Skye

She ran about 8 miles yesterday. In the snow. In 35 degrees. Across a (thankfully!) frozen pond (aka dirt tank).

And still today she's as wound up as she was yesterday morning. Will I ever find the end to this dog's energy?

It's irritating me today because I took her for a couple mile run and by run, I mean running between 18 and 21 miles per hour, and then I went down to the barn to let the horses out. I thought that since she'd ran that distance she'd be more tame around the horses and calves, who's she's hopefully learning to tolerate. Not so much.

So that's frustrating because I don't think I'll ever be able to trust her completely.

But then I think it's a matter of that thing exactly. Me trusting her.

Yesterday she ran after some cows. I was instantly sick. I was yelling at her and surprisingly, she came back. But I didn't even notice that - I was so focused on the fact that she'd run after them.

"You called her off," Daniel said. "That's great!"

You're right. I did. So when she ran up to me, very happy, I patted her and congratulated her.

But I still don't completely trust her.

Maybe it's because she ran away from me for 2 hours. I don't know. Maybe it's because I really love her and I don't want to lose her. But I want her to be good.

And she is good. She sits, lays down, stays, knows "get back", "go lay down", fetches like a dream, tracks the ball (and any other thing she wants), she alerts me when I need alerted, she crawls in my lap and bites my hand at night when she wants to be pet, she lays her ears back and looks at me with her big brown eyes and then I can't be mad or irritated anymore.

Yeah, I dedicated a whole blog post to Skye this morning. Significant when you consider everthing else that's been going on - things like being snowed in for a week now, maneuvering a snowmobile, operating a tractor to feed bulls in 6 degree snowy weather ...

Life is good.