The Dogs of Bedlam Farm

by Jon Katz

  I can’t say that he has never eaten droppings since, or that I have never reflexively yelled at him to stop. I have. But these outbursts are becoming rarer, as his interest in fecal matter diminishes. We’re having fun.

  Who knows? If we herd sheep for another decade or so, I might make it: I might become a patient man. So much for Freud. Give me a good dog any day.

  I HAVE KEPT MY WORD. WHEN I CAME TO THE FARM, I PROMISED myself each dog would have a daily herding lesson, no matter what. And we didn’t miss a day, not in rain nor snow, et cetera, et cetera.

  After the sheep and donkeys were fed and watered and the barn mucked out, and before I began to write, I had a cup of morning coffee and some toast and fruit. I ate breakfast standing by the kitchen window, watching and studying my sheep. If I didn’t yet love them, at least I could try to understand them.

  After a second cup of coffee, I put on my earmuffs, ski mask, knit cap, hooded jacket, et cetera et cetera (and that was only the top layer), and tossed some beef jerky into Orson’s crate; he happily trotted inside. Rose then ran to the mudroom, where I kept my now-repulsive rubber boots. If I began putting them on, she barked and headed for the back door. By now, Rose and I were starting to act in rhythm.

  I’d watched Carolyn Wilki train dozens of herding dogs in Pennsylvania, read many books, and e-mailed some trainers I liked and trusted. Still, it was risky to put a high-powered working dog like Rose in the hands of an impatient, gimpy, and easily frustrated novice. If it didn’t work, I’d have harmed another dog—hardly the reason I came to Bedlam Farm.

  Take the long view, an Irish trainer e-mailed me. Let Rose find her own comfort level. Discourage freelance chasing around, but give her enough freedom so that she can build her confidence and hone her instincts. Keep lessons short and focused. Have a goal in mind, and if she achieves it, cut your losses and get out. Don’t talk too much: you don’t want her looking at you all the time; she’s supposed to be watching the sheep.

  That added up to a lot of things to keep in my head during lessons. But I clung mostly to what Wink, my favorite trainer-advisor, had said: “Trust her. You trust the dog to herd the sheep; the dog trusts you to tell her what you need. Respect her. Let her show you how it’s done. Support her when she needs it, correct her when you must, but they’re her sheep and it’s her pasture.

  “One day you will find that the two of you are working together, and that will be a beautiful day,” he predicted. Yes, it would. But it still seemed quite a way off.

  Though she was less than a year old, Rose already had a commanding authority around sheep. She also had the speed to move around them quickly and head them off without getting nasty.

  Still, the Homer experience made me gun-shy. I had messed up one dog I loved, to the point that I had to give him to somebody else. I didn’t want that to happen to Rose. We were lucky enough to have more than forty acres and our own sheep; now we had to live up to this happy opportunity.

  Some border collie owners are among the dog world’s most rigid snobs. A number of them had already made it clear that they thought it reckless, even irresponsible, to train a puppy without a professional herding trainer.

  Maybe so. But such trainers have loads of dos and don’ts, often contradicting what other trainers insist on: Never praise the dog, always praise the dog. Always use a stick, never use a stick. Always reinforce with food, never reinforce with food. It gets my back up, makes me tense—and then I pass the tension on to the dogs.

  This time, the only voice I wanted to hear in my head was my own. I understood my biggest dangers—my big mouth, my short temper, my bad leg (which makes it hard to move quickly), my difficulties in trusting a dog.

  As it happened, trust was never an issue with Rose. My hand-feeding, rigorously positive training, and liberal use of beef and liver treats had gotten us off on the right foot from the very start. Now all the indicators for successful herding were good: her head swiveled when she heard her name; she made eye contact; our training sessions were short, fun, and focused. On those occasional days when my voice got sharp or I lost patience, she could shrug it off.

  Besides, the context was so different up here. We weren’t driving an hour to someone else’s farm, just walking out the back door. As a result, Rose didn’t go crazy whenever she saw sheep; they were simply always around.

