Why (farm) dogs rule.

There has long been a war between cat and dog people over what pet was the better of the two.
I am here to tell you why dogs win.

First off let me be clear, I have lived with both pets my whole life, I had loved many a cat, cried when they died of old age, and cherished them for their gifts.
This is who I would choose if forced.
Dogs are better!

First off dogs (usually) don't go to the bathroom in the house!
(Good training helps.)

Side note: dogs, with proper training also tend to be much more polite than cats.

Cat litter boxes are gross! They smell and need to be cleaned far too often. Even with our cat who lives outside a big chunk of the time, we still need to clean his box.
 I repeat it's gross!

Our dog, on the other hand, gives me 'the look' asking to go outside, I open the door and let him out and that's it I'm done!
 I understand people in cities have to pick up their dog's poo with little baggies. 
That too is gross!

 Farm dogs do not need this cleanup crew, they only need to be let out, here they have a 130-acre bathroom. 

Our dog is very shy and he prefers to go in the woods behind the ferns in private, and I am grateful for this.

The one time I did have to pick up his poo, when we were camping, he looked at me with this expression on his face and I knew he was thinking- "Mom! What are you doing!"

Also when we took our dog to the vet because he seemed under the weather, they ask me how his bathroom habits were, I had no idea! 
I'm okay with this, I really am.

 I have Family members who treat their dogs as if they were children and I mean really as if they were children. They would even update us on their bathroom habits and how colored their little poopies were.
 I love this family member very much but I could not stand this, I do not need to know how your dog poops were this morning, thank you very much!

I've heard pro-cat people argue, dogs chew things and the cats do not. 
This is not true. first of all, I have had many a cat chew something that they were not supposed to chew, for instance, when I was young my Barbie's hair. They threw it up on my bed later that day.

Puppies only chew things that they're not supposed to if they have not been given enough proper chew toys and Direction on what is okay to chew and what is not.
 They also need lots of choices, because as with children they bore of something quickly, so lots of chew toys for the little guys when they are teething.
Also, for the record, I have never lost a single pair of shoes to a puppy dog. I have however found decapitated mice in my shoes, along with Chipmunks and other things placed there by, Guess Who the cat!

I have also heard the argument by pro-cat people that cats are cleaner. My answer to this is, um no! 
Cats crawl in behind things where it is Dusty and cobwebbed and they chase rats and mice. They go to wear those rodents have been and come out with their poop stuck to their paws, That's gross! 
Dogs also do not walk on you with cat-pan paws. 
As far as I know, I've never seen a dog dip its paws into the toilet and then jump up on my bed, but our cat does!

dogs are also much easier to bathe their for easier to keep clean, also our dog swims a lot so he tends to keep clean "mostly," on his own.

I've also heard the argument that cats are better groomers, this is not always the case.
We have a long haired cat that constantly gets mats because he does not groom his hair. We have to cut and brush the mats out to keep him up. 
My dog, however, trims his own nails with his teeth, pulls his own burdock out of everywhere he can reach, and if he can't reach the burdock, he comes to me and asks for help.

Meanwhile, we have to hold our cat down in a towel and try to brush him, he doesn't like it!

I've also heard people say they do not like how codependent dogs are.
I love that my dog loves me. I love to be greeted at the door and have somebody excited that I'm home. (Although truth be told my husband's always happy when I'm home to.)
All though, I believe this is attached to personally and treatment, you can make your dog codependent if you want to, I don't recommend it.

Please do not think that I am one of those people that needs a dog's approval to be okay with who I am because I don't! 

The only approval I need to be okay with who I am is on my own, and I have that.

 I love dogs because we have a mutual love and admiration for each other, and I love that my dog seems to know what I'm thinking. He knows me, he knows who I am at a deeper level than most humans. (discluding my husband from this statement)
Jack, (the dog) just gets me because we are very much the same.

I connect very well with animals on most levels, but dogs are special.

It's very rare that we do not bring our dog with us but the few times we do leave him home what happens as soon as we open the door? 
Both the cat and dog are there but the cat runs out and disappears into the woods, acting as if he was dying waiting for us to open the door like, "its about time!"
The dog, however, Wiggles his tail and greets us with a smiling face.

