Queen Of The Farm

Uh…no,  it is not I.

It is Claire.  Claire is very popular as you might imagine by looking at her photo.

Her tongue sticks out like that all the time.  Poor thing’ s tongue is too long for her mouth.  You should watch as she tries to eat her food.  The stuff is flying all over the place.

Claire has a palace that includes two homes.  She has the Chick-Condo and she has her Summer Cottage.
It is hard to understand how we can have a dog as beautiful and wonderful as this and we don’t let her out of her pasture.     She is a Great Pyrenees.  They are livestock guard dogs who take their jobs extremely serious.  Many people get them because they are so beautiful but find they are difficult to handle and keep in place.  As a result there is a huge rescue community for all the Pyrs that have been given up because they didn’t “behave”.  Ours is lovely because she is doing exactly what she was bred to do.  Work.

Let’s take a peek.

Her pasture.

She has never been out of this pasture.  It is about twice the size that you see here.  She owns this pasture and guards it well.

The front of her domain as we walk to her house.

The Chick-Condo

She guards the chickens. And a goat or two.    The chickens have half the condo and she has the other half.  She cannot access their quarters because she will eat the eggs,  but they can sneak into hers.

She has about 24 chickens that she guards. It works.  We have guinea hens that roam around our property and we are losing them to predators.  We have never lost a chicken under the watchful eye of Claire.   As soon as we go in at night and the sun goes down, she begins walking the perimeter of the pasture  and barks a lot.  Pyrs do that.  We knew that going in and we accept that.  It is part of their job.  She rallies all night  until dawn.   Claire never makes a peep during the daylight hours unless there is a visible threat.  She rests.   She is very happy doing her job.

The infirmary

The little coop you see in the photo is the infirmary.  That is where hens go when Claire has licked them to near death.  She has never killed a chicken and is very gentle with them but she likes to toss them about and lick them.  Sometimes I will go out there and there will be a chicken lying on its back with its legs straight up in the air playing dead while she licks her tummy.

The Summer Cottage

This is Claire’s getaway cottage.  We found her there a lot this summer as it gets lots of shade.  Sometimes she just needs to get away from her stressful life and vacation for a while.  The flock goes crazy when she is away.  Party time.

But she doesn’t stay gone for too long.  Other wise, someone may come along and take the eggs.

And we wouldn’t want that to happen now, would we?

Please, do not worry that Claire gets lonely at her palace. Her home is in the middle of everything that ever goes on around here.  She misses nothing.   She gets visitors all the time.  We walk with her 3 times a day in her pasture and she is constantly battling all the other critters who want to be part of her posse.  Because she is queen of the land.

She is the happiest, most content dog we have ever had.  We attribute that to letting her do her job.   She has taught us so much about living with and training dogs.   Any dog that is raised on this property going forward  will be trained for  a job.  Thanks, Claire, for teaching us that really important lesson.

Thanks for stopping by.

God bless,

Karen