Watercolor painting of an Australian Shepard

You might recognize this as the Border Collie painting I started last night...if you do, you aren't crazy...something happened in the night and this painting turned into what IT wanted to be instead of what I had planned for it.

Maybe I was subconsciously remembering the time my neighbors at Charlo asked me to do chores for them. They had pigs, chickens, 8 cows to milk, cream to separate, eggs to candle, and the dog and cats to care for. They were going to be gone for two weeks. They did things the old fashioned way so you had to wash a cream separator, feed the skim milk to the pigs and chickens, keep the cream in cream cans and put them in the old water cooler. And they never varied their schedule, each chore was done at a certain time, in a certain way and all the animals knew it!

These neighbors used the old milking buckets that hung from a black strap underneath the cows. The straps had a lot of holes in them with silver gullets so they could be adjusted perfectly for each cow.

While they were explaining to me, how to do the chores, the wife referred to the dog as Dusty. The husband referred to him as Chip. At first, I kept looking round for the other dog, finally I realized there was only one dog, but the husband called the dog Chip, the wife called him Dusty! Those people fought like cats and dogs and could never agree on anything, not even what to call the dog!

The dog was an Australian Shepard. He was a "smart!" Australian Shepard! Not only did he know he had to answer to two names, he knew which cattle were beef cows, and which cows were milk cows. He not only knew which cows were milking, he knew which cows were dry. And he worked for me as easily as he worked for his masters. I could come to do chores in the evening or morning and tell him, "Dusty, go get the milk cows." While I was setting up the barn, he'd bring in the milking cows and leave the dry cows and the herefords in the pasture.

He knew each step of doing the chores, he could round up the chickens, or the pigs, or the cattle with equal ease. There was one thing I had to do to get him to work for me, if I asked him to do a chore the husband usually did, I had to call him Chip, if it was a chore the wife usually performed, I had to call him Dusty to get him to do it.

So perhaps this painting was done in his honor, the dog with two names...I think I'll just name this dog "Patch". One name should be good enough for him!

This little painting is 4X6 inches and $15. If you'd like to own it, email me from the link below, I can send you a paypal invoice. Shipping is $4.00 extra.

Donna Ridgway

Email Me if you have questions, or want to inquire about purchasing a painting.

Remember, you can find horse art , Western art, Mule and Donkey art
wildlife art, cow art, and animal paintings, my reference photosfor sale on my website.