Hi Whitney: I really encourage you NOT to let your dog roam free, or to use the invisible fence. This advice is true whether you want a livestock guarding dog, or a farm pet. When I was a college kid, I let my German Shepherd roam free on the acreage. She "appeared" to stay at home, and was always there when I returned. The neighbor informed me that as soon as I left, she'd go hunting other people's livestock, and he'd seen her on more than one occasion bring a chicken back. I was mortified, and worried that she would get shot, or hit by a car, or cruelly treated. Therefore, I'd chain her when I left. She used to just wind her chain round and round the tree, until she couldn't move any more - let alone get to her water (this was in Florida - access to fresh clean water at all times was even more essential than in other places). In the end, I kept her in the house when I was away, and gave her plenty of off leash supervised exercise when home. Now that I'm an adult, and have a farm and livestock of my own, I get to see it from the other side of the fence! I've been trapped in my barn protecting my sheep from a pitbull for four hours before the animal control came. I've lost numerous valuable rare-breed chickens to dogs. I cannot walk along my road because of roaming dogs. I get chased when on my bicycle. I certainly cannot take my own dogs for a walk in the country. Invisible fences do work for some dogs. However, for those highly predatory ones, they can simply run right through them, but THEN cannot get back in! With my own dogs, I've had my young dog chase one of my cats straight through a barbed wire fence, and then it cost me a fortune at the ER clinic getting her stitched back up again. As my female was very well bred, and I wanted to breed from her, I also had to worry about when she was in season that someone's mutt would climb the fence. It was such a hassle, I ended up having her spayed, rather than having unwanted pups. Now, we have a backyard securely fenced for our dogs to be in unsupervised, and off our livestock. However, they prefer to be inside in the a/c during our hot Texas days, and out of the mosquitoes at night! At least this helps guard against heartworm (even though they are on preventative). By the way, I also have a friend who lost her beloved Aussie on her 200 acres - she went out to the bathroom one day, and never returned. They think she was shot by a hunter. As yours is a rental home, by all means, use the empty stable as a kind of crate when you're not able to supervise. However, a purely outside dog just doesn't get the attention or training they need to make a well-adjusted pet, other than in EXTRAORDINARY circumstances. Obviously, if you have a Great Pyr. to protect livestock, then he/she needs to be shut in with the livestock at night to guard them, NOT in the house with you! I agree with the other posters - two dogs is double-trouble. They will tend to bond with each other, NOT with you, and just wreak havoc far and wide (and near). Good luck!

We have goats and the hoof trimming all depends on what they walk on. Ours are in a pasture so we have to trim hooves twice a month. It doesnt take long and we use EMT Sissors(dont know what they are called but they will cut thru a penny very good sissors)and a hoof hook to get out all of the mud and poo. Their hoofs grow just like our fingernails do. As to fencing we have two types of fencing. The 2 acres they graze in is enclosed with cattlefencing and then we had to run a hot wire along the inside about their height to keep them in. If I had it all to do over again I would use a different type of fencing because the goats can still get their head thru the cattle fencing and get caught. We lost one nanny that way she strangled her self in the fence and we have had to remove our other nanny 3 times. We keep a close eye on her. Our billy is too big to get his head thru. We also have chickens and they do need their own areas although we do let our chickens free range daily to keep them out of the coop. One of our coops (We have 3 separate ones)that my husband built has a window in it so we keep that open to circulate air inside the hen house, they each have their own totally enclosed chicken yard. But if that gets muddy we let them out into the pasture. They learn to go in every night at dusk and we have a trap door system as they go in we lower the door from the outside and they are safely in their houses at night. Right now we have 25 young birds that are still learing to go in at night and we still have to on occasion herd them up their little ramp into the chicken house while someone on the outside lowers the door as the last one go's in. We have ducks (they are messsy)but all animals are confined to 2 1/2 acre fencend in area. They are lots of fun......but takes a commitment especially in the winter whey you have no running water at the barn and you have to carry HOT water up to the barn twice a day in the winter so that they have running water.......Josette

jannorcal, thanks for the info on posting pics Several posters: I have tried Austin's, 9 in fact. So I'm not that eager to try more given the great number of other roses I want to get a look at. But I read about an Austin that's a hybrid rugosa plus Noisette. Said to be hardy and looks cute. Mistress Quickly. Not in my old CRL but maybe in a newer edition. Will check it out. And thanks for the many posts. John how did you get those dogs to sit still for that pic. Riku, fabulous. Well, I still think there is a lot of room on the Roses forum for posting about Austin's. And not enough discussion of the more rare roses out there. This spring I planted an Enfant de France. What in May! And it is covered with beautiful Austin style roses. Who knows how it will fare in the years ahead but I didn't read about it here. QR tipped me off on that one and sure enough Pickering had it. And I'm going to post a question about another interesting rose in QR, Mme. Driout. Also missing here.

" Abstract: Browsing by overabundant herds of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) can cause signifi cant economic damage to agricultural crops and landscape plantings. In many instances, for both commercial growers and homeowners, commercially available repellents may be an appealing alternative to physical exclusion and lethal control of animals. We tested 10 different commercially-available repellents (Chew-Not®, Deer Off®, Deer-Away® Big Game Repellent, Plantskydd®, Bobbex®, Liquid Fence®, Deer Solution®, Hinder®, Repellex® systemic tablets, and coyote urine) on yews (Taxus cuspidata Densiformis) at 2 different locations in Connecticut. The study included both positive (fence) and negative (no treatment) controls. We planted yews in 2 blocks at each location in the spring of 2006; each block had 12 groups of 6 yews. We randomly assigned one of the 12 treatments to each group of yews within each block. We applied repellents based on manufacturers’ label recommendations for the 2006 and 2007 growing seasons and recorded application costs. We derived a protection index based on plant size and dry needle weights at the end of the 2007 growing season. In general, repellents that required more frequent application performed better. Bobbex® ranked highest, but was the most expensive repellent treatment. Hinder® performed nearly as well at a fraction of the cost. Yews protected by Repellex®, Deer Solution®, coyote urine, and Plantskydd® were the same size as unprotected controls at both sites and did not have signifi cantly more needles. No repellents prevented 100% of browse damage. The choice of repellent usage is a trade-off among effectiveness, cost, ability to follow recommended reapplication interval, and plant to be protected." http://berrymaninstitute.org/files/uploads/pdf/journal/spring2010/HWC_4.1%20sp2010.pdf#page=60