Heidi-ho Neighbor

Since my last posts about our old Arkansas house were brought on by the tenth anniversary of its purchase, I suppose it's fitting we remember another "anniversary" of sorts. It was eleven years ago this month that we brought DaVinci home as a puppy. It was definitely another of those firsts, not knowing what we were getting into (a few photos of those early days were blogged about here). He was adopted right after Thanksgiving when we lived in a little townhouse and I was still working full-time. It was a rough few months, as any new addition is!

We've finally gathered up the courage to start again. We have really missed having a dog around the house, and while we love Schrodinger the cat, those are two very different animals. It's taken us almost a year to determine how we could manage a dog, given that we travel so much and are gone all day at times. We really planned to adopt an older dog, but finding one acclimated to chickens and ducks and cats and farm life was nearly impossible. And we're having a major coyote problem this winter (lost two chickens just last week, in fact), so we needed a breed that could survive and maybe even deal with that issue.

So, meet Heidi, the Great Collie (as Jeff calls her):

Heidi is a 15 week old Collie (or Lassie Collie, as some nickname them)/Great Pyrenees cross. She was raised on a farm by a couple who normally breed full-blooded working Great Pyrenees, but their determined female got out and bred with the Rough Collie at the next farm. Heidi was the runt of a large litter, so we really don't know what size to expect out of her. She's only 8 1/2 pounds right now, but she may catch up quickly, or she may stay small (for a Great Pyrenees, anyway)! Either way, her bloodlines give her great potential as a farm dog and guardian.

Lest you think we went pedestrian with her name and bucked our tradition of scientist-inspired monikers, "Heidi" is derived from Werner Heisenberg and his eponymous Uncertainty Principle. It's rather difficult to find pretty, feminine names in the historically male field, so we had to stretch just a bit!



And because there can never be enough cute puppy pictures: