Busy Chickens, Busy Turkeys, Busy Geese–Just Plain Busy!

It has been a few days since my last blog, my, how time flies. 

I have two businesses. One is as a professionally certified animal behavior consultant, which keeps me on my toes, especially as I tend to have an emphasis in canine aggression cases, and have carefully avoided being bitten for 25 years.

My second business is working with trained herding Border Collies doing wild Canada goose management, and this is the time of year that the geese are nesting, resulting in aggressive ganders at entry ways of busy public places, such as at a local Kohls near me.

My dogs and I were on Fox 2 news about 10 days ago, it went to national televised press. I have been getting calls and email from all over the country from people that I know who were casually eating dinner and saw me on TV. I even have a friend from my rare heritage turkey list who lives in South Africa who saw us! Such a small world.

Both the local and the national views can be seen on my website www.doreneolson.com.  The gander that is beating me up is one that I have worked with for over eight years now; he was DELIGHTED to finally be able to give me a pounding, he has been wanting to do that for nearly a decade.

My critics tell me that I should not be smiling and laughing at him, and that holding him off with only one hand makes Gander Wrangling look way too easy, but I have always loved the little dude.

The result of all of this time away has been that my pet chickens and my two pet turkeys have been spending (according to them) WAY too much time in the breezeway, where I keep them for safety when I am not at home.  Today they got to get out for the afternoon while I chose office work time over field work and could supervise their "out" time.

I had some happy Poultry People, who thanked me by sneaking out of the back yard to gobble up all sorts of front yard plants and scootch bark all out of my beds and all over my sidewalks and driveway while dustbathing.  Bad chooks. 

Did you know that "chookies" is Australian slang for "chickens"?  I thought that I invented the word, somehow, and was fairly let down to discover that an entire country was already using my term of endearment for chickens.  Go figure.  And here I thought that I was an original.

So, on that note, go hug your chookies, mine all get that resigned little look on their little faces - "oh, no, here she comes again, she is gunna hug me, and probably kiss my little face, note-to-self - rub more dirt on my face during my next dust bath, maybe she'll leave me alone then!"

Silly chookies!

Dorene, off to find and hug her chickens, and Cricket and Bleu Belle, her heritage turkey hens, too