by Jon Katz
This deference, I quickly discovered, also helped Rose. Orson was teaching the sheep and lambs to respect a dog; Rose, challenging the ewes calmly but firmly, was the dog who needed their respect. I noticed the butting and charging becoming less frequent, Rose growing more confident. I praised Orson relentlessly. If he couldn’t yet herd like a true border collie, he could help the process along.
AFTER ANOTHER WEEK OF NASTY WEATHER THAT SENT ME scampering out to the barn with heat lamps and hay at night, the winter at long last softened its grip on the farm.
On March 20, the day after the last lamb was born, Paula showed up, joking about her exquisite timing. She’d be here for a week, during her semester break, and I’ve rarely been happier to see anybody. Like me, Paula has never been particularly skilled in the domestic arts; unlike me, she is superbly well organized. In a day or so, the house looked like humans occupied it. I was eating home-cooked (or, at least, defrosted) meals, wore clothes that had been washed and dried. She prepared a Paula-like census of all the ewes and lambs, listing every relevant detail from birth date to quality of mothering. She trekked out to the barn to brush and feed Carol and Fanny, a bit neglected of late. She even helped hold a stricken ewe when Dr. Amanda had to correct another prolapse.
Paula’s very presence cheered me up and helped me believe in the possibility of spring. It was a joy to see her settle into the roomy old farmhouse between chores, camping in front of the woodstove, transcribing her taped interviews and editing her students’ papers.
By midweek, spring did in fact arrive. The temperature rose into the fifties and I felt comfortable outside for the first time in months. My frostbitten fingers stopped aching; the ice pack around the house and barns was receding; the mud began to dry. Paula reintroduced the notion, after my weeks of wolfing down bread on the way out to the barn, of the civilized breakfast. She cleared the syringes and lambing supplies from the kitchen table.
It was a pleasure to spend a little time chatting over our coffee, looking out the kitchen window at the ewes and lambs moseying through the pasture, framed by a donkey or two.
As March rushed by and Paula returned to New Jersey and her work, things began to quiet. I got to sleep through the night. The lambing crises became less frequent.
I did, to my real sorrow, lose Minnie and her twins. Weakened by age and infection, pregnancy and delivery, she stopped eating. I tried to tempt her with grain, but she seemed to have lost interest. I was sad but not shocked to find her dead in the barn one morning, and this time, I couldn’t revive her. Gert and Leo, never very hardy despite my supplemental bottles, didn’t survive her for long. It was a grim warning against feeling Godlike.
So our census dropped to thirteen ewes, and seventeen lambs (including the absent but healthy Murphy, who was settling in nicely at Sheila’s place down the road).
But moms and babies were beginning to nibble at the early grass; bales of hay were no longer disappearing at the winter’s frantic rate. Birdsong returned to the trees around the house. I allowed myself a little pride. I’d had help—from Anthony, the vets, the friends advising me and cheering me on, my sister, and Paula. But true to my original covenant, I’d done most of the work myself. Coping with my strange new responsibilities, I’d learned what I had to learn, done what I had to do.
I could hardly believe how much I suddenly knew about placentas, prolapses, milk and teats, tails and tags, and animals’ instinctual struggle to survive.
And to help others survive. I saw some great moms when I walked through the pasture now. The donkeys, always accepting and generous, didn’t seem to mind sharing their barn. No dog could have worked harder than Rose or been of greater assistance to a beleaguered human. As for my brooding Orson, as always an emotional pillar, the great instincts of his breed had risen to the occasion when the need arose.
I had assembled a peaceable kingdom, and how I loved caring for it. It touched the deepest parts of me, whole and broken. If there is a link between our dogs and our humanity, there is also a link between our humanity and the care we provide to creatures that depend on us.
Early on, I’d planned to get rid of half my sheep after lambing season. I’d keep a small flock for herding, sell the rest to local farmers. But I was having second thoughts. It would be tough for me to separate these lambs from their mothers and their birthplace.
I could just hear my neighbors snort. Farm animals aren’t pets, they’d growl. No point in feeding one more sheep than you need. Just money down the drain.
