I’m using a new command with Fate to help her use her eye on the belligerent ewes who are challenging her, and to help her learn that standing still is often much more effective with sheep than racing around. She is getting that.  My new command is “Back “Em, Up,” and sometimes “Give ‘Em Eye,” and she grasps both of them, she stops and is beginning to use her eye to direct the sheep and control them. I took a short video this morning to show what I mean.

Fate is a farm dog, not a trial dog, and I am happy free of the do’s and don’ts and snobbery and competitiveness that are so evident in much of the animal world. I love using my own language, commands and instincts. I am passionately committed to the Beavis & Butthead school of learning. Because I am stupid I am free. Because I don’t know what I’m supposed to think, I am free to think.

People who swear by the “left” and “right” labeling of the world will never know that freedom or joy. There is always more than one way to do anything, and we are having a good time sorting through it. Come and see. In slowing Fate down and showing her how to walk up to the sheep, she has begun to use her, not her speed. Critical for a herding dog.