Chaser (20 page)

10

E
IGHT OTHER BORDER
collie owners were at Wayne's farm with their dogs. They were a mixture of full-time farmers and folks who had other occupations but kept some cattle or sheep on their property. What the other owners and I had in common was that we had run into problems getting our dogs comfortable herding livestock. Some of the dogs were too aggressive and scattered livestock in all directions. Others were too hesitant and could not get livestock moving at all.

It was a friendly group of people, and we milled around for a bit getting acquainted in the warm May sunshine. Wayne's more than two dozen birdhouses, perched high on poles, were full of purple martins, members of the swallow family, back from wintering in South America, and their throaty
tchew, tchew, tchew
calls were a pleasant murmur in the background. Wayne proudly invited us all to come back in late summer and see how bug-free the purple martins made his backyard and pool area.

Following her custom, Chaser was delighted to make friends with the people and had no interest in the other dogs. In that group of dogs, her behavior wasn't unusual. Although the other dogs showed some interest in one another, they were all from good working Border collie lines—the majority of them, like Chaser, were from Wayne's farm—and they were much more interested in the sights, sounds, and smells of Wayne's horses, cattle, and sheep. It reminded me of when I sat around the campfire with Wayne and other Border collie people and their dogs after the herding trials at the Spartanburg County Fair. The dogs were focused on the people and the exciting work they did together. Other dogs were of little interest in comparison.

Introductions finished, we moved to a large dirt corral where Wayne trained his cutting horses and sometimes put on small rodeos or herding demonstrations for groups of visitors. A stand of bleachers at one end of the corral could seat several dozen people. The other dog owners and I sat down in the first row, and our dogs lay on the ground at our feet, their eyes drawn to the five sheep milling about in the corral.

With David standing beside him, Wayne said, “Y'all know I learned most of what I know about Border collies from Arthur Allen. All things considered, I reckon I learned pretty good. But if there's one fellow who might've learned from Mr. Allen even better than me it's the son of a gun—I mean gentleman—next to me. I wish I knew how he done that, plus never gaining a pound since I met him all these years ago, despite outeating me every time we break bread together. But without further eloquence”—the grin Wayne had been stifling broke out on his face—“I give you Mr. David Johnson. David, you have the floor—I mean corral.”

David, as tall as the burly Wayne, but spare and rangy in comparison, blushed and shook his head at that. And then he said, “Wayne, if you could bottle that snake oil, you'd be rich.”

That broke us all up, including Wayne, who said, “Matter of fact, I'm working on the formula, and I could use some investors.”

As our laughter subsided, David got down to business. He spoke briefly about the need to respect a dog as an individual and wound up, “Learn who your dog is, what he knows and doesn't know, what his temperament is, and then train based on that. Now, I've been watching your dogs carefully since you got here, so let me see if I can show you how to get them started off right with the sheep.”

Over the next three hours, David took each of the eight other dogs into the corral with a twenty-foot line attached to a light harness and worked with the dog for fifteen or twenty minutes. As their owners had reported, some of the dogs were too aggressive, others too timid, in trying to move the sheep. With subtle, precise handling of the line and a few words here and there, David firmly but gently restrained the aggressive ones and emboldened the timid ones. After he brought each dog out of the corral, he answered questions about what he'd done.

It was fascinating for all the dog owners to see how David interacted with the various dogs, modeling how best to work with them as individuals. But of course it was especially interesting for each person to see how David worked with his or her dog in particular. David was teaching a master class to two sets of students, dogs and people. I kept wondering how he would work with Chaser and what she and I could learn from that.

Was Chaser ready?

When he'd invited me to the demonstration, Wayne had told me, “Chaser might still be a little young for David to work with, so you should probably plan on her just being an observer alongside of you. She'll learn a lot from that.” But the more I watched David with the other dogs, the more I wanted him to work with Chaser, too. Chaser's behavior made me think she was ready: she never took her eyes off the sheep, and each time a dog moved the sheep her ears went up a bit and her tail started wagging. When David brought the sixth dog out of the ring, I managed to ask Wayne and him, “I know you weren't planning on it, but I sure would love it if Chaser could have a chance with the sheep. Is that possible?”

