Hi!  My name is Scarlet O’Collie and I’m a red and white Border Collie.  I was born in Hastings, Ontario, Canada.  My parents’ names are Gael and Wisp.  They live with Maxine and John Netherway.  They tell me I have some pretty famous ancestors.  Whatever!  I just know that I’m my own dog!  This is my baby picture that you see. 

When I was just a tiny thing, I decided that I wanted to go South to live.  My new Daddy and Mama, Perry and Glenda Burrows, drove all the way up to Canada one January  weekend to take me back to Tennessee!  It was a fun trip.  Mama and Daddy thought it was COLD up in Canada, but I snuggled and kept them warm on the long trip home.  When I got to Tennessee, I felt right at home.

I kind of missed my Canadian brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles, but I thought that it would be rather nice to be “top dog”.  Actually, I thought I would not only be “top dog”, but also “only dog.”  Boy, was I in for a surprise!

The first one I met was Mac.  He’s cool and kind of good looking, too.  He’s been real good about playing with me and showing me the ropes around here.  He’s even starting to let me tag along now sometimes when he goes out to herd the sheep! 

Next, I met Faith!  She’s only two months older than me!  Man, I didn’t know that Border Collies grew that big!  I think she’s some kind of special Border Collie called a Great Pyrenees.  She’s nice, but I decided that I better get my bluff in on her in a hurry if I was to be “top dog” around here.

Faith, Mac, and I have the best time running and playing.  It’s so neat to get outside and chase and wrestle and run.  The best fun of all, though, is to dig in the dirt–especially when we’ve just had a big rain.

One time I got so muddy that Daddy said that I had to have a bath to come back inside.  When I saw all of that muddy water, I was afraid that he had washed me all away.  But it wasn’t so bad, I guess!  It didn’t take me long to forgive him.

But after a long day of playing when I get really, really tired, it sure is nice to have a big sister like Snow.

I think I’m going to like it here in Tennessee!

Mac’s Page 

Hi there!  I’m Mac.  My fancy
name is MacCollie, but here around the farm, I don’t let too many people (or
sheep) know that.  I prefer just plain ole’ Mac.  I’m a red/white/tan
tri-colored Border Collie.  I’m the one who really runs things here at Blue
Goose Glen Farm.  Just ask the sheep if you don’t believe me. 

In my younger days I wasn’t quite as
handsome as I am now, but don’t you think that I was always “cute”? 

In my field it pays to have a good
eye!  I’ve learned to always watch whatever is going on–whether it’s
watching the sheep or watching Daddy prepare my breakfast! 

My true love, though, is watching my
sheep!  I live to herd!  And even though those ewes would never admit
it, they do like having me around.   

I’ve even let my new friend, Scarlet,
start helping me some.  She’s going to be a big help some day–that is, if
she will ever stop biting my ears!  Ouch!  

If she’ll continue to follow the real
leader around here …., 

we’ll get along just fine….
 

       Finding one another later in life than most, DH and I often reminisce about our respective pasts — comparing and contrasting our early lives.  It’s amazing to learn how our paths almost crossed so many times.  We have discovered that we had spent some of our favorite summer vacations in the same remote mountain village, saw the same shows, and enjoyed many of the same past-times.

         However, there was one past-time we didn’t share.  It seems that DH was really into the 70’s scene, donning his Travolta danc’n duds to beat it to the local discos.  There is no way our pasts crossed then, or did they?  Today, this video of the two of us appeared.  Hummmm.   Could our paths have crossed after all?   

This time last week we were getting the biggest snow that we’ve had in years.  Today you’d never know it.  It seems as if spring has finally arrived.  The temperatures are now in the 70s and it didn’t take me long to decide I didn’t need the jacket I’d put on.  Flowers are beginning to bloom, leaves are appearing on the rose bush and the grass is starting to turn green.  It won’t be long until we have to start cutting it again.

 Mac and Scarlet had almost as much fun today as they had in the snow.  They have a little ritual each time they go out.  They both head out in opposite directions making a large circle just as they always did with the sheep.  After that, Mac continues to run, but Scarlet does this little game of faking him out.  She starts running, but soon as he is on his way, she stops, turns around and hides so she can jump out at him when he comes around the corner of the courtyard.  After the hundreds of times she has done this, he has to know what she is doing… but he still loves the game.

Don’t have much time to write tonight, but just wanted to share a couple of pictures of the “kids”.  What a blast they’ve been having the past couple of days.  We don’t get a lot of snow, but this was one of those winter storms that comes along once in every decade or two.  I think that we finally ended up with about eight inches.