I understand that there are a lot of wonderful cats in the world and they have a lot of great things about them, but I have known many cats in my life and only a handful of them weren't jerks.

Our current cat is a jerk, he scratches and bites and growls and annoys. He comes in smelling like skunk and lays on the sofa, or Worse the bed! Then he tries to attack you when you try to wash the skunk off.

Yeah, Whiskers is a little bit of a jerk.

I have met very few dogs that were jerks. Most of them are kind and friendly and loving and willing to be your friend without question of what kind of person you are, at times to their detriment. This is also part of why I love dogs. They are so optimistic and trusting and easy to please. Some dogs can size up a person actuarily in a few seconds, I listen to my dogs when they don't like someone, you can learn a lot from them.

I still don't know what would please my cat, sometimes I think it's a can of tuna but half the time he won't eat it, so I still don't know.

 Dogs can be trusted with your deepest darkest Secrets.
They don't tell you when you're wrong, they don't judge you when you're sad, they don't make fun of you because you're imperfect. They love you regardless of all those things, they might even love you because of them.

Our two farm dogs recognize the sounds of all of our vehicles, from four-wheelers to our tractors. They are smart enough to know that is us coming up the driveway or across the field. They bark at strangers vehicles, but not ours.  Meanwhile are cats run frantically away from anything with wheels, and it doesn't matter who's driving, or how many times they've seen it. The fact that we've never hit them or even gotten close to that doesn't seem to matter. scaredy-cats!

Dogs protect you and your animals, they are intelligent skilled and good at their jobs. 

I'm not arguing that cats are not smart because they are, I just don't think they give a flying fig. 
 I have never seen a cat fight off a bear to save their person, bring a herd of sheep around to save the farmer the trouble, or protect the farmer from an angry bull.

Farm Dogs make our lives safer, fuller, better!
Farm dogs are awesome!

Pig prints.

It's been about two and a half weeks now that all the animals have officially been in the barn.

The barn is not 100% finished but the critters really don't care if the trim is on or not. 

There have already been some wonderful reasons to have the critters inside my barn,  chores have gotten so much easier! 

I'm more and more excited, as I realized every new aspect of how much easier it is. 

Just a minute ago, in fact, I'm still out of breath as I type this, my new reason to be so grateful for the barn came about like this.

 As I was pouring my coffee waiting for my last load of wash to finish before I head back outside.

I noticed something strange in the driveway. 

It was a pig!

the dog didn't quite know what to make of it, as he backed away from the approaching pig.

Now I probably don't even need to tell you this, but the pig is not supposed to be in the driveway! 

As I curse something that I will not repeat here, grabbed my coat and ran out the door.

I was trying to figure out how I was going to get him back into the pen. 

I start calling him the way I do when it's suppertime,  miraculously he came running, turned around on his heels and started running up the driveway.

I Raced For The Barn, opened the big door, dumped some grain onto the floor and he came in! 

I shut the door behind him and usherd him back into his stall and I was done! 

It has never been so easy to recapture an animal before. 

So along with being thankful for many things this year, family, friends and my barn are top 3! 

Happy Thanksgiving.

I do so love my barn!

The farmhouse.

If you google farmhouses, you will get photos of quaint rustic showplaces.

Even though they contain elements of farms, this is more of a stylized way of decorating than a true farmhouse.

Please understand before I continue, that I am not lumping all farmsteads into this, I am merely speaking of the ones I am accustomed. 
There are extremes in either direction. Farmers are human, as with anyone else, there are messy ones and clean ones.

The realities and challenges of keeping up a farmhouse are different than the average bear.

Someone who lives in town walks out to the car, in a garage or their blacktop driveway, and goes to work wear, unless they work at a slaughterhouse or hospital etc, the worst dirt they come in contact with is probably public dirt.

Then they go home after their long tiring day of doing whatever it is they do, to a relatively clean house where they probably make dinner and watch some TV before retiring to bed, as the dishwasher hums away, to do the same pattern over again the next day.

This, however, is not reality for farmers and farm homes. 

Even though we very rarely leave home we are very often not in the house. 

We wake up and down a Fast breakfast and go out to do whatever work needs to be done which is usually seasonal dependent and often dirty. 

