To Herd or Not to Heard

*I’m a full-time horse trainer who has written about horses (here) since 2010. My dogs think it’s their turn now.* 

Just across the west pasture, Pikes Peak shows an early September snow. Here on the prairie, we hit the low forties overnight. The horses are growing winter coats. The sheep are getting hairier, as hair sheep do. I wore my first socks of the season and grabbed my barn coat for the early muck. It was astonishingly filthy and had been that way for months.  One day at a time and at some point, the coat has unrecognizable substances dried in months ago. A lesser woman would have turned up her nose. But I slid into it, promising I’d wash it sometime soon. I might have said that last fall. Sometimes my intentions are as unrecognizable as horse snot.

Last Saturday, Jolene and I went to an early Halloween Sniff n Go. It’s just for fun, which may sound quaint, but I’ve never seen so many scary things in my life. It was a complicated scent work course with multiple hides, but think haunted house. The helpers guide you and offer suggestions. Each room is absolutely stuffed with spider webs, coffins, and skeletons draped on up-turned chairs and tables. No happy jack-o’-lanterns. They must have hit the day-after sales for years. Jolene and I went in costume, of course, because we’re the kind that does that.

Jolene would like you to know there were plastic dog skeletons of several breeds, and she spent a lot of time eyeballing each one. She was fine with the skulls in shrouds with shining red eyes. Dead humans were ignored. But the dogs required a slow approach and unhurried scrutiny. We timed out before finding all in the first room, but did better in the next two rooms.  The finale was a huge room with a total of seven hides. The kind of room that only very elite dogs search. My choice if the lights were on, and if Jolene wore her leash. I said off for both before I thought it through. She’s the color of a shadow, and I couldn’t see her. Times like this, hearing would be a real help. Jolene, not a bit thrown off by her rubber werewolf head, says, pick up the pace, Blake. She calls me that when she’s being a tough girl.

It’s been a quiet work week. Too many have been lately. I fear horse trainers are a luxury compared to buying hay in this economy. I did a thorough cleaning of the duck pen. Don’t ask. Then the goat pen. I spent a morning wrestling snow fence into a gate. We’re beginning to herd through obstacles now, as if sheep have steering.

With being gone, we hadn’t worked the sheep in almost three weeks. I thought Jolene might be a little timid. I was wrong. I had to look up the term for what she did. It was her first “outrun and fetch.” It’s when she goes and gets the sheep and brings them to me. While I stand there with my mouth open.

Just one hitch. When I took her off lead and gave her the usual stay command, she was halfway to the sheep before the word was passed my teeth. But that outrun! This girl and her sheep! She was quick but out of nipping distance. Then she settled in and moved the sheep as I asked her, away and go by. Flawless.

I foolishly bragged about her in our next lesson. The woman, who is not our instructor because she isn’t taking new clients, smiled at Jolene. And then took me to task on that stay command. Don’t take your eye off your dog, she drilled. I repeatedly messed up. Eventually, Jolene was on one side of a shed while I was on the other. Yes, it sounded impossible to me, too. Then we moved sheep into a small pen with a shelter in the middle. That means half the time you can’t see the sheep or your dog. As I continued to flounder, I recognized that my previous concept of that simple four-letter word was woefully underfed.

Jolene, who the sheep think of as a full-blown wolf, tends to stay in a lawn chair when the ducks are out. For their part, every time I come out of the back door, the ducks raise a quacking ruckus. If I walk over to their pen, they go silent and run into their house. Only to come out and scream at me as I walk away.  I tell Jolene I’m confused too.

The only way I can get her to follow them is to keep her on a leash. Not that she would attack them, just that she’d stay in that lawn chair otherwise. For now, we practice the dreaded stay command when she is a few feet from the ducks. Jolene says, don’t trust ’em.

The ducks are equally hard to get out of their pen as they are to bring back in. Zero sense of direction. Impossible to steer. Eventually I wrangled Jolene to my side. Only a few more steps when two of them turned around, stuck their necks straight towards Jolene, and menaced her with beaks wide open. Jolene flinched. She says, evil ducks.

Then the crazy thing happened. The ducks stopped, stood close, and employed their invisibility cape. Perhaps it works for other ducks, but we could see them. I picked up two at a time and put them in the pen. No one even flapped, not those in the pen or under the cape. Mister believes there was an episode about ducks back in the early days of Star Trek.

Meanwhile, we have an unexpected herder in the barn. His name is Bhim, a miniature horse about the size of a sheep. I’ve never had a glimmer of control over him. Bhim went from a hoarding situation to a rescue, to me for halter-training fourteen years ago. I was failing when Edgar Rice Burro asked if he could have a horse. It would have been hypocritical to say no, not that the rescue could have ever adopted Bhim out. I finally sent off his DNA this year and found out that he is extremely inbred. He also has a pathological fear of people, but he’s not afraid of these sheep. And they’re off.

It wouldn’t matter, but I bring the sheep through Edgar Rice Burro and Bhim’s pen to get to theirs. The plan was that Edgar would protect the sheep from coyotes. Not Bhim.

Change is when things go sideways. There’s how you plan it and how it turns out. Ducks were supposed to be easy. Bhim was supposed to act like a horse. And I hoped for a crumb of logic.

Jolene is sleeping on the bench next to me as I write. It’s late, and she silently lets out tiny farts. They smell like something from the dirt cellar under my childhood farmhouse. Not something spoiled, just something a bit pickled. I want to tweak her cheek and say, bless your heart.

Mister gave me that look that says, I’m the literary elite dog. He can smell them too, but as toots come and go, Mister says, it could be worse.

For all the changes that I dread, I love the change from spring to summer and fall to winter. There’s a random hint, then a few days later, a total shift in the atmosphere. The hawks return to the prairie, and the season has changed.

That’s the way with change. You don’t choose the time or get what you thought you wanted. Instead, you eventually get something better. I am doubting those ducks right now, but it’s early.

…  #noai #humanart

An audio version of this essay is available to subscribers who receive two podcasts a week on Substack.

Find Anna Blake and The Gray Mare Podcast on Substack(opens in new tab) or BlueSky social media. Contact me directly at annablake.com(opens in new tab). #deletefacebook

My books include three creative nonfiction books, two memoirs, and two poetry books. Available at all online booksellers, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and signed copies from me. Please consider leaving a rating or review.

Join us at The Barn School,(opens in new tab) our social and equine educational site, with member sharing and our infamous Happy Hour. Everyone’s welcome. For specific horse training advice, search 1500 essays archived on my website. Want more? Become a sustaining member, a “Barnie.(opens in new tab)” Subscribe to our online group and join the best bunch of like-minded horse people anywhere.

Ride for a new brand. Find our Relaxed & Forward and Undomesticated Women swag at Zazzle.

Women Aging Cantankerously