How To Retire Like A Boss (by Sam Perley)

While reclining under the dining room table one afternoon I overheard my family talking about certain athletes and performers who decide to retire and then soon afterward, decide to unretire: coming back to a game that they have clearly grown out of. I shook my head and not just to scratch my ears. I just didn’t get it. From where I sit and lay, it seems an easy transition from active to semi-active.

From the time I was a Border Collie pup I had only a few things in the front of my big brain; tennis balls and sheep or sheep and tennis balls. I spent my pup-hood creating a path next to the outdoor sheep fence because I paced it so relentlessly. I found that if I went one way, the sheep would go the other. And if I did it quickly, I could get everybody fired up! Pretty soon I graduated into sheep-herding training. I have to tell you that I spent quite a bit of time sitting under the tree listening to my “trainer” explain to me how to move sheep. I tried hard to keep my eyes open for most of it. Truth is, I know more about moving those puffballs just from my DNA than they ever will. I just needed someone to partner with and tell me where the sheep needed to be. I was young and strong and had the secret to good herding: the eye. I would walk up to the flock in a slow crouch, and get just close enough so that they knew I was there. Often they would stand and stare back at me, indignant, most of the time: sometimes for effect, stomping one of those little hooves. Hard not to chuckle, but I held my position and my stare. At some point they would turn their heads and I knew they were accepting my “request.” At that point I would swing around behind them all and off we would go back to the barn. This made my partner pretty darn happy. It’s my job but hey, I took the accolades and pats.

As I began to get older I found it a little harder to hear the sheep coming and I wasn’t quite as quick as I had been in moving around them in the field. Once, at at sheepdog trial, Melissa whistled a command to me, I saw her doing it but could not hear the whistle. For the first time in a trial, I stopped and looked at her, telling her with my eye that I could not do this anymore.

At our farm I remained the stock manager. Bronte helped out some, but they knew who to call when something needed to be done. When I got the whistle, I’d race down the road into the pasture: I still had it and they all knew it. I have to admit to a bit of swagger as I left the field after another job well done.

The hearing part kept getting worse. One stormy evening Melissa and I went down to the pasture to bring the flock up to the barn for the night and I didn’t hear her hollering to me. One of the ewes decided to go through me rather than around me up the hill- payback perhaps? My back legs gave out and I sat on the ground, unable to get up for a minute. Melissa raced over to me, rain and tears coming down her face and said, “Come on Sam, let’s get those sheep.” Because it is what I do, it is who I am, I did get up. But we walked very slowly up the hill she and I. She didn’t say it, but we both knew it was the last time we would make this walk with me as the boss.

Pretty soon afterward it was Bronte who got the whistle to work. A few times she looked over at me, a little confused, but was ready to take the lead and I was ready to let her. Sometimes Melissa would ask if I wanted to come and help, sometimes I did, and sometimes the rug under the table felt just too good to leave. I don’t hear everything that is said to me but I hear a little more than I let on, and if the M&M jar opens I hear just fine.

Almost a year ago they brought in a new little Border Collie, Muir. Pretty cute, pretty annoying. I figured we’d better get things straight right from the start and gave him a few good growls when he pushed me too hard. Didn’t mean much by it, but he thought I did, and that’s what I was going for. I watch from the top of the hill as he begins his training, just like I did and laugh at his juvenile mistakes. When he brings the sheep past me they still look away though. I may be old and retired but I’ve still got it. And what matters, Tiger Woods, is that they know it.

Sam