Dogs Gone

A fat blue folder of dogs long gone
Doggone them for leaving
Their place by my feet
For not being puppies
And herders
And guarders
For leaving me waiting behind here at home
While they move on to wide fields
where cows always come running
whenever they roam.

Reading through pedigrees,
Floss, Wisp, Nell and Craig
Davy, Bobby, Sadie, Robbie,
Whitelow Jan,
Dryden Joe,

Grand dogs of the past from Scotland and Wales
All gone now too,
Though their names ring behind them
From the hills and the sheep and the big sheep dog trials

Years ago all combined to make Mike, Nick and Gael
The three collies who worked here
for fifteen long years
Making chores easy and crazy and fun
Tracking in mud and shedding black hair
And lying there sleeping right next to my chair

Mike is long gone now and Nick's getting old.

Gael lies in the kitchen
in front of the gate
Too blind to be watching
Too deaf now to hear
But you still can't get by her
She'll find you no fear.

I was looking yesterday for a picture of a border collie to help me in painting the latest wooden animal project to come my way. In the course of the hunt I dug out my old training books, finding pictures of the likes of Wiston Cap (read the bit in this story about whistle training. I have seen it myself...a dog that knows nothing about whistles working to them anyhow) and so many other great ones. It has been a while since we had a dog here that worked, but when we did they were an incredible help. I really miss just sending a dog to move cows where we want them. Now it's do it yourself if you want it done, and cows don't respect middle-aged-going-on-elderly, ladies near as much as they do fast, young dogs with sharp, white teeth.

Nick at 11 is still eager and biddable, but I could never really use him on the milk cows. He likes to bite above the hock...right where the udder is...and so is not trustworthy. Gael is fifteen and past it all, except for toddling along behind me on the way to the garden.

Mike was a good one. Born knowing more about herding than I'll ever learn.
I didn't deserve him, but I am so glad I had him. As I looked at his registration papers I realized it was no wonder that he was such a terrific dog. Wisp was his grand sire...two time International champion...and I had the honor of working with him, training him, being trained by him. Damn I was lucky.
It was bittersweet to page through the books and registrations, old licenses and vet's receipts.
I was so privileged to have had such a dog...such dogs in fact...but I miss working with them. Their lives are too short.

We have four dogs now, all elderly, what with Nick and Gael, Wally the blue heeler guardian of the barn, and Sadie, the boss's late mother's old mutt, but I am getting the itch to get a puppy. You can't ever replace an old dog and no pup can fill their footprints....but a puppy grows....and learns...and leads you new places where you haven't been before. I'd like to find a puppy.

A working puppy, with the blood of the great ones running through him....
Training stock dogs was the most challenging thing (next to parenting) that I ever did (or more like tried to do). I had to learn several new languages from come bye and away to me to reading cows and sheep in a whole new way.
From training the dog to listen to me and convincing him to work with me to thinking where he needed to be and where I needed to be to make the cows go where we both wanted them without getting anybody run over. From knowing two lefts from two rights...his and mine (and if you want to get complicated, the cows' lefts too) to balance and pressure and outruns and drives.
It is a game I want to play again and I do believe that I am going to need a new dog to play it with.
It is getting hard to wait for him.