Sienna's Fence

Sienna inspired our fence project.  

Sienna started helping herself to our good nieghbor's chicken eggs, straight from his coop, and I was worried she would help herself to a few of his chickens too.  When she went to visit our far nieghbor during their daughters senior photos, we got some cute pictures and a chance to catch up, but we also got worried that she was so far from home. Our neighbor warned us that the highway was very close.  We decided to implement plans for a perimeter fence, ASAP.  On the back side of our little farm, the fence is wire on mostly metal posts that connect all the pasture fences together, but in the front of the house, we used wood posts, and painted them black.  

Brandon has been building all our pasture fences by digging post holes with a gas powered auger, or with old fasioned post hole diggers, and then tamping the dirt around the base of the post with a heavy metal bar.  It's slow, and exhausting.  

To speed things up, we borrowed a fence pounding machine, and Jamie came over on a rainy weekend to help install the posts.   Despite the rain, and more than two tractor malfunctions, we managed to get all the wood posts in place and return the machine on time.  

Here's a little clip of the machine in action.  It was amazing, and once they figured out how to get the posts in straight, it made quick work of a big job.  Not quick enough. 

I took lots of pictures the day we used the fence machine.  It wasn't very cold, so working in the rain was kind of nice and the drizzle made the tree flowers even prettier.  

Little redbud trees planted years ago are finally big enough to be a presence, and pair well with the apple tree near the hammock. 

While the fence was in the works, we tried putting Sienna in the pasture fences near the sheep.  It worked okay, but she didn't like being kept away from us and Wendigo, and we didn't like it either, so we would let her out.  

On Sunday we were working on the fence with both dogs, when Sienna took off after a smell.  She would do that - just take off after something, like a deer or a rabbit, and she could run so fast there was no stopping her.  Like when she would go shark eyed and chase a chicken.  Her instinct to chase would kick in and she had no self control. 

We worried all day, but then someone called our number from her collar and kindly told us where to find her body by the guard rail.  It was late by the time she was retrieved and burried under the apple tree.  

Sienna was the best bad dog I've ever had.  She chased and killed, and barked all night.  She jumped and scratched with muddy paws and head butted those she loved.  She stank like the skunk she harrassed and the dead things she loved to bring home to chew, and had ticks and burrs, and sticks tangled in her tail.  We thought she was great and wanted more than five months of life together.  We will finish her fence before we get another dog.