Tag Archives: English Shepherds

Becky: In praise of a working farm dog

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Becky in the snow last year.

Becky arrived, after a long flight from South Dakota. It was May 2008 and she was 12 weeks old. I let her out of the truck, and she immediately walked up onto the porch, then turned around and growled at the two large adult dogs (Tip and Robbie) who came to greet her. “Don’t come up on my front porch,” she seemed to be saying. I laughed. Good working farm dogs have both grit and intelligence. This dog clearly had both.

The following month ushered in calving season. A first-time mother had given birth to a heifer somewhere in the 10-acre field above the house. An hour later she’d managed to lose track of her calf, and she stood at the top of the hill and bawled, staring down, waiting for us to do something. Cindy saddled her mare and began the search for the missing newborn. For a few minutes, Becky and I stayed in the backyard watching. Then it was just me. She had slipped under the gate and disappeared into the five acres of woods adjoining the pasture. The bawling momma, meanwhile, followed behind Cindy as she crisscrossed the upper fence line a few hundred yards away.

That’s when it happened. Within five minutes of having slipped under the gate, Becky — our four-month-old pup — emerged from the woods, weaving back and forth behind a newborn calf, pushing it forward into the pasture. At the top of the field, the mother quickly caught sight. She gave a great bellow and galumphed down to her calf, immediately nudging her back to the business end to nurse. To this day I get chills when I tell the story. That was the complete farm dog package on display: work ethic, instinct, and a level of intelligence several notches above that of your average human teenager.

A working farm dog is a companion. More important, it is a partner. If you haven’t had the joy of sending a dog out of earshot and having it bring in a flock of sheep or find an injured animal; haven’t watched it move a half-ton recalcitrant steer in a tight chute, occasionally getting kicked but always going back to get the job done; haven’t seen it put just enough pressure on a ewe with a newborn to guide her into a lambing pen without charging — then you are missing out on one of the great satisfactions in life. It’s a true collaboration that becomes second nature. Working alongside a farm dog is a Neolithic partnership, a bridge to millennia past. It bonds you in ways that mere ownership of a pet does not.

Becky had the run of the farm, day and night. During the day she was our right hand; at night she took on raccoons, opossums, skunks, foxes, and coyotes to keep the property varmint- and predator-free. She spent her whole life outside, except for her morning ritual. When I got up, made coffee, then let the other dogs off the back porch, Becky would be by the back door waiting to be let in for her “quiet time.” She would stay inside for 30 minutes and then gladly head back outdoors.

She was uniformly loved by people and feared by other dogs: she never met another of her kin that she didn’t wish to (and sometimes did) rip into. The only thing she was afraid of was thunder. Until, that is, the last couple of years, when her hearing diminished to the point that a rumble no longer affected her.

The life of the working farm dog is a tough one — all of those hard days and hard knocks eventually catch up. But even as her health failed, in spite of being mostly blind and deaf and severely arthritic, even as ultimately she struggled to stand, Becky still did her part: this past week she helped move our flock of 40 ewes and held off the rams while we were feeding.

Becky lapsed into semi-consciousness and we had her euthanized yesterday morning. We buried her in the garden next to her old workmates, Robbie and Tip. This morning I awoke thinking about how to remember her. I headed downstairs and made coffee, then let out our two pet dogs, Max and Buster. Becky, of course, was not waiting at the back door. I will not call her name today to help. She will not sit next to my chair on the porch, within easy reach, occasionally pushing her head under my hand to remind me to pet her. The farm will change, the sheep will now do as they wish, the rams will invade our space, a calf will remain hidden, stray dogs will remain unmolested. She is already missed.

Morning Chores

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It is around six in the morning, I have a full day ahead. Grind the coffee, pour in the water, hit the on switch, pour the coffee down the hatch and like magic the eyes open. The day’s to do list is long, too long and I know full well that half will not get done. But I slip on my Birks and trod off through the wet grass to at least get the feeding and watering done early.

The sun is still sleeping in and what was the full moon is about to take a swan dive in the west. A replacement rooster is replying from the other side of the garden to Mr. Foghorn Leghorn in the coop. Like an artillery barrage they volley back and forth. The younger rooster sending the message, “I’m still here, old man.” The old man has his reply ready, “yeah, who’s sleeping in the weeds and who’s sleeping with the ladies?”