  She had already bailed me out so many times—warding off Nesbitt, keeping the sheep at bay while I delivered feed, rounding up escaped donkeys and ewes. I was coming to understand that she really was the teacher and I the pupil. Getting her to lie down, come quickly, back off when I said “That’ll do”—all of that would come in time. We didn’t have to learn it all at once.

  Meanwhile, whenever she moved to the right, I’d say, “Good come bye!” When she went left, I’d praise her for going “away to me.” I praised her all the time, in fact. That awful censorious voice rarely came out of my mouth.

  In general, I kept in mind Stanley Coren’s great all-purpose training maxim: Never give a dog anything for free. To get into the pasture, Rose had to lie down and stay. To move closer to the sheep, she had to lie down again. To stay with the sheep, she had to remain calm and focused. Her confidence grew with her experience. Yet it was also true, I had to admit, that some things she simply seemed to know without my ever teaching her. These instincts ran deep in her bloodlines. If I could shut up, she would figure it out.

  We got into a routine. Inside the pasture gate, I’d walk toward the small training pen and see what happened. Over several weeks, I noticed that by the time I reached the pen—and I tried not to look back at Rose or at the sheep—flock and dog were close behind. When I finally did look, it wasn’t a pretty sight: Rose was steering the sheep all over the pasture. But inexorably, she brought them to me. I gave this behavior a name—“take the sheep to the pen”—and the sheep and dog began to follow a trail they’d worn down through the snow. The process almost took care of itself after a while.

  Some trainers wouldn’t like this, I knew. They liked sheep moving in straight lines; they preferred traditional verbal commands. But Rose was doing what I needed her to do.

  Some of my own attachment issues, I was coming to realize, had to do with respect. People want their dogs to respect and obey them. I’d argue that it’s equally important that I respect my dogs.

  I respected Orson tremendously for his big heart, despite his grievous past. He had every right to be nasty and unforgiving; instead he’d responded to me with great affection. I respected his intensity, his intelligence and his devotion.

  I respected Rose for her energy and professionalism. She was a working dog through and through, a different creature from Orson or Homer. She wasn’t especially interested in being my intimate, my confidante. She kept tabs on me, popping up every hour or two to lick my hand as I wrote or talked on the phone or prepared meals. Then she’d wander off to move her toys around, chew a bone, monitor the sheep through the window.

  Orson was always next to me. He curled up beside me on the sofa when I watched TV, slept with his head on my shoulder at night.

  If Orson was my soulmate, Rose was the farm manager, my partner. Each took care of a vital part of me. Orson supported me in the most elemental, emotional way; Rose was already making it possible for me to stay on the farm, caring for my animals through a punishing winter. I believe they sensed my respect and returned the favor.

  As had happened with my Labs, Julius and Stanley, I felt I was forging an almost mystical relationship. Together we were beginning to find that lovely state of harmony and comfort that our two species can sometimes achieve. I was a lucky man.

  ORSON WAS PROGRESSING, YET IT WAS HARD TO IMAGINE HIM ever herding the way Rose already did. Still, the working dog is nothing if not ingenious about finding work. One night I got a telephone call from a farmer in North Hebron with a problem: he had a half-dozen cows that had been living in his back fields for years, rebuffing every attempt to bring them into the barn. They’d vi
rtually become wild animals. Now, about to start clearing his property for a new outbuilding, he needed to get them into the barn. He had heard from his friend Carr that I had two working dogs. Was that true?

  I said it was.

  “What do you do?” he asked.

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Oh.” He was disappointed.

  “But the dogs are really quite useful,” I added.

  “Oh, good,” he said, audibly brightening. Could I bring them over?

  A half hour later, I pulled off Route 31 and down a side road alongside a huge farm. Reg was sitting on a giant tractor, waiting for me. I could never let Rose loose on cattle; she could get kicked to death. But nothing made Orson happier than when a goose tried to peck at him, or a cow or sheep tried to kick. He danced, weaved, and nipped; if he wasn’t much of a shepherd, he was a master at domination.

