Category: barclay

Workin’ hard around the yard

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks, barclay, chickens, farm, garden, jack, naviLeave a comment

We had the most beautiful weather this weekend (our weekend is Tues-Wed). This is why we live in the NW. It was sunny, and in the 50s on Tuesday, 40s today. Perfect weather for getting a bunch of hard work done before the ground either freezes up solid again, or melts completely into a mud puddle.

So I started out with a project that has been nagging at me for a couple years. Several years ago I put in a raised bed garden in an unused part of the yard, and it didn’t really work out there, so it sort of got abandoned, it was hard to mow around, and because it was made of concrete blocks with the holes in them, it was a hazard for the dogs who have been playing around it (especially just recently), and it needed to be removed. But who wants to remove 30-some concrete blocks that are sunk into the dirt and seem pretty permanent? Nobody. But it has to be done.

So I got the mower and the lawn cart, and took a load of wood chips over to the garden area (no point driving over there without taking something along for the ride). I shoveled a bunch of fresh chips onto the path where it was getting bare and muddy. It’s going to take several more loads.

Fresh wood chips on the left, ground that needs some more on the right.

I took the cart over to the drainfield area and started loading up concrete blocks. Each one had to be wrestled out of the ground, wiggling them back and forth like a loose tooth. I loaded 12 into the cart at a time and took them over to the area outside my garden next to the compost piles and..

Used them to build a new compost pile area. I really needed a new compost area to put the alpaca poo I’ve been scooping up every morning.

So that was all yesterday. Dave helped a bit but by the end of the day I was beat. Those concrete blocks are terribly heavy! But I’m really happy with the compost area.

Today I headed right out this morning and got to work on the next thing on my list – the semi-annual cleaning of the chicken coop. (this is the after picture).

The deep bed method had backfired on me as it piled up faster than I was keeping up with it. For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to find time to get out there and clean it up. I cleared out THREE heaping wheelbarrow loads – and I think it’s an 8 cubic foot wheelbarrow! That’s a lot of crap!

I spread the chicken poo thinly over the beds in the garden and put the rest in the new compost pile. Then I took all the straw I removed from the alpaca shelter (which was old straw, sheep poo and pig poo from last year) and scattered that over the chicken poo. I’m hoping all this will break down by planting time (May around here) and make for happy plants this summer.

Back in the chicken coop I got the brooder all cleaned out, because the feed store is getting chicks this weekend, and I want to get some. This way they should be old enough to start laying by winter. In this picture I’ve put straw in the brooder, but I’m going to change that to chips, because I think the straw will be too hard for the chicks to walk on.

Some of my girls moved right back into their clean home. They were a bit put out after being banished from the coop all day while it was being cleaned. Next on the to-do list – put up a piece of plywood to hide the insulation from the chickens. I don’t know how they  get to it to tear it up, but they do.

In the coop the dogs help clean up any poo I missed – yuk!

A beautiful end to a very productive two days. I shoveled until I had nothing left in me! It’s great to finally get all those chores done. Now I need a weekend to recover from my weekend!

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Navi goes for a ride!

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi, pets2 Comments

Navi hates riding in the car, for reasons I don’t understand because every other dog I’ve ever had will camp out in the car at every opportunity in the hopes they will get to go somewhere fun. She sits in the car, miserable, drooling, and looking ill the whole way. So I’ve done a lot of desensitizing to get her used to the motion of the car, and now she doesn’t look sick, but she looks like she suspects she might get sick, and so she is very anxious about the whole thing.

On top of that, she associates the harness with going in the car, so the battle actually begins well before we even get out the door, as I try to get her harnessed up. The only time I took her for a walk without a harness, she slipped her collar and ran amok at the park campground!

Last night I was planning to take them to a friend’s house to play with Sake and Sitka, their eskimo friends. But first I had to get her harnessed up. I harnessed Barclay, so she could see him calmly handling it. Then, using lots of treats, I showed her the harness and click and treated her for looking at it, for sniffing it (we’ve done all this many times before), etc, until I was ready to actually put it on her. She would run up to me, then run away, but she kept coming back, she wanted so badly to do what I was asking, and she kept trying, and I kept rewarding her for it. She really made the effort. She even submissively peed on the floor, she was so nervous! But I can’t let that stop her from getting out, or she’ll be housebound forever. Finally, with lots of treats and praise, I got the harness on, and leashed them up and took them out to the van.