Mac and Scarlet have been having the best time running and playing hide-and-go-seek.  Scarlet woke us every couple of hours wanting to go out and play.  It’s a shame that it has to end. 

Okay.  We are in the South.  It’s March.  It’s supposed to be spring, right? 

We’ve had no snow to speak of this winter.  We’ve had temperatures in the 70s and the 80s throughout the winter months.  But now that the Jonquils are blooming and the trees are budding, winter has finally decided to arrive.  We’ve had varying reports depending on which meteorologist you’re listening to, but from what I can gather, we are to have somewhere between 6 and 12 inches of snow tonight. 

 Mac and Scarlet, our “children” (Border Collies) are loving it.  Can’t wait til tomorrow to watch them play.  I was planning on getting some really great pictures, but somebody took the good camera to work today and forgot to bring it home.  Oh well.

Anyway, sounds like tomorrow will be a good day to stay home and keep warm.  I think I’ll watch the dogs play from inside and maybe do some spinning. 

Just thought I’d share a picture of my latest project… a rag quilt for the newest addition to our family.  Little Presley, our great-niece,  was due on Feb. 29th.  If she had gotten here on her expected birthdate I would have only been a few days late which would have probably been a record for me, but she decided to come early.  I’ve had the material for her quilt for quite some time now but other things kept  getting in the way of finishing it.  But once she arrived, I knew I couldn’t delay any longer.  This weekend I finally got the machine out and got busy. 

Presley’s room is decorated in pink and green, so the material I chose was a flannel in a pink stripe and a pink polka dot.  To mix in with that, I found a solid green and a solid yellow to add a little brightness.  And then I saw a bolt of flannel that I simply couldn’t resist.  It had the cutest little baby feet tracking across it.   I was pretty happy with the way it turned out and really enjoyed making it… with the possible exception of the blisters from snipping all of those seams every 1/4 inch and the fear of how it would come out of the washer!  But in the end, it all came out fine.   

But at the opposite end of the spectrum, our newest niece, Presley Faith, arrived yesterday.  She arrived on 2/21 at 2:21 and was 21 inches long.  How is THAT for making a statement?  She was due on Feb. 29^th.  Her mom thought, without a doubt, that she would arrive on that day and be a leap day baby, but little Presley had a mind of her own and decided there was too much of the world to see to wait another week.  Mom and baby are doing fine.  I’m not sure about Dad.

We were looking for another fiber to compliment our wool.  Through his research, Perry had become interested in Cashmere goats.  After some discussion, we decided that cashmere would be a nice addititon for both spinning and blending.  After all, it’s a really nice fiber.  Calls were made, questions answered and it seemed the way to go.  All the necessary arrangments were made and Appy, Angel and Hope were on their way to us from Oregon… via Delta Airlines.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Only the best for our new critters.  We didn’t have a clue!

While anxiously awaiting their arrival, we received the phone call saying they would be a day late.  It seems they got stranded in Atlanta.  We had no way of knowing that goats could suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Until that fretful day, Perry had never found an animal that he couldn’t calm down.  This trio gave the word stress a whole new meaning.  It was days before we could get them cornered into the barn.  Our sheep had always been docile, attentive, sweet natured and calm; this trio would jump six foot fences, run like the wind and then stop and look back as if to say “Catch me if you can.”  Any pre-conceived notions of Appy being happy and Angel being angelic were soon shattered.  And as for Hope… well, let’s just say that all hope for a thriving cashmere business soon was gone.  But this was only the foreshadowing of things to come.

Sure, it’s true that cashmere is a wonderful fiber, but what the previous owner of our new goats had failed to tell us, you have to catch them to get the fiber.  And catch them we never could.  Oh sure, we would see an occasional tuft of soft down hanging from a low-lying limb in the woods or maybe some on the bottom of the fence from those times when they bored of jumping over it and decided to go under instead.  We provided them with lush pastures, but the neighbor’s apples proved to be too much of a temptation.  Can you imagine our horror to see them standing on their back legs staring into the neighbor’s kitchen window?

Our careful genetic selections of bred females and an unrelated male were to result in an exceptional herd… NOT !  After the first year, we had an additional 11 bucks (no does) …all wilder than their parents.

The final straw, though, was the day we saw our 90 year old neighbor, Mrs. Tipps, chasing all 14 of them down the road back to our place.  Something had to be done.

So how did our Cashmere experience end?  Well, we heard of a livestock auction for St. Jude Children’s Hospital.  My nephew, a cancer survivor, had been a patient there and we have a special place in our hearts for St. Jude.  So we donated.  As Perry was struggling with them, trying to get them into the arena, the auctioneer saw them coming and auctioned them off before they ever got through the gate.