Friday, February 26, 2021
CapitalPress.com 9
Dogs: ‘Never thought I’d have a dog this good’
Continued from Page 1
MORE STORIES
WE LOVED
Some rescued animals or pro-
tected crops; others have sim-
ply brought joy to their own-
ers’ lives. These are a few of
their stories.
Wilbur and Ellis
Delford and Marita John-
son, 75 and 70 respec-
tively, raise 380 cattle
annually in Warm Springs,
Ore. Before getting dogs,
they lost 10 to 15 cows
per year to coyotes and
wolves. Since getting two
Great Pyrenees, Wilbur
and Ellis, they’ve only lost
one calf.
Marc
“Been doing sheep for
some 50 years. Never thought
I’d have a dog this good,”
Bob Klinger told the Capital
Press.
An old friend gave Marc
to the Klingers last summer,
when the dog was 2 1/2 years
old.
The Klingers say Marc is
the ideal working dog. Piper
said he learned the commands
to herd sheep “in no time at
all.” Bob said Marc “works
the sheep in the chute like a
pro” for sorting and vacci-
nating. When the Klingers
need to pass through a sec-
tion of electric fencing, Marc
keeps the sheep from escap-
ing through the gap.
He intuitively knows
which critters are friends and
which are foes, they say; he
hunts down mice and voles,
but he lets the farm’s chick-
ens climb on his head, and he
recently befriended an otter in
the creek.
Plenty of Border Col-
lies are good working dogs,
said Piper. What makes
Marc unique, she said, is
that although he enjoys herd-
ing, he’s not obsessed with it.
Instead, he’s gentle, affection-
ate and sticks close to Piper’s
side.
Piper smiled, scratching
Marc’s head, as she described
their first day together.
“When he hadn’t even
been here an hour, he walked
over to me, put his foot on
my leg and looked at me like,
‘Here I am, I’m yours.’”
Sally
Pete Paradis scooped his
3-year-old grandson, Elias,
off his lap and slid out of his
truck. As the two approached
the mouth of an alleyway that
sloped through the vineyard,
three white Maremma sheep-
dogs sauntered toward them.
Paradis said the smartest
of the three — though a bit
people-shy — is Sally.
“She’s not the nice little
dog that comes up on your
lap. This is about as far from
that as you can be,” said Par-
adis. “She’s more like a farm
animal, a domesticated wolf,
if you will.”
Sally is a working dog, and
she does her job well.
Her main role is to protect
the Silverton, Ore. farm’s 100
or so Boer meat goats against
predators. Alone, she faces off
coyotes. Alongside the other
two dogs, Paradis said she can
make cougars think twice.
Sally’s deeply bonded to
the goat herd. That she was
down near the vineyard this
winter morning, in fact, was
because she had heard the
maa-a-a-a of goat kids in the
nearby barn.
“Isn’t that right, Sally?”
Paradis said.
Sally looked up.
Paradis said Sally’s intelli-
gence startles him.
At dusk, she leads the
goats to the barn or under-
neath trees. When it’s her din-
nertime, she takes turns with
Molly
California rancher Bryce
Fruiht’s dog Molly, a
Lab-Border Collie cross,
warns intruders to stay
away, loves to lick the
babies, is gentle with
Fruiht’s grandson and is
always glad to see Fruiht.
Karma
MARC
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
ATHENA
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
the other two dogs, making
sure one is always on watch
duty.
Although her first duty is
to her goats, Sally has also
protected the vineyard. Par-
adis recalls one night, a
storm-downed tree ripped
open a fence. The goat herd
could have entered the vine-
yard block and destroyed it,
but Sally guarded the hole
until her master arrived in the
morning.
“Sally sat on the inside
of the fence, looking at me
like, ‘It’s about time you got
here,’” Paradis said.
Athena
Mike Guebert and his
wife, Linda Bangs, co-own
Terra Farma, a small farm
producing
pasture-raised
meat, eggs and milk in Cor-
bett, Ore. They run a Com-
munity Supported Agricul-
ture program, or CSA.
Ironically, Guebert and
Bangs, who now run a
meat operation, were once
urban-dwelling vegetarians
before they were exposed to
humane livestock production
methods.
The couple’s Great Pyre-
nees, Athena, guards their pas-
ture-raised dairy cows, goats,
pigs, poultry and waterfowl.
The couple recall that one
night, Athena woke them up
with persistent barking. Gue-
bert said he threw on his boots
and ran outside. There, he
found two injured coyotes near
the turkey pens, pieces of coy-
ote skin and fur scattered about
and Athena “sitting as if she’d
been there the whole time.”
