Blue Dog Farms
It's an interesting name with an interesting story.
More times than not when people see the sign on the truck, they think we breed some type of blue dog. We get comments about the old cattle dog in the picture and get asked if we have any for sale.
People are confused when we tell them we raise grass fed and grass finished beef.....
But... but.... there is a dog on the picture. Yep, that's old Blue. The best Australian Red Healer ever.
Blue joined our family long before our Pennsylvania journey began. We were still in Texas, we had half as many kids and the ones we had were tiny. We needed a pup. Blue was in an apartment with her sister and owners and her owners just wanted her to have space to run. Enter the crazy Van Nice family.
After a weekend visit we knew that we belonged to Blue Dog. We moved to Pennsylvania and got Blue her own wide open space to run. It was only appropriate the farm be named for her when we saw her running around, keeping track of the chickens and ducks and splashing in the pond. She loved cows, horses and goats and even considered the kids as part of her herd.
And we never parted ways again until the day she died. I won't explain her death here, but it was a terrible accident and she was taken far too soon from us. Both the older kids watched it happen and it tore up a sweet neighbor too who is an absolute animal lover.
Our entire family was crushed in early December four years ago when she left us. It took a long time and a lot of tears to even be able to talk about another dog in our house. Eventually the two eldest kids started to talk about how they wanted the two littlest kids to grow up with the same experience with a dog that they had.
We met Indigo (on the left, Blue on the right) and knew she was our next pup. Sweet as can be, even a little scared of cows at times, she was the perfect sweet spirited pup to bring some healing to our grieving family.
We didn't forget our Blue, but now we could talk about her with fond memories instead of a pit in our stomach. Indigo carries on the tradition of Blue Dog Farm.
As Indie (as we call her for short) was getting acclimatized to the farm, we noticed that she
was a little reserved. She didn't run as fast as a young pup her age usually does, and she rested a lot. We thought in the first week, this was just because she was in a new place and getting used to us. So we gave her time to rest.
And then, after about a week with us, in the wee hours of the morning when Dan woke up, he heard a small little noise.
He woke Giana up and with a flashlight they went to Indigo's crate and peaked in.
6 puppies. SIX. Somehow in all our smartness, we MISSED that Indigo was pregnant. She was the bestest mom and the puppies were an adorable mix of border collie and sheltie, can you say SMART dogs??
Well, we started to let people visit the puppies when they were about 8 weeks old and then sold all but one pup to local friends and neighbors here. One we kept, Hunter, is Jaylen's dog and helper. We see many of Hunter's litter on a regular basis when walking around on the trails and others we keep up with on Facebook.
We know there will always be a Blue Dog to carry on the tradition of taking care of the farm, the kids and the animals.
And that is why we are BLUE DOG FARMS.
