How Sheepdog Trials Relate to Practical Farm Work

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This is what our dogs are all about. Thanks, ABCA, for producing such a lovely and informative video. :)

For a Good Dog

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A friend of mine recently suffered a tragic loss. Perhaps some day she'll see this. Perhaps she won't want to. But it awoke an old pain in me, for a dog I lost before I got Nick. Today, these words just wanted to come out.
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This morning I awoke and you were still –
No. I can't say the word,
So brutal, so final, so damning.
But you were not
There as the sun rose,
Your fleet form racing across the fields,
Red tongue lolling,
Laughing
At me, mud-bound in my human form.
The others know you are gone.
There is a space among their furry, gently-swirling bodies
That they do not touch.
Where you should be.
What if. If only.
If only I had been
Wiser
Quicker
Omnipotent.
If only I could stave off Death by the sheer force of my will.
My anguish.
My need/wish/want to undo just one moment,
One fractional instant of time,
And have you
Back.
Your silken head under my hand.
Your bright eyes at my feet,
Shining in the grass,
Laser-leveled at the sheep who speak (spoke)
To the silent, siren calling of your blood.
I try not to look at the places where
You
Are not.
At the void you once filled
With the vibrant, joyful Is-ness of your being.
But that would mean
Not looking
At those who curl around my legs,
Caress my hands with damp tongues,
Trying, in their way, to
Touch me.
If only the corroding tears could
Blind me to your absence.
The shards of my heart
Grate together like broken bones.

~ For J. E.
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© G. M. Atwater
At Mountain House, 30 November 2011
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Season's end

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This morning I walked my garden and little fields with a cat the color of autumn, and I bid farewell to summer's last, brave blossoms.
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Autumn draws nigh ....

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Fall is truly here. I see it in the lanky stems of flowers, squeezing out their last, desperate blooms, and in the chilly shadows that lengthen beneath the trees. The mornings are crisp like apple skins and thin clouds cruise the sky, scout ships for the winter storms to come.

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Happy Birthday, Jesse. You are a Very Good Dog.

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Today is the 12th birthday of my good ol' dog, Jesse. It's hard when the good un's grow old.

But it's good to look back on our long journey together. We first met Jesse, then known as "Whip," 10 years ago, when we worked one of several summers at Reds Meadow Pack Station. "Whip" then belonged to one of the other mule packers, but sadly spent most of his time tied to a tree. The guy had got "Whip" from the breeder as partial payment on a horseshoeing bill, but this guy really didn't know what to do with an active young border collie. If "Whip" got loose, he just ran. And then he got caught and went back to his tree.

We felt sorry for the poor pooch and soon realized that this was actually a pretty nice dog. A fellow employee's young daughter would take him for walks on leash, and I'd see "Whip" walking perfectly at heel beside this little blond girl, a lovely picture. Someone, thought I, has spent some time with this dog, and it's certain it wasn't his present owner.

Long story short, we finally talked "Whip's" owner into letting us take him, because the guy really had no attachment to or understanding of the dog. In the hand-off, we learned who the dog's breeder was and best of all, we learned his real name: Jesse. The first time we called him by that name, Jesse literally frolicked. You know me, you know me!

And so he came to live with us. Oh, I didn't really plan to keep Jesse. I just couldn't stand to see him living tied to a tree, and anyhow, we already had 4 dogs. Maybe I could find a nice agility or flyball home for him. Right? But when we got back to civilization, I took him to my sheepdog trainer, Sandy Moore, for an instinct test.

"I sure hope he doesn't herd," I told her, just before I went in the arena. "We really don't need another dog."

But Fate had its own designs. Jesse tested brilliantly. Two years old and never having never seen a sheep, he was a natural. Beautiful flanks, lovely shape to his movements ... I looked at Sandy in something like despair, and she laughed at me. She's kept right on laughing for all these past ten years.  ;)

Still, the road wasn't easy. As a rescue, Jesse had some "issues." His previous owner hadn't been fair in his dealings, and it took little to shatter Jesse's confidence. Too much pressure, too harsh a voice and Jesse would quit the sheep and bolt for safety beside the nearest friend. At one point he developed a positive phobia of a certain training field, the cause of which I never discerned, but it was six months before I could get him to set foot back in that field.

It didn't help that I was still struggling to learn the myriad subtleties of stockdog training, and heaven knows the many mistakes I made along the way. The progress we made was, in very large part, due the intrinsic magic of Jesse's heart. He stuck by me, I stayed with him, and together we learned and grew as a working team.

I can't begin to point out the place or time where Jesse became a Very Good Dog. For the longest time, I was surprised by our successes, and even more surprised when we repeated them. In ASCA trials and AHBA trials, and even one USBCHA Novice-Novice trial, Jesse and I brought in the wins. When we weren't trialing, we were stockhandling for trials, and at every chance we helped friends with livestock chores, whether vaccinating lambs or moving cows to summer range.

Somewhere along the line, that unsure, worried dog became my rock, and the dog that folks around me knew they could count on. If a green handler needed someone to outfield their sheep, Jesse was our man. If a cranky ewe or recalcitrant wether needed its nose pinched, a flash of Jesse's teeth did the job. If sheep escaped a young dog's control, I could send Jesse racing off over the ditches and hills to fetch the woolly rascals back.

And somewhere along the line, I think Jesse taught me more than I ever taught him. The measure and magic of a Very Good Dog were my lesson this decade past, and I am blessed to have been the student in this class of one.

