Stay at home! And yard-work dogs...

Indian Head Storm - "Kate"

It's hard to believe a month ago 40-inches of snow had accumulated here at home. It melted rapidly, as it generally does this time of year, and conditions weatherwise are now, "spring-like." Mornings are cool, afternoons are warm, and the grass is really coming on.
Stay-at-home restrictions, and a serious shortage of funds, have limited my travel from home to other locations where I might get some training done. Fortunately, the dirt roads have dried-out and I'm able to road the dogs, around here, every other day off the quad. I haven't done a lot of bird work because a flock of sheep and it's guardian Greater Pyrenees has occupied the bird field. So what I have focused on is yard work; heeling, whoaing, coming-to-here, standing, loading into the truck, loading into the crate… Dogs young and old are being put through the process every other day; going through the motions with the pups, and polishing-up the older dogs.
In the picture above "Kate" (Kelly's IB Butler X Kelly's Funseeker), 12-months old, is on a board and fully rigged-up, learning to stand-in-place and get comfortable in the gear she needs to associate with the breaking process. She's looking good doing it.

March Miracle, and then.....

Photo by Sutter Rogers

Until Saturday March 14, snowpack in the Sierra was suffering at about 50-percent of normal. For two weeks prior, the daily highs had been in the mid-60's to 70-degrees, it was dry, and the horses were literally sweating standing still. Their winter coats just starting to shed-out, the animals seemed to be going through more salt and water than they typically do in the summer heat.
Well, that Saturday evening it started coming, with a good 16-inches settling-in overnight, and for four consecutive days it came and came; a total of 40-inches of the white stuff accumulating on the railing of my deck. I was on a backhoe tractor 4.5-hrs each day plowing snow so we could get 26 horses fed and watered, and our vehicles in and out our drives. Fortunately, the power was only out for about 36-hrs; in past winters we'd gone four to five days without power during such a storm.
This is a pretty typical winter weather scenario in the mountains; nasty conditions for a few days, the power goes out, you have the woodstove for heat, the fridge gets emptied into a cooler on the back porch to keep things cool, beer into the snowbank, you suffer for a couple days without electronics, read by candlelight.... Then things go back to normal.
Just as the weather began to clear in the northern Sierra, the 600-pound grizzly that was stirring in our midst the past couple months started to move; and it charged hard. COVID-19 got real across America; it became more than just something affecting hot-spot cities and far-off nations. Stay-at-home and shelter-in-place restrictions were implemented in States across the nation, the Dow took a dive, unemployment went form an all-time low to an all-time high, the list goes on and on....
People with and without the virus are suffering in the States and around the world. It's impossible to do this reality justice in words because it's hardly comprehendable. A true shit-storm! I'll take four-feet of snow any day......