Christmas Past.

Merry Christmas everyone.

This week I'm going to show you some pictures of Tippy from Christmas past. Like many other dogs Tippy had a natural ability to open presents. Somehow it seems they know how to do this without being taught - who knows maybe in a past life they were all humans. Well anyway right from the first Christmas the first job for Tippy on Christmas morning was to get on the bed with Vicki Fallon and myself and help Fallon to empty the gifts from her stocking. Like humans she used to play the guessing game but with the aid of her pointy nose there wasn't a lot of guessing involved when it came to picking out the chocolate and Fallon was very kind and let her open at least one of her presents. When the time came to open the presents under the Christmas tree Tippy too had her fair share and again took as much pleasure in opening them as she did playing with them afterwards. From the pictures below you will see what a fun time she had over the years.

These first pictures are from when we were at the farm

These next ones are since we moved here.

It wasn't the same without you.

Have A Happy Christmas Tippy.

Every year on Christmas Eve we have a buffet tea party and as with everything we do the dogs are included as much as possible. Here you can see Tippy is well prepared and knows exactly who to suck up to when requiring a sausage roll or mince pie. The only thing I ever remember her stealing was a tray of mince pies. It was the first Christmas that she was with us and Vicki had made some mince pies and left them on the kitchen worktop waiting to go in the oven. Some time later we found Tippy being violently sick and it wasn’t long before we found out why because when Vicki went to put the pies in the oven most of them were missing! However mince pies did remain one of her favourites although she stuck to cooked ones and only when they were given to her.

Look what I found!

I love you grandad.

I will miss you this year Tippy.

It's A Dirty Job.

At this time of the year there was always plenty of mud around the farm so it was pretty much impossible for Tippy to not end the day wet and muddy. She didn’t mind of course and wondered what all the fuss was about when everyone kept on telling her to stay in her basket. Apart from her basket she somehow managed to acquire an armchair in every room of the house plus the bed in the spare room. The challenge was to make sure she stayed in either her basket or the armchair in the kitchen until she had dried off enough to progress to one of her other chairs and hopefully by bed time she was in some kind of fit state to sleep in the spare bedroom. Of course all the farmers amongst you will be laughing your socks off now as you wonder what was wrong with the dog kennel outside?

Dirty tum - look I'm not getting any mud on the chair!

Clean tum.

Loving Embrace.

I think this picture says quite a lot, I guess there aren't many of you out there who get to give your work mate a loving embrace during work hours - or even out of work hours for that matter. This picture was taken by another work mate called Clint.

The Young Ones.

This week I think I will post another picture of Tippy the hiking dog. I don’t know the details of this picture other than it was taken a very long time ago as we all look much younger. Tippy looks to be hardly more than a puppy.

Part Time Mum.

Every now and then Tippy had to take maternity leave, although she was never 100% committed to raising a family due to the fact that those pesky sheep always needed to be kept in order or at least be under constant supervision of a Border Collies eye. So Tippy was only ever at best a part time mum so it was just as well that all her puppies were just various toys which she gathered around her in the nest she would make once a while by the side of the bed. From the look of this picture her nest on this occasion was made of my fleece, a small backpack and something which I think is a pair of trousers and it looks like she had maybe five or six puppies.

Hiking Tippy.

This picture of Tippy with my mum was taken during one of Tippy’s very first hiking trips in to the hills.

She must have been pretty young at this time because she had a proper black lead from quite early on in her life. Tippy used to love going for a good long hike and handled it very easily, much better than Tommy who will walk long distances but seems to suffer for it afterwards, also he is a dead loss when it comes to stiles whereas Tippy would jump over them or at least allow you to lift her over. This picture was taken at Slippery Stones at the end of the Howden Reservoir.

The One And Only Driving Lesson.

In 2002 the boss decided to build us a big new shed which we didn't really use for cattle until the winter of 2003. It was a very nice shed and Tippy used to have lots of fun running from one end to the other keeping her eye on proceedings. Being a proper sheep dog she would have nothing to do with cattle so her running from one end to the other was done around the outside of the building and lying in the mud and peering through the gap under the door. As you will see from the picture the shed was in three parts, two rows of pens with a feeding passage down the centre, wild horses wouldn't have made her walk down that centre passage, I think to her it was the parting of the waves.

The new shed.

Each row of pens was divided in to ten and each pen held ten cows with their calves. The front of the pen was where the cows stuck their head out to eat the feed and it worked okay as far as they were concerned but with the calves it was another matter because they were small enough to get through the bars and out in to the feed passage so very often the first job in the morning was to put the calves back where they belonged which wasn't always very easy as they aren't known for their co-operation in such matters. So after putting Tippy on the JCB loader tractor and starting it up ready for putting out more feed I set about returning the calves back to where they belonged.

JCB Loader tractor like we had at the farm.

As always Tippy was taking a great interest in proceedings and much as a shepherd whistles or shouts commands to his dog she was doing likewise to me from the safety of the loader. I eventually managed to get the calf back where it belonged and gathering my breath I turned to see the loader slowly reversing down the shed and Tippy looking through the windscreen. It looked very much like a disaster movie where the airsick accountant is left to land a 747. In all the excitement Tippy must have caught the reverse lever and was now reversing down the shed with a look of bewilderment in her little face. I set off after her and the loader knowing full well I was not going to reach it in time to avoid disaster. Thankfully the drive was automatic and not clutch driven, so because the engine was still on tick over when the loader came in to contact with the shed door it did no more than put a slight dent in it before being stopped in its tracks and this gave me time to enter the cab and get the situation under control. It didn't put Tippy off riding the loader but she never drove it again, not that I gave her chance because I always made sure I locked the reverse lever in neutral whenever I left it in future.

Patient Tippy.

Tippy waiting on the quad bike at feeding time.

I think Tippy would have stayed somewhere all day if I told her to, especially if she was on the bike. I remember one time in particular when we were checking the sheep and cattle on a day where you could hardly see the hand in front of your face for the fog. She wasn’t aloud in the field with the cows and calves for both our sakes so I said for her to stay by the gate to the Pumphouse Field while I went round the field looking at the stock. During the inspection I came up on a cow that was calving so I hung around to make sure everything went ok. By the time I’d finished seeing to the cow and making sure the calf was okay and returned to the gate where I’d left Tippy it must have been getting on for two hours since I left her. Normally I would not doubt that she would still be there but I never tested her that long before and on a day when she could hardly see past the end of her pointy nose let alone see where I was but she showed her faith in me that I would return for her because she was still there waiting for me after all that time.

Even a professional sheep dog likes a holiday.

Tippy enjoying ball games on the beach.

I don’t remember how many holidays we took without Tippy, it wasn’t many as it turned out because on returning one time we noticed a difference in her like she was ill. She always stayed with my parents so we knew no great harm had befallen her, I’m sure she was spoilt rotten in fact.

On the Monday afternoon I took her with me to re-build a field wall and I knew for sure there was something wrong with her then because usually all the time I was building a wall or fencing she would be dragging lumps of wood around for me to keep throwing her but on this occasion she spent all day laying around in the grass so when we got home Vicki took her to the vets sure she was suffering some terrible illness so it was both a relief and amusing that on returning Vicki said that the vet had diagnosed that she was sulking because we went away on holiday and left her behind! She didn’t know we had been on holiday, having never been away on holiday she had no idea what one was but the fact that we had left her was enough to cause this mood in her.

Even a professional sheep dog likes a holiday you know!

Eventually she came out of her sulk and from that time on we always took her with us, if we couldn’t take the dog we didn’t go.