Looking the Sheep With Little Pip

Little Pip is feeling pompous today, because she had the honour of helping me check the sheep.

Checking the sheep (or looking, as we call it) is a job that every dog wants to do. It is a great honor to be chosen for this very important job.

"Yes. Can we go now?"

We currently have four flocks in the fields at home. Three of those flocks consists of ewes and their lambs, while the other is of some ewes close to lambing. They would usually be inside, but yesterday we got so fed up with them that we put them out. But first, we had to sort the ones close to lambing from the ones far away from lambing.

Fly rounded them up and we took them to the handling pens.

(See how dirty they are? That's because they have been inside for months! And straw gets very dirty in between bedding.)

Once in the pens, dad checked the ewes for elders. A grand total of 17 were close enough to lambing to keep at home - and they include Sugar!

Sugar is expecting a lamb in the next month or so. Hoorah!

But the ewes and their already-born lambs need to be checked too.

In the first flock we checked, I spotted Georgia.

In the second are Old Tilly and her lamb Lily. We feed the sheep with sheep pellets every other day, and today was one of those days that they don't have any. Yet, anyone who dares to bring the quad (or even tractor) into the field will be mobbed. The sheep come running!

Lily likes to jump for joy at the sight of the quad.

This mobbing and belly love means photo ops!

After leaving flocks one and two disappointed, we went to look flock number three, home of Bubbles, Young Tilly, and their lambs.

Young Tilly and her lambs:

And Bubbles and one of her lambs (the white-faced one with his two ears folded back).

The only problem with the flocks of sheep gathering around the quad is that they can make it hard for me to photograph, as Bubbles demonstrates:

Pip is safe from the mob because she's on the quad.

Pip loves the quad now! She gets to watch sheep from above!