At the van I opened the side door and Barclay jumped in and got on his seat, but Navi was sniffing around. Sniffing, sniffing, sniffing. And it wasn’t because there was anything that interesting to smell, it was because she was nervous, and sniffing is a displacement activity. Since I knew that, I just let her sniff, and when she finally got up the courage to look at the van, she got a click and a treat. She sniffed around some more, but not for as long before she looked at the van again, another click and treat. We kept this up until she got up the guts to go right up and look in the door (at Barclay who was sitting right inside) and finally she put her paws up on the step, and I boosted her in and gave her more treats and lots of praise. Then we drove to our friend’s house and she had a great time playing with her eskimo friends and stealing their toys, and we even took her and Sitka over to Lowes for a little practice walking around and seeing strangers (though she barked a lot and was too excited to take treats when offered, which means she was over-threshold – too stimulated for training) so we took them back home after a short walk-around.

 Sitka and Navi, barely sitting still long enough for a picture at Lowes

I am so proud of her because she does all this for me, she wants to please me and do what I want, and it’s so hard for her. She’s got such a great little heart, and a lot of ‘try’!  I hope after a while she’ll forget about being a car-sick little puppy and learn to relax and enjoy traveling. We love to travel, and to take our Airstream camping, and she’s going to need to relax and enjoy it to come along with us. And of course there’s so much for her to see and do, and it’s all a short car-ride away.

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Happy Birthday Barclay!

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay4 Comments
 
About three years ago we went to a dog show to meet an American Eskimo breeder, just to talk about maybe thinking about getting a puppy sometime in the future. Instead she introduced us to a friend who had an extra puppy that someone had backed out on, and we ended up putting money down on him. A week or so later we brought home fluffy little Barclay. So it’s been three years of socializing, training, a lot of fun and a bit of hard work. When he was a baby he threw the most terrible tantrum in puppy class and the teacher sat down with us and held him until he gave up! That was just more incentive to keep working with him. He’s turned out to be all the dog I could hope for. He is sweet and gentle with humans, friendly and playful with other dogs, and although he chases the chickens when he can, he doesn’t really want to eat them, just to play! He’s not what I would call obedient, but he comes when I call him, most of the time, relatively quickly – for an eskimo. He makes me laugh all the time. Earlier this month he passed his therapy dog testing and earned his Canine Good Citizen certificate. 
They say everyone gets the dog they deserve, I’m flattered to think I deserve this. 
Happy Birthday, Barclay!
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Yesterday it rained

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, farm, jack, navi1 Comment

..and rained and rained and rained. I think it’s the most water I’ve seen in the field for a long time. When I said swale in the front field flooded when it rains, this is what I’m talking about.

I walked around the field a bit to judge what parts actually had standing water, vs what parts might be ok to have livestock on during a deluge. In addition to my miniature horse dreams, I’d still kind of like to have a flock of sheep again someday. They can’t be running around on the wet part of the pasture though!

The swale is not only about 30ft wide, but it all ended up in a 40 x 60 ft pond at the bottom of the field (which was so deep I thought Navi was going to have to swim) by the road. I took the dogs out and they had a great time splashing around and playing fetch in the pond, then we came back up to hang out in the shelter and watch the rain come down.

That roar is the rain on the metal shelter roof. It was LOUD!

The Garden is done

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, garden, navi1 Comment

We had a cold snap last week, and I was home with a cold so I didn’t want to go out and do anything to the garden. Everything growing out there, except a few herbs, was cold-weather plants like cabbage, broccoli, and kale, plus the remaining chard, spinach and onions, so I let them tough it out.

Ouch! Bad idea! Everything is wilted flat to the ground!
 The winter greens…
The chard and spinach
 The sage was the only thing tough enough to look unfazed by the drop to 19 degrees!
I think I’ll be turning over the dead stuff into the rows and toss some of the cut grass from the field on there, or compost, or I have a friend with  livestock who’s going to bring over some manure to put down. I’ll let it cook until spring and then we’ll be ready to go again. Eventually I want my garden to produce year around, but I’m pretty happy with how this year went – even though the weather never cooperated for most of it. I learned a lot, and I’ll be looking forward to pickling my own cukes next year!
 
