Vince and His Girl

When Vince and I got married, I had a dog.  It was a chocolate lab and Chip was the sweetest, most loving dog . . typical of most labs.  Vince was not a dog lover.  He would never be cruel to an animal but he just didn’t want a dog of any kind.  It didn’t help that Chip was a digger.  In Louisiana, he dug up my mechanical sewer pump, he dug a hole so deep that he completely buried my big pump sprayer.

We got to Kentucky and Chip began digging.  He dug when it was hot.  He dug when it was cold.  I believe Chad watched Chip too much because then Chad started digging.  He was going to dig a pond back behind our house.  We had a few acres and Chad would dig for a while and then move on to a new location so that every time Vince cut the back part of our land, the lawn mower got stuck (or worse) in a big hole that either Chip or Chad had dug.

Not only did Chip dig but he chewed!  One winter we brought him into the garage to stay warm. There were four or five steps from the house down to the garage.  The steps were wooden.  In one night, Chip chewed half of those steps completely up.

The next night, Vince tied him to something that was indestructible but if Chip stretched just far enough, he could reach Vince’s big wooden workbench and he chewed one end of it up.

You wouldn’t believe how hard I had to beg before Vince ever agreed to let me get Speck!  But, Vince and Miss Hattie . . those two have bonded.  She will follow Vince around all day.  She especially follows him when he has something in his hand . . a bucket, a hammer, a chainsaw . . to Miss Hattie, if someone is carrying something, it must be something for her.

Notice that, as usual, there’s a water hose in my picture!  🙂

Every now and then Miss Hattie’s attention is drawn to a bug and she has to linger behind to investigate.

But she quickly catches up . . or even gets ahead of Vince and I guess in that case, Vince is following Miss Hattie.

Actually, yesterday when these pictures were taken, Vince was playing a trick on her.  We were ready to go in the house for dinner and he wanted to put her back in with the other chickens and instead of picking her up and putting her in there, he just walked towards the chicken yard with the bucket.  She knows that bucket almost always has treats so she followed him right over there.  I opened the gate and in she went and yes, we did give them all treats because Miss Hattie was expecting something.

The treat was the green tops from the carrots for dinner.  Such sweet chickens!