oh dear

It turns out that our Great Pyrenees - Petunia - has been, uh, KNOWN. 

In the biblical sense. 

Ahem. 

To make this even more complicated . . . our first Great Pyr, Wally, got the neighbor's lab pregnant. Then he got run over. 

So we got a second Great Pyr . . . the exact same day the neighbor asked us to take two of the lab's puppies. 

One was Wally's protege and one was their Shar Pei's offspring. 

That's correct. 

We ended up with three puppies in one day. It was also the day we told our parents we were having a baby. 

Like I said . . . oh dear. 

Now Petunia is pregnant . . . perhaps with Wally's son's baby or perhaps with our black lab Blackjack's pups. 

Can someone please cue the Lion King's Circle of Life? 

In any case, if you're in Missouri and are on the lookout for a 3/4 Great Pyr -- or perhaps a half Great Pyr, half lab -- give us a shout-out. Petunia, like State Farm, has got you covered. 

puppy brothers

Remember the Geico puppy brothers commercial?

Well, these are Wally's puppies. And they're brothers. Clearly.

This is the dog the neighbor kept. 

And this is ours.

Puppies.

Who are brothers.

Clearly.   

Petunia

Blackjack may be my farmer's number one farm dog, and Wally might have come in a close second, but Petunia is rounding third base and heading for home. 

Just observe that grace, that poise, that . . . look of complete uncertainty about what exactly is going on around her.

 

Thanks to Wally, we've discovered that Great Pyrenees really are our favorite dog breed. They're chill, they're massive and they're quiet during the day. 

And they also apparently like to curl up like small woolly mammoths in your lap.

Of course, they love to eat gigantic hunks of meat and bark all night too, but their faces definitely make up for it.

Well, Petunia's does. 

Or at least that's just what we'll keep telling ourselves. 

a (p)update

Colt - half Shar Pei, half lab 

Just a few weeks ago we suddenly found ourselves in THAT category: the one that includes people who have too many dogs. 

puppypalooza 2015

Here on the farm, our motto is, "If one puppy is good, three are better."

That's actually not our motto at all. But when we lost our Great Pyrenees Wally a few weeks ago, we were pretty convinced that a farm couldn't be a farm if there wasn't a dog the size of a small horse roaming around. 

And so, on Saturday, we got little Petunia. 

the envy of all the canines

I'm not sure when I realized it first. 

Maybe it was when we loaded up our chickens--with their wings flapping in our faces--dropped them off to be processed and then went back a week later to pick up frozen drumsticks and breasts.

Or maybe it was when my cousin visited the farm for the first time and asked in shock, "You mean bacon comes from hogs? I thought it just came from the grocery store!"

owning a great pyrenees

Women love little, bitty tiny things: babies, mini quiches, puppies.  Sure you could have a regular-size quiche, but who wants that when you can have an itsy bitsy quiche that's just your size?

Women, that's who.

the birds

One of the best things about living in the country is that it's (a) quiet, (b) relatively private, and (c) see (a).

There are no sirens, no car horns, no screeching wheels. Every now and then, a tractor or the feed truck drives past, but we consider that a virtual traffic jam out here. 

So with the exception of a dog bark or a cow moo, most days it's pretty quiet.

Which is why it didn't take long to figure out something was up earlier this week when the WORLD'S ENTIRE SNOW GOOSE POPULATION SHOWED UP AT OUR HOUSE.

wally and blackjack, cowdog wannabes

We had a lot of snow last year. Like, the kind where my car couldn't always make it over the drifts to get into town kind of snow. 

This year has been snowless and relatively warm. I--to put it mildly--find this fantastic. 

Are you my mother?

Saturday mornings are my favorite. Monday through Friday mornings involve getting ready for work. Sunday morning involves getting ready for church. But Saturday morning means getting to putter around the house with the windows open, listening to heifers wolf down grass and waving at the occasional neighbor who drives past.