What more can I say....

Ethan at the Whaley Street (All Local) Market.
Photo courtesy of the All Local Market

What a dog will do to get out of a bath...

About 4:00 this afternoon, I was going to give Riley, our 9 year old Golden Retriever, a bath but when I went outside to get him, he was nowhere to be seen.  I called and called, but no sign of him, so I gave up.  Mom said he probably heard I was going to give him a bath and he ran!

After dinner and devotions, Savannah asked me if I had seen Riley yet. Come to think of it, no I hadn't. So I went outside and again called for him, but he didn't come.  I checked the tack room, the front porch, and any place I could think of, but still no Riley. So I started walking through the woods calling him. As I was walking, I thought back to all of the dogs we had lost through the years. I was starting to worry, so as I walked I started praying. By this time, Dad, Savannah, and Ethan had joined the search.

After walking for a little while I heard one bark. Riley's. So I called again. Two barks. He was somewhere on the neighbors property. I hollered to Savannah who had also heard the bark. We started off in the direction of the bark, Savannah through the woods, and me on the trail. Everytime I hollered, "Riley!", we heard two barks in reply. Pretty soon, Savannah hollered that she had found him.

His front leg was stuck in a trap. 

 

By this time he was very excited to see us and was pulling on the trap's chain which only hurt him more.  I tried to keep him calm, while Savannah ran back home to get Dad.  When Dad got there, he was able to open the trap, but not without a fight from Riley.  You could tell we were hurting him by trying to get the thing off.  Once it was off, he was able to walk/limp on it.  Pop, Gram and Mom showed up by this time with the golf cart, so he was able to ride on the cart for the trip home.  When we got him home, we gave him some pain medicine and soaked his foot in epsom salt.  It didn't puncture the skin, but it did cut the circulation off to his leg for about 4 hours.

Riley resting after the whole ordeal

He gave us all quite a scare (and quite a few tears, I might add) before we got him out of the trap, but through the whole thing we have several praises:

1. The trap didn't have teeth. 

2. We found him about one hour before it got dark, which would have made looking for him even harder.

3. Dad was still home to get him out of the trap (he was just about to head off to his Bible study)

4. Riley knew enough to keep barking!

Posted by Kelsey

Good Morning!

"Arise, shine;

For your light has come!

And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you."

-Isaiah 60:1

I stumble upon this verse a while back and found it to be a beautiful, cheerful verse to wake up to and quote early in the morning.

This was the view that we awoke to this morning, with the fog settling over the fields.  As I walked out to the dairy to milk, I had to stop and take a couple of photos.  It was a gorgeous day, with the temperatures rising all the way up to 71 degrees this afternoon.

Bucket Feeding

Here is a picture of the baby goats drinking off "the bucket"!  After they are about one week old, we transition them from drinking from a bottle to this bucket.  It saves a lot of time and it's also very cute to watch! 

What a week!

At around 2:30 pm, we had two more baby goats born!  Two girls!  That should be the last doe to have kids for at least a month.  That was a grueling eight days, but well worth it all!  All the babies are healthy as well as the mamas, and everyone is milking well.  Last night, we had the newest babies in the box in the laundry room, but they didn't baa all night!  For a split second this thought popped into my mind, "Boy, it sure was nice to sleep the whole night without waking up to feed the babies!"  But I had to laugh at myself.  Who would say that sleeping from 12:30 to 5:15 would be sleeping through the night?!?  Definitely not me before this last week! 

17 "KIDS" and counting...

Two more kids today! One boy and one girl. They were born at about 2:00 p.m.. Only two more does due in February. Then some are due in March and some in later ??? months.

Posted by Jordan