  So we walked into Reg’s back field. Perhaps a quarter-mile away I saw a knot of cows staring warily down at us. I told Reg to open the barn door, then walked toward them with Orson. “Get ready,” I said, a command that always put him on red alert. He spun, then crouched. I pointed to the cows. “Go get ’em,” I yelled, slapping my leg.

  He took off like a fighter jet, straight through the meadow and into the woods behind the cows. His outruns, iffy around sheep, were magnificent around everything else. He came roaring in behind the cows, who bunched together protectively. One of them turned to go nose-to-nose with Orson—a mistake. Orson got in her face, yapping, and nipped at her nose. She bellowed, turned, and ran. The others followed, Orson in pursuit, barking and circling as the little herd hustled through the meadow and into the barn.

  It had taken perhaps ten minutes. Reg was impressed. He closed the barn door, then chugged his tractor over and handed me a crumpled ten-dollar-bill. I intuitively knew I ought to take it.

  “Good job,” he said. “That’s a good dog you have there. Anytime you want work, call me.” We headed home, feeling satisfied.

  Soon the word spread. People thought a man who wrote about dogs was worse than useless, but they grasped the power of the working dog.

  A woman in Salem had a “shy” sheep who was also wary of the barn. When we pulled up in the truck, Orson merely stuck his head out the open window; the sheep trotted into the barn before I could even open the door to let Orson out.

  A border collie in Rupert kept getting butted by an obstreperous ewe. Orson and Rose and I showed up. The ewe rushed out to challenge us, and Orson nipped while Rose took her backside. Shocked, the ewe retreated to the back of the flock and behaved, now “dog-broke” for good. Orson’s fame spread further, through sheepherding circles, and we “dog-broke” sheep in Hebron, Granville, and Cambridge. Just a few sessions, and the sight of any working dog would get such sheep to move. It was great work for Orson: no blood, no biting, no real training. Just his raw craziness could tame rams and convince ewes that obeying dogs was the wiser choice. Intimidating livestock was his calling.

  If we were dealing with a frightened dog, I’d have the owner leash the dog and walk behind us. The dogs couldn’t tell whether they or Orson were moving the sheep, but they usually concluded that they deserved the credit, so their confidence grew with each visit. Meanwhile, if this could be said of a dog, Orson seemed to be having a blast. We kept our standard fee at ten bucks, but also accepted pies or muffins.

  There are no trial ribbons for helping traumatized border collies or prizes for dog-breaking sheep. But I had a champion on my hands, no doubt. Every few weeks, I got a call that began, “Are you the dog guy?”

  Yes, I’d say, I’m the dog guy. And, as I proudly announced to Paula, after a few months Orson and I had earned eighty dollars, several pies, and three dozen free-range eggs.

  AS FOR ROSE: WINK WAS PRESCIENT. DURING A THAW, WHEN the temperatures briefly turned upward and some of the snow was melting, I saw the sheep clustered by a gate in the highest corner of the pasture. Rose and I clambered uphill to see what they were so interested in.

  There were a few clumps of grass and weeds appearing just beyond the fence at the very top of the hill. Perhaps the sun was warmer there, the patch sheltered somewhat from the wind. In any case, something green was visible for the first time in months, and the sheep wanted at it.

  I had never taken the sheep off my fenced property. If anything went wrong—sheep running off, Rose getting overwhelmed, stray dogs appearing—I’d have no way to restrain my herd, and little likelihood of getting it back intact.

  Still, I kept picturing the old print I had hanging in my office: a shepherd walking a path in the deep woods, his small flock behind him and a happy border collie behind the flock. I had dreamed of living that scene. I thought it might be years away—but maybe not. All I had to do was open the gate.

  It was gorgeous at the top of the pasture. The day was cold but the sun felt good, and the view was mesmerizing. I took a deep breath and unlatched the gate.

  The sheep rushed out, Rose right behind them. I instantly feared I’d made a stupid mistake. The sheep went skittering all over and Rose, excited by this new adventure, was confused, chasing one and then another.

