Today would have been Duchess’s Freedom Day ~ except we celebrated this wonderful rite of passage a week and a half ago! Let me tell you what happened ~ and bring you up to date!

A week ago this past Wednesday, while I was walking Riley down the dirt road alongside our pastures, I noticed some very strange, very large tire tracks of the front-end loader or large tractor variety.  The tracks carved a u-turn out of the dust right in front of Duchess’s quarantine pasture. Then both Riley and I caught a whiff of something really foul. We walked closer to the edge of the road and saw, about 6 feet away in the tall grass, a deer’s leg sticking straight up. Two and two went together really fast ~ someone had dumped a deer carcass right across from Duchess’s pasture.

The smell was bad enough, but I knew that as soon as dusk fell, the carcass would also draw predators ~ and Duchess’s shelter didn’t have a door. She would be very vulnerable and very scared.  Neither was acceptable, so I created a space for that night where she’d feel and be safer. The next day, our vet ran a test to see what her parasite load was ~ if she had one ~ so that I could know whether it was okay to bring her into the barn at night ~ and into the more protected little pasture during the day.  The count wasn’t perfect, but it was low enough so that she could come inside. Yay! Duchess had reached her Freedom Day!

She was so ready to move closer to Mary, Cricket and Bella, whom she had been talking with for over two weeks.  As soon as John and I opened the gates from the quarantine pasture to the little pasture, she munched her way right across the alley and over to the fence where the three waited to greet her. This took a few minutes as she needed to sample several tufts of grass, glance into a shelter that was there, and make sure I was close by. She greeted each of our Ambassador Sheep with a sniff, then made her way back to the tastiest grass and munched the rest of the day away. 

That night, I walked her into her new stall in the Little Barn by putting a little sheep grain in my hand and holding it behind me so she could nibble a bit as we walked. I’ve discovered that Duchess will follow me anywhere for sheep grain! At night, she follows me into her stall for a bit of grain, and in the morning, she follows me into her pasture for a bit of grain. What she loves more than grain, though, is just standing with me. I’ll stand beside her, stroking her neck and back, and we’ll talk about whatever is in front of us ~ cats, bees, waving grass. It’s easier for both of us to just stand in the pasture now that the really bad decomposing smell from the deer carcass has lessened considerably! 

We’ve been following this routine for the past week and a half. I’ve been waiting to see if Duchess’s parasite load would go down, but unfortunately, this past Wednesday, I found out that it has actually risen, so we needed to give her a dewormer.  That medicine started this morning. We’ll run another test in two weeks and see what the count is then. Fingers crossed that in just 14 days, she can join Mary, Cricket and Bella in their pasture ~ and all four can munch the summer away! 

And before I sign off, a quick update on Wilma:  She’s doing GREAT!  

You might remember that we were all unsure how Wilma would respond to life without Betsie. When she came out of shock, she spent many days not able to be outside, and yet not happy inside, either. She would pace and cry out almost constantly.  I had given her a week to begin acclimating to her new life ~ and she’s pulled through! She’s able to be outside, contentedly resting in the sun or munching on the grass, for up to three hours in the morning. She doesn’t cry, and her eyes have settled back into a more normal position in her skull ~ not bugging out in such a terrified, aggressive way. She is able to run past me without fear into her pasture area, and she calmly returns to her stall when it’s time. I’m so happy for her ~ and I’m hoping that she, too, will be able to munch the summer away!

I’ll write more Sheep Stories soon!  Happy day, Everyone!