Nothing frustrates me more than people who don’t train their dogs right, especially when that person is me. We have two cow dogs, named Molly and Bo in order of dominance and attitude, and they probably could have been great in their calling if it weren’t for us. Frankly, they out-IQ us, and it shows. We call them cow dogs because it makes us feel better about ourselves, but we might as well call them chicken dogs or cat dogs for what they actually spend their time doing when they’re on the clock. Molly has also carved out her own wing in the skunk dog hall of fame. If I’m being honest, the ding-nuts could also be called mafia dogs because they have established a lucrative racket victimizing the Schwan’s man and the entire U.S. Postal Service.
Despite their high-handed treatment of all the relatives they should recognize by now, and the bossy way they order us to let them inside when the wind blows or the temperature drops below their convenience, or the neighbors start lighting fireworks, they serve several important functions around here, only one of which is getting the cows to run in the right direction every so often. They also clean up all the cat food (whether or not the cats appreciate it), they sound the stranger-danger alarm so no one can sneak up on us from a mile away and, most importantly, they tell me when Dave is home. Maybe it shouldn’t be so hard to know when Dave is around or not, but it is. We have too many vehicles, including Dave’s own feet, and too many places for Dave to be for me to gauge his whereabouts simply by what transportation is sitting in the driveway or whether I can see him or not. The dogs make it really simple. If the dogs are gone, Dave is home.
Maybe I need to digress here to explain that being home for Dave is different from being in the house. I get myself in trouble all the time because, apparently, many people do not understand this concept. I’ll get a call every once-a-week-or-so on the landline asking me if Dave is home – and if I don’t watch myself, I’ll say yes. Then I’ll find myself explaining that being home for Dave isn’t the same as being accessible. Dave’s only accessible if he is both in the house and at home, and if it’s not dark outside and/or if it’s calving season, the odds that he is in residence are always against the caller.
Back to the dogs. For the longest time, they had a shifting hierarchy of loyalty based on who had steak, who was willing to scratch them for hours on end and who was headed in the most interesting direction. In that hierarchy, however, Dave always came out on top. Always. It didn’t matter what anyone else did. You could cover yourself in bacon grease and have ground squirrels hidden in your pockets, and if Dave walked out the back door and started putting on his irrigating boots, the dogs were gone. He can still turn on his motorcycle anywhere on the place and the dogs will come running, no matter what they have cornered in the irrigation pipe. They’ll leave food in the dog dish to go be with Dave.
Then COVID-19 hit. That brought my college-aged kids home and into quarantine with us. My oldest daughter graduated in those conditions and then had to find work in a world that was largely not working. Of course, Dave had the solution because there is always more to get done around here than can get done. Daughter No. 1 became employee No. 1. She set to with all the cooped-up energy of a whirlwind, building fence, designing corrals, cleaning out the barn. And since she was the most interesting thing happening most of the time, the dogs went with her. They rode in the tractor with her. They went into town with her. They very nearly went to church with her. Every day, I could see them out in the fields together, tagging cattle, talking investment strategy, gossiping about how her parents are going senile.
So, of course, one morning the unthinkable happened. Dave headed outside to irrigate, just like always. He put on the magic irrigation boots. He grabbed his shovel. The dogs danced around him like he was the most fascinating thing they had ever seen, just like always. But when Dave climbed onto his motorcycle and took off over the hay, the dogs did not. They stayed put, watching the door and waiting – waiting for the daughter to come out. It was a dark day.
Maybe Dave could have swallowed this betrayal by man’s best friend, but the changes on the ground did not stop there. Youth is not afraid of adding insult to injury, and the daughter started telling us exactly how we had been training the dogs all wrong. Apparently, we had gone slack and soft, and she was now saddled with an inferior product. She set about righting the dogs’ universe with vigor. She told them what for, what to and where to go, and they loved her for it. The bossier she was, the more they adored her. Then her success with the dogs went straight to her head, and she turned her attention on straightening us out as well.
The story has an inevitable ending. Daughter found employment elsewhere. The dogs put David back on top. We regressed back to our inferior dog-training ways. The UPS truck remains unsafe unless it can show proof of dog treats. I have to give Bo and Molly a remedial lecture about herding the chickens almost daily. I know things could be better, and I really believe you can teach an old dog new tricks. But an old farmer and his wife? That’s a different story.