But when you’ve pulled a lamb out of its mother, when you’ve carried it into the barn, you have a different point of view. At least, I did.
Chapter Twelve
DOG DAYS III
AT THE START OF APRIL THE NIGHTS WERE ONCE AGAIN COLD enough to encrust the water tubs with ice and cover the pasture with frost. I had to haul out the de-icers and stick them back in the water. With a pitchfork, I stirred the hay to bring the dry stuff up for the animals.
At least the spring sun was strong, unlike its winter predecessor. It quickly spread over the meadow and the barns, warming the still-brown grass, drying things out. The soaked ground gave off a continuous sighing, sucking sound as if cold were bubbling up from far below. The roads were still blanketed with sand and salt and bore scars from the Highway Department’s relentless day-and-night plowing.
The donkeys and sheep loved to catch those first morning rays. They were sun worshipers. It was pleasant to look out the window and see them lying down, half-dozing, at ease in the sunlight. For me, these moments were the saving grace of sheep.
Seeing how much Carol loved the spring, I was beginning to understand how rough the winter had been for her. Next fall, Anthony has a plan to build her a heated shed in the barn, maybe with the same lamps that warmed the lambs. He also means to build a south-facing shed for the sheep, so that even if they don’t want to come in from the cold, they can stay dry and out of the wind.
The dogs, freer to follow their usual pursuits now that the lambs were rapidly getting bigger, seemed fond of the longer days and yielding earth, too.
ROSE WAS NOT THE SAME DOG WHO HAD ARRIVED IN OCTOBER. She was a young lady now, responsible, mature. I was filled with admiration and respect for her diligence and work ethic.
Her energy remained breathtaking, and her sense of responsibility had only grown. By dawn, she was already scooting from window to window upstairs to scope things out in the pasture. Rose reminded me of those NFL coaches you see pacing the sidelines at football games, their clipboards full of charts and plays, earphones picking up invisible chatter, always thinking, scheming, reacting. Rose was preparing her herding plays long before we went out to the sheep.
I believed Rose had a secret plan for the farm, a detailed map in her head that showed exactly where all her ewes and lambs and humans ought to be. Though I was nominally the herder, I wasn’t privy to the map. Herding trainers all said you needed a plan, but it seemed to me that I didn’t, as long as Rose had such a good one. My job was mostly to latch and unlatch gates and tell her where I’d like the sheep to go that day. The rest was up to her.
There were moments with Rose when I felt like a ticket-holder at my own show, lucky to be there, in awe of what I was seeing, but incapable of completely understanding the nuances of the production. Some herders talked about the importance of leadership, of directing and guiding the dog. I wish. Most of the time I did what Rose suggested, and it worked out fine.
Her day now began around seven A.M., as she and Orson and I took our first walk. Our walks were getting more exciting. In deep winter, there was little to smell, no holes to dig, nothing to chase. Now chipmunks, field mice, rabbits, and deer, to name a few, had reemerged to keep the dogs occupied as they dashed here and there in an effort to organize things. Border collies are heroic in their ambition, but doomed to fail. They simply cannot position every moving thing in the world where they want it to be.
After our walk, we came back to the farmhouse for brea
kfast, the first of many daily phone yaks with Paula, and a cup of coffee to help jump-start me for the morning chores. They were easier than in winter, but not easy.
Orson stayed behind for this round. Eager for the beef jerky he knew was coming, he was usually already waiting in his crate.
Rose had the drill down, too. By now, she knew the boots I used for herding, the sweatshirt I wore to ward off the morning chill as we headed for the barn, the pocketknife I carried to cut open the hay bales. Deploying any of these items had her sitting by the back door in a flash, staring at me impatiently.
She was my partner in anything relating to sheep, donkeys, barns, and pastures. Orson’s turf was the rest of my life. It was a good division; both seemed happy with their work.
Outside, Rose and I went first to the former pig barn, the small, askew outbuilding where I stored the feed. Big bucket of feed and corn for the sheep, until there was enough grass growing for them. Smaller bucket of oats for Carol and Fanny. Rose, the centurion, scoured the barn for any signs of mice or the two barn cats still living there.