Otherwise all is quiet until the rattle of the cans. Ginger, our workhorse, comes to the gate expectantly. I grab a small amount of feed and lead her out to her pasture. A bit more grain for the sheep and I call Becky, our English Shepherd, to the corral. I position her to the outside left of the barn door. Opening it, I step back, as the flood of sheep, like an unstoppable river current, bursts out the opening.

Becky has little to do except act as a bouncer at a rowdy bar, a reminder that bad behavior has consequences. She walks up on a few ewes who’d rather graze in the wrong pasture; they scurry to catch up with the others. Once they are safe in the proper field I close the gate on them for the day.

A bit of grain to the chickens, I open the door to the run and let them out. Most ignore the grains and head out to look for grubs. Early bird and all of that….

The cattle are fine and grazing the top of the pasture. We only give them grain every few days, mainly just so they know to come when called. Meanwhile, as they move, they look like barges coursing slowly across a bay of grass, not a care in the world.

The pigs are safely in the freezer of six different families. Our new crop will arrive in another week. So with the chores done I walk out to the front of the barn and watch the fog rise from the creek bottom up the hill to just below me. And then, with a mind of its own, it moves swiftly down the valley, clearly on a mission.

I turn back for the house, feeling about as peaceful as one can at the start of a busy day.

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We have been taking turns this week reading poems from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses. A great way to fade off to sleep with the “Northwest Passage” rattling around the brain.

Two Dog Tales

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It’s how you say it, not what you say

Dogs listen more to your tone than to your words. It was in the low thirties and Caleb and I had been clearing a couple hundred yards of trees and brush with the chainsaw. Hard work on a steep slope, made more fatiguing by the cold. We had been at it for several hours while Becky and Katie, our two English Shepherds stayed close by my side.

Further down that hill slope, through a screen of woods was Caleb’s house. They have a collection of what I refer to as “Yappers,” dogs of no determinable breed but all weighing fewer than twenty pounds. A Napoleon complex acted out on a canine stage, these yappers provided a background of steady barking and growling to the crisp winter morning. The house they were protecting was a good fifty yards away from where we worked.  But it was clear they saw us as a threat.

My dogs ignored them other than to give the occasional irritated glance. As we neared completion of the project, Katie (daughter of Becky) ran down the slope towards the fence line. Fearing a rumble and its aftermath I barked a sharp guttural, “KATIE!” To your average kid it would be interpreted that your dad was pissed and you better stop what you are doing. And Katie did stop. Becky on the other hand heard the tone and translated it into “GET-EM!”  She exploded into action and covered the fifty yards before the “yappers” could bark an “Oh, shit.”

She rolled through and over them in a fight I could only glimpse through the screen of woods. Caleb and I are both yelling for her to return. Caleb’s stepdad is out on the porch yelling. And it occurs to me, finally, that to Becky it probably sounds like encouragement. With us as stand-ins for Roman citizens at the Coliseum, screaming for more blood, Becky was determined to entertain. She came back up the slope looking a bit smug from the fight. I yelled at her for good measure and we finished our work.

Old Meanness

Tip, our aged stockdog, was oblivious to the fight. Stone deaf and arthritic she misses all the excitement. But she still has a growl that chills the blood of certain men in the neighborhood. Is it wrong to chuckle at the memory of her pinning Caleb’s brother-in-law on the roof of his truck? I heard a plaintive call one day and went out to find Jay on the truck roof. Tip was using her growl and her stockdog eye to keep the interloper penned until she could consult with me.

A few months ago Cindy and I walked over the hill to visit with our neighbor at his barn. Tip insists on accompanying me anywhere on the farm. But with her arthritis it takes her three times as long to make the journey. We had been talking with Lowell for about fifteen minutes when Tip finally arrived. Lowell, who likes Tip and isn’t buffaloed by her growl, said affectionately, “well, here comes Old Meanness.”

We like that moniker.

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Reading this weekend: Dirt: the erosion of civilizations by David R. Montgomery. It is a fascinating history of the geologic record and role that the loss of soil has played in the decline of civilizations, a message we would do well to take seriously.

Violence, BBQ, Ponds and Marcus Aurelius

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I do not consider myself a violent man. Overall my temperament is fairly even keeled. Although there is bit of shading or room for interpretation in that statement, I’ll stand by it. Yet there have been moments on the farm where Cindy has restrained me from getting my 30/30 and dropping an errant and dangerous bull. And the toolbox on the truck has a nice dent where I felt that the locks refusal to open required the use of a crowbar to persuade it to submit. But that is all to this confession: just the odd desire to bash or occasionally throw things about.

