You'll Ruin Your Eyes

Jed is an odd dog, to say the least. One of his quirks is TV watching. You can tell him to lay down and behave, and he will until an animal appears on the screen. It doesn't matter if he's seen this kind of animal before, he knows it's an animal and he will jump up and bite the screen. The wierd thing is, if he saw that same animal live, unless it was a sheep he wouldn't even notice it was there.

His favorite television program is the PBR. He waits quietly while the bull is in the shute but the second the bull is released and starts bucking, so does Jed. He bounces and spins until the 8 seconds are up and then he waits again for the next bull. Needless to say, sometimes Jed's enthusiasm has to be cut short or the tv will be in danger of falling over every time he bites at it. PBR finals are this weekend. Don't forget to watch. Jed won't.

The Girls

It's not easy being a chicken on our farm. At least that's what I gather from the complaints I hear every morning as I gather their eggs. From the very beginning there was a great interest in them around here and things haven't changed much.

Sometimes it's the cats

and sometimes it's the dogs

but the birds just want to be left alone to eat and do their job. Their job? The girls are the breakfast providers, Scott is the breakfast maker and I am the breakfast eater. (Hey, someone's gotta do it)

Holloween Time

As usual, it is just me and the animals for Haloween. No husband (away doing clinics) no children asking for tricks or treats (it would probably make the dogs bark anyway) and no haunted houses (I'm too chicken to go alone). But we plan to keep the traditons going anyway. I've got a black cat named Salem (really, I do), my decorations are up and my pumpkins are ready to be carved. Lad chipped in last year and did his own interpretive carving but I think I'll go with a regular pumpkin face this year. If I really start feeling left out, maybe I'll let the dogs take turns ringing the doorbell and I can hand out dog biscuits. Now, if I could just think of a costume for Skid

Elder Statesman

Continuing with our Meet and Greet, I must introduce you to Chip. Chip is very important on our farm. His job is to, uh, well... Ok, Chip just keeps the bed warm at night. He is a retired movie and TV actor and that's gotta count for something. Chip was born to act. His father was Murray (border collie - x), on the TV show Mad About You and his grandmother was Bingo from the movie of the same name. Chip came home with me at 16 weeks and had to overcome an almost paralyzing fear of people and carsickness.






Fortunately, we overcame his phobia's and he appeared in his first commercial for Quaker Oats at only six months old.



After that, he appeared several times on the TV show Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Profiler, as well as a background player in the movie Bedazzled.
He took an early retirement when I quit the film buisness and was happy to relocate to Canada when we met Scott. Chip has free run of the house at all times and now, at 9 is our oldest dog.

Soldier Hollow Classic

Come on, you gotta admit it's pretty cool when you get your name up in lights!

Goodbye and Hello

It wouldn't be right to say hello to Skid without taking a moment to say good bye to Nessie. Nessie, our German Shepherd was the only non border collie at Alta-Pete. .
She did a little herding andplayed a guard dog on a couple tv shows, but her main job was as my companion and protector. She'd been trained to do attack work as a young dog and she always had my back. We had to say good bye to Nessie at the beginning of our spring trip. It was her time. The tumor in her belly was giving her trouble so we released her from her pain, and buried her ashes in our flower garden.




Enter Skid. We met Skid six weeks later as we returned from our trip. He had just flown out of the back of a pickup truck going 90 mph plus on a wide open highway. The truck never stopped and Skid skidded to a stop on the side of the road. After our truck and camper trailer skidded to a stop we ran down the road expecting to find a dead dog. He wasn't dead. He was sensless and on his back. Scott sat him upright and I grabbed a towel so we could take him to the nearest vet. We couldn't see any external injuries but we were sure a vet would tell us to put him to sleep. A half hour later, he got up and sarted to walk around the cab of the truck. An hour later he was playing with our border collies at a pit stop. You would never know anything had happened. He had no tags and wasn't neutered. We questioned ourselves. What do we need with a cute little mutt? Is he of any use? We decided we did have a use for him. Nessie left a big hole in our heart and Skid could fill a little bit of that. So he stayed and we haven't regretted it one bit.

Meet Pete

Pete has an official title, it's "barn cat" but actually, Pete runs the place. No, the name Alta Pete has nothing to do with Pete (shhh, don't tell him). Scott picked that name long before Pete came around. Pete and Scott met 5 1/2 years ago when Pete was just a youngster and they both lived in Buffalo, Alberta. Every night in the winter, Scott would leave a heat lamp with a tarp over it on the quad so that it would keep the engine warm enough to start. In the morning, Scott would go out and take off the tarp and see a small streak as it took off to shelter elsewhere. When he figured out it was a feral kitten, he started leaving a bowl of food under the tarp too. Eventually, the kitten started hanging around to meet Scott and they became tentative friends. Both of his ears and the tip of his tail had been frozen off but it didn't seem to bother him.

When it came time to move, Scott caught Pete, neutered him and released him to the new barn in New Dayton where Pete took over his daily duties. Petey, now quite friendly, feels it is very important to supervise all dog work done on our farm and you will often hear his comments (non stop meowing) on the video tapes we do of the dogs in training. Recently, Pete begrudgingly aquired an apprentice. When our neighbors moved and left their farm house vacant, Cali came over to see what we had going on. Between the two of them the farm mice live in fear and never dare to get in to our grain storage.