We returned home exhausted at lunchtime to have a quick meal and a ten-minute break (or if you're lucky a 20-minute nap) and return out into the wild of our 130-acre backyard to continue with what we had started that morning. 

We then return home in the evening potentially cold, almost always filthy and exhausted where then, a hot shower is taken, you fall into bed and hopefully, have a full night's sleep. 
The next day, wake up and do it again.
Although our jobs differ from day to day depending on what needs to be done. 

This leaves very little time to clean up the mess that you make when returning home at lunchtime from, whatever it was you were doing beforehand. 

Even though our farm is clean, (what I mean by this is we do not have junk piled everywhere, we do not leave our animals living in filth,) but we're still a farm, driveways are dirt, our homes are heated with wood. 

This combination leads to Mud, dust, small stones, and sawdust on our floors pretty much all the time.
I would like to tell you that I take time every week to vacuum and wash the windows, but that is not reality. 

There are so many other things that need to be done the housework takes a back seat.
Now, please understand that we're not living in squalor and filth with dirty dishes piled to the ceiling and garbage in the corners.
 I am way too organized and OCD to have that happen. 
It does mean there are dirty clothes in the bathroom and mud on the floors there's sawdust underneath the wood pile because honestly, we have a woodpile in our living room and no I'm not kidding!
 How else do you think we feed the fire in the middle of the night?

We have muddy boots sitting next to the wood stove and as the snow and mud drys up and falls off, its then on the floor.
We have dog and cat hair everywhere, we have many coats that smell of cows hanging on The doors.
Our vehicles are splattered with mud as are the carpets inside them. There is just no way around this, no matter how clean of a person you are (trust me I am a neat freak!) at some point, you need to put this aside for the reality of a farm.

 It took me awhile to get to this point where the pig spilling their food it didn't bother me and make me want to run in with a shovel and clean it up. 
Living with animals is dirty, our dog rolls in smelly stuff at least twice a week, he comes in with his muddy sloppy sponge-like paws as we come in with our large heavy work boots.
 Our Floor is, well, you wouldn't want to eat off them that's for sure. 

Farmhouses are filled with love and kindness and good food for certain, but that's not the only thing lurking around the corners. 

I swept our floor this morning after giving my husband a haircut and I had a dustpan full of dirt that looks like I went outside to dig a hole.

It's also dependent on the seasons.
 My husband likes to say you can tell what season it is just by what is coming out of our boots.
 During the summer it's hey chafed, that gets everywhere, (and I do mean everywhere! 
At some point, I would like to challenge Victoria's Secret to team up with Carharrtt to make a hay-proof bra, but that's for a later post.)
 In late summer and fall it's harvesting of grains, so we'll come home covered in dust and chaff which will be falling off of our socks as we take our boots off.
 In winter it's snow and sawdust everywhere.
 In the springtime, well, all you Vermonters are very familiar with our fifth season, mud!

Sometimes will have several mud seasons in the spring, between all the freezes and thaws.
That is by far when our house gets the very worst!

 It doesn't help that we're sugaring as well and really only come home to sleep and shower. We eat all our meals in the Sugar House
 We're there almost all day.
My husband calls it our spring home.

 The house really does take a backseat, instead of being home mopping our floors we're at the Sugarhouse mopping its floors. 
So whether you enjoy chaos or are a neat freak as I really truly am on the inside.
As you're reading this potentially sitting in your lovely neat living room that is mud, dog hair and manure free.
Be grateful for a moment, because you don't have to clean a farmhouse.

Butchering day.

Butchering an animal, regardless of whether you raised it for that purpose or not, isn't easy!

Even though I had raised this steer for two years, with the full intention of butchering him, it was still difficult on the day of. 

That evening as I went to do chores and only Daisy and the calf was left, it was sad.

This does not mean, I'm not going to do this with the next calf that I am raising for that purpose.

This doesn't mean that I don't feel anything.

 It's walking a balance of knowing that you're raising animals for meat, and still caring for them and making sure they're happy and loved.

 It's not done without feeling, and it's not done without respect!

Now, I have talked about butchering before, when we butchered Yum-Yum the pig, so I'm not going to go into the same Spiel I did last time. 
Instead, I'm going to talk about what happens after.

