On the Farm with Gracie

Fudge was born October 31 2008.. slightly premature she was doing great with her Mom, Mama Bear. Mid November was really cold in Alberta and for whatever reason Mama Bear took Fudge outside and cushed with the babe on the windward side of her. When her human owner found her, Fudge as she was known then, had almost no body temperature and was on the brink of death

Brought to the house she was given a small shot of whiskey, wrapped in a quilt and put on an alpaca rug in the kitchen. Don’t ever tell her she was laying on one of her kinfolk.

Tonka Toy, our Cane Corso, was really intrigued by what was going on and decided that he could take over some of the duties. He laid close to Fudge and I am sure that his body heat is one of the reasons she is with us today.

All day he laid with her and watched over her. Every time she was given a bit of milk he was right there licking her and just watching over her. For two days she was pretty much unresponsive and the prognosis wasn’t great. But..she turned the corner and there in our kitchen was this little bit of an girl standing up trying to SUCK the big dog. Tonka was appalled! The look on his face nothing short of priceless.

The games began, she chased him; he chased her. When she went out to feed from her mom she wore a sweater and a dog coat. Mama Bear was not impressed with that red dog coat. I can’t tell you how many times we put Fudge in the barn and within minutes out of the pen would fly the red coat. The winter of 2008/2009 was one for the history books; it was miserable.

Waiting for the Fireplace

Too cold for the little girl to be out she spent cold days in the house and colder nights. Fudge took to becoming a great Canadian and watching hockey with her HuMan.  If she was out in the kitchen or down the hall and a team scored it was amazing. She would hear the crowd and come running full tilt from where ever she was to see what was going on. It was during one of these races that she came whipping around the corner on the hardwood and wiped out.. wasn’t really Graceful…hence she became Gracie. We are considering buying Gracie a team jersey so she can cheer on her favorite NHL team.

Guess you are probably wondering about having an alpaca living in the house and how the bathroom breaks might work or not! Gracie was house trained within about 3 days. We fed her a bottle and would wait about 20 minutes before taking her out for a walk. It was no time at all until she was going to the door and doing alpaca speak to get out.

Gracie is mad about her HuMan. She follows him wherever he goes. When he goes to check the water trough for the cattle, she waits at the fence for him to come back. She reminds of the song ” I will follow him; follow him wherever he may go”.. The wee alpaca girl loves to be cuddled and her favorite thing to do is put her nose into the man’s hand and get it tweaked.. all part of her daily ritual that includes a lot of hugs.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 6th, 2009 at 7:18 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.