No worries! The owl didn’t try to get one of my Ratties, although while I was under the tree taking pictures of him, he did kinda give an appraising look at Maddie… but I just wanted to share some pictures that I had of him, as he, or she, is so awesome! And what better place to share than with my Ratties of course! When I’m down in the gully, I’ve been seeing two largish birds fly out of the junipers, but I’ve never actually seen what they were. I thought they were hawks until I saw this fellow sitting in the tree the other day. Now I understand why neither my husband nor I have seen them until they fly away. They are very much camouflaged!
Not much going on at the moment with my crew. My hubby takes them all irrigating with him now and when I get home, they are all pretty tired and crashed out on the couches and chair and floor! But I’m determined to continue training them, so will have to maybe start early in the morning before he gets them out!
I’m working on getting AKC and UKC registration for several of them, so maybe I’ll try my hand at showing later this year. At least locally anyway. I think Sammie would do well, as will Maddie and Colt. I’ll have to start practicing with them for the show stack. That won’t be too difficult, but it will be more difficult to find a way to get them out to socialize with people, as there just aren’t many people in this area!
I’ve been looking at some Rally Obedience patterns and think it would be fun to do. Now I just have to convince some of my Ratties that it is!
Hubby was telling me the other day that Sammie has learned a new trick. By accident she learned then when he turns water out into a new ditch, any critters will come out of their hole so they won’t drown. Now Sammie will stand in the water over a hole and wait for the critter to come out when she sees that hubby is turning water into a ditch.
Also, we’ve discovered that she’s a bit of a disciplinarian with some of the other dogs. For some reason my Maddie absolutely hates having her toe nails trimmed. Because it is so traumatic for all involved, I’m guilty of not trimming them very often. I’ve been slowly working with her so that I can handle her feet without her having a heart attack, and decided that I should trim at least one foot. Sammie happened to be close by when I started, and when Maddie started to have a fit, Sammie jumped up on the chair and told her in no uncertain terms to just knock that stuff off and just get a back bone and get your nails trimmed! Took us by surprise, but it was very clear that Sammie wasn’t going to have any of this screaming stuff. I just did one foot, but will be doing another one soon. We’re curious to see if Sammie will discipline Maddie again or not. Should be interesting!
Pictures of the (Great Horned) Owl…
Now the pictures of the main characters of my blog!
Looking for bunnies in the brush and rocks…
And hunting for prairie dogs…
Rat Race Rat Terriers 