"What's a CHICKEN?!?"

First of all, I would like to sincerely thank you all for your generous comments and your good wishes for Uno and our family.  I had just told my husband a few days ago that it didn't feel like Christmas for me yet.  After reading all of the wonderful things you all said on FB and on the blog comments, I immediately felt like Christmas was here.  What are holidays about if not to share what you have and what you feel?  And what better gift could you ask for than the gift of love, reciprocated?  Uno has given this to us and it is so heartwarming to see that he is loved as much as he is capable of loving.  Thank you to all of you for looking after us and for bringing the holidays home for us.




 
Now, on a lighter note... my family and I have several chickens that we keep in a backyard coop for the sole purpose of keeping them as pets and for the free range, organic eggs they give us (the one rooster we have was an accident -- HE was supposed to be a SHE!).  When the ladies from Beagle Freedom Project came to do our home check, Jean wondered out loud how Uno would react to our feathered friends.  Well, this was his first reaction to seeing them through the window:

He seemed really intrigued by them, hopping up and down several times to check them out, so I thought at the very least he wouldn't be afraid of them.  My lab pups ("The Established") are super-curious about them and, while I don't believe they would intentionally hurt them, they have been known to chase them very... enthusiastically... whenever one of the hens gets loose while The Established are in the yard.  I figured the same thing would happen with Uno (hound instincts and all that) but I was curious as my Dottie pays absolutely no attention to the hens at all.  Well, he was curious, alright, but more about all the good smells and their food than the hens themselves!!  A truer Beagle never lived...

A little disclaimer, here -- we live in a wind tunnel and we've had some pretty serious winds here, as you all probably know.  My hubby was picking up the shingles he had just put up on the chicken coop he built the week before as I filmed Uno.  Another disclaimer -- for those of you that may be concerned about the barren nature of the chicken run, please know that we have a HUGE backyard in which the chickens run around in the late afternoon until dusk at which time they climb into their coop on their own.  There used to be vegetation in the run but turns out hens like to eat it...


 

Overall, then, the introduction to the livestock was uneventful, albeit entertaining!  We even let Uno sniff the eggs but he was even less interested in those than he was in the hens.  



It truly amazes me how adaptable this little guy is, especially given everything he's been through.  Our hope is that from now on, all of Uno's experiences and adventures are at least as nondescript as meeting the chickens, if not all out FUN.  It is, after all, the very least that he and his 39 brothers deserve... 

Log on to BeagleFreedomProject.org to see how you can help.