Adopting Willow was the easy part. Now for the more challenging and fun part – integrating her into our homestead. The original plan was for Willow to stay in our barn until she was ready to be with Blue (our other Akbash LGD) and the sheep. The problem with that was we didn’t want to leave Willow all alone in the barn in a new, strange place. We invited Willow into our home and she was quite pleased to see a sofa near the front door. She went right for it!
Normally, I would not be accepting of a dog (or any animal) in our house, much less our sofa. Read More
We enjoyed our brief visit in Jackson, WY but it was time to bring Willow (our new Akbash livestock guardian dog we adopted) home! We made the long drive through south Idaho and western Montana back up to the panhandle of north Idaho. Willow did great in car ride but she was definitely ready to stretch her legs when we got home. It didn’t take long at all for our resident LGD, Blue, to take notice. See Blue and Willow meet for the first time in this video:
This video shares the story of our new livestock guardian dog, Willow. Willow’s story has a sad beginning but because of some wonderful folks that rescued her from certain death, she has been given another chance. We are honored to have such a special, wonderful dog as part of our family. Please share this video through all of your social media networks. There are countless other dogs that are in need of help. It is my hope this video will raise awareness to growing problem and will motivate at least one person to help.
Justin Rhodes of abundantpermaculture.com reached out to me for help getting started with sheep. He is bringing lambs onto his homestead for lawn control and a meat harvest in the fall. Justin is a chicken master and quite handy with cattle also but hasn’t had much exposure to sheep. He wanted to get my input on some of the materials he will need for his sheep. After making Justin a list of materials with links, I figured I’d share it with everyone since there are probably many other people out there who need help getting started.
I published a YouTube video called 6 Things You Need to Get Started with Sheep