Master Class

A shepherdess from Nebraska came to teach at my herding instructor's place today. Not a powdered-wig-and-roses, Watteau-style shepherdess, but a white-haired, weathered-faced lady with a gravelly voice and a herding resume as long as Wolfie's tail.

After eight lessons, I must confess I still have little idea of what herding is about. It involves too many moving parts—the sheep, the dog, the instructor, and my own clueless body. My difficulty comes from the fact that, by the time we analyze who did what and who went where, everybody is in a different place and doing something else.

The basic premise of herding is that a good dog already knows what to do—you just need to give him a little guidance. That is certainly true in Wolfie's case. I've been told over and over that he has a superb inborn sense of how to handle sheep. It's the “little guidance” from me that is the problem.

Take today. The sheep are in a corner of the pen. Wolfie is on a down-stay in front of them as the guru from Nebraska explains some finer point to my instructor and me. The guru is barely even facing Wolfie, but at one point she interrupts herself: “You see that? He just got the sheep to turn.” Wolfie is still lying down, he's done nothing that I can tell, but by golly, suddenly the sheep are facing the other way. “He didn't want them to go in THAT direction,” the guru explains, “so he just moved his head a little.”

My dog moving his head a little, six sheep changing direction—this is the new planet on which I am learning to tread.

Sometimes during a lesson my teacher takes over, and then I can see him--my own Wolfie whom a raised from a floppy-eared pup--serious and determined, working those sheep, putting them where they need to be.

What have I done to deserve his? I fed him well, loved him dearly, took him to obedience classes which he found a little boring and did not excel in. But obedience is a long way from herding, where he's thinking on his own, making decisions, acting responsibly. I don't know where Wolfie gets what my father used to call (relating to violin playing) his “conditions,” the sense of tone and timing that cannot be taught.

I lean on the fence, just another stage mother. How did I end up with this herding dog? I was only looking for a pet—a smart pet, of course, but just a pet...

A sheep breaks away and Wolfie firmly leads it back. Good boy!

By the time the hour is over, he's shooting me looks. I can tell that he's mentally exhausted, like a teenager who's just taken the SATs. “Let's get in the car!” I don't have to say it twice. Panting, he lies down in the back of the Subaru, then naps most of the day at home. But for the rest of the day he sticks close to me, lies down at my feet, looks me in the eye. “Thanks,” I can hear him saying, “thanks for letting me do that thing with the sheep.”

Dog, Woman, Sheep

Wolfie and I had our weekly herding lesson today. Or rather, he got to do what he wants and knows to do, and I tried to learn to guide him, and then get out of his way.

In many ways, these lessons are the highlight of our week. Addicted as I am to them, however, I find them challenging.

Here's how it goes. We drive some twenty minutes to Sarah's place (Sarah is our instructor). I let Wolfie out of the car ONLY after he makes eye contact with me—which can take a while since he needs to take in all the smells that have settled over the place since the last lesson.

We greet Sarah, then go through the sit, make eye-contact, release ritual through a series of gates until we get to the pen where the sheep are. We're talking only three or four sheep here--not herds of hundreds--wise and experienced and not easily rattled.

I take my place at the head of the sheep, who are wide and woolly, and who for some reason seem to want to follow me (so unlike goats!). I start walking them around the perimeter of the pen, then tell Wolfie to “walk up.” With Sarah holding a long leash, Wolfie “puts pressure” on the sheep from behind. If he puts too much “pressure” by following too quickly or too closely, I'm supposed to stop him and make him sit.

How am I supposed to know when he's putting on too much pressure, if I'm facing away from him? By the way the sheep act. How am I supposed to make him sit from a distance, when all he wants to do is run after the sheep? By sheer force of will, power of personality, intensity of intention.

If you haven't been around sheep a lot, it's not easy to discern the moment at which they “feel the dog” and alter their pace. Nor is it easy to get your sheep-obsessed dog to drop to a sit at twenty paces. My first obedience class was somewhere in the late 1970s. My last one was a couple of months ago. During all those intervening decades I heard “if your dog doesn't comply with a command instantly, go and enforce it,” i.e., walk up to him and MAKE him sit.

But in herding, if you walk back to your dog to enforce a “sit,” you are abandoning your sheep, which makes your dog want to rush in and take care of them himself.

The only option for me, then, is, the moment the sheep alter their gait, to whirl around and, calmly and masterfully, project such laser-like energy with my command that Wolfie will instantly drop into a sit. (The reward for a herding dog who sits, BTW, is neither treats nor pats, but a “walk up” command to go after his beloved sheep again.)

In desperation, I thought I would try visualizing Wolfie in a sit as I gave the command. I'd read and heard about visualizing your dog doing whatever you wanted him to do, but had never thought it as efficient as a good “snap and release” on the leash.

This morning, having nothing to lose, I decided to try it. “Sit!” I said, while staying with my sheep. I pictured Wolfie sitting ten feet behind us, and by golly, he did. “Walk up,” I said, and started walking with the sheep. The minute they began to speed up, I whirled around and said “sit!” to the thundering Wolfie. Just in time, I remembered to visualize, and he sat.

This worked amazingly well for a while. Then I started to lose it, and inevitably, so did he. Something happened to my focus, my concentration, my will. I got distracted by the sheep, the sweat running down my face, the bugs. It wasn't working anymore. My mind was mush. It was time to quit. Sarah nicely got Wolfie to drive the sheep into a corner so we could tell him “that'll do!” and praise and pet him, and the lesson was over.

I came home exhausted. I couldn't understand why. The exercises we'd been doing in the relatively small pen were not physically challenging. It must have been the mind part, the visualization, the part that made Wolfie do what I wanted him to do without an outward sign. The weird part.

Why did it work so well, and why did it take so much out of me?

November 17, 2008 "Sustainable Fun"

Last winter was an especially cold and icy one in Vermont, and a plague of cabin fever raged across the land. “Never again!” my yoga teacher/herbalist/painter/gardener friend and I swore when it was over. (My friend's name is Dona Friedman, and you can see her work at artistseyestudio.com)

When the days started getting shorter this fall we began casting about for ways to keep ourselves and our friends lively and amused in the dark days ahead. We wanted something easy, basically an excuse to get together with people we like on a regular basis and with a minimum of fuss.

Just about everyone who moves to Vermont—or is born here and decides to stay—has an interesting story. People around here invent their lives and themselves in the best existentialist sense of the word. They blow glass, raise sheep, dry herbs, give massages, run for office...and there's never enough time to hear their stories when you meet them at a party or the post office.

Why not, my friend and I said, ask one of these interesting friends and neighbors to talk informally about his or her life and passions, and invite other friends and neighbors to drop in and listen? In a word, why not have a Salon?

So we did. Yesterday, Sunday, was the first one. There were nine people in all. Joanne Smith told us of her transformation from knitting aficionada in Connecticut to serious shepherd in Vermont. She was eloquent and witty, and told us amazing and intimate things about sheep. She let us feel the soft, lustrous yarns spun from the prize-winning wool of her Romneys. She spread out a sheepskin that would have made Jason and the Argonauts set sail for Vermont. She told us about Toby, her sheepdog, more of a friend and colleague than a dog. (You can see Joanne's farm, her sheep, and Toby at bearmountainfarm.com)

Joanne's Wool

We drank wine, ate cheese, asked Joanne questions and talked about whatever came into our heads. There was a fire going in the stove, and our little living room rang with talk and laughter.

It was way more fun than a movie, or a play, or a cocktail party. It was a salon, i.e., people turning to each other for stimulation, companionship, and that mysterious something that humans have been getting, since time immemorial, from sitting around a fire, talking.