Two Dogs Dining

These two dog are much better behaved than some children that I see at the restaurants!

Great work! I totally enjoyed watching this!

Started Border Collie female for sale - Kate

Kate is a rough coat, tri female. She was born in August 2010. Her sire is Nan, a son of Alasdair MacRae's Nap and his dam is Ellie, a daughter of my Nan.  She is a small and friend female. She is very willing to please and has been a house dog.

She does short outruns of about 50-75 yards, balances well and has a nice fetch. She covers the sheep well and rates the sheep very nicely. She goes both directions with ease and can change directions without  any issue. She has worked 65 sheep as well as five. She has worked lambs.

She is very biddable and wants to please, thus is an easy dog to train. She calls of well and kennels and crates fine. She gets along with the other dogs, cats, poultry, horses, llama and cattle. She is quiet in the kennel and house. She is not a barker or aggressive.

Nan is Imp Spot x L&M Nell. Nan's sibling are Tommy Wilson's Sly Laura Hick's Jag and Joni Swanke's chip (deceased)  Nan is my Open dog and I see some of Nan's attributes in her. Her grandsire is MacRae's nap, who has won the National Finals.  Her sire, Nap (George MacDonald) is a successful Open dog.

She can be a nice Open dog for the handler who wants a willing partner. I am selling her since I am overdogged.

Prior post on Kate

Congratulation to Vicki Romero

Chicken with Rice (Arroz Con Pollo)

This is a very tasty meal. I love cooking Mexican food and recently have been on an Mexican food kick!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil

2 chickens, cut up

1 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground pepper

1 cup prepared sofrito, see note

1/2 cup chopped pimiento-stuffed olives

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Pinch ground cloves

4 cups long-grain white rice

6 cups chicken broth, as needed

2 large bottled roasted red peppers, cut in 1/4-inch strips

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Season chicken with half of the salt and pepper to taste. Place chicken pieces, in batches, skin-side down in the Dutch oven; cook, turning as needed, until well browned, about 10 minutes. Set side

2. Add sofrito and olives to pot. Season with remaining salt and pepper to taste. Raise heat to medium high; cook until liquid has evaporated. Stir in cumin, cloves and rice. Return chicken to pot. Pour in broth to cover rice by 1 inch. Heat to a boil; cook over high heat until liquid level reaches top of the rice, about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to low. Cover; cook until liquid is absorbed, rice is tender but firm and chicken is cooked through, 15-20 minutes. Fluff rice with fork. Garnish with roasted pepper strips.

Note: You can make sofrito (a mix of chopped onions, peppers, garlic, cilantro and tomatoes) or purchase a prepared version at Latin American food markets.

You can use a crock pot but use the Dutch Oven for cooking the chicken

Driving Miss Rainey

I was using Rainey to sort sheep last night and she did quite well. The ram faced her and she never flinched and he decided that moving was a good idea. She had to do two lookbacks to get hidden sheep out of the marsh. She took both and went out blindly where my whistles sent her. She got the waywards ewes and brought them back smartly. We got the remaining ewes sorted and I must remember that she has only really been teaming with me for not very long time frame. I only started to run her in trial a little over three months ago. She struggled with her debut with me but placed in the top twenty (I think) and since then has won a few PN trials or placed very highly. She still does struggle but is getting better and better and I help her though her weakness.

One of her weakness has been driving. At first, I had to encourage her every step, cheerlead and sometime be by her side. It was a major effort for her to put one foot in front of the other. Scott worked on her to get more push but her gas tank was running low. So she came home from his training, knowing wonderful flanks, whistles and homework to do on her drives.

So we drove and drove and worked and worked. Janet ran her in some trials and some she would show how brilliant she could be, while other she faded on the drive. She was a one person dog and it was evident in the middle of the summer, that she was my dog. Janet tried her best to get her to work with her, but she made her decision to be my dog.

I made her my main working dog, sometimes she would so hard that she would collapse when she got into the house. The work was hard and long; the sheep would be surly or ewes with lambs who challenged her every move. She would move 100 ewes, pack them in a pen, sort sheep for lessons, be a backup dog, drive flocks form pasture to another and stall work. When she had to drive the sheep, she would struggle but I would keep whistling her on. I taught her a grip so when the sheep stalled or would face her off, she could pull that tool out and use it. With each grip, she got more confidence. Sometimes I would stop her just before she would grip, after giving her the grip command, the sheep would jump and she was able to see that her intent was just as good.

