I’m doing it again. Pretending to be Jane Goodall… you know, if she got a herd of sheep. I was born this way, to the dismay of those who thought daydreaming about animals was an immature waste of time. I guess I showed them, still doing it on the far side of seventy. Jane Goodall gave generations of girls like me validation. I like to think we carry her forward, forever with us. Maybe even watching sheeps with me now.
Some animal math: Dogs were the first animal to be domesticated somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago. Quite a shared history over eons of time. You could call dogs our greatest success, but I bet it had more to do with the dogs than our miraculous training skills. Dogs adapted to humans because at our hearts, we are both predators. We chase what we want.
Surprisingly, the second animal to be domesticated, some 4,000 years later, was sheep. They were valued sources of meat, milk, and wool. Sheep herds were a sign of wealth. I try to keep that in mind.
The earliest working dogs were livestock guardian dogs, but herding soon followed, 10,000 years ago. Or, if it’s easier to get your head around, that was 8,000 BC. Moving sheep was an important job, as humans moved on foot. Horses were not domesticated until 4,500 years later. Mister rolls his eyes. He is an old soul, so nothing is new to him.
Look at Jolene, my tiny wolf-dog. We are doing what our ancestors have done for millennia. Pretty humbling when you think about it.
The ducks are outside now, with a heated house. They’re at three-quarter feather, with areas of wispy old fuzz that make them look a little hung over all the time. They can spot when I’m carrying peas from halfway across the yard. But if I’m coming to change the water, they cringe into a corner, making themselves tight and small and too quiet. They are flighty with no wings to speak of. When I move away, they stride toward me, loudly ordering more peas. They don’t trust me. They like the peas. We’ll work it out.
The sheep come every time I yodel out, Sheeps! Eddie comes at a trot, and the ewes follow. We move in a tight clump, as if my shadow is their safe place. Yet, I am not allowed to touch them. Not at all. They don’t trust me. They know humans eat them. It’s common sense, inherited down through generations.
Beyond personality, ducks and sheep are prey animals. Survival means stick together. Run for your life, over anything in your way. The method that hasn’t evolved much, but it works for the majority. True of horses, too. Humans find it more convenient to forget this sometimes.
Sheep owners all tell me how smart sheep are, and I agree. And so are the ducks. We don’t always recognize it since prey animals use their intelligence for survival, rather than pleasing us. Putting their needs above our desires doesn’t make them stupid. Ask any cat.
Are we even measuring intelligence correctly? Notice how in every case, we judge animals by how much they accommodate us? Horses drop their heads and exhale.
It’s been sploot weather, Mister would like you to know. Belly flat to the floor, taking in any bit of cool he can find. Mister is doing all-day meditation these dog days of summer. Heat makes him spiritual. Jolene tries to cajole him into playing. Then the bitey face gets real.
It’s a heatwave. At this altitude, it feels like the broil setting. Two of the sheeps have full wool coats. Sometimes hair sheep don’t shed out and need to be sheared. Although I’ve clipped llamas for over twenty years, sheep are very different animals. I remembered shearing time from my childhood farm. From my five-year-old vantage point, a gang of men appeared one day. As if on a conveyor belt, a line of sheep arrived and were stripped in minutes, each shearer doing around two hundred sheep a day. I remember the stressed sheep being flipped, all the bloody nicks covered by blood stop powder. But in a remarkable moment of human intelligence, rather than insisting I could do it better, I decided to hire it done.
The American Sheep Industry Association has a shearer directory. I found a local member, and we set a time. The young couple came, and I immediately liked them. They raise Icelandic sheep and have been shearing for others for three years. They work as equals, taking turns shearing. The longer it takes, the more stress, so they got right to business, keeping their voices low. After quickly shearing the two ewes with full coats, they touched up the rest of the herd for good measure. Efficient and conscientious. They are trying to make a life out-of time, too. I hope they succeed.
The only drama happened before the shearers arrived. They warned me they could not shear if the sheep were wet. Afternoons are explosive here, and as their arrival time drew near, the sky went indigo dark. The sheep were in their pen, but I needed to lock them inside their shelter to stay dry. I grabbed a rake to make my arm longer and entered their pen. I felt some raindrops. When I tried to move them, the sheeps ran in all directions. The more I tried, the more nervous they became. What a mess. If only I had a trained herding dog. The wind was kicking up.
Could Jolene fake it? I walked to the house and brought her on a long leash. A physical connection gives her a bit of extra confidence when Edgar Rice Burro lowers his head and glares at her. She’s starting to be more comfortable coming to the barn, but then an intense thunderclap and the horses bolted. She was on my heel, but still walking forward. When she saw the sheeps, Jolene gave a tiny hello bark. Then all eyes were on her, and the sheeps stood in a line facing her. We went in. I said, go by, and she took an arc to the right. One sheep left the group, and Jolene darted to push the ewe back. It took a couple of tries, but the sheep went into the stall and I closed the gate.
Jolene is building perception. The instinct to keep the herd together comes naturally to her, but she also has an instinct to chase. That’s where I come in, helping to balance her instincts with her loyalty to my voice. It’s a game of Mother, May I? Two steps forward. Now wait. As intelligent as sheeps are, a dog must be quicker, smarter, but not threaten the sheep too much. It’s a tightrope. Jolene beamed, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
Chanting her song, I took her back to the house, but by the time I got back to the barn, the sheeps had broken out again. One more time the leash went on, and this time Jolene pranced to their pen. She had it done in one and stayed with me until the shearers got here.
Sheeps are geniuses on the one subject of survival. Dogs have to match wits. Jolene and I are not perfect. We make mistakes. The sheeps let us know we’re idiots. And they would know. I tell Jolene we are floundering toward greatness. After all, that was a thousand pounds of sheep, obedient to eighteen pounds of dog. Also, animal math.
When the shearers arrived a few minutes later, Jolene greeted them with wiggles, and the woman said, more than once, she’s so cute.
Jolene and I thought, that’s not what the sheeps say.
…
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