No more outdoor fun

Friday night, the youngest wanted to sleep in my bed.  Despite my protests, I shared the bed with him and Cash.  It was a good thing, because in the morning he pointed out that Cash's eye was swollen and then his mouth.  I hadn't noticed it, but it was pretty obvious.

The trouble has begun

Although Paisley will happily skip into her crate when we ask her to, Cash is another story.  He hates the crate and no matter how we bribe him, he hates to go in and hates to stay in quietly.  Each time that I put Paisley in her crate, Cash will look at me out of the corner of my eye and then quickly hurry in to my room and jump in the bed.  He seems to think that if he "goes to bed" in my bed that I won't make him "go to bed" in his bed.

A few days ago we came home to this...

I'm not even sure how he managed to do that, but he's clearly planning to break free.

It has begun.... or ended depending on how you look at it

Last week someone from the county came and knocked at our door.  I was in the shower so the youngest had to tell the man to wait a few minutes for me to finish and get dressed.  I had no idea who it was until I stepped outside and he introduced himself.  He was the head engineer on the road-widening project and was in charge of overseeing the work in front of my house.

He told me they would be coming through soon to begin work on the land they took last winter.  I asked how long I had and he said about 10 days.

I took pictures that day as we were leaving our property just to remember what I had since it was going to be changing.  As you can see, from the road you can't see our house unless you're looking directly up the driveway.

The end of an era

We've had a lot of changes around here in the past month or two, and the idea of selling the goats has been tossed around quite a bit in order to keep up with the changes.  I finally decided it was best for us to find them another home.

A woman that used to be on the 4H board emailed me and was looking to add some girls to her small herd so she could breed them.  It took about two weeks for us to coordinate schedules, but she finally came by over the weekend to see them and then came back today to pick them up.

The girls were actually very easy to catch as they each came to the gate and waited while we grabbed their collars and both of them walked right into the trailer.  Maybe it was a sign.

It was strange not having them attempt to shove past me into the chicken coops when I was locking up tonight and it was strange to not have to lock the gate to the goat pen behind me.

I am a bit worried about having more predator issues now but I'll keep my fingers crossed that we won't have any major issues.

Over the next few weeks I hope to take down the top layer of fencing that we had to put up over the years to keep the goats in.  It's been so mangled and messed up by them that it's looked horrible for awhile.  Then I want to start using the goat pen as more of a dog run so the puppies can be around the chickens and learn to accept them and they can also get some better exercise.

Lesson learned

We went on a short weekend trip and decided that taking one of the dogs would make things easier for the pet sitter and would give us a chance to do some one-on-one attention and training for the other dog.  Because Cash is usually more mellow, we decided to take him with us.

Boy was I wrong.  Cash was not happy with the kennel he slept in over night and when we picked him back up the next morning, he just seemed completely lost and confused as to where Paisley was.  We took him to a dog run area and he just paced the fence line looking for her.

We heard from a friend that Paisley seemed much more quiet and a bit sad while we were away as well.  It looks like we won't be able to separate them again.

On the way home, I think Cash was being as patient as possible.

And once we were home, although Paisley was hyper as usual, it wasn't long before she came and climbed into my lap and fell asleep.  Maybe she was just glad to have us home.