Monday, November 1, 2010

Halloween,sheepdogs, and strange events


Halloween night we were sitting in the living room watching reruns of the old Simon and Simon detective show( 1980's television reruns) on netflix . It had been a long day of wood cutting and stacking and late fall garden chores so I just wanted to veg out in front of the t,v with a glass of wine, and the old man likes Simon and Simon because one of the brothers in the show lived on a boat and my husband is obsessed with sailboats lately. The dogs had had a long walk earlier and were laying down relaxing too. The lights were off and the t.v. was on when I heard this strange sound as if a body was being dragged across the floor. I'm thinking" what the heck is that?" as it is Halloween night, we are watching detective shows and I'm getting a tad spooked. I get up to check things out and notice that Cash, the new Australian Shepherd is in my husbands office. I look at him with a " what are you doing in here?" expression, and notice that there is a big plastic bag of my sheep fleece next to him. Now I know that my husband is very picky about what goes in his office and I couldn't imagine why he would have put this huge outside trash can sized bag of my sheep fleece in there and I asked him" did you put my giant bag of fleece in your office?" and I get a " no why would I possibly do that" back from him and I remember hearing that sound like a body being dragged across the linoleum floor and " bingo" Can you believe that this 45 lb sheep dog had dragged a huge bag of fleece into the dark office to have his way with it! I remembered that last Friday I had gone to my knitting club and left the dog alone in the car with my giant bag of fleece and when I came back there was wool fluff all over the car. It was as if he got bored and entertained himself by teasing apart the giant fleece which is actually what needed to be done in preparation for carding. So I suppose he was at it again, bored, and decided to take what he perceived as "his giant bag of fleece toy" into the office in order to play with his secret stash! I really need to get this boy some sheep or at least start him on agility training or sheep dog training. The Australian Shepherd is a little more intense than my Australian Cattle dog who when young, was very smart and not particularly high energy or high maintenance as long as he was with his people. This new dog is a little quirky, I still haven't figured him out quite yet

4 comments:

  1. It is pretty obvious that the dog is trying to tell you that he wants you to get him a sheep to play with...or maybe a long haired goat.:)

    I subject my wife to Simon & Simon reruns on Netflix from time to time as well.

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  2. Hey Mr. H, yes the Aussie Shepherd gets excited by all the livestock in the neighborhood, I'm probably in line to get some sheep next spring. My husband explains to me that the Rick character in the Simon and Simon t.v show really set the stage for a certain male aesthetic- cowboy hats and boots, aviator sunglasses and pick-up truck- the Dodge Power Wagon. I definitely married a Rick type character!

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  3. I thought you might find this interesting. If you get a chance check out the intelligence of the border collie 26:10 into this video...pretty amazing.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-decoded.html

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  4. Thanks Mr.H that was a really interesting video. I'm trying to train my husband in this manner- dishes in the sink, laundry down the laundry chute, I even point sometimes!

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