  “C’mon, Rosie,” I exhorted. “Let’s round ’em up and take a walk.” She turned to me, head tilting as it does when she seems to be trying to figure something out. Then she sprang into action, circling the ewes into a tight cluster. I led the way, a walking stick in my right hand. Faith, I said to myself. Have faith. If I keep going, the sheep and the dog will end up behind me, just like they usually do.

  Which is just what happened, Rose playing the role she’d been rehearsing for all her young life. Had Orson been there, the sheep would likely be diving into the woods. But they stayed pretty calm around Rose. When they stopped to graze, she stopped. When one wandered too far from the group, she nudged it back into place. When I moved, she moved, and then they moved. She began “wearing,” walking a curving path back and forth behind the sheep to push them unobtrusively forward, though that was a technique I still hadn’t taught her.

  It was a triumphal procession. I was the man in the print, the shepherd, and she was my herder. For much of an hour, we walked through my neighbor Adam’s land and my own, stopping now and then so that the sheep could munch at patches of green that might not reappear for months—we hadn’t seen the last snowfall, I was sure.

  Everything about the setting was lovely and soothing—the view, the sweet, sharp air, the quiet of the woods, the sight of a dog who makes you understand why there are domesticated dogs in the first place.

  I regretted that Orson couldn’t join us, but I also accepted that he probably never would. Dogs pay the price for the awful things people sometimes do to them. There was part of him, I knew, that would never operate the way border collies were meant to function. Still, he had his other work, which he loved, and I couldn’t imagine there were many dogs living a better life.

  After a while, as the sun started to weaken and my leg to throb, Rose and I walked the flock back over the crest of the hill and down into our own pasture. I’d hardly said a word the whole time, but we both seemed to have read the same script, a sweet moment in the life of any dog and owner working together.

  Not bad, I thought. Score one for this terrific little dog, and another for the balding middle-aged Jersey guy with his odd entourage.

  On the first really warm day of spring, I decided, Rose and I were going to walk those sheep right down the road in front of my house, down Route 30, and right up to the doorstep of the Bedlam’s Corner Variety Store.

  Chapter Ten

  FAMILY CIRCLE

  BOTH OF US WERE LAUGHING, THE TALL, MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN with the picture of a Newfoundland puppy on her sweatshirt and I. Despite the fact that we were freezing, standing at the edge of an ice-covered pond outside a small town southeast of Buffalo on a raw, blustery day, we were happy.

  Neither of us could believe that we were there together. We had only distant memories of being together at all, even tho
ugh this was my sister. And we were about to score some huge points in her new neighborhood.

  Rose was in her classic border collie crouch—nose almost to the ground, right paw lifted, head tilted, eyes focused intently, awaiting my command.

  “There are sheep hiding out there,” I said quietly, gesturing to the thickly wooded hillside in front of us. “The sheep we saw last night. And we are going to get them.”

  At the mention of “sheep,” Rose knew more or less what we were there for. A working girl knows when there’s a job to do.

  It was late February. I’d had more laden moments in my life, but not many.

  Two weeks earlier, after many discussions with me, my sister and her tribe of Newfoundlands had moved from her home in a working-class Boston suburb to a five-acre tract with a ranch house above this pond.

  In Massachusetts, Jane and her big, gentle dogs—all rescues of one kind or another—had been confined by convention and local ordinances to a small fenced yard with daily treks to a nearby park. Here, in this bitter winter, they were joyously in their natural element. The healthier ones were romping through their much larger fenced yard; those with various ailments had a quiet environment in the finished basement.

  Finally, and at great cost, Jane had found a loving and peaceful family, and like some wise, powerful elder, she’d led them into the wilderness where they all—including her—could live undisturbed.

  Jane seemed as happy as the dogs. Even though I hadn’t seen her in many years, I couldn’t remember seeing so calm a look on her face.

  We’d been talking about a visit, but intended to wait until later in the spring, when the weather was more agreeable and I was finished with lambing. Her new place was a long drive from mine.

  But things had speeded up, taken a strange turn, the fates intervening with a clear message. Jane’s brand-new neighbors were up in arms over some wild sheep living on the edge of the pond.