Tuesday evening was slated to be the changing of the pastures. Our neighbour, who has leased out his land to a rancher so that his 80 cow-calf pairs (plus a couple of bulls) can graze for the summer, has divided his quarter section into quarters. The cows are being run on each pasture for around 10 days, and then they are rotated to the next batch of fresh grass. Up until now our neighbour handled this chore but he has left for an extended business trip and left it up to us. Yep, those city-folks are now “shepharding” the cows. The rancher is coming up about once a week, but the watering and chasing down strays is now our job. So of course you would throw a 6-year-old Canaan Dog into the mix. After all he has worked sheep, so what’s the difference? Right? Just kidding….no wait, that’s introducing goats into this equation. Suffice it to say we have had a grand total of 6 weeks learning on cows. As I wrote on the blog a couple of weeks ago, Macc picked 3 strays off our road and put them back in the pasture. That story is at:

http://canaandogsense.blogspot.com/2009/07/thatll-do-macc.html

This was to be more serious, particularly since some of them had found a way to get near the gas compressor station. Lots of pipes with high pressure natural gas and cows are a bad mix. Cows love to rub against things. Valves under several hundred pounds of pressure are a bad choice. So the first order of business was to move them away from the high pressure stuff. There were several cow-calf pairs to deal with, but Macc has sensed a quick cheat to this process; where the calf goes, so goes Mom. By pressuring the calf, and by doing so he is picking on someone his own size, the cow decides that there must be better places to be and moves on out. Junior follows. A few more pressured calves and the whole group starts moving. But even then they will fool you. This is not a flocking species. So one set of cow-calf moves to the left, one to the right and the other one goes right up the middle. And when you are dealing with a pasture, not a corral, this can get away from you in a hurry. But Macc has shown that he will not back down to them, even venturing within a circle of them to make his point. We had three groups to amalgamate and push into the next pasture: the compressor station gang, the watering hole bunch, and then the rest that were trying to get the last blades of grass from the old pasture. In all it took about 2 hours to round them up from the far reaches of the pasture. Macc stayed on them the whole time, even keeping them off me while I unhinged a panel to let them through. No casualties, some hurt feelings, and one happy tired Canaan Dog who is getting better all the time.