There is a big step from novicehood into serious investment in learning to work stock, and it is called driving. After all, in driving you cut the umbilical cord of the classic fetch which has existed so long between you and your dog; instead of her always being right there on the other side of the stock, which are right there behind you, off she goes with your stock, with you standing there, hopefully directing it all from afar.

A bewildering profusion of techniques for beginning to drive make the task even more daunting than it already is. There is the “happy accident” school, in which the dog gets too pushy, the stock gets too light, and both of you end up on the same side of the herd. Presto! Driving! Then there is the fence school, where you sandwich the stock between the dog and the fence, so, in a sense, the fence replaces you as a pressure on the stock, giving the dog more control. And there are plenty more.

It doesn't appear that the most successful trainers rely upon the dog being wrong and accidentally setting up a drive. Among other things, they feel that it is essential that the dog be able to differentiate, in her mind, between fetching and driving, and this is not the road to it.

Sherry has a very specific technique to teach a dog to drive. It begins with a parallel drive, with the dog driving the stock while you walk along beside them at a suitable distance. It works beautifully for her, but it does involve, as always, really understanding the concept, getting the footwork down, reading the stock exactly, having a high degree of control of your dog, and possessing perfect timing. As you can imagine, one can spend a considerable time assembling all of this. Meanwhile, your dog keeps wondering what the heck you're doing, while you are wondering the same thing.

Once you and your dog can hold a small group of sheep or cattle still, in an open field, and you can flank your dog around the herd and stop her at any point, you can begin this amazingly confusing process. There is your dog on the opposite side of the stock from you, and you are facing the the direction in which you are planning to go. You “pull your dog off the top”, that is, direct her to come around to your side of the group. Meanwhile, you fade out to the side and toward her side; you cross paths, with the dog going between you and the stock. At the moment—the exact moment—the animals' heads turn in the direction you want them to go, you turn your dog in with the “there” command you've been practicing since your round pen days, and, with the blessing of the livestock gods, off you go, driving.

There are other possible scenarios. You could forget to watch your stocks' heads. You could not turn your dog in at the exact right place. You could forget where you are supposed to position yourself, or how to get there. Your stock could decide that, come hell or high water, they are going to plaster themselves to your leg. Your stock could decide that here is their opportunity to light out for the territories. You could get your timing perfect but your dog disobeys you because she has never turned in while the stock are in such an odd place, and what are you doing out there in the wrong position anyway? I'll fix the picture so we're comfortably fetching again, and now you're mad at me! What did I do now?

Sherry uses rather sticky sheep or calm dogbroke cattle for this, so that the dog has to really work her inside flank—her wear between the stock and the handler—to keep the stock pushed off you. Sherry isn't a very schoolteachery person, but she does have one verbal drill: “What is the reason for the parallel drive?” Correct answer: “To teach the inside flank”. If your dog doesn't know how to go between you and the stock and keep them away from you, they cannot drive. If you are not close enough to the action to correct your dog's inside flank, they will have a harder time learning it.

At present, the most common situation for me is that I can't figure out how to get far enough away fast enough that my dog has room to flank in between me and the stock, so she ends up barking in frustration at my butt. This is an improvement from the days of just wallowing about in confusion and Bonnie inevitably defaulting to a fetch. But every once in a while, and more and more often, everything lines up, and, for a few hundred yards, we actually drive.