My first border collie was a wandering pup, found on the highway near a truck stop, and brought into the pound by some caring people.
He didn't attach to me right away. It took a couple of months of morning walks through our local meadows and woods before he decided I was ok, and became my friend for life.
Since then my wife adopted a white border collie, then my daughter brought home a black and white fluffball puppy.
A problem arose because the other two borders always knew when I was readying to take my dog on a walk. Which ones would I leave home, moping and sorry-faced?
My solution was to rig up a three dog leash and tie it to my belt. The young pup walks out in front, followed by my dog and the white border collie, who go side by side with shoulders touching, occasionally reaching over to nuzzle one another.
Walking the three works real well most of the time, except on days like the one last week: Picture three dogs nearing a dumpster in the 5am dark, then a fat raccoon breaking right at run-for-your-trash-scrounging life speed.
Now I have these three trained to all sit and watch like black and white angels while other dogs past, but a leashed poodle we see coming from three hundred yards ahead is not quite the same thing as a sudden running raccoon.
I hate it when that happens. I could have tried to hold my dogs and risk having a disk in my back pulled out of whack, or be dragged down, or maybe use my horse sense and adapt some, sort of go with the flow. I pumped my forty year old legs, trying my darndest to stay up with those three dogs, and was real glad when that coon scrambled up a tree.
I didn't fare so well the time that a rabbit flushed out over a landscape of newfallen wet snow. I got pulled down and became a sled behind three crazed rabbit-running dogs.
And there is today, when I saw something on the path out of normal. A couple of seconds of sleepy staring into the dark made out a black tail, high in the air, and the realization a moment later and that what was below was charged and ready to fly, in our faces. I was instantly wide- -eyed-alert awake, without even a drop of caffeine.
I pulled the dogs tight and fortunately the skunk scampered down and away. My dogs in their ignorance figured that they should be after it, like the coon. I had to insist that I would be the boss this time, and so sat down to put some leverage in my decision.
They love their walks though, and especially love it when I take them for two- or three-day backpacking trips high in the mountains. Tell me, what can be better than exploring evergreen forests and alpine basins all day, in areas where the only trails are ones left by elk and deer and what follows them, then sitting for a relaxed wilderness camp-stove dinner, watching quiet and shadows overtake the mountains, with three tired and soul-happy border collies around me?
Life starts the fire. Love fans the flame.
. . . Kate Wolf
12/9/98; Est. 7/5/95
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