I’ll be  honest, I love training Fate to work with the sheep, but sheepherding is not the point for me. Ultimately, it’s not even that important. We have a small farm, the sheep pretty much do what they are told, they don’t need to be taken out far for pasture, and dog or not,  a cup of grain will get them moving as quickly as a border collie.

I don’t  have a ton of love for the many people who love to pretent that they have kick-ass herding dogs. There are precious few of those kinds of dogs.

I am much prouder when people tell me my dogs are loving and trustworthy and welcome anywhere. Herding dogs are often one of those obnoxious conceits that creep into our relationships with animals. Many of the border collie obsessives I meet give me a headache, and I’m sure I return the favor.

Instead of a bumper sticker reading “Caution: Working Dog On Board (does this mean we can be reckless with non-working dogs?),” I’d rather have one that says “It’s Not About Us.”

How the dog moves the sheep will never be half as important to me as what the dog is like, how it lives its life, how it lives with us in harmony and nourishment. I would get rid of Fate or Red in a heartbeat if they were aggressive to one another, the other animals, to human beings. Or if one of them tore a sheep up for sport.

And I will never be a natural herding trainer, or one of those herding trialers,  it is not an ambition of mine, it is not in my genetic make-up. I hated it when I did it. I do regret I haven’t done it with Red, we could have some fun.

Fate is doing well with her training, and I have obviously enjoyed it, we are not nearly done. But in a sense, now that she is growing up a bit, the real work begins, the real training. Fate is an explosive dog, full of instinct and energy, she practically flies across the ground, seeking out every bit of chicken shit or donkey droppings she can find.

It is time to work on the spiritual part, to show her how to be calm, to be still, to find and center herself without anyone shouting at her, without sheep or the crate. She has taken me to the wall more than once. I realized this week that I have dropped the ball on “stay,” one of the most important commands in the training lexicon.

I don’t believe in “push” dogs, dogs that rush out the door ahead of us. A bad thing to let the dog do, that is all about dominance, and if we don’t want to overly dominate them, we ought not let them dominate us. My dogs wait to go out the door, or through a gate, I am always right ahead of them, I always go first. This has been an issue with Fate, who explodes out of any door in her eagerness to get to work. I don’t let her do it, but it is not yet natural to her.

So I am focusing now on the “stay” command. If a dog won’t stay in a position for at least three minutes, they don’t know how to stay. Very few human beings have the patience to make their dogs wait for anything for three minutes. I’ve gotten Red to do it, I have barely tried with Fate. I’m doing it now.

I am making her “stay” in new positions, and I am close by to correct her when she doesn’t, her instincts sometimes overwhelm her. I say “stay,” and step back. The longest we have gotten is 1:30 seconds. That was today, and it was 30 seconds longer than any time before. By the end of the week, we will be doing three minutes. For Fate, this is not about obedience. This is helping her balance her instincts with the need to center and be still, to learn how to do nothing.

The sheep can wait a bit, it is time for the real training to start.