Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Dogs of Hilltop Farm

I keep up with the blog that Jon Katz writes - Bedlam Farm Journal. He has a page called The Dogs of Bedlam Farm. If you’ve kept up with my blog, you may have read that at one time we called this farm “Hilltop Angus Farm” but took down the sign and quit calling our farm by that name when we got out of the Registered Angus cattle business. For this post, I’ve revived a portion of the former name as reflected by the title of this entry. Well... back to the dog story - my grandchildren have 8 dogs, at least they have 8 at the time of this writing. I’m not even sure that this would be legal if they lived in the city limits. There are 6 full time dogs that I call lifers, and 2 foster puppies as of today. These dogs receive lots of love and excellent care; and I enjoy seeing them interact with the children. Since my grandchildren foster a few dogs from time to time, the inventory changes periodically; but right now there is a Yorkshire Terrier named Sasha, a Golden Lab named Callie, an adopted stray named Cass (who came with buns in the oven, thankfully adopted out after their weaning), an Australian Shepherd named Josie, another adopted mutt named Sadie (named for my mother), and the newest adopted mutt named Patch. I argued that Patch should have been named Captain Hook or Pirate, but the grandchildren call him Blockhead when they don’t call him by his given name, Patch. Every one of these dogs is as sweet as can be and they are quite well behaved. The puppies that are soon to be adopted out are cute little Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix rascals, each of which has one blue eye and one brown eye. They don’t have names and aren’t old enough to answer to a name anyway, but they are so cute; and since they are leaving this weekend, I wanted to get some photos while I still had the chance. Now these dogs aren’t like the dogs of Bedlam Farm in that I can’t holler “Photoshoot” and expect them to come and pose, but they do seem to like to play around in front of me while I have the camera in my hands. The lifers are trained well enough to sit on command and shake hands. I had a good time taking pictures this afternoon and I hope you’ll enjoy what I was able to capture.



This is the little male puppy, and no, that is not an artifact in the photo. He has a white spot on his nose. He is the calmer and gentler puppy of the pair.









The little female pup has her eye on something. The next photo shows her response to it.










She was hanging on to this toy for dear life. This dog is definitely going to be a handful.













Josie has her tongue out and her paw high for a handshake. Sadie is trying.










Cass is the sweetest of all the dogs. We don't know how old she is, but she is getting pretty old and we fear she won't make it through another winter. She lays around most of the time now.








Callie has hip dysplasia but she still loves to fetch a ball. She is awfully sweet, too.












Group shot! I think Patch is pretty obvious.









Sasha just wasn’t in the mood to have her picture taken. Maybe I’ll sneak up on her another day.

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