Tough week at the Nettles Ranch

            Lil and Rascal’s puppies just turned 7 weeks old, and last week I had planned time to start advertising them for sale – well, that was the plan.

              Rascal is the Australian Cattle Dog with me in my profile pic and he is really a sweetheart. Highly intelligent Rascal and his mom Allie, (the pups’ grandmother) go to the pasture each day by themselves and bring up the cattle, depositing them into the round pen for Ronnie’s training sessions.

             Rascal is Ronnie’s #1 hired hand, not only retrieving the cattle from the pasture but also turning back while his Master works horses. He hasn’t quite got the technique down for closing the gate behind him, but then to his credit, no one has stopped long enough to teach him he needs to do that!

             We have been rearing excellent cow dogs for almost two decades, shipping them throughout the United States and overseas. Two decades ago was when we quit breeding for papers and began breeding for cow sense. Amazing the difference.

             This set of pups show extreme promise – bright, mischievous, intelligent look in the eye, already showing signs of learning. Then, Saturday night they had a visitor. A coon scaled a 5-foot non-climbable fence (non-climbable; someone forgot to tell the coon he couldn’t do that) and killed one of the pups.

            It made for a teary-eyed day for me. In fact, I’m just now able to delete the pics of that little boy before I post the other four brothers online to sale. Amazing how many I had of him. Amazing how tender-hearted I am.

            Working with animals is a wonderful profession, one full of great stories and bright rainbows. But with every rainbow comes a little rain and with every great story comes a little sadness. Last Sunday was a sad day at the Nettles Ranch.

Tags: australian cattle dogs, equine, horse, Nettles, stirrups