I am teaching Fate to herd sheep, and I will share the process with you, as always.

Working with a border collie is a challenge and a responsibility, especially when one has as much drive and instinct and heart as Fate. I will do everything I can to do right by her, it is challenging work.

This morning, I let her run with the sheep. She did beautifully for about five minutes, and then she lost it and the chase began. I stopped her and ended the lesson. For several days now I have been working on a lie down with her, one that is strong and quick enough to survive the prey drive and distractions unleashed by herding.

At the other Bedlam Farm, I had a training pen, I could put the sheep inside of it and work the dog on the outside, opposite me. I don’t have that option here. My strategy is to have a recall that works, even in the heat of herding. I want to give her some time each day to move around the sheep with me, but it will be gradual, she gets nothing for free.

To enter the pasture, she sits and stays. To walk up to the sheep she lies down, gets up, then lies down again. Today, even as aroused as she was, she began to listen to me, to hear me, to respond to me. I was amazed by that, and greatly encouraged. We can work together. She has the “walk up,” command – walk slowly to the sheep – down. She is beginning to lie down quickly – maybe 70 per cent of the time, she obeys the sit command almost 100 per cent of the time. We are getting there. I will take nothing for granted, ask her to do nothing I can’t enforce or follow through on.

I use a long lede – maybe 15 feet, so I can stomp on the lede if she gets crazy. Which she will.

In the second lesson, I left Red out of the pasture. you can see in this photo that Fate and the sheep are both looking at Red, I need them to look at one another. This happened without Red in the ring. I am feeling my way here, every border collie is different, every circumstance is different. This one is over the top with instinct, she needs to do this, Maria and I both believe. She has a sweet disposition and loves to be with us, that is a fortunate thing.

Fate is determined and impulsive, I am more determined than she. That is the paradigm. I hope.

She is like Red in that as intense as she is in the pasture, she puts it aside in the house and elsewhere and is very much with us. The real working dogs are either in crates or out with sheep, that will not be Fate’s life. But she will get plenty of sheep and plenty of us.

Unlike many people with border collies, I am uneasy with the culture of the herding trials. I’ve got four ribbons hanging on my wall, i hang them proudly, but I did not care for many of the trials I went to. The sheep weren’t having much fun, neither were most of the people and dogs that I saw. Competition is not often good for humans. I have great respect for the people who do it, and they do amazing things with their dogs, but it is not for  me, not fun for me to watch or join.

So this is where we are now. Tomorrow morning, I will let Fate run again, be silent while she scarfs up sheep droppings, mark her behavior when she lies down or does an outrun. Herding training is a marathon, not a sprint, and I am not blessed with a lot of patience or a long attention span. So the trainer was right when she said every dog offers us the opportunity to be a better human. I will show Fate how to herd sheep safely, she will hopefully make me a better man.

See you tomorrow.