Mike is different now, from the dog he was when he came here. He is old and loyal as only an old dog can be. He knows every nuance of my daily schedule and neatly anticipates where I will be at any time and what I will be doing. This morning, when I came here to the computer, he cocked his head at me, puzzled that I didn’t turn on the television 24-hour news station first. I always do and he knows and expects it. He heads to his kennel when it is time for me to go to the barn for milking. He keeps an eye on me at bedtime to make sure I don’t go up without him. He waits for me to put my glasses on before he gets up in the morning. I may go downstairs without them, but he knows that I will be back if I do. I don’t have to ask. He makes it his business to know.

It was not always like this. When I, in blissful arrogance, took myself off to buy a Border collie pup, I thought that I would be training it to work for me right away. I have had lots of dogs, smart ones, well-trained and delightful dogs. Dogs that I took from humble beginnings to being the best in their obedience classes, the best Frisbee dogs, the ones who knew the most and best tricks of all the dogs. However, a working Border collie, whose mama came right from the sheep-fested hills of Scotland with hundreds of years of have-to in her blood, was a whole nother story. One that it would take me quite a while to comprehend.

I thought I knew cows too, which is a good place to start when training a herding dog. Mike was born knowing more about moving stock than I will ever know. When he was in the nest yet, tumbling over his siblings looking for milk, his brain held all he would ever need to know to herd, except that loyalty, trust and devotion that he is full of now.
And that didn’t come easy. It had to be earned out on the hill and in the barn yard, working, learning and convincing him that he truly did have to work with me, even if I was really, really stupid.

I did everything wrong that I could do. I took him to stock when he was too young for one thing. He handled it and backed down his first cow when he was four months old. I stood in the wrong place at the wrong time and said the wrong thing. It took me a while to even figure out that I was dumb at herding. Then I strove to right that situation. I took lessons. I read books. I borrowed videos from NEBCA. I bought sheep and learned to love them, (some of them at least, but that is another story). At night I even dreamed of the choreography with dog and sheep that makes such a beautiful dance.

It didn’t make any difference. Mike worked and worked hard with that wonderful fanaticism that drives a Border collie to move animals. However, he didn’t work for me, or even with me. He just sort of worked around me, or over me if it was more convenient. Finally one day, after he had driven a group of heifers right over me a half a dozen times, I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck in the stinking barnyard mud, and while I was screaming at him, almost sobbing with frustration and misery something clicked. He decided that dumb as I was, I was his boss and he really had to stop killing me with cows. And I realized that I didn’t know a damn thing about herding with dogs and that it was going to be the hardest thing I ever learned.

When some one says that something isn’t rocket science, you know it is simple and doable. Herding effectively with a dog IS rocket science. In order to be a useful part of the equation the human being has to read cows or sheep-that is watch them and anticipate what they are going to do, and where they are going to go, before they do. The person has to learn right from left-the dog’s right and left that is, and learn the proper commands. It is not easy to keep Away to me and Come by straight when things are getting western and thousands of pounds of animal are headed somewhere they hadn’t ought to be going. The human part of the herding equation has to herd with their brain. The dog supplies the muscle and power and they already know too much. People have to learn it all.

Somehow Mike and I got past all the mistakes or most of them at least. I never got him backed off his stock enough to go to a trial. He never would just go get the cows by himself. However, he dog broke bulls and ornery cows, put heifers in and out of the barn, whether they wanted to go or not, and gathered the hills as long as I was there to keep him pointed the right way. He was so powerful that the barnyard heifers went right in the barn the minute I raised my hand to lift the latch on his kennel to let him out. They knew he was coming to put them in and they decided to just get it over with.

Then one day a couple of years ago he quit. He went under the tractor to move a cow, rather than doing what I asked. It took a while, but we realized that he has been kicked in the head so many times that he can’t see the cows well enough to work.
Heck, I couldn’t work them either if I couldn’t see them, and we have other dogs to do the job, although none possess his level of talent. We let him quit.

So Mike is retired. Now he dedicates all his skill and Border collie fanaticism to me. I am flattered to be the subject of his study, I'll tell you. I love him like a friend and more than any other dog ever.

I don’t get too cocky though because he likes the box of biscuits on top of the refrigerator almost as much.