The Silence of the Sheep

I’m afraid to say that I’ve been in such disgrace lately that I’ve not even been allowed onto the computer to put my entries up.

I’ve committed a Deed so Dastardly that I’ve even since been blamed for the Business Over Helen’s Wellies.

I’ll explain once I’m not in such trouble.

In the meantime, I shall catch up with some earlier stuff.

Here are some pictures of My Good Self and Mutley at the field near the river.

The long grass has recently been mown and now we can race around as fast as we like.

Mutley is my Hero, have I mentioned that before?

You can see Mutley wearing his special mask to stop him biting.

I think it makes him look like a superhero,

I’d like a mask like that so that I could fly and jump tall fences in a single bound

Sometimes I wonder if I should bite more things so that I can get a mask.
I asked Mutley about it, thinking that he’d be pleased that I wanted to be like him and hoping that he’d have me as his superhero sidekick.

He said I was daft.

I think he must have just been a bit hot after all the running and swimming,

really we are great mates !

Rocco says Mutley in his mask looks like Hannibal.

Rocco says those sorts of things because when he spent months running wild in Ireland he says he absorbed a lot of knowledge of popular culture. Anyone would think he spent months watching DVDs to hear him going on and on. I’ve no idea who Hannibal is. Rocco said something about The Silence of the Sheep, but I’m a sheepdog and one thing I do know is the only way to get sheep to be silent is to bark at them.

One day I’d like to have Lots of Sheep To Bark At !

Bruce

Bruce came to us from Ireland where he had been living with a family
who didn’t have the time for his needs.
He had spent a lot of time tied up in the garden and as a result of this was not sociable with
other dogs.
He loved adults and children and his ball.
He fostered with Jane, one of our dedicated foster mums for three months.
Lots of people went to see him but as he was very strong they felt they wouldn’t be
able to cope with him.
Eventually he went to live with a couple who 12 years earlier had adopted a dog called Ben from us who had sadly died.
Bruce settled in the minute he went there as if he had lived with them all his life and has helped to get them ovet the loss of Ben.
He is very much loved.

Sky Chasing and Sky Groaning with Harley

Here’s me and Harley looking at the sky.

Harley is staying with us and he is like a big animated teddy bear.

He also sometimes winds Rocco up which saves me a job.

Today I’ve been trying to explain to him the difference between Sky Chasing and Sky Groaning,

but I don’t think he fully grasped the intricate nuances of the subjects.

I’ve got them down to a fine art.

Most dogs never look at the sky, and only occasionally remember that is there

when they are trying to see in which direction a stick or ball went.

I watch it a lot.

I often go out with my head up as far as I can reach and study what the sky is doing.

Sometimes there are clouds, and sometimes they race overhead so fast I feel that I have to try and control them.

The best way of doing this I’ve found is for me to run up and down the path as quickly as I can so that the clouds slow down.

This is Sky Chasing.

Harley grasped the running part but just kept running after me, and not watching the clouds.

When I told him to watch the clouds, he kept running into me instead of looking where he was going.

He’s a bit bigger and heavier than I am, so after being trampled on a few times I swiftly moved the conversation on to the subject of Sky Groaning.

Sky Groaning is something I’m still trying to understand myself, and I’d hoped Harley might have been able to share some insights, but unfortunately it was all beyond him.

The way I see it is this:

Sometimes it rains.

Rain is A Very Strange Thing.

I bark at the rain because it can ruin a pleasant snooze in the sun.

Sometimes the rain comes from the clouds.

Sometimes the rain comes from the washing that Helen hangs up.

I run up and down under the washing line and notice that our blankets seem to rain a lot.

Which is odd, because they are always dry when they come back into our beds afterwards.

The swaying blankets drive me mad, just like the clouds, so I used to bark at them.

But now I Groan at them instead.

Helen calls it my Sky Groaning, but she doesn’t realise I learnt it from her in the first place.

One afternoon when I’d spent a long while trying to control the weather,

Helen returned from Being Out and came and joined me in looking at the sky.

She saw the rain coming from the clouds and the rain coming from the washing and she gave a very big groan.

The next day it was really sunny all day.

I was very inspired by this and now often practice Sky Groaning several times a week.

Harley said I think too much about the sky and should play more instead.

I said he plays too much and should think more about the sky instead.

Rocco was smirking at both of us again, I don’t know why.

My promotion!

I have been promoted today, I now sit in the footwell in the front of the car on my own.

Even Mutley doesn’t sit in the front.

To prove how good I can be I sat very still and only moaned a bit even
though I could see plenty of cars that needed herding.

Helen wagged her finger at me and gave me the Collie Eye when I forgot
myself and nearly barked.

I was very good and stayed in my place even when Helen got out of the
car to open the gate.

