When I showed up for my next lesson with George, after a longish hiatus, I was determined to come away with something I could try at home. I am a fairly poor learner. I cannot learn something as physical and complex as herding by reading about it, by watching others either in person or on video, or by having someone explain it to me. I learn about like a dog does—I fumble around, get it right more or less by trial and error, and receive an "atta girl"—either by my teacher (verbally), or by my stock and/or my dog (nonverbally). Then I am likely to repeat the behavior, at first awkwardly, but with more and more proficiency and confidence.

Come to think about it, that's not only true of herding. Any real-world work, from writing an essay to writing computer code to pruning a fruit tree, I learn only, only, only, by trying it, making mistakes, and correcting my mistakes. Books and classes are only useful in that they make it possible to eliminate some of the grossest mistakes—they refine my guesses.

George is a thinking trainer. If it appears that your dog has the basic instincts of a herding dog—without which you are pouring water up a rope—he feels the best way to teach is to simply encourage your dog to exhibit her behaviors, and then work on modifying them, bit by bit, with subtlety, smoothness, and calm. Now, this is about what any successful stockdog trainer does, but George thinks about it more than most. Or at least, he talks about it more than most.

What does this look like? Well, there is a fairly large arena with about twenty sheep turned out in it, including pregnant ewes and new lambs. When George said, "let's just see what she does", I knew that he trusted Bonnie was not about to single out a fifteen pound lamb and destroy it. Which of course she wasn't.

Without the set-up routine for her outrun that she was used to, Bonnie clearly felt unsure of what was expected. Was she supposed to work or not? She looked at me, she looked at the sheep, she sniffed around a little. Whenever she looked at the sheep, I said, "atta girl, good girl", and she decided that meant bring 'em. Which she did, running straight through the middle, splitting up the herd, and then collecting them all again and bringing them to me—and past me—at a canter. Not a disaster--after all, she did bring me all the sheep and they were not panic-stricken--but not exactly a prizewinning lift either.

As George had explained to me, Bonnie needed to learn to react to my pressure with subtlety. When I step toward her, or make a slight gesture toward her even, she should give way. So far, my training had been pretty unsubtle, and included yelling, threatening her with my pole, smashing my training pole on the ground, and occasionally throwing it at her, although my aim is such that this was not at all dangerous to my dog.

At George's I learned how to do two things. First, how to get a reaction. When she pushed the sheep past me, I moved in toward her and blocked her from flanking around me, until she gave ground. I didn't measure how much ground she gave at this point, just that she did. I didn't say anything, and when she gave, I immediately said atta girl and gave her back her sheep. The first time, she barked at me and struggled to get around me before giving up and kicking out from the sheep. The second time, no barking. The third and fourth and fifth and sixth times were ever easier as she quickly grasped that all she had to do was give ground and she could have her sheep back, instantly, just that simple.

The second thing I learned how to do was to get Bonnie to relax on her gather. The elaborate strategies and set-up routine I had always gone through had made her very tense and anticipatory. I already knew that if I really wanted a beautiful wide outrun, I should have bought one. That is, Bonnie's default, bred-in outrun was what we saw: the shortest distance between two points. A wide-enough-to-get-around-them outrun was only likely if she was relaxed enough to remember her training.

To relax her, I simply had her gather the sheep, just as before, but this time, as soon as she brought them, I stopped her and called her off. We did this a bunch of times. George had me do a little subtle body blocking and cuing to help her start her outrun with her shoulder turned enough away that she was likely to go around rather than through. Quickly she anticipated being stopped at the end of every lift, and began to treat her gather more like a take pen, which she had learned was far better executed slowly. Soon she was cantering around rather than accelerating like an express train, and the sheep were staying together.

Although nothing she did was anything like perfect, she showed so much improvement so fast I felt pretty excited. The best part was that Bonnie was not very stressed even though I was changing the rules radically. The sheep were calm, nobody was yelling, nobody was even saying much.

As I was leaving, I watched George's wife bring a young saddled horse into the arena for training. The horse stood absolutely still on a slack rein as she climbed somewhat laboriously into the saddle (it was a tall horse), and settled herself. Then she fed the horse a little treat, and sat there awhile. Slowly she gathered the reins and I watched the horse give to the pressure, collect itself, and then walk off lightly, balanced, quiet, relaxed, energized. Hmm.