Training A Border Collie/Training The Trainer

Harvest is beginning to slow. Squash still meander down the compost pile and kale doesn’t seem to mind the night temperatures beginning to dip below forty. We pulled over a hundred red and yellow onions from the mobile garden with many that could double for a softball. They still lay, their greenery folded, next to the black walnuts drying on a rack in the basement. The processing of tomato sauce is finished, tall jars of ruby red stand in rows like rigid British soldiers in the basement freezer. Apple pressing for cider is well underway, the chest freezer stacked but able to take more. Our apples are taking a sabbatical this year so we have taken to carrying apple crates everywhere in the back of the truck on the off-chance we will drive by a roadside tree laden with fruit. We have brought home several bushels thanks to random acts of picking. Our back seat smells of sweet apples and dog.

The sheet change-over is accomplished and we fall into bed, smiles on our faces folded in flannel once again. Orange outside becomes de rigueur and, while eating yogurt, I spend long moments watching leaves drift lazily to the ground.

It is also Border collie training season. Seamus has reach a year and a half, time to take him to train to herd on distant pastures and foreign sheep. Although he’s brimming with instinct, both dog and trainer benefit, as music students do, from an outside eye. Each Thursday I load him into the truck and we drive about an hour and twenty to Cindi’s farm in NH. Beautiful, sprawling, built in the 1800s.

Cindi greets him as “Mr. Handsome” and he collapses against her legs. I unravel the thirty five foot orange lead and hook it to Seamus’s collar as we enter the field. Young dogs normally begin on goats rather than starting right out on flighty sheep. Goats move slower and tend to follow humans.

At our farm, Seamus follows me into the chicken coops each morning and, in full stalk mode, he circles the flock and holds them to me as I sprinkle scratch into their outdoor bowls. They squawk, indignantly, but do his bidding. In the evenings he comes into each coop and we count hens to be sure everyone is accounted for. I count aloud and Seamus watches attentively, as if agreeing with my math. When finished, I announce that all birds are inside and ask for a high five. He lifts his right paw but does look away. He is a border collie, after all.

In the goat paddock we drop the lead to the ground: Seamus can still feel the weight of it but understands that he has some freedom. This freedom can be ended rather quickly if I step on the lead.

He watches the goats move from a lie-down position, his eye calculating their next position. I ask him to “stand” and he rises, without moving his feet. When I step forward, he steps forward: we are in tandem, at least for this moment.

I ask him to “walk up” and he is to move straight and slowly “with me.” My job is to watch his body for tension. As he gets closer to the goats he can feel their pressure and I see his shoulders tighten and his eye get colder. I immediately ask him to “lie down.” He drops to the ground (on a good day) and I kneel beside him, changing my voice to soft and encouraging- I want to see his right ear move- indicating he is listening. If I don’t see it, I speak again or softly click my tongue until he is able to focus on me.

A border collie normally has instinct to herd, the training serves to develop that instinct and for the dog to understand that they are working with you rather than independently with you chasing along behind them.

I have had the great good fortune to have partnered with several amazing border collies. It is, without question, one of the great joys of my life to feel the cross communication with another species. When a dog, in full stride, looks over at you to see what you would like them to do, it is magic in action.

It is a lot for a young dog’s brain to take in when they begin to train. They have to learn not to respond to their prey drive as an animal runs across the field in front of them. And there is drive but also fear involved. He looks to me for what to do next and to protect him from danger.

Ironically a young dog is always “testing” to see who is stronger between the two of you. If you are not prepared to lead, he will. Cindi often looks over and reminds me that Seamus is continually asking, “Are you strong enough to be my leader?”

Each week we grow together under Cindi’s watchful eye. At home, when I pull on boots and grab my coiled orange lead and stick, both dogs stand at attention. It is hard to ask Bronte to wait inside while Seamus takes turn on “her” flock. I see her frustration as she flops down onto her bed but I remind her that he needs to learn.

Seamus and I go into the field and practice moving the sheep. I use the lead and then release him from my hand. The other day he followed (OK chased) the sheep to the bottom of the paddock and I stood and hollered, “That’ll do Seamus- HERE.” He was standing, holding his sheep in place, otherwise known as hog-heaven, but upon hearing me he turned his head toward the sheep then spun around and came racing back to my side, lying down near my feet. I dropped to my knees and spoke softly, “What a good dog you are.” He smiled, because he knew.

Looking out the windows we see brilliant reds and yellows, some on the branches against the windows and some across the field on the mountainside where the sun drops. We haven’t had frost on our pumpkins..yet, but I’ve seen it in other fields. Climbing out of the flannel sheets, my feet are cold as they hit the floor. I hear Paul tossing an armful of wood into the wood box. I quickly start a small fire in the wood stove and hear the breath of the flames as the wood begins to catch. Without the heat of the summer sunshine our house in the trees will remain chilly unless we start a morning fire, often letting it go out as the temperature rises during the day.

I sit at the cherry bar, my bare feet dangling as I cut up apples for breakfast. My feet are warm from the heat of the stove but made warmer by the warmth of Seamus as he circles and then coils on the ground beside me. He looks up at me, I look down at him, we understand.