As you regular readers know, there are bogs at the end of our mountain trail. So after hours of travel, when people and horses and dogs are tired, the cows usually fall off the trail into the bogs to get a drink and get cool. You can’t ride your horse in there, because they will get stuck, or think they are getting stuck, and horses panic and it’s just not a good situation! That’s when you’re choice is to bail off your horse and try to chase them on foot, or have a great dog to get ’em!
Now, we lucked out and picked the coolest day we’d had in weeks, so the cows weren’t near as hot or thirsty, but, bogs are still attractive – it just wasn’t as bad as it can be.
That was great, because I’d hauled up Dally and Eden to be fresh dogs for the last bit of the drive. Dally knows the routine, but often will just stand and bark, she’s wiser and more cautious in her middle years! Eden, though, little bitty Eden just LOVES this. She shined earlier this summer chasing cows out of little ponds formed from runoff, and although she still thought the regular drive was rather boring compared to chasing the bazillion rabbits and mice we have this year, THIS part was a BLAST!
My video skills were sorely lacking. In fact, for the second bit, I was tottering on a hillock, trying not to fall or step in a boggy hole. The bog consists of thousands of little hillocks surrounded by the blackest, stickiest, and rather stinky goo you can imagine. Not that it really stinks until its on you! Anyway, you can’t hardly even see Eden in the last bit, but she was still going at them!
Now, she has that REALLY ANNOYING YIP that Elsa had, and that I hope she outgrows. But she is aggressive in this situation, biting heels and tails! I’m wound up, making my voice high, encouraging her on and on! Let’s do this! It’s exciting! It’s actually OK to bite them! YEEHAW! There’s one split second where she looks back at me, to check if I’m still wanting her to do this… THAT was my favorite part!
It’s just a minute long… but you’ll get the idea! (More of that yip can be dangerous to your eardrums!)
Eden: Bog Dog from Carol Greet on Vimeo.
Eden loves getting cows out of bogs!
Find me here!
It’s so neat to see a dog’s instincts kick in! Looks like Eden’s a real cow dog now!
That little “bog dog” is really coming into her own – I laughed when she
had a hold of a cow’s tail momentarily. Perfect aim at a moving target! 🙂
Way to go Eden!!!!! One great dog.
And I love watching her! Such enthusiasm.
What a dog. I see what you mean about the long grass. Good job Eden has young energy to jump as well as run.
Good dog!
Yippin’ good cowdog, that little Eden! The energy of youth and perfect body weight!
In case you’ll do another Q&A, here’s my question: Except for what I learned here, from you, I know nothing about stockmanship, so I’m wondering: Did you ever try to follow the rules of “Low Stress Stockmanship” as you intended to? Did it not work for you, or do these scenes qualify as LSS? (I hope I didn’t phrase this in a way that comes across as provocative; I’m honestly just wodering, since, to this ignorant city-prisoner, it looks and sounds pretty High Stress! In any event, I figure it must be precisely what you need in a bog situation and with a cowdog-in-training?) Thanks! Now to look up “bog” and “hillock” so that I can add them to my Red Dirt vocabulary… 😉
Apparently I use “wodering” and “wondering” interchangeably… Ouch.