Farm Fresh Blog

"The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys."

Other Half has been pining away for a GoPro video camera. Since he doesn't lean toward extreme spots, I wondered why he needed a tiny camera that he could strap on before doing something that would give our insurance company fits. But true to form, he wasn't planning on strapping the camera on himself. He planned to strap the camera ON THE DOGS. Yes, the dogs. He even bought a special harness made just for strapping the camera on your dog.

He wanted a camera on Aja when she was training in bite work and narcotics. He wanted a camera on Dillon to get a dog's eye view of the forest as the dog bounced across the ranch. (Buy plenty of Dramine.) And he wanted to strap that camera on the Border Collies while they worked cattle. Yyyyyyyeah. . .

Trace was not nearly as thrilled with this idea as his handler.

Since the camera battery was still charging, Other Half decided to do a test run with Trace just wearing the harness. He wanted to make sure we didn't take any chances with Trace slithering under a barbed wire fence and catching the camera on it. I had to go to work so I sent Other Half out there with my Canon to document it. I caught the first part and frankly, I wasn't too impressed. I was later assured that the dog finally settled and started to work.

The job:

Calves are bunched into the buck pen, munching on a round bale of hay. Remove calves from buck pen. Place cattle in arena where they will later be fed.

This is right up Lily's alley. Her forte is up close, predictable pen work. She drives well but gathering at a distance is simply beyond her. On the other hand, Trace's forte is long distance gathering. He sees no point in close up pen work because, "Well duh, you've already penned 'em up."

Nevertheless Other Half wanted to use Trace for this because he eventually wants to put his camera on Trace. As predicted, Trace went into the pen and announced,

"Well duh, you've already got 'em penned."

Eventually he got the cows moved out. (I think the cows moved on their own because they're used to Lily moving them daily.) Anyway, once they were outside the goat pen, then Mr. Trace decided that they needed to be penned in the arena and he was the man for the job. Alrightie then.

According to Other Half, after Trace got over his initial hesitation, he decided he could work in the harness, so the next step is to attach the camera to the harness. Of course, then there will be the whole learning curve when we try to figure out how to upload the video into the computer and then edit it. Trust me, all the cussing will need to be edited out.  :)