Friday, September 12, 2025
Meet Thurber
Thurber, our Livestock Guardian Dog
Thurber!
He's our new little (or big) addition to the ranch.
Thurber is the original name of our town (Bicknell). Some guy came to the town "back in the day" and offered a library if the people would change it's name to Bicknell and so they did. Little did they know that the library would consist of about 20 books that were mainly scientific and irrelevant to a good reading library kind of books. The people have been sorry ever since.
Our little guy is a Maremma (look it up). He is acclimating and learning his job right now, not spending much time with the alpacas or Odin or Charlie. He harrasses the cats and chickens mostly right now, and barks at the "bad people" who ride their bikes on the highway or the farmers across the field. Thurber shadows M and me as we do our chores and has sniffed most of the girl alpacas noses and their black gold (poop) before it's been shoveled.
This little guy is so full of energy ... he's learning "good ouch and ouch" as we teach him to gently take food from our hands. We want him to be kind to our ranch visitors -- YOU -- and others but to be protective of our sweet alpacas and our other LGD's and know the difference like Charlie and Odin.
Odin is six, Charlie is ten, and big dogs don't live forever. That's the hard part of ranch life. There's a cycle of life that we don't like to talk about. We want Charlie to pass on his his wisdom while he can.
We hope you'll love seeing him when you next come for a ranch experience.