Not as Easy as it Looks

While Mike and I were visiting Suzanne this last weekend, Emily became the official chicken sitter.  Actually she didn't only sit the chickens and ducks but the dogs too.  We were lucky to get Emily to do this job as she is a very busy student at Carbondale.   In fact, I had to get on her calendar weeks in advance.

We left Friday morning and Emily arrived Friday night just in time to put the chickens to bed and feed the fish and the dogs before it got dark.  The first inkling that we were going to have some difficulty with this chicken sitter occurred when Mike gave Emily instructions on feeding the dogs.  She didn't like how he was doing it (she thought Mabel was getting too much special treatment) and said she was going to do it her way.

Then Emily went out to take care of the chickens.  Since I hadn't been there all day, the first thing she had to do was collect the eggs.  However, when she went to get them she found Ellen sitting on the nest and not the least bit interested in getting off.  This is a problem because if Ellen is on the nest at 7 pm she is planning to spend the night there.  I texted Emily instructions.  Emily was going to have to put on gloves and take the chicken off the nest and put her in the big coop with the rest of the poultry so she would be safe for the night.  Ellen, the chicken, is never happy when we have to do this and I usually get Mike to do it as Ellen will peck at me.  At least I told Emily to wear gloves.  When I asked how things were going Emily texted me back to say, "She's a mean chicken and I don't care if she gets eaten."  

The next time we talked to Emily was on Sunday.  We asked how it was going now.  She said Mabel had an eye infection but Grandpa told her it was just allergies and not to worry.  She also mentioned that Little Girl, one of our dogs was limping.  In fact, Emily had been forced to carry Little Girl up and down the stairs when locking her up at night she was limping so badly.  However, this hadn't been a problem on Saturday night as Little Girl never came home for dinner and didn't show up all night.  Turned out Little Girl had been locked in Grandpa's garage by mistake.

I decided to take advantage of this teachable moment and point out to Emily how much harder her weekend would have been if she had also had to take care of a horse.  Naturally, she disagreed.  She said "it would have been so easy to just add one more stop and feed the horses."

Anyway, Emily is back at school and Mike and I are taking care of our animals again and have no plans to travel, at least in the near future.  I am sure that time will come again and I don't know what I will do.  Should I try to get Emily to chicken sit again or call a professional pet sitting service?  A tough choice.