I had high hopes for my little sheep-boarding adventure. I imagined that I would be able to drive over to the ranch three or four times a week and get my dog all practiced up, the way I'd wanted to for at least a year. But so far, reality wasn't exactly tracking my fantasy. For one thing, the first time I'd been left to my own devices, and tried to leave the sheep and goats, both mine and the ranch's, as I'd been told to, I hardly could have gotten it wronger. I heard "when you're done, let them out into the field". What I should have heard was "when you're done, let them all out except for the black ewe who won't come in at night on her own, the butcher buckling, and the butcher ewe lamb — oh, and make sure the livestock guardian pup is locked securely into the back pens because he can get out through the cattle panels and he'll go run on the road."

Suffice it to say, it was very difficult to put everything back together the way it was supposed to be, and by the time the mistake was discovered I was too far away to come back and help fix it. So, one black mark there.

It kept raining, and the working corrals were very muddy. I was finding that Ty was getting rather bored, too, as he usually does when we move sheep back and forth in a small space for no apparent reason. Kam offered the idea that, if we could get the whole flock across the 30 acre field with the small mountain in it, over to the huge, long-disused arena on the other side of the property, we could keep them there, with an LGD. It was thick with grass, and everyone would appreciate that, especially the sheep. They could lamb there in the clean grass much more safely, bacteria-wise, than in the mucky pens near the house.

On the negative side of that proposal, I was by no means sure that Ty and I were ready to accomplish this. Kam, who has never done much of any stockdog work, was afraid that we would lose the sheep up the mountainside. I knew Ty wouldn't lose the sheep. I had a different worry. The problem I saw was that neither Ty nor the sheep had ever gone to the arena, so I was the only one of the bunch who would know what the program was. Ty would try his best to keep the flock to me, but he'd be working against two strong draws, the safety of the corrals behind us, and the uphill draw of the mountainside just to the right of us. The sheep didn't draw to a shepherd, so it was going to be all up to Ty. I trusted he could do it, but I definitely didn't trust that he could do it uneventfully, the first time.

Normally, I would just take a deep breath, square my shoulders, and march out to my destiny. But most of these sheep were on the verge of lambing. Should I risk these sheep — half of which weren't mine — with my green dog whose reaction to a crisis was often to grab hold? The odds for a poor outcome seemed awfully high.

If I had Bonnie with me, I probably would have tried her out first; she knew the route to the arena and had successfully brought different flocks of sheep and goats across the field before, although not these. She wouldn't grip, was usually easy to call off, so the worst that would probably happen is she would lose the sheep. But I had left her at home. Kam encouraged me to give it a try, and the prospect of the grassy arena and a clean lambing area was very tempting. So, I decided to give it go.

I got the whole flock in a small pen with a gate to the field. It was a big heavy drive gate which would not stay open. I had to open it and then wedge it, in order to have enough room to get the sheep out. I tried to set Ty up to get the sheep unpenned completely the first time, but even that turned out to be very hard. Ty was reverting to his 'default' take pen behavior, in which he walks slowly straight in on the sheep, not on the fence line, so that they eventually panicked and some dashed away while he held the others. In other words, a total mess.

We had to round up the dashers and put them back in with the others three times. By this time of course, dog, sheep, and shepherd, were very frazzled and upset. Finally I got Ty to take them out correctly. One ewe took off at a dead run for the mountain, and Ty took off to head her. I couldn't get the gate closed fast enough, and all the sheep poured right back in.

The main trouble was that I couldn't get away from the pens far enough fast enough to give Ty enough space to get behind the sheep and keep them from running back in. Sheep were too light, dog was too out of control, and I couldn't think of the right moves fast enough.

I hadn't totally failed like this for awhile. If the ewes hadn't been so pregnant I would have just hung in and figured it out, but I just couldn't risk them so much. I decided to pack it up and go home.

Later, Kam called me and said that she'd forgotten that she was going to be out of town for the next week, and that we shouldn't leave the flock over in the arena anyway, as her farm sitter wouldn't get over there to check on them. Oh.

I realized that I had entered into this arrangement a bit naively. First, I got bred ewes instead of the wethers I'd been intending to buy, because they were available, the right breed, had been isolated and hence didn't need quarentining and testing, and, they were cheap.

Second, I hadn't bargained for how different it would be, working sheep that had never been worked by a dog, on a ranch which was really not set up for working with a dog either. Although two arenas, large and small, and holding pens, had been built for a stockdog trainer who didn't use them much and eventually moved on, the owners had no experience with using dogs. Hence, there were both communication difficulties and equipment difficulties I hadn't quite anticipated.

I tried not to blame myself or my dog too much. Clearly, until the ewes had lambed, and were well along, stockdog practice was going to be difficult. So, I decided to make lemonade. I called up my friends in the Northwest and told them I'd be coming to see them soon. Why not? I'd been antsy to go look at farm real estate up North anyway. This was as good an opportunity as any, and the weather in February would be a test of whether those maritime winters were for me.