 The pasture looks beautiful. The cold has slowed the grass down, and it’s been flooded a couple times. 
Barclay the farm dog! Just hanging out with me.

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Therapy dog testing – done!

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay3 Comments

Yay – Barclay passed his Therapy Dog International evaluation, and that included the AKC Canine Good Citizen certification as well! What a good boy!

Testing was done at our friend Alison’s dog training school, Everyday Dog in Vancouver. It’s not a big facility, and I think we had 12 dogs in the first group – ranging from a little Shih Tzu type dog to a Great Dane that was literally as big as a small horse! We all crowded over to one side of the room so there was room to do the testing on the other side.

Testing involved things like walking on a leash, meeting a stranger for greeting, letting a stranger pet them and brush them, handle ears and feet. Then there were a few other tests like walking through a crowd which included people in walkers and wheelchairs stopping to pet him, and walking back and forth while people ran by, squeaking balls and banging metal dishes together. Even if he hadn’t passed it would have been a great experience for him, but he did fine, especially for being in a room full of strange dogs and commotions! I think the surroundings were the real test!

When we finish sending in the paperwork Barclay will be certified to go visit places like hospitals and retirement homes or do the in-school reading programs where kids read to dogs. We have friends in the dog club who do this with their Great Pyrenees and they say it’s very rewarding to see how much the dogs do for people and how much they enjoy their company.

The Canine Good Citizen certification isn’t as big a deal, but I trained Alki for it when she was a pup, and we moved right before she was supposed to take the test – so we never got back around to doing that, though I always wanted to and I knew she could have passed easily. So I feel good that Barclay has his CGC now, because he is a very good boy, and I think the CGC is a great program.

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Small victories

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi3 Comments

Navi has been scared of getting in the car since we got her. In fact before we adopted her, when I just knew her at the dog park, she didn’t like riding in the car. So I knew that was an issue. Unfortunately it’s kind of a big issue, because of where we live we can’t just head out the door and go for a walk. Rural roads with no sidewalks, just speeding cars with a ditch along the side of the road are not conductive to going for relaxing dog walks. So to get out we pretty much have to go for a drive to get somewhere safe to walk. But poor Navi would strain at the leash to stay away from the car, and then when put in it she would sit in the back seat, head hung down, drooling and miserable. That miserable experience was making every trip a bit more difficult than the last.

Since Navi didn’t like the car, I tried desensitizing her to it by letting them play around the van, hopping in and out freely for treats. Once she felt better about that I would close them up in the van while we hung out and had treats, then let her go. When she was comfortable with that I would close her in the van and back it up the length of the driveway and drive back up to the house. Last week I took her in the van into town (a nice short drive) for a fun walk at the park with our dog friends. Today I took her for another ride just to go pick Dave up at work, and she did fine again. We even stopped at the feed store and she went in with me and said hi to the cashier. Then we came back out and she jumped right in the van with just a little encouragement.

So the car issue is slowly becoming a non-issue. I’m looking forward to being able to just take her for a ride, then we can go for more walks, and go to dog training and stuff like that. Because right now she’s just having fun around the house:

Here she is eating an egg. I think it’s the first time I’ve given her a whole egg. It took her a while to figure out what to do with it. 
 Barclay knows how to get into an egg. It’s one of his favorite perks of living on the farm!
 It’s hard to get pictures of Navi, they always seem to come out like this!
Or this! Fuzzy dog!
Unless she stops to chew on a giant bone.
Barclay’s favorite thing in the world is playing with his flirt pole, or as we call it ‘stickball’. He gets a hold of the ball and doesn’t want to let it go, but when I get it back he loves chasing it and jumping in the air to snatch it back! 
Navi likes to get involved by getting between him and the stick. Notice how Barclay keeps a foot on the rope, just to make sure I don’t get it away from him.
He never gets grouchy with her, he just patiently waits for her to get out of the way so he can play some more.
So I get the ball back and swing it around, and all eyes are on the ball.
Barclay is not only acrobatic in his leaps and spins to get the ball, but he does an amazing job of calculating where the ball will swing to, and is often in mid-air waiting for it. And then Navi gets involved…
They make me laugh all the time!
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