Upland Redemption 2024: Northwoods Trip and A Very Special Announcement

There hasn’t been much to report about life at the new (temporary) location, so I haven’t reported anything. There is a lot I’d like to say, but I decided to wait about a month and settle in a bit longer before making statements. My initial thoughts are not positive though. I’m just not sure I am a prairie girl.

Totem came in season a few weeks earlier than planned and it took a bit of doing, but the stud owners and I worked everything out and each drove about 9 hours to meet in the middle of somewhere in the Northwoods! I couldn’t have been more happy to see the coveted Northwoods during the first week of October. I can’t believe how everything worked out. I ended up with an extra day off at work and everything fell into place perfectly!

Can I take a sidebar here and try to convey how incredible it was to wake up in the Northwoods? I don’t know if I can ever express my love of the area, the smell of the woods, the striking colors, the winds of the Gitchi Gumee, (Lake Superior) whipping my face as streams of tears fell onto my jacket. Tears of joy and some of sadness as memories came flooding back; memories of what I thought was love and of old friends, and my son, and all the dogs. But I had to shake it off and stop right there. I will look forward, not back.

So, I am very proud and excited to announce a pairing of Laurel Mt Llewellins to look forward to. Totem was bred to the very handsome tricolor dog, Dylan (Litter name “Sherrif Sam” out of Santana by Count), due in December. I’ll have an application available soon for previous LML customers interested in a pup as soon as I’m certain of the pregnancy. If you want to get on the list, send me an email.

We got to do a short hunt and thanks to Wisconsin’s first-time hunter’s discount, it didn’t hurt the pocket too much to only hunt part of a day. We found some fantastic cover thanks to OnX Hunt Maps and Scout and Hunt maps and we found and put up birds in the beautiful Autumn Northwoods of Wisconsin.

I got to spend another night in the middle of those woods and was able to shoot the Northern Lights with critters creeping around nearby. And next to that, it was pure delight to wake up there, make coffee, and run the girls right out of the Ambo with the frost on the ground and the sun rising. I don’t have the words to describe how incredible that was. The joy, and the freedom, the smell of the Northwoods, the breeze, the happiness of the dogs to run, and the skip in our steps are indescribable.

A very special thank you to Bill and Evelyn for making the journey to meet up there, for pulling the Ambo out of the ditch when I got it hung up trying to make it into an area that I approached from the wrong angle. And for fixing my tire. And for being great dog parents.

And then it was the 8+ hours back to the middle of South Dakota for work in the morning. I wasn’t so excited about the drive back, though it was a beautiful trip across Minnesota. It was so hard to leave my beloved Northwoods once again, but I left with even more gratitude that I got to be there again and spent the drive planning on how I can get back there again. But for now, I have a work contract to fulfill and promises to the dogs to get them on prairie birds. And a very special and exciting litter of puppies to look forward to that should make their entrance in to the world in early December. And I’ll spend December – February raising them, which is one of my favorite things to do. You all know how much I love raising a litter of Llewellin Setter puppies. And it looks like I’ll be doing that back where it all started, in the Laurel Mountains of PA!

That’s all for now, peeps. Thanks for reading and thank you all so much for the emails and messages. It means a lot.

Love, M.