Athena even showed her own-
ers a portion of the fence that
needed repair.
“She’s an amazing pro-
tector, and she’s also just the
sweetest dog,” said Bangs.
KIT
Courtesy of Liana Livingston
POPPIE
Courtesy of Robin Wylie
SALLY
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
LILY
MOLLY
Courtesy of Bryce Fruiht
Bangs squatted down,
running her fingers through
Athena’s white fur. They
were on a green hill inside
a multi-species grazing pad-
dock where dairy cows
and meat goats munched
together.
The couple were so
pleased with Athena that they
wanted to pass on her genet-
ics, so they bought a male
dog, Zuri, and across about
six months, Athena had two
litters, 20 puppies total.
“She’s an amazing mom,”
said Guebert.
Kit
Liana Livingston, 18, and
her sister Emmeline, 11, say
their dog Kit — named after
American frontiersman Kit
Carson — is one of the best
parts of farm life.
Kit, a Border Collie-Mc-
Nab Shepherd cross, helps
drive 120 or so beef cattle at
a time on the family ranch in
Starkey, Ore.
“It saves a lot of time when
he helps move the cows,” said
Liana Livingston.
The dog also scares away
coyotes and even had a battle
with an angry badger.
Although Kit’s a work-
ing dog, the girls say it’s his
fun personality that makes life
colorful.
Kit is 5, but the girls say
he still acts like a puppy. After
the Livingstons feed the cows
and are about to put away hay
strings, Kit likes to grab the
strings’ ends and pull them
for a game of tug-of-war. He
also loves catching rocks and
snowballs, and can shake
hands and play dead.
When it snows, the Living-
stons say, Kit is “very skilled
at hooky bobbing.” The girls’
parents drive their truck
through the snow, and the
girls, along with their siblings
and Kit, hook onto the bumper
and squat down for a ride.
The only problem, Liana
said, is that sometimes Kit
grabs her pants while she’s
holding onto the bumper.
“He definitely keeps farm
life lighthearted,” she said.
Poppie
Robin Wylie, 64, who
owns a ranch in Nampa,
Idaho, and manages several
farms across eastern Wash-
ington, said her dog, Poppie,
fills a hole she didn’t think
anyone could fill.
When her previous dog
died, Wylie was devastated.
“I said to my friend, ‘I
Courtesy of Robin Loznak
don’t want to get another dog
yet,’” she said.
But her friend ignored
her comment and called
her the next day to say she
found another dog for her,
a 10-month-old cross-breed
that a cattle rancher was giv-
ing away.
“We really bonded,” she
said.
Wylie said Poppie is
incredibly smart and even
knows the days of the week.
Wylie’s daughter visits every
Monday at 9 a.m. Each Mon-
day just before that time, Pop-
pie waits by the door for her
arrival.
“How can she know what
seven days is?” said Wylie.
Poppie helped Wylie’s
heart heal after the loss of her
previous dog, and she also
brought life and laughter to the
farm. She’s interested in every-
thing and often sports a green
manure mustache. She’s gen-
tle with Wylie’s grandchildren,
but she’s tough when she needs
to be, driving away skunks,
stray dogs and coyotes. When
inside, Poppie often curls up
under Wylie’s desk, keeping
her owner’s feet warm. Poppie
has some English Shepherd
in her, which Wylie suspects
makes her a good “all-purpose
farm dog.”
“She’s the most perfect
farm dog I’ve ever had,” said
Wylie.
Rancher Boyd Walton, 78,
of Omak Lake, Wash., was
out walking one night
last fall when his dog,
Karma, alerted him that
a cougar was nearby and
he was in danger. Walton
was able to safely leave
and returned later with
his gun.
Lily
Robin Loznak’s family
lives on a 570-acre property
with cattle, Douglas firs and
hazelnut trees in Oakland,
Ore. On a ridge overlook-
ing the Umpqua River sits a
farmhouse.
Founded in 1868 by Mar-
tha Poindexter Maupin, this
is both a state-designated
Century Farm and a Sesqui-
centennial Farm, owned and
operated by members of the
same family for 150 years.
This is also where Lily,
a mixed-breed rescue with
some Border Collie in her,
lives.
Loznak used to work as a
veterinary assistant at Saving
Grace Pet Adoption Center in
Roseburg, so he had a rela-
tionship with Umpqua Valley
Humane Society. Staff there
knew he was looking for a
dog, and one day, he got a call.
