There is nothing that will get your blood moving and heart pumping early on a Saturday morning like a call from your neighbor saying "Your sheep are out in the road."
My wonderful husband offered to crawl out of bed and help, but I told him I thought Sprite and I could get them back ok.
A few minutes later, after grabbing clothes, boots and dog, I was walking down the road and saw them out in an open field.
I sent Sprite "way to me" out into the tall grass, but the sheep saw me and bolted away, like I didn't feed them all the time or something, the bastards. They weren't going to wait around to see if they knew me or not. They ran across the road and up into another neighbor's yard behind some pine trees.
Sprite couldn't see them go, being shorter than the grass, so I called her back and we walked down the road further. I sent her again. She still couldn't see where the sheep were, but she went all the way down the driveway past them, looking, then spotted them and inched up from behind. I walked carefully slightly closer to the sheep. About the time she made contact I stepped out from behind trees. The older sheep came directly to me, recognizing me. The lambs bolted to the side, but Sprite tucked them in.
We took the sheep down to the nearest gate and plopped them in to our field, no problem.
I immediately spotted the trouble: a dead tree had fallen on the fence. I hauled it away and went back to the house for more clips to hold the fence up again.
I'm sure Decker (the brown one in the foreground of the above picture) led the escape over the fence, he's just that kind of sheep.
