Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve tagged along in the truck to feed cattle. I’ve rode with border collies, had border collie butts stuck in my face over the excitement of an open window, been sat on by more than one border collie (at a time!) and had many more adventures… With border colllies.
Of course, I felt the tug to take a picture during our adventures… More than once actually! But only had my phone on me. (Which, surprisingly, takes half decent pictures!)
I liked it when we’d finish feeding the gals and then turn around and here they’d all be lined up snarfing the feed down…
And of course, yellow feed leads to….
Yellow noses! I believe the name for this handsome guy was “Red”?
Meet Gus – A first rate border collie cowdog! He and his lady friend, Lucy (his partner in the cattle moving business) work together day in and day out to move the ol’ gals where ever they’re supposed to be going!
One thing I learned from all these adventures? Border collies will do almost anything to be near an open window. One of the reasons why? To see a cow nearby or….
“Or to have one of the old coots get too close to our truck, which means we can snap at them! Sometimes we get them, sometimes we don’t. It’s all in a day’s work.” Gus has informed me greatly on this very matter.
This business of truck guarding is one that the two borders take quite seriously. (As you can see by this picture!)
“But as we said before, this job isn’t all fun and games! Take this picture for instance: Here we are, needing to get the girls from one pasture to the one right across the road. Sounds simple? Tag along, we’ll show you how it went down.” (Gus has taken over my notepad and computer at this point, so he’ll be narrating the rest of this post!)
“It starts with one of us telling the humans to go tie ropes across the road. This is our escape-proof walkway.
Lucy and I lay patiently, quietly directing on what must be done and waiting for the gate to be opened.
Pretty soon, the gate is open and the first cow heads through. (See our human over there??)
Than a few more of the ol’ girls come through…..
Pretty soon they’re all out of the one pasture and almost into the next!
This is where we come in – We quietly let ourselves off our leashes and head toward the cattle. We weave back and forth and snap at their heels to get them moving away from the gate and farther out into the pasture!
We come back to find that the big, red bull, Clifford, has stayed behind. But that’s ok! We have another pasture for him anyway.
We gather some cubes and direct the humans to put them in the trailer and load the big boy up.
Umm, I take it this keyboard isn’t the dog-friendly edition – I had a typo there… What? This key? Ok, hang on.
Correction folks, make that a very big boy!
Yep, well, we moved Clifford over to another pasture with some lovely ladies in it and hope he feels mighty at home. And, while I hate to say it, that pretty much closes up our day, hope to see you all again soon!” – Gus
Behind the scenes: “Ashleigh, thanks again for having me. I think the writing thing might work for this ol’ boy after all! Which reminds me, I’ve been working on this novel and……. “
After giving it some serious thought, Gus decided the writing thing wasn’t his cup of tea and went back to be a full-fledged cowdog. No longer trying to juggle writing for his novel and snapping the heels of unmoving 2,000 pound animals, he feels he made the right decision.
Hopefully you enjoyed our four-legged guest writer!
Ashleigh
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