When I talked about our new arrivals a few weeks ago, I neglected to mention one very important addition — our new working dog Roy.
Roy is on the alert for unauthorized chicken maneuvers.
We’d been planning to get a new dog even before Sam passed away, as he’d grown too old for keeping up with a herd of cattle. So in late April, Jim made a trip to Kentucky to see Virgil Holland, the breeder we’d gotten Sam from, and came back with Roy.
At two years old, Roy is a fully trained working dog, with the boundless energy and amazing intelligence that so characterizes Border Collies. Trained on sheep, he’s managed the shift to cattle very well. In his spare time he likes to try out his herding chops on other species (no luck so far with the barn swallows) and moonlighting as part of our pest control program by killing flies on the wing, which given how high he can jump can be mildly startling for the rest of us. He is a valuable and loving member of our team. May he be with us for many years to come!
In addition our final intern — Douglas Montiel of Ecuador — arrived on Sunday. Douglas was with us once before, in 2011, but there’s been a lot of changes since then. Luckily for him, he’s a fast learner. With those two additions, our 2014 work crew is complete. Onwards to the new season!