Every day, in the midst of storm after storm, frigid day after frigid night, a small struggle has emerged in our pasture, one of those farm struggles that has little importance to the outside world, but is critical to the life and the farm. We’ve seen many of those struggles, one of the most painful was Rocky’s struggle to survive Simon, only one male equine would dominate.

Another struggle is underway between Liam, a proud and willful ram, and Red, an experienced and very dominant border collie. Liam is challenging Red almost every day, and it is a struggle a border collie has to win, because it will determined who has to obey the dog in the pasture and who does not.

Every day now, Liam tries to walk around Red, or ignore him, or challenges him and tries to butt him. He tries to get to the hay feeder and then the grain buckets, he tries to walk around Red on the snow paths. The two are knocking heads almost every day and although Liam has backed down eventually every time, he seems to be challenging Red more and more. Red is an experienced and professional dog, mostly he has backed Liam down by using his powerful eyes, the way border collies usually control sheep.

Liam has been gentle ram so far, but at this age, rams get their testosterone up and decide just how nice they plan to be. Red will respond to this, he will do what he has to do.

He nipped Liam on the nose once – the acceptable way for border collies to deal with recalcitrant sheep – and got him to back down quickly, I suspect these two are  heading for a bigger confrontation one of these days. By Spring, one of these two will be dominant, the other will have submitted. I will put my money on Red, I leave it to him to figure it out.