I think I am beginning not to associate the car with barking or at
least that is what Helen says is starting to happen.

I was allowed back in the river today and swam for ages,
I like to chase the ripples.

Helen said it was a stress free walk.

Mutley and I are never stressed,
it’s only Helen that gets like this.

Oh and I don’t like to be a tell tale but Mark will not be pleased to
hear that Helen had a cigarette on the way back.

She is supposed to be giving up and has no will power unlike me.

Chicken Run

My friend Sue and I often say that when we are old we will giggle to
ourselves when we think of the time her husband went away for a
weekend and his parting words were “No chickens Sue, I mean it”

We were doing a battery chicken rescue at the time.
Well on the day he left for the weekend,

me and two other people went off,

loaded our cars up several times

(Oh by the way did you know that
you can get 80 chickens in a Ford Sierra estate car?)

dropped them off to homes and then halfway through the afternoon

and the last two car loads we found ourselves with a problem.

We didn’t have anywhere for the last 160 chickens.
So off to Sue’s we go for a cuppa and a think.

It was decided that we would put them in Sue’s newly decorated work room,

Dulux eggshell blue rather appropriately,

all 160 of them.

It seemed a good idea at the time.

Sue fed them, got them all settled and had the Titanic soundtrack CD playing

which seemed to soothe the chickens.

Eggs were being laid by the dozens and walked on and the room
was very rapidly becoming not as spic and span as it had been.

160 chickens seem to poo an awful lot.

Mark phones and as Sue is reassuring him that there are absolutely no
chickens in the house or aviary one of her dogs jumped up at the
stable door to the room to say hello to the clucks.

Which set them off completely.
She managed to make out that the noise they were making was a tv
programme.

The next day we go round to pick them up and as you do when
under pressure decide that a cuppa or two is in order.

An hour or so later we are still idling and Mark phones to say he’s about half an
hour away.

I don’t think three people have moved so fast in the history of man,

we had a relay system from the room to the car of protesting
chickens and boy do they take a while to catch.
We whizzed off and Sue amazingly managed to bleach the room just
before he walked in the door and as he is standing in the room
threshold she looks up at the ceiling to see

chicken shit splattered all over it …

Some the chickens were kept in a terrible state as you can see from these photos:

Bumble

Bumble was found in a supermarket car park when he was 12 weeks old,
Bumble and a young kitten were found together in a box.

Bumble was homed and for two years lived with a lady locally.

Unfortunately he was returned to us with a weak excuse about his lack of training,
Mmmm,who’s fault was this we ask ourselves?

Bumble is a gentle giant and very sociable with dogs and humans alike.
He was good off the lead and walked beautifully to heel,
he was clean in the house and didn’t chew.
We found him a home with a lovely lady who first fostered him to see how he would get on with her other dog.
They all loved him from the first minute he walked into their home and he loved them.

The Business Over Helen's Wellies

We’re all in trouble over this Business Over Helen’s Wellies

( see Anonymous Dastardly Dog )

I’m not saying I know who did it
I’m not saying it was me

But I’m Being On My Best Behaviour just in case Helen suspects it was me

I think that she does suspect it was me, but the great thing about living in a rescue is that there are always enough other dogs about that Helen is never certain , unless she actually catches the culprit in action.

Being caught in action is definitely Something To Be Avoided At All Costs.

Some great other news though, my constant barking in the car has had an unexpected consequence – I now get to ride in the front!

This is great as the passenger footwell feels like A Safe Place, and I get lots of fuss, which takes my mind off most of the Things To Bark At.

Being in the front does give me a better view of more Things To Bark At, but Helen’s admonishing finger soon reminds me I’ll get Barked At if I’m not On My Best Behaviour

Yesterday I was so tired from Doing Exciting Things, that I fell asleep on Jan’s legs

I dreamed that there were Lots of Things To Bark At

Anonymous Dastardly Dog

Recently, I have noticed a slight smell of urine in my kitchen.

I am sad to have to report that someone
who is not owning up to this dastardly deed peed in my wellie !!!!

Until the guilty culprit comes forward and owns up,
all dogs are on detention for a week and are to
write a 100 lines each

“Helen’s boots are not to be peed in”

Barney and the 19 eccles cakes

A few years ago my mum baked a big batch of home-made eccles cakes.

They were very hot straight from the oven and so she put them on top of the worktop to cool.

There were two trays of them, 19 big cakes in all.

And then there were none.

A full investigation after the Dastardly Deed concluded that the maximum possible time that Barney could have been unaccompanied in the kitchen was two minutes.

So well-executed was this Dastardly Deed that the number of eccles cakes misappropriated on that fateful day was carefully recorded, in order that it may serve as an inspiration to would-be Dastardly Dogs for years to come!