Guard Dog Toby

This is Toby, our ground-patrol corgi.  Generally he spends his time guarding our goat herd, watching out for my daughter, and providing general guard duties.

Occasionally, though, he has to think outside the box.  Especially when there are intruders.  Like the groundhog who decided to try to make a new home on our property.  Toby did not like that idea one bit, so he chased the groundhog off, as he does with any intruder.  Apparently the groundhog felt so threatened that he ran to the nearest safe place - a tree.

Toby felt so happy with his success that he spent the rest of his day making sure the groundhog stayed in that tree. By the time the groundhog was allowed to come out of the tree, he must have learned his lesson, because we haven't seen him since.

Spring!

It seems like Spring has finally made a commitment to stay.  Which means several things here at the farm: mud season, spring cleaning, and shearing.  I never knew the meaning of "mud room" until living here, and am already plotting for how to expand ours.  Either that or how to make our kitchen look like an exact replica of the many shades of mud/leaves/sticks and other things that seem to be tracked inside every single day.  Seriously, having a brown pergo floor does nothing; it needs to have nuances of outdoors.  Even with daily cleaning, I will not see my actual floor again until the dry summer.

So I focus my energies on cleaning other things, like the barn.  Spring is when we do one of our major semi-annual barn cleaning events.  It's warn enough to stick the animals outside for a day while we overhaul and do general inventory. 

Spring is also shearing time for the angora goats.  The other goats always find it interesting and want to know what's going on, seeing the angora goats as strangers without their long coats.

Sassafrass was the first one done.  As usual, she was best behaved of the group for her haircut.  She did not take kindly to having her picture taken though, high-tailing it for the barn before I could get a good picture.

Basil, our buck, wasn't far behind.  He was the last one shaved and apparently figured out what was going on.  He jumped the fence and made a break for the pasture so that he wouldn't have to be shaved.  Unfortunately his head was no match for his stomach, and we were able to get him back with a bowl of grain very quickly.  But he wasn't sticking around after his trim either.  Or maybe he thought there would be more grain in the barn, since Sassafrass went in there so quickly?

Leah decided to let me know what she thought about the whole thing:

As much as they do not seem to appreciate having been shaved right now, I bet they will appreciate their hair cuts once the weather really warms up!