Red and Fate are both border collies, but they are on opposite ends of the canine biological and behavioral spectrum. Red is intense while working, completely at ease while not working. He is instantly responsive to commands, and focuses only on me and his work, and the other human beings he has come to know and love.

He is a perfect companion, as well as a perfect therapy dog. He is still in the car, can be trusted off the leash, never chases a squirrel or a chipmunk, does not go hear the road.  He goes everywhere with me, content to sit by my side in radio studios, book stores, the dentist’s office. Fate is the yin to his yang. She is intensely curiously, interested in every moving thing, wants to rush to every strange person and greet them, chases every leaf, mouse, chipmunk or squirrel, eats animal droppings and chicken poop continuously and obsessively, raids the wastebaskets in the house for things to chew, pulls things off of the tables and hides them around the house, digs up the yards and hides her treats and balls.

She is a perpetual motion machine. After two months of intense training, I can get her to sleep in the house if I make her lie down three times and give the command “chill.” She roams the house constantly looking for trouble to get into, and she finds it. She is good in the crate, and we are grateful to have it.

Both are great dogs, they ask different things of us, require different things from us. I think we have six more months of hard and  intense training with Fate, she is very bright, extremely affectionate and highly responsive when she is not distracted, which is much of the time. It is kind of exciting to have two such remarkable but different dogs. I always say you get the dogs you need, and this is so.