I took a lesson with Scott and he was pleased and gave me some more pointers. To lessen the drive commands, but until she was more confident, do what I needed at trials. So at home, I would lessen the drive commands, she would stop, turn to look at me and if she went forward, I would give her a small tweet. If not, I would walk a step forward and tweet to her. Her confidence grew.

We continued on the trial field and on her drive, I would work her fast and flanked so her eye would not slow her down. I did see the first part of her drive; she would be slow so I had to be aware of that. However on her crossdrive, she would get into a zone and push and on the last leg, she was on the sheep hard. She was a good penner and could read her sheep quite well. She had a good way with the sheep and would not upset them; however if the sheep were very heavy, she had to lean into them. She doesn’t like heavy sheep so we worked on that quite a bit.

The trials came and went and she won quite a few and timed out on the drive on others. I thought for sure on the range ewes she would have issues, but her lift was one of the best and she lost a couple of points on the fetch. At the drive, they stood up to her and when they charged, she stood her ground. She did time out on that run but I was happy with her as she tried her best.

On the light hair sheep, she calmed them and lost three points on her entire run. They really liked her and her calmness allowed her to walk them smoothly through the course. At the trial, I helped her when she was struggling, often giving her a series of commands so she didn’t have time to stall out. She is very biddable so took my commands on the fly. She tried hard to do everything proper and precise.

I was happy with her progress considering just over three months ago, we stepped out as a team. Now we are a team and she is getting better and better. She has taken over her mother duties on the Sunday lessons, playing backup dog, sorting, and assisting the pups and doing the chores. Rainey thinks she is the only dog to do the work and often I use her. However, she draws the line at working poultry. She is in the same camp as Nan. Poultry is fine as long it is in her food bowl. Live poultry should be avoided at all cost.

As the night drew to a close on Saturday, I had her drive the flock to the far pond. There seems to be a certain area where she stalls and everyone stops. It is about even with the front edge of the pond. Tonight I started her to drive the flock; softy gave her a walk up and turned my back to shut the gate. I fussed with the gate and then walked over the hill to see where Rainey and the flock had stopped. Much to my surprise, she had driven them well past the area she normally gets stuck and around the pond, still pushing with some authority. I stood and watched in amazement. She stopped once, turned and looked at me, decided I was useless in not giving her any commands, figured she to take charge and continued onward. She pushed them to the fence line and I called her back.

She bounded back in happiness , tail swinging in joy as I praised her. She jumped on the front of my coat, her tiny paws leaving mud paw marks on it and I ruffled her ears, telling her that she was good girl.

She answered back, “I have always been a good girl. But today, I was exceptionally good!”

The Ending of a Legend: Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney so dreaded the day he had to end his signature "60 Minutes" commentaries about life's large and small absurdities that he kept going until he was 92 years old.

Even then, he said he wasn't retiring. Writers never retire. But his life after the end of "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" was short: He died Friday night, according to CBS, only a month after delivering his 1,097th and final televised commentary.

Rooney had gone to the hospital for an undisclosed surgery, but major complications developed and he never recovered.

"Andy always said he wanted to work until the day he died, and he managed to do it, save the last few weeks in the hospital," said his "60 Minutes" colleague, correspondent Steve Kroft.

Rooney talked on "60 Minutes" about what was in the news, and his opinions occasionally got him in trouble. But he was just as likely to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why air travel had become unpleasant and why banks needed to have important-sounding names.

Rooney won one of his four Emmy Awards for a piece on whether there was a real Mrs. Smith who made Mrs. Smith's Pies. As it turned out, there was no Mrs. Smith.

"I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn't realize they thought," Rooney once said. "And they say, `Hey, yeah!' And they like that."

Looking for something new to punctuate its weekly broadcast, "60 Minutes" aired its first Rooney commentary on July 2, 1978. He complained about people who keep track of how many people die in car accidents on holiday weekends. In fact, he said, the Fourth of July is "one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace."

More than three decades later, he was railing about how unpleasant air travel had become. "Let's make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention," he said. "We'll pick a week next year and we'll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days."

In early 2009, as he was about to turn 90, Rooney looked ahead to President Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration with a look at past inaugurations. He told viewers that Calvin Coolidge's 1925 swearing-in was the first to be broadcast on radio, adding, "That may have been the most interesting thing Coolidge ever did."

