My husband, Dan, is pretty easy to spot. He’s often driving around in his old two-tone brown pickup with his cowboy hat and overalls. But the one thing you look for when trying to find him is his dog. This would be commonplace in the plains or southwest, but here in the upper Midwest, cowboy hats and cow dogs are not commonplace. This is Wisconsin, the home of the Harley Davidson.
We moved from my home in western Oklahoma to my husband’s home in Wisconsin four years ago so Dan could join the third generation dairy farm. Farming can be a lonely job. He needed some companionship.
My mother had been involved with American Working Farmcollie Association, a group trying to maintain the good old-fashioned farm shepherds. She decided that Dan and my 2-year-old son, Lane, needed a friend that could help out, so she bought us an English shepherd, one of the farmcollie breeds recognized by AWFA. English shepherds are hard to find, so we flew Comanche Red Bank Josey Whales in from Texas.
Josey immediately began to follow us around doing the daily chores. In the beginning, he was mostly comic relief and babysitter. I could always find the baby, because Josey would be with him. I will never forget the evening that we had an emergency in the milking parlor that demanded our attention. I left Lane and Josey playing in the straw pile. The emergency lasted longer than I intended and I was worried as I rushed back to check on Lane. I found Lane playing in the straw pile, but strangely there was no Josey. I looked all over and could not find him. I whistled and he came bounding out of the straw pile. That crazy pup had let Lane bury him!
Josey’s bid ability was exemplary. He lived to please. One evening, Dan and Josey came home late from milking. Dan warmed up his supper plate, sat it on the living room floor and went upstairs to change. I expected Josey to go to the plate; instead, Josey went and laid at the foot of the stairs and waited for Dan.
As he matured, he began helping with the cattle. He lacked confidence as a pup, but showed promise as a herder. When Josey was eight-months-old, we began having trouble with the neighbors’ dogs coming over. Josey resented their intrusion and properly started running them off. One cold evening while we were milking, Josey was hit by a car. I suspect he was returning the neighbors’ dogs to their proper place.
English shepherds typically work out of pack drive. They install themselves as beta member in your pack, which on a farm includes you, your kids, your cats, and your stock. Because an English shepherd sees himself as part of a far-reaching pack, a good English shepherd, like Josey Whales, strives to protect and care for the pack that he loves.
We were devastated after the loss of Josey, but my mother was not ready to give up. She had been researching bloodlines and line traits in English shepherds. A good English shepherd is incredibly in tune with the people—the alphas. Whatever rule alpha makes, the beta English shepherd enforces. My mom was looking for a dog that excelled in this bossy big brother behavior. She found him in a suburban backyard in Oregon.
The following June, we picked up Red Bank Shooter at the airport. He was 10-weeks-old and a very confident pup. Like Josey, we immediately started teaching the daily routine. Shooter accompanied Dan everywhere. When Dan was milking, a process that took about 5 hours, Shooter would lie on Dan’s jacket in the barn office. He would not leave the jacket. For several months, Shooter went everywhere and learned the routine of the farm. He began helping Dan with the heifers that first summer.
Dan taught him “come” and “easy”. Shooter figured out the rest by tagging along and watching Dan. If Shooter got out of hand with the cattle, Dan would call him to come and make him start over. Shooter’s style ranges from standing up on hind legs and slapping on the rump with his paws, like Dan does, to a tenacious grip. Shooter uses only the amount of force that is necessary to accomplish the task. He rarely overdoes it.
During summer, we rotationally graze our 200 heifers on about 200 acres. Dan usually wants to drive through the heifers to look at them all. He and the dogs end up on the backside of the herd so they drive the heifers to the next pasture. By the end of summer, Dan will go move the gate and Shooter will go get the cows. There has not been a need for him to fetch them with an outrun because by season end, the heifers know come when they see Shooter. Shooter’s natural inclination is to drive, but I’m sure an outrun could be taught.
Our cattle are artificially inseminated. Every day there is a need to cut out from the herd the animals that will be bred. Once Shooter took the ones that needed to go in for breeding without anyone telling him which ones to take. We think he can smell cows in estrus.
We let Shooter start working when he was willing to try and able to stay out of harm’s way. We have pretty docile heifers, so, for him, this was four-months-old. He showed lots of desire to work but was frustrating at times because he really liked going to the front of the cow. In his inexperience, he often turned them back the wrong way.
When Shooter was seven-months-old, he found a use for that turning technique. We came home one cold night to find heifers in the barnyard when they should have been in the pasture. Shooter immediately ran to greet us, which was odd for a cold night when he would usually be tucked up under the porch. We were thankful that none were on the road. Returning them to the pasture was a simple fix. It seemed strange that they had not gone to the road.
