{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 …
Tag: rural life
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
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 …
Escort
Old Mama
She’s not much to look at, some cross between livestock guardian dog breeds. Born on the range to working guardians, she’s lived all her 10+ years of life there, migrating with the flocks from the sagebrush-covered low country in winter, to the high country of the Wind River Mountains as the flocks move for summer …
Playing with Food
Because sometimes it’s fun to play with your food – a coyote in western Wyoming this morning.
Curs On Coyotes
We parked the truck under the crest of the ridge and the two yellow female curs jumped from the cab to the ground, sniffing around unconcernedly for ground squirrels. Jeff quietly called the dogs back to the truck so he could snap electronic collars onto their necks. The girls remained quiet and seemed calm, but …
Spring Reds
This seems to be the spring for red fox in western Wyoming. It’s not that we have more of them, but we’ve got a few litters that have been more visible than usual. Fortunately they aren’t near our lambing grounds, so they aren’t in areas where conflicts would be expected. I spotted six kits at …