The Border Collie He Called a Pet

It was bright by eight in the morning, a pale hazy sky and a steady breeze that kept the flies down and had people reaching for their jackets.

I wore my tan felt hat and the red plaid shirt my mother gave me two Christmases ago. I braided my hair back tight so it would stay out of my face.

I carried the crook my dad made me when I was fourteen, steamed and bent from a single hickory sapling.

There were twenty-two dogs in the open class. I knew most of the handlers.

Ranchers from three counties around, a couple of women who trained dogs for a living, an old man from Wyoming who had been running dogs since before I was born.

The ewes came from a rancher named Doyle who supplied them every year. Range ewes, wild and light on their feet, not used to dogs at all.

That is what makes a trial fair. Nobody has worked those sheep before. Everybody starts even.

The judges were two old ranchers named Zeb and Obed. Between them they had probably judged a hundred trials.

They sat in a pickup bed at the top of the field with clipboards and a thermos of coffee and did not talk much.

Maude came at nine with her cane and sat in the third row of the bleachers with a blanket over her knees. Ross sat beside her.

A few of Maude’s old friends from church came and sat with them, and somebody brought a cooler of pop.

Jerrod drew the seventh run. I watched from the fence with Flick at my feet. I wanted his dog to run clean.

I mean that. That red dog had worked hard his whole life and he deserved a good day.

The outrun was good, wide and steady. The lift was a little hard, and the ewes came off the post at a trot.

The fetch was straight enough. Jerrod’s dog was old but he knew his business.

The drive went wrong. The ewes split going around the first panel, two going one way and three the other.

The red dog brought them back together, but it cost time and it cost points. They missed the second panel completely.

At the pen the ewes would not go. Jerrod stood at the gate with his hand on the latch and the red dog worked back and forth, back and forth.

Two ewes went in. Then one came out. The time ran out with four in the pen and one standing outside looking at the crowd.

Jerrod walked off the field with his jaw set. He put his dog in the truck and stood by the tailgate with his arms crossed, and he did not look at anybody.

We drew the twentieth run, almost the last of the day. By then it was past two in the afternoon and the sun was high and the wind had not let up.

The ewes had been settled in the holding pens all day, and they had gotten wilder, not tamer.

When they called my name I walked out to the post with my crook and Flick walked beside me with her head low.

I could hear the bleachers go a little quiet. People knew who I was. People knew whose brother I had married.