6 June

Through The Looking Glass. Rose And The Sheep

by Jon Katz
Sheep: Through The Looking Glass

I’m not sure I ever  saw a sheep alive and up close until I was in my mid-50’s and I went out to a sheep farm in Pennsylvania to take Orson, my first border collie, there for lessons, and then Rose, in preparation for my move up to the country.

I think people with delusions like I had can often do great things, because they don’t know they are delusional, of course, they think everybody else is.

In Pennsylvania, at the Raspberry Ridge Sheep Farm, I met Carolyn Wilkie a dog whisperer who adored difficult dogs and had little time or patience for people. She was known to toss people off of her property if she thought their cars  were Yuppie-ish. She could flip a savage dog around in days with her special meatball recipes and her unorthodox but successful training methods.

Carolyn had a dozen border collies tucked in crates in different corners of the house, and sometimes it seemed the very hallways would growl if you walked quickly past them. She rotated them in and out all day to work with the sheep and the visiting dogs.

We became  friends, and Carolyn worked me with and the dogs, and also used me as  bait to train aggressive dogs. I learned a lot from her.

On weekends, we conducted herding instinct tests for the very same yuppies who didn’t have sheep but who were desperate – $75 a pop – to go home with a herding instinct certificate from the AKC.

The line was very long and a dog had to eat a child to fail. If the showed interest in the sheep for five minutes, they were in.

People really wanted their dogs to have herding instincts. It was there I saw my first sheep, the long-suffering and long suffering sheep Carolyn used to train the eager border collies and other herding dogs who flocked to her farm, and I suspect, still do. Raspberry Ridge has a full schedule these days.

Carolyn was an amazing dog trainer and a shepherd, I loved sitting out with her at night while her dogs kept an eye on the flock and we drank and read together in the moonlight. Soon, I was going to sheep herding summer camp. Orson got a blue ribbon, a miracle.

It was Carolyn who turned to me  after I was yelling at Rose to lie down and yelled, “Katz, if you want to have a better dog, you will have to be a better human!” She was right, and I am still working on it. I miss Carolyn, she was a good friend, and our long BS sessions at night and at breakfast in the morning. I have this life-long habit of letting people go. It’s a sad habit.

It was there I began to imagine a different life in a different place. I just loved Carolyn’s farm and ached to live on one.

I spent a lot of time there away from my family and my life in New Jersey, an hour or so away. It did not occur to me that my visits to Raspberry Ridge would soon change my life, and my writing, and my marriage. My wife then came out to see me once, but  she was not much drawn to the dog training and herding out there, or later, to the farm or life in upstate New York.

When I moved upstate and bought the first Bedlam Farm, Carolyn  sold me about 17 of her dog-broke sheep to bring up to  the first Bedlam Farm.  I lambed for three years in a row, until I had a flock of 36. It was Rose who saved the day when the lambs gave birth in the deep and frigid winter. When the lambs were born, they would freeze to the ground if I didn’t them into the heated cages quickly.

I knew nothing about lambing and screwed most of it up. Rose saved me. I never knew where she slept, she had no interest in sleeping in bed or curling up with me.  She growled at anyone who tried to talk baby talk to her. She was a very strong woman.

She was the master of the farm. When a lamb was born in the cold night, she would hear it crying out for Mom from the window she looked out  at most of the night. She would come to the side of the bed, whine and bark and if that failed, as it often did, she would nip on my ear until I got up. And it hurt.

She was telling me a lamb was born, and we’d rush outside.

Rose would keep the mother together with the lamb so she wouldn’t lose her baby’s  scent and abandon him or her. I’d pick up the lamb in a sling and Rose would get behind the ewe and we’d walk down the hill together, me walking backwards and holding the lamb out so the mother could smell it, Rose bringing up the rear to make sure the mother didn’t panic or bolt.

We never lost a lamb. One night, three coyotes came down the hill after a lamb that was crying out and looking for its mother. Rose charged up the hill in snow taller than she was and stood between the lamb and the coyotes, who were standing their ground.

I was trying to get up the hill – it was an  awful snow storm – and Rose wouldn’t back down.

She inched up the hill and stared the coyotes down, until the leader turned and fled up the hill.The others followed.

We  heard the howls all night, but Rose and I got all of the sheep and lambs into the big barn and shut the door. As hard as it sometimes was, I loved my time on that farm with Rose, I loved learning about the animals and being on that beautiful hill, overlooking the beautiful valley.

Rose and I took the sheep all over town, including to the Presbyterian Church where we moved the lawn until the town Rottweiler showed up.

Rose, who was unflappable, and I led a hasty retreat back up the hill that and confined our travels to the woods and abandoned pastures way up the hill. I could see there were sheep all over the place.

Today, I look out the window and see sheep grazing peacefully. They are fat and happy with good wool we will be shearing this coming Saturday, if the shearer shows  up.

I lived most of my life without seeing a real sheep, and now I see them every time I look out the window or go to the car or go get the mail. I will never get over how strange life is. And I am grateful to have these peaceable and patient creatures in my life.

3 Comments

  1. I loved reading about your start in herding sheep with Orson and Rose in your books. I think it’s true that life is a journey, and we continue and grow and learn throughout.

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