Today I woke up before dawn and lay awake in the dark trying to guess what time it was. The jays were arguing about something in the plum tree outside our window at the top of their unlovely voices.The days are shortening, no longer is five thirty or even six so light that the chickens start complaining that it's high time I stirred my lazy bones.

Eventually I got up and did the chores. It was one of those coastal summer mornings, so thick with mist that everything was wet, the dust was black with moisture and stuck to the dogs' paws. The heavy fog damped all sound, making the world seem peculiarly intimate. I noticed the duck bath water needed changing again, and that the ducks were hiding their eggs somewhere. I brought Bonnie in with me to feed the goats, to keep Tule from jumping on me. It is cute in a thirty pound doeling, probably not so cute in an adult. Bonnie's presence makes all the animals respectful. I planned how to replace the pen gate this weekend with something more permanent, and figure out how to keep the chickens out of the hay, which they industriously ruin if allowed.

I hadn't had many herding lessons this summer, because of a combination of a hamstring injury, out-of-state guests, house remodeling, and a record heat wave. When I started up again this week, I was pleased at how biddable Bonnie was, and how clearly I could see where my mistakes were. Even though we weren't exactly doing well at our parallel driving, at least I was able to understand what Sherry was talking about. Bonnie's inside flank was too flat, driving the sheep too far ahead of me. Then they hid between me and Bonnie, frustrating everyone but the sheep themselves.

Sherry explained to me once again, and this time I actually heard, that Bonnie's inside flank must widen out, and that if the lead sheep got ahead of me, I was to flank her behind me, all the way to the point that she stopped the flock, drop her, and then walk between her and the flock to my correct position. That way, the sheep would always stay controlled by my dog, and wouldn't be able to hide in my "shadow".

I was anxious to practice all this, of course. But I was also anxious to see my garden again, which had disappeared behind head-high thistles while I was otherwise occupied. And I wanted to put in a little time with my baby goat flock too. I had started doing a bit of fetching around their enclosure, to get them used to Bonnie and vice versa. Since it is a half acre of poison oak, blackberry thickets, woodpiles, and downed timber, it isn't ever exactly uneventful. But yesterday I was happy when Bonnie anticipated and warded off their attempt to leap to the top of a five foot tall redwood stump, which had successfully brought everything to a stop the previous day.

When I came back in, everyone in my house was still asleep. I made my tea and read the news, which was uniformly horrible, with nothing but the promise of worse to come. The whole world appeared to be going up in flames. I remembered what my daughter had said last night, when we were playing Scrabble, which we do with a passion whenever we have time: "being a pessimist means you always have the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised."

In the end, I decided to go up to Gwen's and practice my parallel drive. Which was disappointing; somehow Gwen's sheep didn't do what Sherry's sheep did. I tried to end on a good note by just getting her inside flank the way it ought to be, once, and quitting. Then I went home and spent a little time with my goats. Here Bonnie was way excited, yipping and bounding through the obstacle course that is the goat pasture, trying to weave her way to the point of escape before they did. Baby goats have considerably more original ideas than mature ewes do, and it made Bonnie pretty nervous. However, the goats were learning to mind and trust Bonnie, just as Bonnie was learning to manage them, and we did some nice quiet (quiet for weanling goats anyway) fetches through the blackberries before I thought 'that'll do', for now.

It made me happy. I am not a competitive person, and never can muster up a lot of enthusiasm for ribbons and titles of any kind. It's hard for me to burn to get working titles on cows when I don't have any cows or plan to. But I love being out with my flock and my dog, or helping friends with their livestock. I've never gotten enough of those pleasures. Innocent pleasures, you could say, in an era of ever-diminishing innocence.