Usually I go serenely about my chores. The odd irritation brushed off as irrelevant in the big scheme as Mr. Aurelius teaches. So when the damn lamb spends every f-ing moment outside the paddock bleating incessantly, I smile and think, “Spit-roasted BBQ in the autumn?” Yeah, that’ll be nice.

It is a nice trick. Eat those that irritate you. Works well on a farm as anger management. But perhaps you should not try this at home.

Inclinations towards violence aside this has been a good weekend. We got two hundred garlic bulbs cured and trimmed and ready for storage. Cindy has spent a fair amount of time photographing puppies. I’ll leave it to her to describe the challenges of corralling puppies and dealing with the website. But Becky had ten puppies a week ago. You can see pictures on the website. And Caleb and I spent six hours in the sun and heat laying out erosion mats where the pond is no more.

After three years and more money that we would care to admit we had the big pond filled. It simply never held water. Dozens of know-it-all experts and neighbors each had their own opinions and we tried them all.

But when faced with spending $10,000 to line the pond we capitulated and filled it.  After all, the pond was too big for me to throw about in a tantrum. It took 100 dump truck loads to fill.

So we stretched out straw erosion mats yesterday and put down staples and spread grass seed. Now we wait for it to return to its previous state as an attractive pasture. A hard lesson and one we will pay for if I can ever find where I threw our checkbook.

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Reading this week: Restoration Agriculture: real-world permaculture for farmers by Mark Shepherd.

The Gods and the Sheep Mock Me

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Childhood readings of my grandmother’s Bullfinch’s Mythology have colored my sense of how the world is ordered more so than childhood attendance at my family’s church. I tend to expect divine intervention, if there is any, to be shaped by petty, meddlesome beings acting for their own benefit.

Last week I headed outdoors to feed before driving into town for a work-related visit. Chickens fed, pigs fed, ducks fed, chicks fed and all watered without drama. The sheep are kept up in the barn for protection from predators at night. Each morning the 10-by-12-foot door is slid open to allow them into an outer corral with access to one of three small pastures. Cindy recently built a service door into the larger sliding door to make the job easier.

Opening the smaller door, I was trampled as usual by the flood of our flock surging around me to get outside and enjoy the spring weather.

Walking back to the house to get dressed I paused for a while to herd one of the lambs back into the pasture. This lamb, the smallest of the newborns, searches for freedom each day by crawling under gates. It has spent most of its short life escaping and then wandering along the fence line bleating to its mom for instructions on how to get back in with the flock. A short ten minutes of chasing it back and forth and I was back in the house.

Heading back out to my truck to leave I saw half the flock in the intended field grazing. The other half was exiting the back gate in the corral into a larger unsecured pasture. Cindy’s calming affect absent, I hurtled into action. Yelling helpful things like “Shit!” repeatedly while asking Becky, our English Shepherd, to go get them back constituted my principle plan of action.

Becky seemed a bit cowed by yelling. A great and effective dog at all farm tasks when asked politely. But when confronted with a man swinging his arms madly in all directions and shouting contradictory instructions, as the sheep scattered to the four winds, Becky did the sensible thing and retired to the barn with her dignity intact.

My default setting in a crisis is food, either for myself or for the livestock. So I sprinted back up to the barn and got a bucket of feed as the flock disappeared across a ravine and headed to the woods. Returning with the feed I ran after them shaking the bucket and yelling “baah” rather stupidly and interspersed with more expletives directed at their lineage. They ignored me. Meanwhile the horses were merrily charging in among the sheep accelerating their pace away from me.

After a few minutes of running up and down a hill my brain finally began working. Opening the gate to the upper field I called the horses.

Shaking the bucket of grain got their attention and they trotted to me in record time. Perversely, so did the sheep. It was a sprint by both to get to me and get the grain. Two of the three horses thundered through the gate before the main body of sheep–it was that close. I slammed the gate closed and was easily able to move the sheep into an adjacent pasture. I ran back to the house, changed out of my sweat soaked clothes and headed off to town.

As I drove into Knoxville, no one could have convinced me otherwise that the whole affair was not the work of that group on Olympus playing with a wicked sense of humor.

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Reading this week: Immoderate Greatness: why civilizations fail by William Ophuls.