Hey there!  Hope you all had a fantastic weekend; I especially hope none of you had the same miserable head cold as I did.  Not to worry, after a lot of sleep and countless bottles of water/gatorade, I’m feeling much better.  Still sniffly though.

Today I wanted to share with you a snippet about the dogs Mr. Rancher uses to help move cows.  We, of course, have our dog Bo who is the youngest of the cow-dogs.  Bo isn’t quite trained, but he is very aggressive and persistent.  If only he would work so hard and listen to what we’re telling him to do.  We’ll call him a work in progress.  The other dogs all live at my in-laws’ house and don’t technically belong to Mr. Rancher.  I think he takes credit for all of them though.  Patch is the oldest border collie and he is the best babysitter.  He will fetch anything–a ball, a sock, a stick–for hours on end and doesn’t mind playing with kids.  He’s pretty good about working cows too.  Rex and Fly are the next oldest.  These two are brothers from the same litter.  Ty got Fly as an early Christmas present a few years ago and two weeks later Lexcie got Rex as an actual Christmas present.  Fly is the tiniest of all the dogs and probably the most anti-social.  He really likes Ty and Ty’s immediate family, not really anybody else.  And he hates guns.  Fly is a good worker when he wants to be but tends to be on the lazier side of things.  Rex is, well, the poster child of our border collies.  He’s built and colored the closest to the breed standard–even though border collies can be a very wide variety of colors, shapes, and sizes–and is the hardest worker.  He lives to please and loves to work cows.  Stanley is the second youngest of the cow-dogs and is by far and away the largest one.  He is a good worker as well and is the best at playing with any new puppies.

All of the dogs, regardless of their desire to actually work cows, like to go with Ty.  A few months ago Mr. Rancher and I were loading our bulls for a visit to the vet’s office and all of the dogs were there to help us.  Five dogs to load five bulls.  Maybe a little over-board but they all like to help so darn much!

I’m sure Mr. Rancher and I will always have a border collies.  We’re a little biased and picky when it comes to our cow-dogs. and border collies are what we like the best.

This is Rex, the poster child.

Isn’t he gorgeous?!

Such a pretty dog and such a hard worker and such a sneaky thing too.  Rex prefers to ride in the front of the pick-up rather than on the back or in the trailer.  As a result, he’s learned to jump through any open window into the cab and lie very quietly in the back-seat so no one will notice.  A few days ago he did just that and hitched a ride home to my house with Mr. Rancher.  After checking gopher traps we drove Rex back out to my in-laws’ house.  I have no idea how many miles have been driven looking for lost cow-dogs, taking cow-dogs back home, or picking up cow-dogs that fell off the pick-up.  I’m sure it’s a lot though.  These guys are critical components to taking care of the cows and I don’t think we could live without ’em.