This has been a busy winter as I was blessed to be artist in residence
for seven weeks in a Spartanburg school district. I taught weaving to 3rd through 5th
graders while telling lots of farm stories.
As it turned out, one of the farm stories evolved as I was in a school
in January.
I got home from school at three each afternoon and immediately changed
clothes and walked the farm. This is the
time that I would feed the dogs and gather eggs. One Monday afternoon as I walked outside I
noticed that Baloo, one of our livestock guardian dogs, seemed to be wandering
down in the woods. Baloo is a delightful
fellow that we acquired a few years ago.
He was a six month old puppy who was people shy. He had been raised in a pasture full of goats
with his mother, many siblings and a few other dogs. In order for his owner to sell him to us,
Baloo had to be lured in with food and snatched. He was so shy that when we were bringing him
home from North Carolina he laid as low as he could in his kennel and did not
even wimper. He is three quarters Great
Pyrenees and a quarter Kangal. Ironically,
his father is the son of a very expensive line of dogs that we’d looked at a
few years ago but chose not to invest a few thousand dollars in. We did not know that when we went to look at
the pups but were fascinated when the owner explained the story of his stray
genetics. We were just pleased with a
healthy working dog and liked the fact that the Kangal influence meant that we
would not have to deal with the matted hair that so many Pyrenees develop.
Baloo quickly warmed up to us and has turned out to be a great dog with
one fault. He has no respect for fence
lines. He avoids electric fences but has
learned to climb gates. One of the first
things we did with him was to have him neutered so he is a mellow boy who gets
along with all of the other dogs. He
visits them in their individual pastures most every day, racing around and
playing for a while and then returning to his favorite place to nap in the
barnyard. I have watched him climb a
gate to help one of the Anatolian Shepherds with their duties. One of his favorite jobs is to bark at the
hawks that like to make slow looping passes to check out our free range
chickens roaming throughout the farm.
But Baloo rarely goes all the way back to the woods. That is why I was a little surprised to see a
big fuzzy white dog walking the edge of the tree line as I did my usual walk
around after school that afternoon.
Baloo is an obedient fellow so I called his name a few times and began
to count sheep in a side pasture. In a
moment Baloo was by my side. I was
surprised as I hadn’t heard the clang and thump noise that accompanies a trip
over a gate. I glanced to the woods
thinking I must have misjudged how far away he was when I called for him. The big fuzzy white dog was still at the edge
of the woods. The Anatolian Shepherds
have smooth white coats and a different gait so I knew it wasn’t one of
them. I realized immediately that I’d
better start locking up my own dogs so that I didn’t have a fight with a stray
dog that seemed not to be threatening any of the livestock.
Each of our dogs is very territorial which is a good instinct when it
comes to guarding livestock in a pasture.
It can be a challenge when it is necessary to move the dogs around. Even the best of friends fight when they are
not in their own pastures. I carefully
shifted dogs around to pastures or into barns where they would not see the
stranger. I called my sweet husband at
work to tell him that I had a stray dog in the woods and was going down to try
to catch him and then grabbed a lead rope out of the stable. I started back to the woods. The big stray noticed me and loped up the
hill. I was cautious as I didn’t have a
clue about the dog’s temperament. As the
dog reached me he dropped to the ground.
I slowly reached out with the rope thinking that perhaps I could gently
trap him. He raised his head and waited
for me to put the rope around his neck and then politely stood and walked to my
side, ready for me to lead him somewhere.
He was thrilled as we walked through a pasture full of goats. He seemed so happy to be with livestock. I was a little apprehensive that he would
walk through the back door of the old barn with me as he was not familiar with
the building but he was quite the gentleman on the lead, carefully following me
in with little coaxing. I took him into
the stable and examined him. His hair
was matted and he had some sort of wound on the side of his head. I knew better than to poke around at a wound
on a strange dog. I prepared a bowl of
food for him and put him alone in a stall with it and a bucket of fresh
water. He was a bit underweight for his
size but otherwise looked healthy. He
tore into the food but wanted to rejoin me as soon as he was done. He was an enormous cuddly fellow, wrapping
his front leg around my leg and leaning into my side. He whined when I left him to go back to the
house. Over the next ten days I visited
him in the stable often, frequently moving all of our dogs around so that I
could take him for a walk among the goats.
I asked him each day where he belonged but he never had an answer for
me. I spent a fair bit of time gently
picking blackberry brambles out of his pretty white coat. He even sat patiently for me to brush
him. One time when I tried to clean the
wound on the side of his head he reached around and gently grabbed my arm in
his enormous mouth. He was tenderly
telling me that he didn’t want me to do that.
And he loved when I let Baloo into the stable for a time of wrestling
and play.
The dog had no collar so we took him to our vet only to discover that
he was not microchipped. My sweet and
patient husband went to every farm within a few miles to ask if they were
missing a dog. We called all the local
vets and humane shelters. We placed an
ad and a gentleman answered it. His dog
had been gone for a few weeks. He lived
about forty miles from us but it would not be unheard of for the dog to have
been rescued or given a ride to end up at our place. The fellow came out and was disappointed that
the dog was not his. I kept my students updated on each day’s developments with
the dog. They loved speculating on his
story as they did their daily weaving projects.
We eventually discovered that there is a Great Pyrenees rescue group in
town and contacted them. We were asked
if he had a double dew claw indicating that he was a purebred Pyr. He had the double dew claw. He was
a fabulous dog. We knew from the outset
that we did not need to add another dog to the six livestock guardians we
already have. We were also adamant that
we would find his owner or a very good home for him. The gentleman from the Pyr rescue was in
constant contact trying to help us find his owner. When we finally convinced him that we could
not keep the dog much longer he came out to the farm to meet the dog. He was taken with the well-mannered and
gentle giant who had found us. After a few more days of checking and paperwork
we surrendered the dog to the rescue.
The fellow who runs the rescue decided to foster the dog himself and
temporarily named him Ivan. The next day
the gentleman brought his assistant with him to meet the dog. She agreed that he was amazing and the dog
took to her immediately, letting her walk him around the front yard on a
leash. They left all happily squeezed
together in the front seat of a small pickup truck. He sent us several follow
up reports on Ivan as he continued to look for Ivan’s home. We also continued to watch lost and found
lists but never came up with anything.
We were invited to visit Ivan in his new home and are confident that he
has found a great place. We will just
always wonder what kind of journey he had been on and how it was that he ended
up in our tightly-fenced back pasture.
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Hearts Farm.
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