Kizzy Ann Stamps by Jeri Watts Page B

helped people with herding for a long, long time. Just like people, there are some who stand out, and one of the most famous is Shep. He was a border collie who amazed Scotland with his talent combined with a demeanor that allowed him to work easily for his master.
    Shag also has a good attitude, at least for working with me. She doesn’t, however, take to just everybody, so that could work against her in a trial, which is what the border-collie world has. Yes, it turns out that something like dog shows exists here too. You can win the big prize or the second place and so forth, but it’s not about how your dog
looks.
It’s about how your dog
works.
This seems the better place for Shag and me. Still, I think the dog may need to take commands from a judge, and Shag is none too happy about taking commands from anyone but Mr. McKenna or me.
    “I’ve written a list of commands for you,” he announced one day. He held a walking stick, and he had a pink tinge to his face as he shoved the paper into my hands. “It’s written in the language of sheepdogs and shepherds. You’ll need to be learning that. Learn it by heart — once you and Shag know them together, you’ll truly be a pair.” He said this as he marched toward the distant meadow, filled with his white woolly sheep.
    I looked the list over, and, Miss Anderson, I have to tell you my eyeballs clear jumped. “This is a bunch of nonsense. What does ‘go by’ mean? And ‘outrun’?”
    Mr. McKenna gripped his walking stick so tight his knuckles turned white as his hair. “The language of dogs. The language of Scotland. And I’ll appreciate you saying nothing negative regarding it.” He stared straight ahead, his gait eating up the ground to the meadow.
    I was trotting to keep up. I’ll have to admit that it is hard for me to apologize. But apologize I did. “I’m sorry. It’s just I don’t understand.”
    He smiled at me, a crack in his demeanor for one split second. “We all have things to learn, girlie. You’re not alone in that.”
    He cleared his throat and explained as we neared the gate to the meadow. “‘Go by’ means you want your dog to circle to the left of the herd and drive them to the right a bit. We need you and Shag to work almost instinctively, but I do say
almost,
Kizzy Ann. Because the border collie has instincts closely tied to the wolf’s, and sheep killing is an instinct we never want a border collie to experience. It is hard to bring them back once they’ve been to the edge. A dog like that has no place then on a farm, and without good work, your dog is lost.”
    I looked at Shag, her easy glide beside him, her ears perked, alert to the sheep, and her fur almost standing on end, so ready was she to get to work.
    We spent hours, then, Miss Anderson, hours having me recite a command and Mr. McKenna leading Shag through the action that corresponded.
    Now Shag and I are figuring out the basic commands. I know how to send her left, right, and one of the possible ways to get her to bring in the sheep. It’s called an outrun, going in either direction out and around the sheep, to get behind the flock. The trick is for Shag not to go straight at them, but to move in an arc so she ends up behind the sheep. At this point in my learning, I need to try to work with Shag so the flock stays between the handler and the dog. Mr. McKenna says that doesn’t always happen, and he also says the shape of the outrun is one of the things judges look at in a trial, but Shag and I aren’t ready to worry about any of that yet.
    Anyway, she gets back there, and at a certain distance she uses what Mr. McKenna calls her eye stalk to get the sheep moving toward the pen. It’s kind of hard to explain, but she has to stare them into moving. She controls them with no movement. An eye stalk is really important, and the sheep’s response determines if the dog has a strong or weak eye. Nothing I do matters here. You won’t be surprised, I’m sure, to know