Hey I'll just Cram the dogs in this Slot.

We are mid move to the new ranch. It's about a million times nicer than the old one, but not without problems. One being that the owner is involved in a dog lawsuit. From a former trainer there, that lived in a cottage on the property, whose bull mastiff bit one of her clients, in the cottage, in the face. And that client sued the ranch owner for a million dollars! Because her face got basically bitten off. So the ranch owner is a little paranoid about dogs.

Now my dogs are basically small ranch dogs. Almost every horse trainer has dogs. Usually they are fairly small and portable and horse friendly. Jack russells and corgis are very popular. Ruby is basically a jack russell and Otterpop is standard order generic ranch dog, cattle dog in chihuahua body. Ruby's a good ranch dog because she could give a hoot about horses and just wants to lay in the sun or race around after gophers or eat cat food. Otterpop likes to keep horses in line-she hates horses that hang their heads out of stalls and chew wood. She used to go in the paddock with my little black pony, who I guess she assumed was a dog, but other than that stays out of pastures and arenas and stuff. She is flawed as a ranch dog in that she hates men of the Latino persuasion and barks at them if they are new to her. But other than that, they're good dogs.

At the Soquel ranch, they lived in a crate in my office or out on their grassy lawn in the sun. Sometimes they would escape, Ruby loves horse shoers more than anything in the world and when there was a horse shoer out, she'd try to get down there. Otterpop likes to sit with me and sometimes would escape down to the arena to be near me. But they like their crate ok and adjusted to being in lock down most of the day.

At the new ranch, with the new lawsuit freakout thing, they need to be in major lockdown. Right now, all I can figure out is a crate tucked into a little space between the barn and the building our tackroom is in. It's about 3 feet wide and shady aka dark. On this beautiful, gopher filled, 26 acre ranch, they are going to live in a 3' wide dark slot outside a busy barn. But such is life I guess. Not much I can do about it now. i also have to add them to my liability policy, which worries me somewhat. But I gotta do what I gotta do. The new ranch is convenient to much dog agility and if they weren't in lockdown, I could make a little practice area for them. We'll see.