I sometimes glimpsed them skittering around the barns at night when I came out for my final check; otherwise, they remained invisible. Unlike the one that attacked Rose, these two made no trouble and were welcome. I occasionally left a can of tuna fish open on a ledge in the pig barn; it was always empty in the morning.
I carried the feed buckets outside, unlatched the barnyard gate. I put Rose in a stay; she waited, stiff and alert, until I told her, “Go get the sheep.”
It was a statement of how far we’d come that I no longer paid much attention as she tore up the hill to wherever the ewes and lambs had gathered. Without fail, Rose and the sheep were heading down the hill within minutes. When they reached the trough and started crunching, Rose positioned herself between the sheep and the barn and lay down, on guard.
For weeks during the winter, chaos erupted after the sheep finished their feed and then headed for the donkeys’ oats. Almost daily, a sheep would plow into my legs and topple me. It was hard enough to stay upright on the icy slope, impossible with sheep crashing around. Fanny and Carol were too gentle to fight the marauders off and always backed away while I cursed. Rose didn’t like it.
So she began sitting between the sheep trough and the donkeys’ feed buckets, and now woe to the sheep who even looked our way. I went about my chores while she kept order.
Each day, I walked around to the main barn’s back door, slid it open, and hauled out two bales of hay. Rose hopped up the step and into the big drafty barn and chased out the napping pigeons.
I dragged the hay to the feeder, Rose patrolling ahead to keep the sheep from rushing at me and the hay; then I cut the baling twine, which I wrapped around a fencepost, and shook the bales into the feeder. (Farmers all have cascades of baling twine around their fenceposts. I’ve adopted the custom without ever figuring out why.) The sheep came up and started crunching. Rose never bothered them while they were eating; she sat regally off to the side, carefully observing everybody’s movements, including mine.
This was usually when Rose and I had our first herding session of the day. When I moved toward the sheep and said, “Let’s go,” she sprang into action and circled the herd, gathering them together, nudging wanderers and slow movers along. Silently, I picked someplace to walk—the training pen, the paddock, the path over the hill—and set out. The sheep followed me, she followed them, keeping the flock together. Rose has a tendency to circle around to the front, slowing their progress, so I sometimes held out my hand and yelled “Back” to steer her to the rear of the flock.
I’d never had a dog like Rose before, nor a relationship like this. It was a strange thing to say, for someone who believed in not blurring the differences between dogs and humans, but I couldn’t help thinking of Paula when I watched Rose on the job. Like my wife, Rose was a working girl, focused and businesslike, picky about the people she liked, supportive even when skeptical, devoid of guile. And I couldn’t exist without her.
Rose had been a gamble in lots of ways. Orson and I were firmly attached when she’d arrived, much of our work with each other well under way, so there was little risk to him. But Carolyn had warned that a new puppy could have serious consequences for Homer. His anxiety, avoidant behavior, and herding problems might never be resolved if an energetic new puppy entered the picture. And as it happened, they weren’t.
A new puppy is always an adventure. I loved adventures. Still, I’d never imagined Rose would be the dog she was. For one thing, she and Orson were crazy about each other from the first. He tried all of his domineering, possessive tricks, and she just blew him off.
Nothing stymied or bothered Rose for very long, and, as my ewes were learning, nothing intimidated her for long, either. After a few months, Orson had given up trying to push her around. In fact, I was astonished to see Rose tease Orson into playing tug-of-war one spring morning. Each grabbed one end of a rope toy and they raced off together in ever widening circles around the house. Rose had opened up even this intense creature.
I admitted, as I watched them romp, to feeling a bit triumphant. Orson had grown almost Lablike in his sweetness and obedience; Rose had thrived on our home schooling; I had survived the winter. But anybody who loves dogs knows that life with them is filled with unpredictability.
ONE DAY EARLY IN APRIL I WAS TAKING THE DOGS FOR THEIR final evening walk, a routine and simple affair. Usually I stood by the back door, and gazed up at the sky while the dogs rushed up the hill, did their business, and came in for the night.