Wayne looked to David, who nodded his head yes. That excited me, but it also made me a little anxious. Was I still rushing? Was Chaser ready for this? It was hard to sit still as David worked with the seventh and eighth of the other dogs.

Finally, it was Chaser's turn. David first took her into the corral without putting the harness and long line on her. For a few minutes he just observed her as she sniffed the ground with no apparent interest in the sheep. But as he later told me, David saw that she was interested, albeit uncertain about what to do, from the way she angled her body slightly toward the sheep rather than away from them. He called her by name, put the harness and long line on her, and walked with her toward the sheep. For several minutes David simply stood holding the line slackly in one hand while Chaser sniffed the ground, but with her eye always on the sheep. I was seesawing between hope and disappointment, afraid that David was going to bring Chaser out of the corral and tell me she wasn't ready.

Then I heard David whispering softly to Chaser, “You can do it. You can do it. You can do it.”

I couldn't detect any reaction on Chaser's part. Again I feared that David was going to give up on her. But he kept whispering, “You can do it. You can do it. You can do it.”

I couldn't tell you how long he did that, whether it was three minutes or ten minutes. It felt like an eternity.

And then Chaser shifted her feet and pointed her nose straight at the sheep. Her ears went up and her tail began to stand out behind her. David was still whispering, “You can do it. You can do it. You can do it.”

The sheep noticed the change in Chaser's position and body language and they began shifting their own feet. At that, Chaser stepped briskly toward them and they began to move off away from her.

David sang out, “Good girl, Chaser. That'll do,” and she trotted over to him. Maybe I was projecting my desires, but she looked as pleased as when she'd found a toy I'd hidden. She seemed to be bursting with pride, just like I was. My other feelings were relief that Chaser had made this breakthrough, and admiration for David's intense communion with her.

David brought Chaser out of the corral, and she basked in my pets and praise. David told me, “She'll train up fine, if you've a mind to do it.”

What a day it had been. I couldn't wait to tell Sally the good news.

 

Six months later on a crisp October afternoon I said, “Chaser! Let's go to the sheep.”

In a flash Chaser was at the door, tail wagging, waiting for me to come open it.

Sally was going through the mail at her desk along the long wall of the living room. She looked up and said, “You said the magic word, hon. Chaser's raring to go.”

I pulled on my jacket and circled through the living room so that Sally and I could kiss each other goodbye. A few minutes later Chaser and I were in the car heading for Wayne West's farm, about half an hour away. We were in the regular family car, not our pickup, so Chaser was lying on the back seat. But as always when we were driving somewhere, she was having a snooze, resting up for whenever there would be something interesting to do.

Not that she was in any doubt about where we were heading. Though Rico's critics said dogs do not learn words by overhearing them, there were quite a few words that Chaser seemed to have learned in exactly that way. I never tried to teach her the word “sheep,” for example. She learned it simply by overhearing it in connection with going to Wayne's.

After David Johnson guided Chaser through her first successful encounter with sheep, Wayne told me, “Carry Chaser on out here with you whenever you got time, Doc. Don't bother calling ahead. If I'm not around, you know where the sheep are. You and Chaser'll do me a favor. Those darned sheep know my dogs so good, and know to heed them so fast, that people don't always appreciate my dogs when I'm demonstrating with them. If Chaser moves those sheep around, that'll freshen up their reactions for the next time I demonstrate with my dogs.”

Since then, we'd been going out to Wayne's once or twice a week. It wasn't often enough for Chaser to become really accomplished at sheepherding. For one thing, Border collies can't excel without regularly facing fresh challenges with unfamiliar sheep. Like human athletes competing against more challenging opponents and human students tackling more difficult subject matter, Border collies need to make their way through progressively more difficult situations and problem solving to achieve mastery as working dogs and become champions in herding trials. The same is true of shepherds. People such as Wayne West and David Johnson can guide and partner with dogs so well because of all their experiences with different sheep in varied places and conditions.