Oh, out there in the world of Big Hats, my Jesse may not amount to much. He's never done a 600-yard outrun, never set foot on so much as a Pro-Novice course. I honestly don't know if he would have made an Open dog, at all. His stops aren't great, his outruns are tight, and on his lifts he tends to slice at the top. (All of those a product of my imprecise training.) He's an upright, loose-eyed, not very stylish dog, and his bloodlines aren't remarkable at all. But if you needed a chore done on the ranch or farm, Jesse and I could saddle up and get 'er done. To me, that's  been what counts.

At 12 years old, he still wants to work. He's showing his age, finally, in the grizzling on his face, the faint cloudiness in his eyes, and his hindquarters are getting weak. The chiropractor is also now his friend, given the way he throws himself about with the younger dogs. But he still wants to work, and I still find things for him to do. I'll keep making work for him until he shows me he simply can't.

Because he is my Jesse, my partner and friend, and he is my Very Good Dog. Happy birthday, you funny old man. I love you and I'll love you forever.

~ Gloria
Mountain House
14 February 2011

ODE TO A SHEEPDOG

 
When he leaves me
in his thundering stride,
I watch in very awe,
For he is a black javelin soaring, racing,
Flung from ages past.
On and on and up, he flies,
Until reaching the top, where he turns,
Eyes golden and fever-bright,
And a discussion is had:
“Move, I command thee.”
“Why should we, fanged beast?”
“Because this is the order of things,” he replies.
And the ewes turn and flow towards me,
Little round women in woolen skirts
And their knees flash in sunlight as they come.
I am almost loath to intrude
With my shrill human commands,
For he heeds the call of his blood,
Which whispers from windy hills and fells half a world away.
But when we are done and I whistle him to me,
He comes loping, galloping, joyous
For love of me and what we are together.
And from the long, cool shadows of time,
His forbears watch,
Red tongues lolling in approval.


© G. M. Atwater

11 Nov 2010
Mountain House, Nevada

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Reflections on the Me I Used to Be

The date stamped on the photo is January 1969, but the summer setting tells us it's 1968. This is the most perfect snapshot of my childhood I have ever seen.

In the photo are my brother, my mom and me. Dad is the one behind the camera. In the background is our 1961 Ford Fairlane and the house we rented at Lake Tapps in Washington State. Mom is wearing one of her favorite sleeveless dresses and I'm in Sunday clothes, so we're either going to or have just come back from church. You can see my shiny black shoes that, if I struck my heels down hard enough, went "click-clack" on linoleum floors like the grownup ladies' shoes. The only thing missing is my dad's old dog, Suzy, who's probably in the house.

My brother looks like he's ready for a nap. I look like I want to get in my play clothes so I can go skin my other knee. He's three and I am six.

In those days, the scattered houses around Lake Tapps were mainly summer homes, though there were a few year-round residents like us. Our place wasn't really built for winters, evidenced by the "poink-poink" of water dripping into mom's Revere Ware pans during heavy rains. The couch in the living room faced those big windows, and when storms boomed and lashed outside, mom would sit with my brother and I snuggled safe to each side.

Behind the house are the woods where I played and my imagination took wings. Mom and dad used to bring us on guided nature walks in the national parks and forests, and I took those lessons to heart. In these woods, I spent hours foraging for things to eat. Blackberries, salal berries, Oregon grapes, wild huckleberries, thimble berries and also wild hazelnuts. Mom would wonder why I came in for dinner and had little appetite. I collected rocks and sticks and snail shells, and kept chunks of moss on styrofoam meat trays, because the moss looked like little green lawns in a miniature world. I still recall the spice of fallen leaves and the warm, herbal fragrance of bracken ferns.

In the summers, we'd pile into that Ford Fairlane (licence plate OSC 712) and the back seat was as big as a ball field. My brother and I would jostle and elbow, amuse ourselves with books and games, and play "slug-bug" on the long drives to see Grandma and Grandpa, or to visit some train depot my model-railroading dad wanted to see. Mom packed picnic lunches of cold chicken, pressed ham sandwiches, jello salad and apples.

1968 was a period of tumult, but I knew nothing of the times, of the Tet Offensive, the Chicago riots or the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Still, I think kids sense a world in upheaval. My dad had left the Methodist ministry a year before, moving us out of the little Victorian parsonage in Orting (the one with the slippery oak banister on the stairs) to this house. Dad struggled to find work, for a time selling Fuller Brush products door-to-door. I loved his sample case, with its exotic soapy scents and gizmos for grooming the well-dressed man.

Here I also remember my mom and dad first arguing over money worries. Then old Suzy dog became ill and dad took her down to the vet. He returned home later that day, alone. Mom and I were shattered. I don't think she ever forgave dad for that. Some while after Suzy died, I acquired two imaginary dogs, redbone hounds whose names I forget. (Whether I precociously read "Where the Red Fern Grows" at age seven, I can't recall. Maybe dad read it to me.)

We were only in this house two or three years, but somehow living here left an indelible mark in me. For years after we left, I had nightmares of returning to find my woods cut down, replaced by modern houses. Of course those dreams have decades since come true. Today, my brother is a deeply troubled soul, estranged and divorced from us. Mom and dad are in assisted living and dad will be 90, soon. I am for all purposes an only child.

To find this photo in storage almost 42 years later has been bittersweet and a little disconcerting. I hold in my hands a near-perfect window back in time. I'm happy where I stand today. Life is good. But I can't help the pang of melancholy this image brings. Where, indeed, do the days go? It is well we cannot look into the face of a child and see where the storms of life may blow them.

Pax ~

Gloria