They had a rescue, they
said, that had been raised in
the city but was too high-en-
ergy for town.
“She was exactly right for
us,” said Loznak.
It turns out, Loznak’s
family was exactly right
for Lily, too. She loves
watching the cattle, keep-
ing down the rodent popula-
tion, swimming in the river
and riding shotgun along-
side Loznak in his Kubota
UTV out to the hazelnut
orchards.
Loznak said what strikes
him is that although farm-
ers on his land have raised
a wide range of crops and
livestock, one semi-con-
stant fixture has been the
farm dog. Most generations
of his family had dogs, he
said. He even has an old
photograph, taken around
the 1870s, that shows the
original family on the farm-
house porch. At their side is
a dog.
“There’s just something
special about farm dogs,” said
Loznak.
Hemp: Funding for audit was provided
by Oregon Department of Agriculture
Seed: Residential retail makes up about
60% of total grass seed industry sales
Continued from Page 1
Continued from Page 1
information for people responsible for grow
sites.
Part of the audit’s purpose was to work out
such kinks, helping to regulate irrigation com-
pliance on hemp farms elsewhere, Johnstone
said. With about 1,000 grow sites, Southwest
Oregon has about half the hemp operations in
the state.
“We hope to take this process on the road to
support other watermasters,” he said.
Bruce Corn, a commission member and
farmer near Ontario, Ore., said he was con-
cerned that less than 20% of the grow sites
in Southwest Oregon were visited during the
audit, which seemed to indicate the agency
was short-handed.
“Eighty percent were lucky and didn’t get
checked,” he said. “There appears to be a
pretty large problem from the data you brought
back.”
Funding for the audit and additional staff-
ing was provided by the state’s Department of
Agriculture, which shifted money to OWRD
specifically to study irrigation on hemp farms
last year due to complaints about unlawful
water use.
Hemp production in Oregon boomed after
pilot projects were federally permitted in the
2014 Farm Bill and then the crop was legalized
in the 2018 Farm Bill.
The ODA has figured out a way to con-
tinue paying for the additional water rights
scrutiny for another biennium, though the
approach probably won’t be permanent,
said Lauren Henderson, the agency’s assis-
tant director. The agency is also asking law-
makers to pay for four more hemp enforce-
ment positions at ODA during this legislative
session.
“We haven’t been able to keep up, partic-
ularly on the enforcement side,” Henderson
said. “We do need to improve our presence
down there and we are working to do that.”
While some of the problems with water
rights are due to growers willfully abusing the
system, many simply didn’t understand the
complexity of water law when they began pro-
ducing hemp, he said. “We had a lot of grow-
ers who were new to agriculture and saw hemp
as a way to get in.”
have worked extra.
Territorial’s farm opera-
tion supplies about 17% of
its seed; the company buys
the remainder from seed pro-
ducers worldwide, includ-
ing contracting with local
growers.
Along with vegetables,
Johns said people are also
buying flower seeds to “dec-
orate” their yards.
Farmers who grow veg-
etable seed for commer-
cial-scale farms say that
market has been less stable
during the pandemic, but
many seed crops are still per-
forming well.
People are still spending
more time and money on
landscaping — a boon for
grass seed companies.
“It feels like, in the retail
sector at least, people went
crazy buying,” said James
Schneider, president and
CEO of Barenbrug USA, a
grass seed supplier.
Schneider estimated res-
idential retail makes up
about 60% of total grass seed
industry sales. Year over
year, from 2019 to 2020,
he said residential sales of
grass seed increased 25%,
and sales this spring are pro-
jected to jump 5% to 20%.
When sports fields closed
last spring, sales of commer-
cial and sports seed mixes
initially took a hit. But as
sports teams adapted — for
example, by filling the stands
with cardboard fans — sales
returned to normal.
Golf courses, experts say,
ordered record poundage
of seed because more peo-
ple have picked up the sport
during the pandemic.
“Golf has had a resur-
gence they haven’t seen
since Tiger Woods. We’ve
picked up a whole new gen-
eration of golfers,” said
Scott Harer, vice president
at Columbia Seeds, another
grass seed company.
Kent Whittig, Western
regional sales representa-
tive at Allied Seed LLC, a
forage, turfgrass and cover
crop seed company, said
cover crop seed is also in
demand, along with warm
season annuals, including
teff, millet and sorghum.
In general, industry lead-
ers told the Capital Press the
forage sector remained fairly
static through the pandemic.
“Animals still need to
eat regardless of COVID,”
said Schneider of Barenbrug
USA.