One annoying thing that we experience up here are unwanted cow visitations. Ranches will bring their cattle up to graze on Forest or BLM land, and they find their way into Sand Creek Park and onto our property. Cattle guards get filled with dirt over time and are no longer effective. The beetle killed pines fall over and take down fences. It is almost impossible to "fence them out", which is the rule of the West.

And, we really don't like them on our property. They can be destructive (to outdoor furniture, bird feeders, etc). And, their poop is a real mess (that the dog's just love to eat, play in, track around, etc).

So, when we woke the other day to about 15 head in our beautiful meadow and up against the house, we were pretty upset. They were eating bird food, rubbing against the cabin, and generally being obnoxious. So, we let Bella out.

As I told our neighbor when I called him about 7:30, "I've got good news and bad".

"The good news is that Bella has natural herding instrincts and somehow knew exactly what to do to drive some cattle away from our place and keep them together as a group."

"The bad news is that she drove about half of them through your gate and into your pasture."

A few minutes later I drove the Ranger (we've decided to call Mountain Mia), over to their place and Deb was on horseback rounding them up. She drove them through some broken fence and then stayed with them to move them back onto Forest land.

Later that day, we were sitting inside the cabin and heard someone hollering. I went out back to find an old cowboy (Richard), sitting on a beautiful horse at our back door. "Hear you got some cattle in here", he said. I told him that Deb had driven them back onto forest land, so he tipped his hat, turned his horse, and went on his way.