{Intro from Cat: Last week, a wolf tried to get into a flock of yearling sheep on the mountain, and ended up in a brawl with six guardian dogs. Although the wolf was injured, it escaped without succeeding in killing any sheep. If it lives, I’m hoping it learned a valuable lesson. A couple of …
Author: Cat Urbigkit
Retiring Old Mama
The last few years, we’ve been working Old Mama into retirement. She’s a fine old dog that has traveled many, many miles accompanying her flocks from the low desert to the high mountains each year. We gradually placed her with flocks following shorter trails, and finally stopped allowing her to trail to winter range a …
The Predation Crisis
Registering Microchips
We recently imported several dogs from outside the United States, and those dogs had been microchipped by veterinarians before arriving in the U.S. For the microchips to be useful in the event a dog is lost, the numbers associated with the chip must be registered. Implanted microchips that aren’t registered by the animal owner are …
Golden Eagle Migrations
Researchers recently discovered the importance of Montana’s Big Belt Mountains (near Bozeman) as a raptor migration flyway, and their first major monitoring effort for this flyway began in the fall of 2015, and was repeated in fall 2016. This route recorded the greatest number of migrating golden eagles of any site in North America, with …
Central Asian Arrivals
Guardian/herding dog differences
I’ve written extensively about our relationship with our working livestock guardian dogs and have written very little about life with our herding dogs. The difference between the two types of dogs is remarkable. None of our guardian dogs over the age of about two months old has ever been willing to play with a …
Mountain Counts
A range flock of domestic sheep exits the mountains in the southern Wind River Range of western Wyoming. Before the flock begins its slow movement to lower elevations, herders needed a head count. But how do you count thousands of sheep with only two men? It’s fairly simple. Range sheep have strong flocking instincts, and …
Escort
The call
We were supposed to shear our sheep today, but a combination of rain and snow pushed back our shearing schedule and I had a free afternoon. I drove about 45 minutes south to meet up with an old friend who was making a quick stop on a Utah-to-Alaska roadtrip with her family. I was given …