Geek shepherds

Our Higgs particle in front of her triplet sister
Hodge Podge

If you're reading this post looking for apps to improve your flock, you might be disappointed - though I can tell you that we've been using FlockFiler for our pedigrees for many years and love it. The Jacob Sheep Breeders Association has an awesome pedigree database, too and I enjoy researching our sheep ancestry on it. But actually, that's not what I'm talking about here.

I grew up in a family where things like tectonic plate movement was a perfectly normal dinner conversation. After all, my daddy is a rocket scientist. So my children were raised in a household where discussions of Bram Stoker's writings could lead to studies of fly genus and species. It was natural then, when I named Elizabeth's littlest afterthought triplet Higgledy Piggeldy that she instantly became Higgs Boson particle. After all, she is the littlest particle of a sheep in our flock.

And when it was announced on July 4 of this year that they had found the Higgs Boson particle, we just looked at each other and said, "Wow, google earth is now good enough that they can see Higgs."

Who's training who?

My critters find me very easy to train. I've been aware of this for years. When I am working with horses or other performance animals, I have to be very careful that we are progressing on my agenda - along with theirs!

For example, our little pug cross, Scraps, is on pain medicine for a torn ligament right now. The vet said the pills taste good and she should eat them fine. The first two, she did. Then she spit it out. I wrapped her pill in a hot dog. She ate it. Then this morning, she ate the hot dog, spit the pill out and expectantly looked at me. Obviously, I was supposed to wrap another hot dog around the pill.

At that point, I realized her scheme and force fed her the pill. She has a bit of a weight problem, too. She does not need extra hot dogs. I have one very unhappy little dog! She was sure she had her human much better trained than that.

Sometimes I don't even realize the ways they change my behaviour. My Aussie will come up and sit next to me. If I don't go into auto-pet the dog mode, he will rumble. Rarely any more does he have to escalate to a full "YIP" to get me to automatically start stroking him with a hand or foot.


Shawn laughed at me the other morning when he came into the office. It took me a minute to figure out why. His cat, Halfie, likes to sit in my office chair. She gets very upset and subversive if I move her. She will jump on my lap, rub on my computer and make a general pest of herself. But, if I just leave her in the chair and type over her, life is good.

Halfie knows who really runs the Common Threads office!