Fate would send a border collie snob into cardiac arrest. That is to say; she won’t herd the sheep or other them.

She comes from a champion breeding line in Wales but has adapted sheepherding to meet her ideas. She is not one of those border collies you see on YouTube all the time, dashing around a giant flock of sheep to maneuver them back into the barn after a long day of grazing together.

Fate does it – and many other things –  here way. She loves to run circles around the sheep, but when I enter the pasture, she quite happily abandons them waits eagerly for my permission to run mad circles around the flock.

They pay her no mind now she doesn’t move them around, nor do they pay the slightest attention to her. When she rushes up to Maria and me, one or the other of us says “Go Get The Sheep,” and off she goes running in widening circles around them until her tongue hangs to the ground. She is pleased and proud of herself.

Here, she left the sheep to run up and greet me, waiting for my call to “get the sheep,” at which point she took off and looked like a brilliant border dollar doing what comes naturally. She is a strange dog, but loving and incredibly smart. She can steal Bud’s treat right out of his mouth without him even noticing.

People pull their cars over to ooh and aah over her speed and stamina and beauty; they have no idea she is in her unique world, doing it her particular way.

We love her for doing things her way; she is an excellent dog for Maria, an artsy dog who loves to watch quilts being put together.  Not many border collies do that. She herds the sheep the way Ferdinand herded the cows,