Off to the West: Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

These five 'darlings' scare the heck out of #3. Send her running, screaming in terror. Of course, they give chase, which reinforces it. And, to top things off, she's just the right height for them to think she's someone that they can take down. Last year, she got caught between an irate rooster and an irate gander. The one jumping at her and the other hissing and grabbing at her and twisting. Needless to say, she is not the family 'goose girl'. We got the first two right off last spring, and named them (properly) Percy and Abigail (for a while, we thought it was Amelia and Abigail, like the Gander sisters in The Aristocats...then it became obvious we had a romantic couple on our hands). They are very British, being Embdens. They have a tendency to look down on we colonists. But they tolerate us (except for #3) and they have learned that when I come out in the evening, they had best high-tail it to the coop. The other three, we got a month or so later, so while there is not so much age disparity, there definitely was already an Alpha male and female on the premises, so the newbies took second place. Percy has an occasional 'fling' with Penelope, but Cyril and Adelicia seem content to just be Beta Male and Female...and put up with Percy and his attitude.

This little lady, is Tuck. Originally, we had Tuck, Lenny, and Ming Ming (can anyone say "The Wonderpets"?). Unfortunately, Lenny got hauled off by a coyote, and MingMing (who turned out to be male) committed suicide by minivan--was clear of the van, and then turned and ran right underneath it when I was leaving home one day this spring. Very difficult. But Tuck bravely manages to waddle on through life, without him. She's a Khaki Campbell, and is, as KCs are, a great egg layer, but a horrrrribbble mother. Goodness, she just waddles around the yard leaving her eggs...where-ever! I'm glad of the times I can find them in the coop, simply so it isn't a guessing game as to where she has dropped them off this time!

This lovely, is Sheba. She's our almost 8 mos old Great Pyr. You can perhaps see by the way her ears are blown back, that the wind is pretty high. That is kind of hard to show in photos, unless one has a tornado blowing through (no thank you, not even for blogging history!), but she was in the right place at the right time...She is very shy around people, but she has always been very very good with the animals, and while she takes a backseat to our other dog, Mel, she is beginning to give as good as she gets. I think it is only a matter of time til he learns to leave her alone...

And this...this is Mel. Our hyperactive, part Border Collie, part Blue Heeler dog. He loves the children, thank goodness (although he tried to herd them, too, until we taught him not to). The chickens, well, he'd probably rather eat the chickens, but at least he seems to have learned not to herd them. Our cows (not pictured), however, are a whoooole 'nother story. And the geese don't hesitate to take him on. Grab, yank, and twist, is what they do to him. He leaves them alone, unless he's just looking for a fight. He is a year and a half old, and already a good bit smaller than Sheba is now (she was a teeny bit smaller than he was when we got her, and she was almost 4 mos old at that time). He was very reluctant to be photographed, so what you see, is what you get.