"Words cannot adequately express Andy's contribution to the world of journalism and the impact he made - as a colleague and a friend - upon everybody at CBS," said Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. president and CEO.

Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and "60 Minutes" executive producer, said "it's hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much."

"60 Minutes" will end its broadcast Sunday with a tribute to Rooney by veteran correspondent Morley Safer.

For his final essay, Rooney said that he'd live a life luckier than most.

"I wish I could do this forever. I can't, though," he said.

He said he probably hadn't said anything on "60 Minutes" that most of his viewers didn't already know or hadn't thought. "That's what a writer does," he said. "A writer's job is to tell the truth."

True to his occasional crotchety nature, though, he complained about being famous or bothered by fans. His last wish from fans: If you see him in a restaurant, just let him eat his dinner.

Rooney was a freelance writer in 1949 when he encountered CBS radio star Arthur Godfrey in an elevator and - with the bluntness millions of people learned about later - told him his show could use better writing. Godfrey hired him and by 1953, when he moved to TV, Rooney was his only writer.

He wrote for CBS' Garry Moore during the early 1960s before settling into a partnership with Harry Reasoner at CBS News. Given a challenge to write on any topic, he wrote "An Essay on Doors" in 1964, and continued with contemplations on bridges, chairs and women.

"The best work I ever did," Rooney said. "But nobody knows I can do it or ever did it. Nobody knows that I'm a writer and producer. They think I'm this guy on television."

He became such a part of the culture that comic Joe Piscopo satirized Rooney's squeaky voice with the refrain, "Did you ever ..." Rooney never started any of his essays that way. For many years, "60 Minutes" improbably was the most popular program on television and a dose of Rooney was what people came to expect for a knowing smile on the night before they had to go back to work.

Rooney left CBS in 1970 when it refused to air his angry essay about the Vietnam War. He went on TV for the first time, reading the essay on PBS and winning a Writers Guild of America award for it.

He returned to CBS three years later as a writer and producer of specials. Notable among them was the 1975 "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," whose lighthearted but serious look at government won him a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.

His words sometimes landed Rooney in hot water. CBS suspended him for three months in 1990 for making racist remarks in an interview, which he denied. Rooney, who was arrested in Florida while in the Army in the 1940s for refusing to leave a seat among blacks on a bus, was hurt deeply by the charge of racism.

Gay rights groups were mad, during the AIDS epidemic, when Rooney mentioned homosexual unions in saying "many of the ills which kill us are self-induced." Indians protested when Rooney suggested Native Americans who made money from casinos weren't doing enough to help their own people.

The Associated Press learned the danger of getting on Rooney's cranky side. In 1996, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore wrote a column suggesting it was time for Rooney to leave the broadcast. On Rooney's next "60 Minutes" appearance, he invited those who disagreed to make their opinions known. The AP switchboard was flooded by some 7,000 phone calls and countless postcards were sent to the AP mail room.

"Your piece made me mad," Rooney told Moore two years later. "One of my major shortcomings - I'm vindictive. I don't know why that is. Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back. It's a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened.

"He was one of television's few voices to strongly oppose the war in Iraq after the George W. Bush administration launched it in 2002. After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, he said he was chastened by its quick fall but didn't regret his "60 Minutes" commentaries.

"I'm in a position of feeling secure enough so that I can say what I think is right and if so many people think it's wrong that I get fired, well, I've got enough to eat," Rooney said at the time.

Andrew Aitken Rooney was born on Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, N.Y., and worked as a copy boy on the Albany Knickerbocker News while in high school. College at Colgate University was cut short by World War II, when Rooney worked for Stars and Stripes.

With another former Stars and Stripes staffer, Oram C. Hutton, Rooney wrote four books about the war. They included the 1947 book, "Their Conqueror's Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders," documenting offenses against the Germans by occupying forces.

Rooney and his wife, Marguerite, were married for 62 years before she died of heart failure in 2004. They had four children and lived in New York, with homes in Norwalk, Conn., and upstate New York. Daughter Emily Rooney is a former executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight." Brian was a longtime ABC News correspondent, Ellen a photographer and Martha Fishel is chief of the public service division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Services will be private, and it's anticipated CBS News will hold a public memorial later, Brian Rooney said Saturday.