Beginning the Addiction

Spike and I arrived at the farm, him covered in drool from panting and his carrying on during the car ride and me, thinking about Spike and I were going to bond and, of course, how quiet he would be on the ride home. THIS was going to fix everything. He was going to be a star.

I met Alice and after some conversation we decided to take Spike to the sheep. I held on to his line for dear life as he dragged me into the field. I struggled and told him to heel, sit, lie down… SOMETHING !!! What was going on? Why wasn’t he listening to me? Eventually he did lie down, or sat down. Alice then suggested I let him go “let’s see what he does”. We must have been making great progress to be able to go “off leash” so quickly. With a little trepidation, I let the leash go and, he was off. Running, chasing, barking, tail high in the air. He was having the time of his life. Alice pointed out lots of things to me, said something about going around the sheep, come… something, away to me, it was like a completely foreign language. I was willing to learn, for Spike.

Alice asked me to get Spike to lie down. I was sure that after running like that for 10 minutes, he would have been happy to. Lie down. Nothing. Lie Down! ... Still nothing. In fact, it seemed like he was going faster… LIE DOWN !!!! Nothing. No, wait… something. He was biting them! Good god he was biting them! Next, I found myself running, trying to catch this dog that had clearly lost his mind. How was I ever going to catch him? I was coming to the realization that this field was HUGE, now that I was running all over it. Spike was out of control. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I stomped on his line and he came to a screeching, tumbling halt, as did I. Both of us were exhausted. I walked with Spike’s line held firmly in my hand, to get him a drink. As I looked down at him I noticed his front legs were bright red. At first I thought he had caused some serious injury to a sheep or to all of them. Upon closer inspection I noticed that it was Sally’s feet that were bleeding. The horror! I mentioned it to Alice and she just shrugged saying something about a city dog.

That was my first introduction to sheepherding, and just like that, I was hooked, perhaps the word ‘addicted’ is more apt.