Elliana ~ My ‘Designer Poodle’

It was early on the morning of April 23rd when the telephone rang. I was just getting ready to head out the door to do chores. My dear friend and neighbor wanted to know if I could help her out with a ‘situation’. She had just finished her morning check, in the lambing pen. Two of her ewes had delivered overnight, but there were 3 babies, and each ewe only wanted one. There was no way of knowing which one had twins.

Cindy had no patience for bottle babies and if you don’t have access to milk for them, milk replacement is expensive. By the time a lamb is old enough to wean, you’ll have spent more money buying milk than you could ever sell the lamb for. Would I be interested in taking it off her hands? There’d be no charge, the lamb was worthless to her. It actually posed a threat to the rest of her flock. As it ran around the pen screaming, it was sure to attract predators.

🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑

I don’t raise sheep! Well, that’s not entirely true. The day Cindy called me about her dilemma I had two, ‘LambLamb and Thomas.’ Cindy’s done this before, almost 5 years ago. I had originally named him ‘Lambchops.’ On the farm, every animal either has a purpose, or they are food. I’ve found it easier to teach my children this by naming our ‘food’ after the food it is destined to become. Normally, that saves the grief of attachment.

That year, I already had 8 bottle baby goats. Each had been either from a set of twins or triplets, and I had decided to hand raise them to make it easier on their mothers.

This task has been made considerably easier with the use of an ingenious invention, the multi-teat bucket. It holds 3 gallons of milk, hangs on the fence, and has 6 nipples. That year, I was already using two and there were a couple of nipples to spare, as well as plenty of milk being produced. One more baby on the buckets would be nothing for us.

My husband had often said that he enjoyed mutton, but I had yet to try it. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. We could raise the lamb through spring and summer and butcher him in the fall. I was admittedly somewhat eager to finally have a chance to give it a try. Then we hit a bit of a wall.

🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩

My granddaughter fell in love. Every time she heard me call out for Lambchop, she would cry and wail… ‘YOU CAN’T EAT MY LAMBLAMB!’

I was gobsmacked, when two months into this, my husband looked at me and said, ‘You DO know that you CAN’T eat her ‘LambLamb,’ right?’

What!?! That had always been HIS rule, not mine! He informed me that I might just have to learn to spin or something. That shouldn’t be SO bad, considering I already crochet.

🙄🙄🙄🙄

Thomas is just an old man, that had nowhere else to go. His previous owners had raised him as a pet but were sadly forced to move to town. He’d been castrated, so couldn’t be used for breeding and is far too old to butcher. He might just as well live out the rest of his days adding to my hoard of unprocessed wool. 🤷‍♀️

But, I don’t actually RAISE sheep!

Sorry, I digressed. Back to April 23rd…

I pulled a jar of colostrum from my freezer and put it in some water to thaw, while I quickly did my morning chores. Cindy showed up about an hour after she’d called. She pulled a cardboard box from the backseat of her car and set it down on the lawn.

Something rather unexpected happened while I was in the house prepping a bottle and grabbing Cindy a cup of coffee…

The lamb was quite yellow, with amniotic fluid now crusted into her wool. She seemed a little hopeless, having spent God only knows how many hours searching for her mother. She still seemed strong… just sad.

Then…

My dog Thor ventured over and tried to give her a bath. He was the first to show her a little bit of interest. By the time I had her bottle ready, she was trying to nurse and poor Thor could only sit there, looking confused and helpless. As I fed her, he kept trying to get her cleaned up, but cleaning wool is rather challenging and I ended up having to give her a bath.

I dried her off as best I could and put a warm coat on her, and took her back outside. Since newborns need to be fed every 3 hours, I had put her in a large wire dog crate just beside my step. Thor kept sniffing around and digging to try to get her out, so I finally decided to just let her roam. She wouldn’t venture far, and now that she was clean and fed, she was content and quiet. Something incredibly beautiful, yet somewhat odd happened.

Thor and Elliana bonded.

At first, whenever Ellie would try to suckle, Thor would alert me. If I was in the house, he’d scratch at the door. If I was outside, he’d come and sit beside me, with the lamb poking at his flank, he’d just gaze at me with big, pathetic eyes. Soon Ellie figured out that I held the key to a full belly. If I was in the house when she got hungry, she race around the house screaming, until she got her bottle.

Once she was old enough that she didn’t need to be fed through the night, I thought she could live with my goats. That idea was quickly shot down after Thor dug several deep holes under the fence and broke her (and the goat kids) out… repeatedly. I decided it would be easier to just have a ‘yard sheep’.

It wasn’t long before Ellie started proving herself to be a valuable farm dog. She would ‘bark’ to alert us when vehicles pulled into the yard and run alongside Thor to greet visitors. She even learned to herd cattle and goats, and actually is better at it than her ‘dad’!

Elliana has no idea what it even means to be a sheep. For all intents and purposes, she is and always will be the best darn farm dog we’ve ever owned!

I finally broke down and bought some lamb chops from the store, just to give them a try. My hoard of raw wool is growing and I have yet to find time to learn to process it, so I needed to justify our keeping Ellie. My husband hasn’t had the opportunity to witness Thor sitting back while Ellie does the ‘work’, so had been talking about selling her this fall. I’d even had offers of double her market value!

Instead, she’s been bred and will lamb come spring… I guess I’ll have to stop telling people that I don’t raise sheep!

I originally published this story on Medium.