New addition to the family!

Meet Misty! Misty is a 10 year old Border Collie. She has been a hard working girl all her life and it has come time that she slow down some.

Where she was living there were lots of sheep and moving from on pasture to another sometimes was 2 miles. Her last mom thought that it was time for her to goto a new place. Its a good thing I started thinking about finding a dog here to help us out with our sheep. I hope that we can give her just as good of home as she had.

Thanks to Janet at Tamarack Lamb and Wool for giving us the chance to give Misty a great retirement home.

It will take us some time to get used to each other, but time works wonders. So far Misty rides very well in the Jeep. I think she enjoyed her ride home. She had the whole back seat to herself. :) When we got home we had some time to stretch our legs before Oshki came home. Oshki (the lab) of course wants to play hard with everyone, but Misty wouldnt have any of it.

Even tho Misty had spent most of her time outside, she is liking the life of being an indoor dog too. Tomorrow she will have to spend the day outside as I have to work for a few hours. Im sure she will spend the time sunning herself in the warm winter sun.

We have gone on a couple walks and she does well. She goes off for a bit, then after 200 feet or so, comes back with a smile on her face as she jumps up to my hand with a look that says 'am I dont OK?' I tell her she is a good girl! and we walk more. She is a careful dog. almost as if she knows she cant pound on me.

I did take her in with the sheep yesterday. I was more interested in what my sheep would do. I sent Misty to 'come bye' and the sheep moved one way (shock). There are alot of obstacles in the pen, and it was ok until the sheep started for their shed. I thought maybe Misty could bring them back, so sent her and all I accomplised in doing was helping the sheep faster into their lean-to. I called her off and left the sheep be. It was pretty close to what I would call the sheep 'freeked' out! No harm was done. I know it doesnt help that there are a couple of ewes in there that are pretty flighty.

We are expecting lambs soon here at Double Barrel. There are 3 ewes that are due soon. I suppose since Im going back to work, then its going to be one of them =-/ Daisy is as big as a house again, so Im expecting Triplets. I think Spud (our State Fair attendee) is carrying twins again. Bob probly is as well, but she is a longer gal than Spud so she might have triplets, too.

All I can do is wait and take pics. =-)

The warm sun!

Im very happy to say that the sun is out again and Im looking forward to almost a week of a bit of snow melting each day!

Brent got home late this past Wed night, and it was wonderful having him home. Thursday was sorta a laidback day, but Friday we headed over to Ely. We picked out our Mukluks (http://www.mukluks.com/) and dropped off some items to be digitized for my embroidery machine. We wandered thru the couple stores that we usually checkout... just to see what's new. We also drove down to Trader Craigs. Its no Delaney's, but its more of an expensive garage sale. We found a bunch of LP's that we would have loved to have brought home if they weren't priced so high. It was sorta a shock to see the face that goes with the voice on WELY. I didnt think he was that old!

The Ely Winterfest has just finished up for another year, so we got to see a bunch of the snow sculptures. Lots of good ideas, and designs.

Brent and I decided to have a bite of lunch on the way home. We stopped at what I think is going to be our new favorite resturant, in Tower.

We just split a bowl of soup and a sandwitch. We didnt want to spoil our supper or buy the whole grocery store when we stopped there later.

Saturday was the Riders In Cahoots Sleighrally. Brent, KJ and I met Lois and Al there. Lois had brought her Fjord team, Sandburr and Viggo. I took Lois's camera and snapped all kinds of pics for her. I know that since we were late, we missed several of the rigs, but it was alot of fun! I'll admit that I was sad that we didnt take any horses this year, and yet it was nice that we didnt have to. We were able to come and go as we wanted and didnt have to hurry back or there.

A quick stop at the grocery store for some goodies got us home in time for supper. One of Jake's friends had come over, so we all gathered up to the table for some yummy porterhouse stakes! Big ones, too. We had gotten 5 and had 1 1/2 left over. Was very good meat! We had to uncover the big grill, and it was good to do so. Brent decided to run up to the clubhouse quick and do some plowing. While he and KJ were gone to plow, I chopped up some potatoes to be cooked on the grill. There is just something about fried potatos on the grill!

The weekend always goes too fast, tho. Monday afternoon, Brent had to leave to head down to the Twin Cites to get on his plane back to Wyoming. Hopefully he wont be gone quite so long this time. I hope that the weather out there is just as good as it is here.

