Collies with PhD's

When I was eleven my parents took my brother and me on holiday for a summer to a small piece of Britain near Cornwall. The closest town was a place called Boude, where you could (and I couldn't make this up) get a rump roast on Fridays that was advertised by a sign reading: "We have really big rump. When we say big, we mean BIG."

We stayed in the B&B that a farmer and his wife ran out of an old barn and were quite comfortable if a bit sniffly. The farm was a sheep farm and my entire family including myself have always struggled a bit with allergies. That's an understatement- each of us had to take two benadryl and a puff of an inhaler to go out the door in the morning.

Anyway.

It was a wonderful place and a great spot to learn a bit of responsibility while not being overwhelmed. The afternoons were more often than not taken over by one adventure or another; generally archaeological expeditions initiated by my mother which I liked then and have since come to appreciate in my own obsessive and intense way.

The mornings of that summer were rather our own. If I woke up late I would typically read on the couch or go up to the farm house to eat a late breakfast of the leftover cold eggs and play with the collie puppies.

If I got up on time, though, I could help the farmer move the sheep through pasture for a small amount of money, which I felt was a great deal since money bought candy and I could walk to the candy store in five minutes. So I often helped.

My tasks were really simple- use a wooden prod and help the sheep through the gate into the next pasture to graze. Mind the sheep (a process of standing), and make sure they don't get carried off by pterodactyls. This simple chore was further eased because of the chief collie dog of the farm who boasted a PhD from Oxford, multiple publications, a fellowship at the University of London, and a respected reputation both in Scientific and Liberal Arts circles. His day job did not require the full extent of his intellect, but he certainly could have done the job by himself were it not for his lack of opposable thumbs. 

Basically the morning went easily, with both me and the sheep being neatly nipped and herded from clover patch A to clover patch B, and occasionally into a sort of rumbling circle of sheep-ness with an errant human unable to do anything but follow stern canine instruction. Every so often, however, my opposable thumb magic was required. A gate would present itself between pastures and the collie would look at me with the intensity of a professor during a spoken final exam until I performed the small duty for which I was qualified. The other moment where I could earn my keep was to keep the sheep from drowning their (I hate to say it but...) stupid selves in the creek at the bottom of the hill.

Here's the layout of the farm: At the top of the southmost hill was the farmhouse, the converted barn in which my family stayed, a strange swimming pool, and a goodish patch of untended dirt and gravel. Sloping downward, the hill became two rich clover pastures separated down the middle by a gate. Pasture A and pasture B, if you follow. At the bottom of the hill ran what I can't even in good conscience call a stream. It was really a trickle. A streamlet. There was maybe three inches of water flowing there on a rainy day. This little rivulet was bordered on both sides by the picturesque English hedges of great fame. Twice the hedges were broken and craftily constructed bridges with high fences allowed us (the collie dog, with me stupidly bringing up the rear) to pass the sheep from pasture to pasture. On the other side of the streamlet, another hedgerow and mirrored pastures C and D, also with a dividing fence.

Now, despite the collie being so brilliant that he probably is now a contender for a Nobel prize in physics, the sheep were so monumentally stupid that they would actually avoid the nice open gate, struggle mightily over the hedge, and become trapped in the little run of water that thought it might be a stream of some kind. Then, as if they weren't absurd enough to have not listened to Sir Collie, the sheep would, of their own volition, lie down in the water and proceed to try and drown. Three inches of water, if you recall. My job was to heave their stinking, waterlogged, wooly selves back up, heave them over the hedge, and then somehow continue with my life.

When I was a kid, I was small. A small boy is useful, but when it comes to heaving sheep out of streams, they're not necessarily what should be your first pick. Generally my tactic was to push the sheep upright so that their face was out of the water, and then to encourage them to do their jumping trick to get back into pasture C or D. Sheep are stubborn as well as stupid, though, and more often than not I was forced to walk the sheep by its ear through the streamlet until the drainage pipe to the west of the plot where we could hitch back up onto the road and walk the long way around back to the farm.

It didn't matter how long this process took: when I returned to the pasture next in line I would find the collie dog waiting alertly and with remarkable self-possession. All sheep would be in the pasture, regardless of the closure of the gate or not. I would return the errant animal to the fold and the collie would usher me through, demand my closure of the gate, and then enjoy the freedom to herd his sheep and me while contemplating Descartes and possible futures for Middle Eastern countries.