We brought Red and Fate to the town cemetery today, it is a beautiful place to walk and we are scrupulous about cleaning up. It was hot, the sun was strong, and Red lay down for a minute while Maria and I were looking at tombstones, and his buddy Fate came over to rest alongside of him. The two are very much at ease with one another, Red has been incredibly generous and loving to the new pest, who we call Monstro. It’s a good thing she is cute.
I love training Fate and teaching her how to herd sheep – Maria asked me if I would do most of the training. Fate and I have a beautiful relationship, but the real bond emerging is one between Fate and Maria. As dogs do, and as border collies always do, Fate has chosen Maria to be her human, and Maria has chosen Fate to be her dog.
Fate follows Maria from room to room and eagerly goes into her studio all day as she makes art. The two are so comfortable together, and love one another very much.Today, we took Red and Fate to the cemetery for the walk, I loved the sight of these two remarkable and loving women exploring the cemetery together. Maria loves this oak tree, it is old and huge and she decided to measure it.
Fate was with her every step of the way. Maria hung her leash on the tree and the two of them walked around the tree and measure it – more than eighteen feet wide, said Maria. Fate was as fascinated by the tree as Maria was. This afternoon, another step for Fate, she is going with me to the Albany Train Station to pick up my daughter and son-in-law, they are coming for the weekend. I will ask her to be quiet in the back seat for three or four hours. Fate is still very much a puppy, but the portrait of the dog is beginning to emerge, the best of the border collie – bright, curious, playful, eager to work, loving, busy.
Two wonderful creatures have found one another and joined the glorious partnership of the human and the animal that has always marked human existence.
In a vase, on my windowsill. Maria’s gallery of flowers.
Working with Fate is proving a wonderful and very spiritual experience for me, and I hope for her.
She sure loves to work, something I have always had in common with border collies. Her enthusiasm and spirit are a joy to watch.
Training a border collie to herd sheep is simple on one level – they love to do it, with every bone in their bodies. But then it gets complex. It’s not a hunt or a chase, it’s a careful, choreographed ballet, it takes an enormous amount of work and patience for a dog to her livestock safely, humanely, and well.
But there is a cloud over the head of every border collie and every person who loves to watch them work. Animals like these are being driven away from humans and out of the world, just like the New York Carriage Horses, the ponies in the farmer’s markets, the elephants in the circuses.
I am careful to keep Fate from too much chasing and running, it’s not about that. Her instincts are beginning to show themselves, she handles herself well with the sheep. Today, for the first time, she got them out of a corner, walked them to the middle of the pasture and then lay down and held them there.
Fate is very young and very small, and the sheep know it. They will move away from her, but also dig into corners and near gates and defy her to move them. She can’t, at least not yet. That is important to respect.
Today was another big step for her, for me, for us together. They did listen to her, she got them out and held them. This process reminds me that there is nothing more natural than animals and people working together. Why, I wonder, is it a stupid trick for an elephant and a trainer to move together in tandem in a ring, but a beautiful and timeless thing for a border collie to move sheep around in a pasture?
I guess it depends on which kind of propaganda one listens to and how much of it you believe.
If the animals involved are treated well – most border collies and carriage horses and elephants are, according to almost all of the evidence – then it is essentially alll the same thing, animals and people working together for the delight and pleasure of people. We don’t really need border collies to have sheep on our farms, a cup of grain will also work, as most farmers know.
There is an epidemic kind of elitism at work when we consider the role of animals in our world. “Stupid tricks” have been entertaining and enlightening human beings for thousands of years, they enchanted me as a child, and millions of other children all over the world, and obviously, they enchant many adults. The people who are entertained by animals are presumed ignorant and cruel. Remember that when you watch the next herding trial on TV.
But labels are selective and dangerous. One person’s stupid trick is another person’s wonder and joy, we ought to be careful about the words we use and the very selfish way we look at animal.
I love working with Fate and training her, it is a gift to both of us, an affirmation of the glorious work people and animals have always done together. I got a message yesterday from a person who calls herself a supporter of animal rights, and she said she believed it was cruel and abusive to make this dog run around in a pasture, and torture for the sheep to be chased around a pasture by a wolf-like dog. One day, she promises, dogs will liberated from people like me, free to live their natural lives.
For the record, Fate works harder in a day than any New York Carriage Horse is permitted to work in a month. She works in rain, heat and cold, is butted and trampled in fields lined with thorns and burrs and full of ticks. She does not get five weeks of vacation a year.
Was there any point in telling her, I wondered, that there is nothing more natural in a border collie’s life than herding sheep. But then, there is nothing more natural for draft horses than pulling carriages with people in them.
I imagine one day demonstrators will start showing up at herding trials, as they have at pony rides and carriage stands in New York, and claim it is torture for Fate to fulfill her destiny and work for me and with sheep. One day I might see them at my farm, my neighbors would enjoy having people tell them it is cruel for border collies to herd sheep.
To those many good people watching Fate’s evolution and loving it (and sending me the most wonderful messages), please think of the other domesticated animals vanishing from our every day lives, please know that there are people out there with a lot of money who think you are cruel and dumb for supporting “stupid tricks” like a border collie herding sheep. It is wrong, they say, for animals to be used to entertain people. The secret informers and rescue farms with their trailers and the police will be right behind them, with protestors and signs and hefty contributions for local politicians and legislators.
If they can do it to the ponies and the carriage horses and the elephants, they can do it to me. And to you. And to Fate.
Another good lesson this morning with Fate, something I now do every morning after the farm chores. We are having a problem as the sheep are bunching up in a corner or by the gate and standing their ground. I don’t want fate to get into a head-butting contest with sheep, she is too small and too young. And she needs for the sheep to move if she is going to learn how to run and go around them.
So I brought Red in and parked him by the gate. Fate balances off of Red, as he came in from the “away” side, she went to the left. She is beginning to grasp the “come bye” command, I can move Red and she will move also, and I can label her movements with a word or two. She sat calmly by the sheep in a “lie down” while I had Red get up and move them back. I could not ask for more than that.
Red is happy to share the herding work, he is calm and helpful. I see she is learning by watching him. Sometimes I will work with him, sometimes without him. Fate is amazing in the pasture, she is calm, she lies down when asked ( mostly), she keeps her distance from the sheep, she doesn’t tear into the middle of the block, scattering them. I’m very happy with our first week and a half of lessons.
