Good Monday morning to all you critter and land loving folks. I have been wrestling to get this one down on paper for quite some time…somewhere close to three months. I have a bad habit of walking away from the working cows blog when I come up against struggles in ranching. What I feel most responsible for is the well-being of our livestock, it’s a maternal piece of me that flows over into caring for the four leggeds. Its easy to prattle on about rotational grazing, how great rain is, and being excited over things like a successful cover crop, things that are wins. This is a loss and a gain; it is about a critter of the dog variety. Now I will honestly say, 2023 had dog drama at our ranch, the kind that wears you and possibly your neighbors out. Sometimes in ranching you must pivot and quickly, that is what the dog drama did. Hopefully soon, I will share cute pictures of donkeys with sheep as guardian animals. This post is about a bundle of fur, half kelpie, half English shepherd, that came from dear friends of ours and quickly won our hearts about a year ago. Chubbs, Chubby, Chubbo…one of the coolest dogs I have ever been around, tons of potential, and crazy instincts. Chubbs had gotten to the point where he and one guard dog would take a daily swim in our creek, but he was always back on the porch wet and happy about life. Well October 20th we had a town day and I didn’t see him before we left, and I didn’t think too much of it, but when we returned home after dark and he wasn’t on the porch I knew something was wrong. I can’t tell you how many tears, miles walked, and days spent checking local shelter sites have ensued since that day, but we never have found our beloved pup, and it still tears me up to type about it today. What a total bummer, I was broken for me, and my kids as they all grieved this loss, maternal emotion overload. So why, why share a downer story on a Monday morning… “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31. I share this because I wholeheartedly believe these verses. We loved our neighbors when we rehomed two guardian dogs that didn’t work out in our neighborhood…dog drama. I share this because we were loved by our neighbors. The same dear family that we had bought Chubbs from had another batch of puppies. I wasn’t having it, the kids were ready, but my heart still hurt, and I kept hoping I would wake up some morning and I would find him sitting on the porch, and I was still recovering from the dog drama. Fast forward to mid-December, these friends still had pups left, now six months old, and the kids thought I should still be considering this. Clay and I agreed we should try this one more time, this was their last litter…we surprised the kids. Our daughter crumpled to the ground crying and hugging this gift from our friends, and I wish I recorded it, but I was blubbering as well. We had been loved. They knew and we knew it wouldn’t be Chubbs or replace him, but I can tell you a Quill can be used by God to mend a hurt of the heart.

Chubbs

Quill