It's a little bit different between butchering the pig who was getting very mean, or butchering an animal that was just a pain in the butt. 
(He was constantly dumping the 45-gallon water trough.)

I firmly believe, he knew it was coming.

Because he escaped three times in the two weeks leading up to his butchering date, we found him in the garden feeding himself on anything that was left unpicked.

This was Daisy's first time losing one of her offspring, so I was mostly worried about how she would react.

She was penned out of sight of the butchering and with a big pile of hay to keep her occupied, this does not mean she did not know what was going on. 

You can think I'm crazy if you want, but animals are smart, they know long before it happens.  Animals understand a heck of a lot more than most people give them credit for.

The next afternoon I proceeded to let Daisy into a new section of the pasture, where Duffer hadn't been. Also a few days later we moved her into the barn for the first time.

Some change for her, when something like this happens, is perfect.

 It was obvious that she was a little sad at first, but she has perked up since and is enjoying being in the barn, she has her other calf with her for now. 

Bovines are herd animals, as are goats and sheep, having one member of a herd taken away can cause a true emotional upset, if not handled correctly.

 All in all the butchering went well and I'm very proud of how healthy and high-quality my steer was.  Hopefully, he'll bring some delicious meals to our customers, where they can make wonderful memories over the dinner table. 

After all, it is my goal to nourish and bring happiness.

Thank you, Duff.

The joys of farm dogs!

I love dogs!

Top two favorite animals, may even be #1.

I had my first dog when I was 2 and haven't gone for long without one in my life.

I could regale you with tales of all the wonderful dogs my family has owned, but I will save that for another time, right now I want to tell you about our current loves.

Rye is a newcomer to the farm, he has been with us about a year. 
He came to us as a birthday gift for my grandmother, at a year and a half old he had never seen a cat or cow before. 

His first few hours with us were shaky ones. When sitting on the porch with Super Farmer and my Grandmother, Rye slipped and fell off the porch.
 (I should add that Rye is a BIG dog, we are talking 126 lbs here)

well, Rey slipped off the porch in the rain, he hit the electric fence in the fall, and he panicked understandably. 

As my husband tried to help him back onto the porch the cat attacked Rye. 
The poor pup shook for a good half an hour. 
My husband brought him inside and Grandmother feed him dog cookies until he calmed down. 
Now that was not a good way for poor Rye to learn about the fence or cats, but life is like that on the farm, sometimes you get thrown into the deep end.

Poor Rye still hasn't forgiven sweetie the cat, he associates that pain of the electric fence with sweetie the cat.

 A few weeks of barking at the bovines, unsure of what they were.

He tried to get the pigs to play thinking that they were some sort of odd hairless dog.

Every once in awhile he bounds after the chickens but has settled in well.

Our dog Jax, is around 3 and has been with us for two years.

He is 50lbs of a great dog!

He goes everywhere with us, to the point that when we recently had to leave him home when attending an agricultural conference, we were surprised the next day.

He had so much spunk he was outrunning the ATV!
 It made us realize what a handful he could possibly be in a different living situation. 

Farm dogs get tons of exercise, we are outside working on our sugar woods or baling hay or fixing fences almost every day and the dogs are always with us. 
They run and jump and chase squirrels and have a wonderful time. 
 He is a retriever and full of energy, very smart and inquisitive it makes me wonder if he would be a different dog under a different living condition.

There's no doubt in my mind that there is a little pug on someone's sofa snuggly warm somewhere and he is thrilled to be there and if you put him down on the farm he would probably be overwhelmed and miserable, but not our dogs!
 Farm dogs jobs differ from, breed, size, and personality.

 As a general rule having a dog running around your farm is just a wonderful deterrent to Predators that would be a problem to farmers.

Farm dogs have a wonderful life there are all sorts of smells and interesting things to find, dig up and piles of Goo to roll in, grossing there humans out.
 We love our families three canines as much as a member of the family. 
Be it the 126 pound Rye the 50-pound Jaxs or the 6-pound Pos, we love them all!

 I don't think our dogs would trade the life they have for anything else. I'm very proud that they are well-trained, healthy and happy. 
It fills my heart with joy just have them around.