Cast of Ranch Characters

If one has a ranch, one must have some animals. Everything takes time. We came down with our old dog (Sheba) and my inherited cat - Tober was a little stray in Kent, Ohio before Cheyenne gave her a home. When Cheyenne got married, Tober needed a new home and has fit in with us just fine, as she's a master mouser! Our little family is slowly growing. Mid January a little kitty (we now call her "Little Kitty") appeared in the living room window late one night and has been around ever since. I think she's here to stay! She retreats from the cold and storms and sleeps in a box on the front porch and her job is to keep the outside rodents in check and keep the snakes away from the house. She is a great climber of trees, poles, and fences, and I attribute this to her ability to survive despite the coyotes around.

Our next addition was "Doc" (Poco Docs Copy), a quarterhorse gelding that's about 14 years old. He's very gentle and friendly, but he's also very tall and I'm going to need a stool to get on him. In fact, it takes 2 of us to get a bridle on him - one to put the bit in his mouth and the other to hold the bridle in place when he raises his head. I'm sure we'll eventually learn to do this solo! Cinching the saddle is also a challenge until we get the technique down! Doc probably knows that we're total novices. As you can see, he's for pleasure riding and checking fence lines. Everyone has a job around here.

Then, the day after Doc arrived, we were given 2 beautiful border collies. We renamed them "Sam" and "Jake". Unfortunately less than 48 hours later, Jake started having very violent seizures and ended up in the doggie hospital for a couple of days. He came home on tranquilizer and a couple of days later he wandered off! Six days later he came back but he and Sam would fight on and off during the night, so we had to give him back. So now we only have Sam. We are working on obedience training and when we have cows for Mike to watch, Sam will be trained to herd them. He has great potential with his pleasing temperament. He's affectionate and playful and gets along well with Sheba and Little Kitty.

Then we attracted another stray - only this one was very destructive. He was a digging machine!! This is Artemus the Armadillo - I guess we could call him Artie! The first time we saw him, we discovered he had a one track mind - dig and eat! If you touched his back, he just dug faster! We bagged him up and took him to the pecan orchard! Three days later he was back digging up the yard. So we returned him to the orchard! The next day he was back in the yard! So Mike transported him down the road about a half mile. It took a few days and he was back again! So he took him about a mile or so down the road (opposite direction) and so far we haven't seen him for about 2 weeks!!

Our newest member of the family is Eeyore. He's 21 months old and his ears are about 10" long! He has kind of wirey wavy fur on his body, but soft on his forehead. He's very friendly and gentle. He follows us around everywhere and he loves "cookies" (compressed grain?). Mike's going to make him a cart to pull. Right now his main job is to keep the coyotes away. They're known for this, so lots of people around here have donkeys in their pastures.