lot like him was the one that was attacked by that baby skunk.

Here he is again laying next to one of his brothers. Mom’s in the backround keeping a tab on her puppies.

And lastly, the puppy that cannot stay out of the water to save her life. She’s really sweet too and can’t get enough attention. Maybe she’ll actually enjoy taking baths unlike our other dogs.

Well, as soon as we left on a weekend trip to San Antonio (don’t worry, there’s a whole separate post for that), Mary, one of our Aussie Shepherds had her puppies. These should be an interesting group of Aussies. There are 9 of them. It looks like there will be some good coloring in this group. They will be fun to watch grow up. Noah loves all baby animals and he is right in there on the action.

We took a quick trip down to San Antonio to attend an open house for the new San Antonio Temple. Even ranchers need a little time off, right? It was always tentative, whether we would actually go because we still had one horse to foal and it was due that very weekend. The foal was actually born the week prior, thank goodness. But we were also waiting on Mary, one of our Australian Shepherds to have her puppies. That ended up happening while we were gone. It’s not easy finding someone or multiple people really to look after the place and the animals while we were gone, but thanks to these good friends, we were able to get away.

San Antonio is a great place to visit. Since we were there, we worked in a trip to SeaWorld and downtown while we were there. SeaWorld is a fun theme park. Not too crowded, and that ranks very high on my list nowadays.

Robbie and Peter by Shamu. That’s not the real Shamu. What a show those Killer Whales put on!

This was one of the more spectacular shots I got. This trainer had some amazing balance standing right on Shamu’s nose after coming up from the bottom of this giant tank. These whales are so huge. They make that tank look like a big tub with the waves they stir up just swimming around.

SeaWorld has a lot more than shows of course. How about some rides to get you sick?

The Steel Eel is quite intimidating. I did go on it just to prove I’m still not too old for this stuff. I decided I’m too old for this stuff and turned to my picture taking role. It took me a while to get my stomach resettled. Yikes! What did I enjoy about roller coasters and what happened to those days?

Russell was in his glory going on all roller coasters many multiple times. Here he is with cousin Mike.

Me, Noah, Peter and Robbie enjoying the penguin exhibit.

Now here’s the most enjoyable “ride” they have at SeaWorld, and I don’t mean the Log Ride. The best thing, IMHO, is to drop a quarter in the machine and use your 60 second window to blast riders with your own water blaster. I dropped a lot of quarters on this ride. That was wickedly fun. Everyone I got was a good sport about it. I’d rather be the blaster than the blastee, though.

San Antonio downtown is a magical place to visit. The Riverwalk is neat. Restaurants line the banks of the river. Lot’s of mexican restaurants. We had lunch at Casa Rio. Other times down there, Diane and I have had dinner at The Little Rhein Steakhouse. That’s some good food, for sure. You can catch a ride on the river boats and listen to the guide make up stories about the various sites along the way.

Eric and Rebecca take in the view from this bridge overlooking the Riverwalk.

If you go to San Antonio, you simply must take a little tour of the Alamo. It’s a critical part of Texas history. We took the kids there, of course.

Katie (she’s home from college — yahoo!) and Ryan outside the Alamo. That’s a side shot of the Alamo because the front is obstructed by a bunch of scaffolding and stage equipment preparing for a benefit concert to be held May 2nd.

Lacey our 5 year old Palomino mare finally had her baby. The foal’s sire is Coins for Cash, a black Quarterhorse stallion. Lacey’s registered name is An Afternoon Tradition. It’s a little filly. So now we have to figure out what to name the baby. These registered horses have a registered name that usually incorporates some aspect of the mother and father. Then, they have the name they are called. Strange but that’s how they do it. We’re taking nominations. So far I’ve suggested Traditional Cash.

The baby was born on April 23rd. Here it is a few weeks later. We have some concerns about her legs. The front left knee seems to be bent in a little. Vet says not to worry.

This mama Hereford is cleaning up her new baby while they stand out in the tall grass. This is a late Spring calf. I thought we were done for the Spring, but I guess I was wrong.

Yes, there’s a bunch of wild pigs out here in the Texas country. They’re not the real wild boars that you read about. They’re what they call “feral pigs”. There’s been a lot of news lately about feral cats in WI. “Feral” refers to formerly domesticated animals escaped/abandoned and now living in the wild. People seem to come out here to the country and drop off their cats and dogs. We’ve taken care of 3 or 4 dogs out here that just showed up one day. And the cats, man, it’s too much. But that’s another topic.

Apparently, these feral pigs out here are descendants of pigs that were let free or escaped in years past. They reproduce rather prolifically and make some big herds. They are very destructive of pasture and fences. When on the run they just blast through fences. Sometimes they bounce right off, if the fence is fairly new and strong, but most times they just tear up the fence. And you can tell where they’ve been rooting around, because they can make a pasture look like it was just plowed in some places. But they are pretty elusive. Every time we see them, we don’t have our camera. We have been lucky enough to shoot two of them over the years, though. And let me tell you, they make excellent food. Wow! I was shocked at how good it was. They are definitely free ranging and that seems to make all the difference. Their meat is lean and tasty. I’d like to get another one if I ever manage to have my gun with me at the right time. I’m not a big hunter and I don’t do it for sport, but we do own plenty of guns and use them to hunt for food and practice hunting for food.

But anyway, just this morning I was headed out to the Graveyard Pasture (far north corner of the property)and was very surprised to run into this one mama pig with her little piglets — about 10 of them. Normally, by the time you see them, the pigs are already on the run, having already heard you or sniffed your scent. But this mama apparently couldn’t detect my presence. There was a fairly stiff breeze and they were upwind. But I was on the tractor with the big mower on the back. Nonetheless, they were just walking along at a leisurely pace. I fumbled for my camera and got it powered up and got a few good shots. These are very rare in my experience out here. I’ve never seen a mama and all her piglets out in the open like this just sauntering along.

I was glad they posed for the picture.

Amazingly on the same journey to the pasture, I ran into some wild turkeys. I couldn’t get the camera out in time for that though.