Midnight Rendezvous Part 2

Hey there again my friends! So here is the next part of my story! If you remember I had to drive 2 hours to get back home! I didn't get there until 3:00 pm. Tom was busy with our adult children trying to get the farm ready to leave for 24 hours! I ran inside and threw some things in an overnight bag, hugged my little guys and told them to be good! Then Tom, Honey and I jumped in our van and headed for ILLINOIS! Our breeder friend had given us directions from St Louis. She lives 1 hour South of Chicago! We had a long way to go! She asked what time we might get there and we apologized and told her it would be late! Like midnight late! She said no worries and we were keeping in touch through my phone! The only problem with that was I have a Sprint phone that refused to work in Illinois! I couldn't call her, I couldn't text her. I couldn't get a signal at all. We could have used Tom's phone 📱 but we couldn't find it! (Turns out he left it at home. ) At least we still had directions and a map!

We finally reached our destination at 1:00 am. Her directions however didn't tell us exactly where her house was and we couldn't call her! So here we were waking up her neighbors at 1:00 am! My brave husband made me go up to the doors 🚪 and knock! (🐔 Chicken! I mean Turkey!) We finally found her on our third try! So we brought Honey into her garage. Our breeder friend had 2 litters of Collie puppies and one litter of Shelties. Her male she brought out to breed our Honey to was a gorgeous tri-factored sable! Unfortunately he was young and couldn't get the job done! I probably should explain why we made a mad dash to this particular breeder. Most Collies like 96% of them are carriers for a gene called CEA Collie Eye Anomaly. The other gene that has become a big problem is MDR1. It is very hard to find Collies that don't carry these genes. Our Breeder friend in Illinois has three clear males for both genes! So that was why we were sitting in her garage in the middle of the 🌙 night! Since her tri-factored male couldn't do his job she brought in her Pure for sable male! He was a little bit more experienced and again absolutely gorgeous! Instead of doing a natural breeding, this time she collected from the male and we artificially inseminated our Honey! It's not that we had no idea what artificial insemination was, we are farmers! It's just that I didn't expect it! So there we now were, at 3:00 am sitting in her garage with Honey. Holding her head down and her haunches up! We had to sit like that for twenty minutes. Honey was giving us a look I can't even describe! Our Breeder friend offered to let us sleep at her house. That was so nice of her since she didn't really know us. Tom decided that we should get on down the road. So we left Chris and her gorgeous Collies and got back on the road! It was so cold there, they had snow on the ground!

On our way! Honey and I taking a selfie! Honey at the hotel. She was so good, no accidents and she even ran up and down the stairs! Not bad for her first time! Finally we found a Best Western that was pet friendly and we crashed for the night it was 4:00 in the morning! We got about 5 hrs of sleep and then got on the road again. It was sleeting and snowing 🌨 on us pretty much until we got back into MO. We stopped at a place in Kingdom City. It was a truck plaza that actually had a little doggie park! It was fenced in with astro turff, there were supplies to clean up after your dog, an automatic dog 🐕 water bowl and you could take your dog off leash! Honey really liked it! She got to stretch her legs and then she was ready to go! We got home at 8:00 pm and we were so grateful to be there! We were very tired and I think we are still recovering! We are just not as young as we used to be. Everything at home was fine! The kids did a good job! Our little guys were fine! Now we are 🙏 praying for puppies! Then there is Dixie our tri-color female. When she's ready to breed we will have to do it all over again! So 9 weeks from now we hope to have a blessed event! That's all for now, gotta go be a Nana! FG Farm Girl