To get a border collie puppy bred from a male and female in Wales, you first have to be crazy, just like the dog is.

You have to impress Dr. Karen Thompson with your commitment and sincerity, not a simple task. This wonderful human being and amazing breeder of dogs will not hand over her puppies to anybody she does not believe is spirituality and emotionally stable, by which I mean patient, loving and sound of heart. I would not care to try and fool that woman, it would not go well. She gave me Red, and now  Fate, and I don’t know what else you can say about a breeder or a human being than that.

And you have to take the long view, that is, be patient, be determined, keep your sense of humor close and your wits closer. Border collie puppies challenge one in a very particular way, the same way buying a small nuclear reactor and keeping it in a crate downstairs would.

Training fate to work with the sheep has been one of the joys of my life and work with dogs. If I stick with it and listen, she will soon teach me how to herd sheep with a good dog. Red got me started, Fate will carry on the work.

Fate is a lot of fun to work with, but she tries my patience and short attention span. A young border collie filled with instinct does not always hear a human give commands, does not always respond. That takes time. I won’t let her into the pasture unless she sits by the open gate for a full minute, it takes four or five tries to get her to sit and lie down at all, she is so intensely focused on getting to the sheep. When she settles and listens, I open the gate and call her in.

This morning, the sheep were out in the middle of the pasture, I took Fate’s leash off and out she went, circling the sheep and marching them to the side of the fence, where, with great poise and regal bearing, she lay down and watched them. The sheep were a bit flabbergasted, they lowered their heads and stared back, and the scene got peaceful after a few minutes, they put there heads down, I called Fate to get out from them a bit, and it could have been a scene from Wales.

Fate has extraordinary presence for such a young dog, the sheep are beginning to respect her there are deepening  moments of calm around them. We are still working on our outruns, sometimes I think she is getting it, sometimes i don’t. Patience, patience, patience. She is worth it, and I will not mess her up. She has come a long way in two weeks, longer than I even imagined.