And Then There Were Two

We had a number of people stop by the house and introduce themselves, invite us to church, invite us to functions, we appreciated their taking time to stop and welcome us, but we had so much we needed to do, we just kept on working.  We had the owners Ex-wife stop by, it was not good...she said it was her house. It happened several times, she wanted to come in and show her boyfriend "her house", we didn't let her in.  The man who dug the pond and did work on the septic system stopped by...we had questions, he didn't remember much about the septic, other than it needed work, they hadn't done it right.

We had the lady who moved out, who we were told rented the house stop by...she told us she did a lot of work on the pond and stocked it.  She was going to buy it, but they gave her 30 days to come up with the money or get out.  She was not happy about that at all, but we didn't know anything about it.  She saw Kensie (Dog#1) and said she had one hanging around her house, that she had been feeding, about the same size and color...could we take it?  She said she couldn't keep it, it was too big and her husband wouldn't let her have a dog that big...she already had two.  We had been thinking about getting a companion for Kensie and this dog was free.  I followed her down to her house...which was actually a small FEMA trailer.  She had bought land about two miles from our house, on the same street with a much bigger pond. She was saving to build a house...but now I knew why she couldn't keep the dog.  She called her "Baby", she was very thin but had lots of energy, almost white, and very friendly.  I scooped her up in my arms, put her in my truck  and took her home.  We decided to call her Bailee, she and Kensie were almost identical in size and age.

Bailee, we found out was not housebroken, but she was a quick learner.  She was hungry and thirsty, she was a bit wild and use to being an outside dog.  It was really hot outside at that time, she became an inside dog pretty quickly and Kensie had someone about the same age to play with while we continued to work on the house and the yard.  We kinda of figured she had never had any shots or been fixed, when I took her to the vet and got her shots they said they couldn't tell if she had been fixed and they thought she was still very young.  We could wait and see if she went into heet and we would know for sure.  Bailee would get into the street, she would wander off and be gone for long periods...we got a training collar to help her learn commands and boundaries.  It has tones for being good, a warning, and different levels of shock for when she was doing something she should not be doing.  She learned very quickly, and we rarely ever had to use the shock feature.  Now, we can put the collar on her and she just behaves, she knows what it is.  We used it on Kensie too...and when they are within hearing distance of each other when we press the warning tone, they both come running.

Bailee our Catahoula  on the left, Kensie our Lab on the right

Bailee, we found out through research, is at least part Chatahoula Cur, possibly a ghost variety.  Bailee has a lot of black spots on her skin and faint black spots on her coat, she has gotten a bit darker since we got her.  Chatahoula's are very muscular hunting dogs that in a pack will take down wild boar, their nickname is "Hog Dog".  This was confirmed at the vet.  So, now we have a pair of dogs, similar in size and color.  Kensie is lighter weight, slender and runs like the wind.  Bailee is muscular, thick boned, strong and smart.