It has been a nasty nine months. Full of struggle and suffering both physical and emotional and financial. Bad enough I wanted to quit. I lost most of my best ewes and all my favorites, some violently and some slowly and painfully. I thought it was over when spring came and then started losing lambs to coyotes. Then that stopped and dogs attacked again. The last injured lamb died last week and I got the last set of necropsy results- my best ewe, that the dogs ran down a bank into a pond? Yeah, she essentially starved to death - term pregnant with triplets. Because of the drought and then the rain and mud she had gotten to a point where she physically could not eat enough of the feed we had left to keep up.