This weekend I will be traveling down by Hinkley to bring home our new dog. Her name is Misty and she is a border collie. My hope is that she will give me an extra hand with moving sheep around. I am looking forward to bringing her home and learning some new things. We picked up a doghouse for her and just need to find a place for it as well as stuff it full of straw. Hopefully Artie and Oshki will take to a new member of our working farm in stride. Pics to come, of course :)

A new week..... I think

Not a whole lot of new stuff going on. I was on an ambulance run over the weekend. Was a simple run, so I was OK as far as not having to worry about not doing this or that. I'd taken Jake into Orr so that he could work on his Release Time banner, so it would be done in time for Church on Wed. Ash Wed, ya know. He got it done, and I picked him up later on the next day in the afternoon. Im looking forward to seeing his and the other kids' banners Wed night.

Brent should be home, too. Well, tickets haven't been purchased yet, but that is the plan. He should be home by supper time. I guess he will have to leave again on Monday. That's his birthday so it rather sucks. 4H meeting that afternoon, too. Maybe he will be home long enough for a dogsled ride?

Saturday is the annual Riders-in-Cahoots sleigh rally. We always have fun there. This year we will leave the horses home.... for obvious reasons. Lois and Al will be there, too. So looking forward to seeing them. Havent seen Lois since the MN State Fair, and even longer since Ive seen Al, I think. gotta work on that not happening again!

Come on down if you've nothing better to do. Look at their website for directions. www.ridersincahoots.com Its at a new place this year, not the fairgrounds. Im going to try to remember my camera, but if not, I told Lois I would happily take over her camera.

I don't know if I will be allowed to ride in the sleigh or not. Lois is bringing her Fjord team, so sure would like to. Ill find out more on Wed when I have my check up.

Yes... ONE more thing happening on Wed! never fails! I will have to leave soon after the kids leave for school to get down to Duluth on time. At least I know where Im going, so that helps. Ill stop at Sam's club and hopefully Best Buy, too. I want to look at computers. The laptop is dying and I want to replace it. Sooner the better. Just maybe I will be able to use the laptop for short things here and there if Im careful.

I finished our taxes, so soon we will be caught up on our bills. That is going to feel nice. :) Going to feel even nicer when I can return to work and start getting my daily duties back to normal. Im still deciding where Im going to put the new doghouse. Im hoping that next weekend, I can go get the new dog.

Hopefully I will have some pics to share from the sleighrally.

Not an ordinary day.

Here's Artie, my Maremma Sheepdog. He's the guy that my vet came out to give shots too. She let me know his results today. Heartworm negative, Lyme positive, the other 2 tests were negative.

UGH! I can't believe it. I dont know how long he has had it, but I'm glad that we caught it. He is looking at a treatment of about a month. Im waiting to hear back as to how much his pills will cost. I'll have to go buy some hamburger for him. I found out today that cheese isnt the best thing to hide a pill in.

Artie was a very good dog when the Vet was here. We did have to let him scoot back against the wall when we did the blood draw. We were patient with him and I gave him lots of love when we were done. He probly wont be coming back into the barn for a while, but with any luck it will be a while before I have a need to get my hands on him.

Its tax time. I've just about got that done. They need to be looked over by a friend who has better knowledge of that stuff than me and then I will send them off. It will be nice to have the vechicles paid on (tabs) and will throw some extra money to those pesky credit cards.

Im looking forward to having Brent home this weekend. He says he'd like to stay this weekend and come home next weekend for the Grand Rapids Sleigh Rally (sponsored by Riders in Cahoots www.ridersincahoots.com ). Even if he isnt home for that, I'll still be going down there. Ive a few friends that will be there. At the very least, I can take over a camera!

Each night I have been looking at the sled dog race results for both the John Beargrease (www.beargrease.com) and the Wyoming Stage Stop (www.wyomingstagestop.com). We have friends running in both of them. There are some great pics on the Wyoming site. I keep looking for the Chapman group, but so far, they are evading the cameras. I think the weather has been pretty good for both races. They could have been getting the bad snow and such that they are getting down south.

Well, thats about it for now. One of these days, I might have something fun to write about other than my knitting! Take care for now.