nine

The first dog into the arena for the instinct test was a very young blue merle Border Collie named Spring. April Bruce, her owner, had told me that she was seven months old and had never seen sheep before. Spring entered the ring calmly enough, and the tester told April to walk her closer to the sheep. As they approached, one of the ewes raised her head and turned to stare at the puppy. My heart was beginning to pound as I watched, but Spring stood still, one front foot a few inches in front of the other, shoulders slightly crouched, head thrust forward.

“Have her down,” the tester said. Spring lay down on April’s command, and the tester said, “Take her leash and send her.”

As soon as she was released, Spring got to work. She ran a wide circle to get behind the three woollies and pushed them forward with her quiet presence.

Tom touched my arm and asked, “Did you say she’s never seen sheep before?”

“That’s what April told me.”

“Wow.”

Wow indeed. As her owner walked a serpentine path across the ring, Spring moved back and forth behind the trio to keep them moving. She stopped and backed up on command, working like a dog that had some training.

“She’s a hard act to follow,” I said.

“You’ll do fine.” Tom ran his hand over the top of Jay’s skull and down the back of his neck. “Both of you.”

I took my attention off the action to smile at Tom. He grinned back, and then his gaze shifted to the arena and he gestured toward it with his chin.

Spring stood frozen, still focused on the three sheep. April walked backward a few more steps, and Spring glanced at her and back at the sheep. The dog’s whole expression softened and she bowed at the sheep, inviting them to play. She sprang back up and bounced toward the lead ewe, who looked as confused by her well-spoken canine body language as an American tourist trying to make out a thick Highland brogue. Who could watch that and not laugh? I glanced at the tester, and she was practically doubled over. I looked back at the dog. She bowed once more, looked around as if to see who everyone found
so funny, and went back to work until the judge signaled the end of
the test.

My stomach went a bit gurgly as I took Jay’s leash from Tom, but I sucked in a long breath and walked to the gate. Jay and I waited while Ray and Bonnie moved the first three sheep into a holding pen and brought three fresh ones out. Hutchinson stood about twenty feet away, talking to Summer. Her arms were crossed tight across her body, and even from that distance, I could see the rage that played across her face. She turned her head toward the arena, but I couldn’t tell whether she was looking at something or away from Hutch.

“Come on in.”

The tester’s voice brought me back to the task at hand and, as I stepped into the arena, all my saliva turned to dust. Jay pulled against the leash, but let up when I said, “Easy.” Like many Aussies, Jay can be quite the comedian, and I couldn’t help wondering whether Spring’s performance had inspired him to try something funny.

He didn’t try anything funny, at least not on purpose, but he clearly thought his job was to keep the sheep very close to me. Two feet, max. And the sheep, a trio of Rambouillets, looked gigantic. And nervous. I was sure each one outweighed me, and that they wouldn’t hesitate to throw that weight around to get away from a dog. Monty Python’s famous “killer sheep” skit popped into my mind.

At the tester’s direction, I released Jay and he sprinted around the little flock. Before he could get behind them, though, they took off toward the far end of the arena. Jay raced away on a parallel track, clearly planning to outrun them and turn them back. Which he did. The ewes turned away from him and came at me, shoulder to shoulder, full speed ahead. I ran to my left, trying to get out of the way, but the sheep adjusted their course. The one in the middle butted me in the belly, and I flew up and back and fell flat. I shut my eyes as they passed over me, landing a couple of good hoof strikes but missing vital organs.

“Get up!” I heard the words, but for a moment, my body wouldn’t cooperate. More words filtered into my brain. The tester yelled at me. “Get up! Now!”

I picked myself up and turned around, expecting to see the sheep galloping away with Jay on their funny little tails. Oh, shit. They were coming straight at me again, my delighted dog right behind with a look on his face that seemed to say, “I got ’em, Mom! Here they are!”

And they knocked me flat again. I scrambled up, half expecting them to take another crack at me, but the sheep apparently had given up the notion that they could escape. They were coming toward me, but at a fast shuffling walk, and I managed to back away, follow instructions, and complete the test.

“Call your dog,” the tester said, and when I had him beside me and on leash, she put her hand on my shoulder. “Those were tough sheep for an instinct test.” She chuckled. “Flighty.” I was still trying to catch my breath, so I just nodded. “Your dog could use a bit more training, but he passed.”

Jay grinned at me, butt wiggling, and as soon as we left the arena, I knelt on the ground and hugged him. “You did great, Bubby.” He answered by leaning into me and sliding his body against mine until he was on the ground, paws in the air, for a belly rub, which, of course, he got.

I grinned at Tom, who gave me a thumbs-up. Still grinning, I walked Jay up the little roadway where we had found the tracks so that we could both unwind a bit. Thirty yards along, we veered onto a narrow lane—a narrow dirt track through grass, really—that ran between the back of the arena’s holding pen and a field of corn stubble. We went only a short distance, but the lane ran on, apparently, to the back of the property, which I guesstimated to be a hundred acres or more. I stroked Jay’s head and said, “Maybe we can take a longer walk later, Bub.”

As we turned around, the light caught a disturbed stretch of ground at the edge of the cornfield. I stopped for a closer look. Paw prints. Big paw prints, like the one we’d found earlier. There were only four of them, as if the dog had hopped off the grass momentarily as he headed for the pole barn at the end of the lane. I made a mental note to tell Hutchinson, but my attempts to think through what the prints might mean were cut short by the sound of a woman’s voice. It was Summer Winslow, and although she was not yelling, her words slashed through the distance between us like a machete.

“How could he do that?”

I tried not to stare, or to draw her attention, but I couldn’t resist a quick glance as I turned away from her toward the arena, aiming to rejoin Tom. She was talking into her phone, her whole body radiating emotion, but for a few seconds I could no longer hear what she was saying. Then her voice rose again and she made another threat. It hit me in the gut like the stampeding ewes.

“He’ll pay for this.”