cow dog | Song Dog Journal

So I haven’t written much about Josie, and I really don’t know why. She was our first puppy clever enough to figure out how to escape the enclosure in the house, and got stepped on by Elvis and scared me half to death when the pups were older and sleeping in the barn. She limped out of hiding, crying pitifully and holding her little stepped-on leg up, and came straight to me to be held. Bess got to experience her first day on the job and got her own blog post, but apparently Josie just got lumped in with Bess and has been kind of overlooked.

Josie at this point has had many first days on the job! These pups are so intelligent and showing promise of being cowy, and it has already been a treat to watch their instincts start to come out. Bess goes nuts when she hears Brad yelling at cows and barrels down the hill to find him. Josie is a little more subdued, but this morning when we were gathering cows from the calving lot into the corrals, Josie took a leap off the fourwheeler and ran to help get the cows rounded up. She managed to not get stepped on.

From the get-go, I guess I thought Bess would be my dog and Josie would be Brad’s, but somehow things got turned upside down and this little dog stole my little heart. And oh my goodness, is she a faithful little companion! She has been my lap-warmer during my morning devotions or when I’m writing, she’s my chicken chores buddy, and revels in our walks. She likes riding in the tractor, she doesn’t have her ATV legs yet, and she is fast. Very fast. She can also be extremely slow and has this irritating and adorable habit of plunking her little butt down and tilting her head to the side when she hears her name and is pretending she doesn’t remember it. Naptime is sacred as is her bedtime, and before bed potty breaks are met with dramatic resistance and suddenly forgetting how to walk. She likes cheese and hotdogs, and doesn’t like spinach. She follows me around the kitchen and preemptively “downs” when she thinks I might give her something. She thinks she has me figured out.

As far as her name is concerned, when I name a critter it is usually just because the name somehow fits. And then it sticks, and that’s that. And given Brad’s track record of names like “Yellow Cat” and “Grey Cat,” I don’t take any chances. But Josie’s dad’s name is Joe, and her grandpa was Jonas, so Josie seemed appropriate.

Welcome to the crew, Josie girl!

What started out as an uneventful eventful day turned into a fiasco when the new mother of a litter of five brand new puppies vanished. Just vanished.

I was going down to check my chickens and she acted like she wanted to go out. Okay, I thought, she’s been inside all day and her puppies had full bellies. So I let her out. I took care of my chickens and went to locate Pearl, who popped up from down past the shop. I did my due diligence and made sure there wasn’t a surprise puppy down there, and Pearl headed up towards the house. I was close behind her, but just needed to grab something on my way. I took my eyes off her for all of three minutes. And she was gone.

I looked everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I looked for about forty-five minutes before calling my husband, who was up north getting grain. And I kept looking. I took the ATV out and looked, as I said, everywhere. Calling, shouting, scolding, and finally melting into an angry, crying, but still functional mess.

I figured she’d had another puppy in her and went off somewhere to have it. I remembered the elk carcass a mountain lion dragged away, up on top of the ridge and north a ways, and the mountain lion scat I saw closer to home. We’ve had some good sized coyotes getting rather bold. And then the sun started going down.

If it could be gotten into or under, I looked there. And looked again. And Brad got home and we looked again. And then she appeared out of nowhere from by the house, pretty dirty and looking guilty again. We had looked under everything. Except the front deck. We didn’t even know a dog could fit under there. But she did. And sure enough, we could hear a puppy squealing, not near one side or the other, but under the very center of the deck.

So basically we had to partially take the deck apart, which was harder than it should have been, to rescue the miserable, cold little girlie, and thus the entire ridiculous and beautiful family was reunited. Everyone is warm and dry and bellies are full, tight as little drums. Four little girls and two little boys.