I’ve heard the farmers up here often talk about a dog as his or her “chore dog.” E.B. White uses the term to describe his dog Fred in “One Man’s Meat,” his wonderful collection of essays about living on a farm in Maine late in his life. E.B. White is an inspiration to me, in many things and his reference to Fred got to me thinking about the “chore dog.” Chore dogs are different from other dogs, they are pets, of course, but something more than that.

They are working dogs, and on a farm, their owners wouldn’t dream of setting foot outside of the farmhouse without the chore dog. When I go out to the barn or the pasture, Red just appears. It is assumed he is coming. You never know what you might find in a pasture – an injured sheep, a donkey who has unlatched a gate, foxes stalking chickens, a barn cat up a tree. Chore dogs walk ahead of you, always. They scan the horizon. They read your mood – the pasture gate was blowing open in the wind one day, and one of the donkeys had spotted it and was heading towards it. I looked at it with alarm, but before I could open my mouth, Red had rushed towards it and the donkey stopped. He saw it before I did, it was out of place. Rose was a chore dog, she had a map of the farm in her head as good chore dogs do and when anything is out of place, they rush to it, and alert you to it.

Chore dogs are the unheralded heroes of farms. They have been precious to me, and I am grateful to have a new chore dog in Red.