But even if Chaser wasn't going to be ready for sheepherding trials anytime soon, we both loved working the sheep once or twice a week for thirty or forty minutes at a time. Over the past six months we'd improved a lot, individually and as a team, in reading the sheep and moving them from one place to another in the good-size pasture Wayne had close to his house. It was fun to watch Chaser growing more and more comfortable at keeping her eye on the sheep while giving me her ear and the occasional glance. The hesitancy she initially showed around the sheep was long gone, and any resistance from the sheep was a welcome challenge. It seemed to me that her tail never stopped wagging as she darted back and forth around the stock in response to my signals.

The visits to Wayne's were rewards to both Chaser and me for her language learning progress, but they were also part of that language learning. I always wanted to keep Chaser's understanding of words grounded in the herding behaviors that are her genetic birthright. Chaser was eighteen months old and so far had learned seven hundred proper noun object names. She easily learned one or two new proper noun toy names a day without forgetting any of the old ones. So I had no doubt that she was going to reach the thousand mark.

About a mile from Flint Hill Farm, Chaser sat up expectantly. It probably took a few drives out to Wayne's for her brain to map the route exactly. But it seemed that she almost instantly knew every straightaway, turn, bend, undulation, and bump of the drive, and tracked it subliminally while she dozed. Yasha and our other dogs showed the same anticipatory behavior in the car as we neared favored hiking and white-water spots, and most dog owners who regularly take their dogs on certain outings have probably experienced this phenomenon. Dogs' apparent ability to map a driving route in their minds may not be a match for the marvels of homing pigeons and migratory birds, but it's impressive in its own right. Chaser always woke up and began to look out the window for Wayne's farm at the same spot along the road.

“You're right, Chaser. We're almost to the sheep,” I said. At the word “sheep” Chaser barked happily.

Nobody was at home but the animals when we pulled into Wayne's driveway and parked next to his garage. The dogs in the kennel greeted the car with a cacophony of barks. The barking grew frenzied when I opened the rear door of the car and Chaser jumped out and sped over to the gate to the sheep pasture on the other side of Wayne's swimming pool. All of the dogs wanted to be in that pasture working the sheep, but the most frenzied barker was a female dog, mostly black with white patches, that I didn't recall seeing before.

As soon I opened the gate, Chaser shot through it and ran down the sloping pasture to find the sheep. She disappeared over a little knoll as I closed the gate behind us. I walked to the crest of the knoll and saw that Chaser had Wayne's small flock of five sheep in the far corner of the pasture. She was running back and forth, trying to move them out of the corner.

“There,” I sang out, and Chaser stood still.

“Way to me,” I said. To follow that signal and go behind the sheep in a counterclockwise direction, Chaser had to move along the fence that formed the right side of the corner the sheep were in. As she did so, the sheep spilled out of the corner.

“Come by,” I said, to turn Chaser back behind them clockwise.

“There,” I said, when Chaser was directly opposite me and about ten feet behind the sheep. She stopped instantly. “Drop,” I said. She went to her belly. I watched the sheep for a second or two as they clustered a little closer together.

“Walk up,” I said. Chaser sprang to her feet and began to walk toward the sheep. The sheep moved up the slope to me, and I turned and walked a good seventy yards away to another corner of the pasture, where the road to Wayne's house intersected with a side road.

I turned around to see the little flock of five sheep, all full-grown adults much bigger than a Border collie, coming toward me. Right in among them was Chaser, as if she were part of the flock. Wayne told me he'd never seen another Border collie do that.

One of the sheep broke ranks and tried to peel back the other way. Without a word from me, Chaser darted out from among the other sheep and turned the stray back into the flock. Then she inserted herself back in the group and trotted along again in the middle of them, ears up, tail wagging, and tongue lolling out of her mouth.