I bet you hadn't considered that stockdog training problems and global warming have a lot in common. It's true.They are both the result of the human penchant for wanting things right now, and the human resistance to paying attention to what is happening on the periphery of their attention. The reason that the first one is, in the overall scheme of things, somewhat minor, while the other threatens our very existence, is only a difference in scale.

I am convinced that stockdog training, by and large, is still in the neolithic stages. Agility competitors, faced with needing to produce speed and accuracy from thin air, found that dolphin trainers had worked out a behaviorist methodology so vastly superior in results to the old jerk-and-praise regimen of the obedience trainers, that they adopted it wholly and never looked back. Their successes transformed the way most trainers now work with dogs. But stockdog trainers (if they have a born stockdog) have the luxury of adhering to the coarsest of techniques, like yelling and throwing things, because they are working with a bona fide drive. Your dog will forgive you almost anything and keep trying to figure you out, just to be able to keep playing. There is no corresponding agility drive.

This explains why the advancement of technique in stockdog training is so slow. When stupidity works okay, why try harder? Okay, it's not truly stupidity. What it really is, is ape language. People and other primates communicate intensity by raising their voices, hitting, and throwing things. Dogs, having lived with us for so long, do understand us, but only crudely, since they do not raise their voices or throw things to communicate with each other.

I've been trying to think like my dog more. I've (almost) stopped yelling, for the rather obvious reason that it never does anything besides get me over-excited (Bonnie pays very little attention to yelling). I've been trying to work from the premise that if my dog isn't working the stock the way I want, it is because she simply doesn't understand my parameters for acceptable stock work. It's my job to get her to understand, and that means I have to think like a stockdog. And not just any stockdog: my stockdog. More about that in a bit.

I've also been thinking about global warming, a whole lot. The facts are indisputable: we burn too much energy and it is changing the climate adversely. So, stop doing that, right? Isn't that the obvious conclusion? Well, I've been trying to stop, and the results are interesting.

The first thing I noticed is that one huge thing fossil fuel technology does is destroy the necessity to wait. That's what people did, before. They hung clothes out and waited for the sun to dry them. When they wanted to read a book, they waited until it was light enough. They waited for the rain to fall to bring the seeds up. When they wanted to go somewhere, they knew it would take a long time, so they waited until they had every errand saved up. When they wanted to talk to somebody, they waited until they saw them again. It wasn't a virtue because there wasn't a choice.

Now, it's a virtue: patience. Another way of saying 'I prefer not to'.

Patience is a virtue in stockdog training too. And it doesn't come any more naturally to me in that area than any other. Like most people who work Aussies, I am always working on my dog not being too pushy. I love her push when I need it, hate it when I don't. We are working light, unspoiled sheep which will not tolerate a pushy dog. I've been trying George's techniques and ideas, which are largely inspired by the Natural Horsemanship school—which also reminds me of those dolphin trainers. Reward every increment made in the direction you desire. Reward relaxed work—a calm dog is a dog that can learn and solve problems. If you aren't getting a better than 90% success rate, stop and rethink, because you have set the lesson up wrong for your dog. Teach one thing at a time. Patience.

Here's another parallel: in trying to live with less fossil fuel input, patience is not enough. In fact it is pointless, if not married to intelligent observation. You have to wait in a poised, positioned way for a confluence of events: when it stops raining so you can bicycle to town, when the sun warms the table enough to rise bread there, when your hen is ready to set, when the firewood is dry enough to burn. You have to adapt to circumstances, which means you have to notice what is going on.

I started thinking about the dog I had instead of the dog I imagined I was trying to make, and that made me change three things right off. First, I stopped trying to get her to lie down. Bonnie loathes and resists lying down except when she has the stock cornered. If I tell her to sit, she is happy to obey. Second, I stopped trying to force her to do a Border Collie-shaped outrun. Her natural outrun is straight toward the stock, then veering out just enough to go around them. As long as she is relaxed, and not doing some bullet train imitation, she can get away with that just fine. She just lopes up in a casual manner and gathers them. Even fairly spooky sheep seem to do okay with this, although it sure doesn't look stylish.

Third, I stopped using "steady", which means "walk " and substituted "easy", which just means, take it slow. It gave us more flexibility—instead of a command which then had to be enforced, it was a parameter, which she could implement in what way seemed best to her. I started doing this for take pens, without thinking much about it, and only when George said "what is a gather but a really big take pen?" that I realized that I could think about them the same way, and then Bonnie would.

Last week we moved in one session from panicky chasing and fence crashing to calm trotting fetches and slow easy gathers. No, the sheep didn't stay between me and my dog. Incremental progress. But I did not get mad at my dog, and she relaxed and improved vastly in the space of half an hour. The next time on those sheep, only two bad gathers and mostly we calmly fetched the same sheep which were almost unworkable two sessions before. I spent all that time resisting micromanaging my dog and just trying to help her relax and work farther away. Once she did those things, all the rest was so simple. I don't think I said much to her at all.

Equating patient waiting with something to be avoided seems to be part of our culture. Where are we rushing to? We've stopped asking ourselves what motivates this cultural desire for speed. That's what "convenience" mostly is: speed. And speed always means the end of careful observation. Nobody notices the cigarette butts thrown on the freeway, but you sure notice them on foot. I've started hanging out my clothes . . . I wait for my dog to relax and realize she doesn't have to work that hard. I wait for the sheep to relax and realize we aren't going to do them any harm. Do I have to work that hard either? I help Bonnie by believing in her, and being relaxed myself, and trying to be a careful observer. I wait for the sun to come out.