[lily cd re]

Oh my. First everyone is just fine.

But what a morning we've had so far!

I enjoyed a late start since I don't have much on the agenda today other than grading lecture finals for my class that ended Thursday night and some errands. BF left for work just before 9:30 and let Peeves out in the yard. A few minutes later I called him to come in and he didn't show up so I sent Lily to see if she could corral him. Now both of them were MIA so I went out to see what was up and the first animals I encountered were chickens! I saw Peeves on the lawn behind the furthest level of the deck all involved with something on the ground. My first thought was that he was eating a bird, but no, just some little thing that he was sniffing. Birds followed me towards him. He looked, but no chase. I got him to come to me and led him to the back door but then realized I couldn't let him in since Javelin was right there and the energy was too up from Javvy to leave them alone together.

I left Lily and Peeves and chickens right outside the door and went in and moved Javelin to the back of the house so I could bring the other dogs in. I grabbed the heavy duty stapler so I could close up the spot that the birds had squeezed through to let themselves loose and went out to fix it. Peeves and Lily went back in. I got the repair done and went back in to put the stapler down and a bird followed me right into the house! She protested being picked up and this was actually the first time Peeves showed any active interest in any of them. I quickly dropped her out the back door and blocked Peeves from following her. I went out and finished taking care of the birds and got them back into the coop.

Finally after all of that was over Javelin got to go out and now we can all have breakfast.

Whew!

 

[Johanna]

Life with a bunch of critters is never boring! Glad you got them all corralled with no serious problems.

 

[Skylar]

Life is always more joyous AND more complicated the more pets you have.

 

[Click-N-Treat]

Oh, good morning. That's insane! Glad everyone is fine. Good job.

 

[Poodlebeguiled]

LOL. What a morning! It sounds rather complicated juggling all these animals around. Good thing you didn't have to be somewhere important and on time. I'm chuckling but I bet at the time it was rather unsettling. Akkk. :ahhhhh: Glad it all turned out all right.

 

[lily cd re]

LOL. What a morning! It sounds rather complicated juggling all these animals around. Good thing you didn't have to be somewhere important and on time. I'm chuckling but I bet at the time it was rather unsettling. Akkk. :ahhhhh: Glad it all turned out all right.

I kind of wanted to make my coffee into a cocktail!

 

[Poodlebeguiled]

:drink::drink::drink: Hahaha. Or you could have made an Irish coffee. :act-up:

The chaos first thing in the morning reminds me of the days when I had horses, which was most of my life until fairly recently. It seemed like they were always getting out. One time some strange noise woke me up at 3:00 in the morning. I looked out my bedroom window and there was Brisa, one of my mares down below, chomping away on my picnic table on the patio. Another time I woke up and the two mares were standing in front of the big barn door that you can drive up to, not in their stalls or arena where they hung out at night...outside of the fence. They were waiting for breakfast. I looked down my 500 ft. driveway and I saw my neighbor's lawn that had divots in it and a pile of poo. They had been on it in the night. I hurried down and fixed his lawn and fixed my fence where they had gotten out. I was mortified. Lucky this was a good friend who didn't mind. but Thankfully, this was a large, 200 acre private neighborhood of large acreage parcels and just little private lanes, no busy road anywhere close.

Several times Brisa kept winding up in the part of the barn where the hay and grain is stored. (grain was locked up though) Her stall door would be found opened. I blamed my son for leaving the latch undone. He swore he remembered to lock it after cleaning the stalls. Poor kid. It turned out that Brisa figured out how to unlatch the door with her lips. (genius Arabian horse) So I had to rig up an extra snap on a lead rope to keep her out of there. It was just one thing after the other sometimes. Somehow your story sparked a lot of memories of mornings where you think you're going to relax with your first cup of :coffee2: you don't get to. :ahhhhh:

Sorry...I just completely hijacked your thread. It's my age. I've turned into a chatter box. :argh:

 

[lily cd re]

No worries not really hijacking, just more funny stories about how complicated it can be to deal with multiple and smart animals.


PS, thought about Irish Coffee too.

 

[Asta's Mom]

Crazy morning but glad everyone (except Javvy maybe) was taking it in stride. Easy fix with the staple gun (what would we do without them) Second on that Irish coffee!

 

[Moni]

Wow - glad everyone is still in one piece. A friend of mine keeps losing chickens to coyotes and then to her own dogs - Bloodhounds, Dachshunds and Pointers. And her chickens don't seem very smart - escape the safety of their enclosure at every turn either towards the outside of the property - the coyotes all lined up - or the other direction into the dog runs! You would think they would have learned by now (they are not spring chickens).

 

[lily cd re]

Chickens are sweet and funny, but not rocket scientists for sure! We have a fenced yard and my birds are not strong flyers so they can't really get out of the yard and we don't have coyotes (yet), but I worry about overhead predators. We have lots of red tailed hawks and even juvenile bald eagles (last years nearby fledges as well as at least one three year old from another nest), so I don't tend to let them loose to forage until late enough in the day that there aren't good gliding thermals and/or without usually Lily, but now I guess I could use Peeves too to dissuade the overhead lurkers. They always are hoping to get out. My youngest birds are two years old on Friday actually, so they don't ever seem to figure out that being loose isn't always safe.

 

[Charmed]

My poodles are good chicken guardians, but Nike thinks they make excellent meals. When Sailor was younger, he would help me herd the chickens back inside their coops. I love all the 'situating' you had to do to get everyone in their right locations. Thank goodness all your dogs are well trained... well, really I should say Kudos to you for training your dogs so well.

 

[lily cd re]

Charmed thank you for that nice compliment. There was a lot of excited energy going on so I wanted to be super careful trafficking everyone around. Can you imagine if overexcited dogs had gotten into it over a bird that got in the house? I made sure that everyone got purpose driven training around the birds from when the chicks first arrived so no one thinks the birds are lunch, not that Javelin wouldn't give them a good chase if left to his own devices (although his recall is good enough I can call him off them).