In the light of the next morning we were able to read the puzzle. There were heifer tracks coming right down the driveway—a straight shot from the gate they got out of. Then the tracks just stopped. We surmised that Shooter had turned them back. There is no other explanation for 37 heifers heading one direction in a straight line just abruptly turning back. That suspicion was further confirmed one early morning a few months later when I saw Shooter do this exact same thing. That next summer we worked on our fences!
English shepherds are very guided by rules and routine. They are easily alarmed to things that are out of the ordinary. Shooter knew that it was out of the ordinary for the heifers to be out of the pasture. His need to follow the rules and routine, motivated him to want them back in the pasture. Due to the design of our barnyard, putting them back would have been impossible, but he sure wasn’t going to let them leave! He just kept them home and waited for us. This is sometimes referred to as enforcer behavior.
Shooter is not always an obedient dog. He will sometimes break command or refuse to do what Dan asks. He usually looks to Dan for guidance when he is unsure, but every now and then he will refuse Dan’s request. We have learned to look harder at the situation when this happens because often Shooter is right. I much prefer this dog that rates the stock and thinks on his own to one that simply follows commands.
Last winter, Dan and a friend were cutting firewood. They were loading the firewood into the tractor-pulled dump wagon. They filled it and planned to take a load to the neighbor’s house. Dan left with the tractor and the neighbor stopped the pickup at the house to let Shooter out. A long while later, I saw Shooter strangely sitting, shivering in the middle of the driveway. I finally realized that the neighbor let him out and told him to "stay". Shooter was very relieved when I called him to “come”!
Along the way, Meg came to live with us. She was a year-and-a-half old. She was skittish and timid; we could barely touch her. She had not been taught any rules. In effect, she believed that she had to make the decisions for the pack, because no one ever showed that they filled the alpha role. After two years of the “nothing in life is free” philosophy and lots of attention, she came to identify us as the rule makers. She still has some bad habits, but we are able to see the kind of dog she would’ve been had she had a better environment as a pup. The quality of her pups has proven the steadiness of her genes.
If the English shepherd’s handler does not give the dog solid rules, the dog may start making the rules himself. This is not usually a pleasant experience. A consistent handler is necessary to pilot this intelligent dog that is capable of making unguided decisions.
Meg now accompanies Dan and Shooter to the pasture. She helps out with the herding at times. She wants to gather and fetch. Dan hasn’t quite figured out how to use her. Bonding with the pack is essential to English shepherd function and it occurs easiest as a pup. Meg was grown when she came here and is not as closely bonded to her pack as Shooter is.
In winter, our hired man comes daily to scrape the manure from the free stall barn with the skid steer. The dogs hear him coming and they just automatically start moving the animals out of the first row for him. I don’t think he even gets out of the skid steer except to open the gate.
Shooter is especially protective of sick animals. He will stand guard over them and not let the other cattle near. He will also do this with our kids if the kids are in the pasture. This is very handy when we need to treat a down animal or when we are watching for heat. If he weren’t there, the curious heifers would be nuisances.
Meg excels at the vermin control job. She hunts rodents that are after our feed and she is often skunk-sprayed because she won’t let any predator in the henhouse. She has been known to tree raccoons and corner red squirrels under the wood pile.
Shooter’s hunting abilities are seen in his tracking ability. Dan sometimes uses him to find deer that have been mortally wounded during hunting season. Shooter is quite proficient at the job and everything he does is natural. I’ll never understand how he just knew what Dan was looking for their first time out. The dog reads his mind at least as well as I do!
To be effective defenders of the farm and nurturers of the pack, we need them to roam the farm freely. We must be able to trust that they won’t wander, chase deer, or harass the stock. This cannot be expected automatically, but it has not been at all hard to teach our dogs. English shepherds are very concerned with their territory. After all, the territory supports the pack.
An English shepherd that is kept in a kennel and taken out only to herd on command cannot fulfill its duties. A kenneled English shepherd has limited knowledge of the farm routines and cannot bond with the pack. Without the full understanding of the routines, it will make poor judgments that can be costly to the farmer and to the dog. The best way to raise an English shepherd is to keep it with you. Once you have one, you’ll realize that it’s not hard to do!
So in our search for companionship, we found a lot more. Our dogs have carved out their own jobs on our farm. I truly believe that without Shooter we would have to pay another person to do his job. Our dogs pull their weight in work and lounge with us in rest. They never seem to need work, they just want to help us out. Now when Lane complains about helping out with chores, I use the dogs as models of us all working together willingly.