We’d followed this routine for months without any kind of trouble, without my even paying much attention. Rose ran around more than Orson, but she never left my sight or sound. And her recall was terrific; from her first day, I never said “Come” without tossing a treat on the ground; now all I had to do was yell, “Rosie, come!” and she would tear down the path or through the woods toward me. She never strayed far, anyway; border collies like to keep an eye on the humans who bring them to sheep.
On this cool night, just a few days before my first longish visit home in months—I planned to stay four or five days—I opened the door, strolled alongside the house, and shined my torch out into the pasture to see the sheep’s reflecting eyes. They were way up on the hill, their lambs huddled near them.
Orson drifted back to the door. No Rose. I called her once, twice. Nothing.
After months of walking, herding, lambing, cuddling, I knew this dog. She’d never run off or failed to come within a few moments of being called.
I waited for five or ten minutes, my desire to do something growing along with my anxiety. I walked outside, yelled, pointed the high-powered flashlight everywhere I could see. I took Orson out and we trekked through the brush and woods and up the dark hill. I blew the whistle I sometimes used during herding training and called her name.
I told myself she’d be back any second. When I called Paula, just to let her know I might be outside for a while, I said Rose was probably chasing some woodchuck into its hole. I didn’t want to take this seriously. But as the minutes ticked by, my lame effort to stave off terror faltered. I started to think about the coyotes and bobcats and even—rumor had it—a mountain lion that prowled these woods.
I’d heard more than one horror story about a dog attacked by coyotes in a backyard, about dogs who ran off and got trapped in the nested strands of barbed wire left all over the woods from long-abandoned farms. Sadly, their bodies were usually found much later. The thought of Rose cornered by some animal or trapped in a ditch or wire chewed at me.
I ran up and down the dark road shouting, flashing my light and blowing the whistle.
I thought of calling someone for help. Anthony would have roared over with Arthur and the nuclear lights mounted on his Toyota pickup. But I clung to the notion she would pop out of the woods any second.
I could already hear the Country Bullshit: “Aw, hell, what a nervous Flatlander you are! Dogs around here run off a
ll the time. She’ll be back.”
Country wisdom is often right, and a healthy counterpoint to Flatlander anxieties. But for all the dogs that come back, there are plenty that don’t, hit by cars on those dark dirt roads, killed by predators, lost in the vast woods. As I often told my neighbors, just because somebody is anxious doesn’t mean his fears are always groundless.
Rose was a small, intense, and impulsive creature, whose confidence sometimes outweighed her common sense. She also had ferocious predatory instincts, boundless energy, and insatiable curiosity—all potentially dangerous qualities.
After two hours of walking up and down and shouting, I was wiped out and hoarse. Orson and I got into the farm truck and chugged up the road. He was peering ahead through the windshield; I was blowing the whistle, hitting the horn, shouting, “Rose! Rosie!” out the window. About a half-mile along, I thought I heard some barking.
I turned the truck to shine the headlights up the hill and didn’t notice the deep drainage ditch to my left. In ten seconds the truck slid smoothly off of the road, tilted at an angle, and sank up to its fenders in thick mud—probably the only thing that kept it from rolling all the way over. Pushing the door open with some difficulty, I crawled out and saw I was mired in muck over the tires.
Orson and I began the long slog back down the dark road. I saw one or two lights down driveways, but it was getting late, not a good time to be knocking on strangers’ doors. As I walked down the hill I kept calling out for Rose, my heart sinking.
Clearly, something was wrong. You could hear a call for miles in this valley and she had always responded instantly. Something had hurt or trapped her.
I couldn’t shake off my visions of her struggling in barbed wire or running for her life.
Rose was still a puppy; she weighed only thirty-three pounds. She was used to pushing around our bovine sheep, who sometimes butted or resisted her but rarely gave her any serious trouble. She would have no chance against a pack of coyotes or a bobcat. But if she was all right, why hadn’t she come, why didn’t she respond to the whistle that always brought her flying back to me? Why hadn’t I been more vigilant? Why didn’t I call her five minutes earlier?