The real world

The real herding world is not made up of kind sheep who walk along with the handler and don't have a brain. The REAL sheep are those that have babies in a field and have to be brought in during extreme weather. Such as my two mommas that had lambs this last week/end. These have never been easy sheep to work, they are not worked by students they are only worked by me and mostly my dogs. They were broke by my dogs, and know that they should respect them WITHOUT lambs. They had to be re-educated today... We are expecting severe storms tonight and tomorrow and while sheep should survive them, our large oak in the front is old and rotting, and their shed is in poor repair. Hail and tornados are possible and every baby is important to life and this farm!
So I tried first without any dogs (grain) and that was a BIG no go! They weren't about to leave more than about 10' from the gate with or without their babies. Second I tried Sally, no go again, they had Sally wheeling. One would go after her then the other with no break, she couldn't win that WAR. So then I picked both babies up and brought Abby out to help her daughter. With me holding the lambs, the two girls had to work together first to break the sheep off the fence/gate and then to break them back to me. All in all I think the job took about 40min, the barn is 100yds from the front pasture. That is real work in the real world... The two girls worked their tails right off, no quit, no give but really had to work at it. By the time we got half way to the barn those two ewes were marching along right behind me like little soldiers! You go girls! Sally and Abby got extra scritches and plenty of time in the spa after that:-))