Gone to the Dogs

 I think we’re still recovering from that long drive day.  We had originally planned to be driving The Ring of Kerry or The Dingle (beautiful peninsulas in the south) but the distance to get there and back plus do justice to the drive just wasn’t within our desires at all.  Unfortunately, we’ll have to pass them up.

Instead we spent some time in the morning doing a little shopping.  Then in the afternoon we headed off to a place the owner of the pub we were in the night before (McGann’s) recommended.  It was called the Caherconnell Stone Fort & Sheepdog Demonstration.

First this gentleman took us on a tour of the Fort, or Cashel.  It has had archeologists digging for the last 10 years and they have found all kinds of artifacts.  They date the Fort back to the 400s, but occupied for about 1200 years, and they’re still digging in the area.  They bring students from the university in Galway.

We’ve seen these walls everywhere around here.  Our guide explained why they’re like this.  No mortar is used in this type.  The wind blows through it so it doesn’t fall down. 



Others are built low and flat to protect the baby cows and sheep from wind.
This little guy was looking for food from us.  Pretty brave.  He was only about 4-5 inches long.


We then had a sheepdog demonstration.  Here’s our guide for this one.  He’s actually the owner of this whole place.  You can see 3 of the dogs with him.  They all have a name and they all obey his commands amazingly.

He had one of the dogs go out and round up the sheep, which she did.  He calls to them and/or uses a whistle which only that dog identifies with.


And you can see a couple of the dogs lying in the grass.  The sheep think of the dogs as predators, so they’re afraid of them.  If a dog is lying or standing there, the sheep won’t go near them.  And the sheep know where each dog is.

We were thoroughly impressed with this whole thing.  After the show, he had the dogs come out to an area where we could take pictures with them and pet them.  Beautiful dogs.



We went back to our place after getting some gasoline and chilled a bit before heading out for dinner to McDermott’s Pub.


There was some money tacked above the bar, so John pulled out a Canadian $5 bill, we signed it, and the bartender tacked it up too!


How about this goat cheese salad?  It was awesome!  I think I even ate the flower.


End of another great day.









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