Dancing Dogs

by Jon Katz

  Fran gave Patricia a form and asked that she fill it out.

  “We want the dog to show sustained interest in sheep for up to three minutes. We see if you have any control over him, whether or not he uses his eyes”—she moved over to look at Dave again—“seems like this guy only has one good one, right?”

  Patricia was amazed. She couldn’t remember which eye was blind herself sometimes.

  “We see whether he wears, runs wide, herds, or just attacks. Then we decide if we go from here.”

  Fran handed Patricia a pen, told her to read the form, and write a check for $125, and then get in line. “We take VISA,” she said with a smile. There was a remote credit-card machine out by the herding-instinct pen.

  “Everybody who comes here thinks their dog is a working dog,” she said. “Once in a while, they’re right.”

  She looked at Patricia, then at the Infiniti.

  “I don’t really care what kind of car people drive, you know. It isn’t any of my business. I have found over the years that some people don’t want to do this work. Walk in the mud, step in sheep shit, run back and forth after their dog for weeks or months in the sun, in the rain, with flies and ticks. Some people do want to do it. And I never really know who is who. Generally, people who drive BMWs don’t want to do that work, so I don’t like to waste anybody’s time and give false hope to any dog. You can’t do what I do and like people a lot. Most people are selfish and lazy when it comes to dogs. They want their dogs to be cute little babies, and when you see how they mess them up, why would you like them? It’s always the people’s fault when a beautiful dog like this gets fucked up.”

  With that, Fran turned to walk toward the pasture.

  ONE OF THE WOMEN came up to Patricia and introduced herself as Jess, as she collected her check and her form. She said she worked as Fran’s assistant in exchange for free herding lessons. Her “girl, Tara,” was in the car, she said, and it took Patricia a second to realize she was talking about a dog. She and Tara had been coming to Fran for two years.

  Jess checked over Patricia’s forms.

  “Lots of us have barter arrangements with Fran because we can’t afford the lessons. Fran doesn’t turn anybody away for money. Some of us clean up, move the sheep, haul hay, help train, take care of the farm. But we also need people around here who can afford to pay. Keeps things in balance.”

  Well, thought Patricia, that was clear enough.

  Jess explained that she and Dave would be given a number—theirs was 23. Jess would pin it to Patricia’s back, and use an elastic strap to put it around Dave’s back so Fran could see it. When it was Patricia and Dave’s turn, Fran would ask them to walk around the pen two or three times so she could see how Dave acted around sheep, and then she would either ask Patricia to leave the testing area with Dave or to unleash him and see what he did.

  It was important, Jess said, for Patricia to be quiet and not shout at the dog. That would only make him more confused and excited. Just take the leash off and walk around the pen. Once in a while, when Fran tells you, stop and see how the dog reacts to where you are. Two or three times, she’ll tell you to turn around, and see what the dog does, whether he runs off or notices.

  Patricia did not have a good feeling about this. She couldn’t even get Dave to sit down in the house, or stop jumping through windows. How would he react around sheep in an open pasture?

  Patricia got into line. Up ahead, she watched an Australian shepherd walk around the small corral as the sheep backed up and hunched together. The dog barked, then circled, then barked again. After a few minutes, Fran, who was standing behind a table at one corner of the test area, shouted for the woman to unleash the dog. She did, and he circled the pen steadily for nearly five minutes.

  Patricia noted the dog’s focus, his intensity, and his calm, qualities Dave did not possess. When the woman called him, he lay down until she came over and put the leash back on him. She had never gotten Dave to do that. It was clear that Patricia was far out of her league here.

  The next dog, a German-shepherd mix, pulled his lead out of his owner’s hand, lunged over the fence, and grabbed one of the ewes by the leg, dragging her around the tiny ring. Everyone froze. The ewe was bleating piteously, terrified.

  The woman shouted frantically for the dog to get off, along with a number of people in line. Other dogs barked, the sheep panicked.

  Fran Gangi got up out of her chair, vaulted the fence, and, using a shepherd’s crook, hooked the dog around the collar and pulled him off the ewe, who was bleeding, although not seriously.

  The line had practically disintegrated as the crowd gathered around the fence to see what was happening. Jess asked that everyone get back into their places.

  “Oh, my God!” shouted the woman. “Zeus, bad dog! Bad dog!” Patricia thought she was hysterical at the sight of the sheep, lying still in shock, and her dog, who had wool streaming out of his teeth. Fran had tied the dog to the gate, and now she turned around and glowered at the screaming woman. “Will you just be quiet?”

  Patricia expected Fran to kick the dog and its owner out of the test, but she didn’t. Instead, one of the women who worked at the farm handed Fran a tube, and she turned the ewe’s head, held her down, and applied an antibiotic ointment to the leg.

  Patricia was struck by how calm Fran was. People got back into line. The dog seemed to settle. The injured ewe got up and jumped back into the small flock. She and the other sheep munched on some hay that had been thrown in by one of Fran’s helpers.

  “A few bite marks,” she said. “She’ll be fine. Susie, make a note of the ewe’s number, will you? Number 165. We’ll check on her later and we’ll get her out early.”

  Fran asked Zeus’s owner to come up to the fence and stand beside her. She walked over to Zeus, and tossed him a treat, which he refused to eat at first.

  “He’s still cranked up,” she said. Then she threw another. And another. Finally, Zeus began eating them. He seemed to calm, to turn away from the sheep. After a few minutes, Fran bent down and untied him from the gate. Zeus looked at the sheep, then at her. She stood back a few feet, held up a treat, and then told Zeus, “Here.” He walked over to her, just a few feet from the sheep, and lay down. She held him in that position for several minutes, tossing treats down around the ground. Zeus ate the treats, but never took his eyes off the sheep for long.

  “You can tell he’s not a border collie,” Fran said quietly. “They wouldn’t take the treats. Interesting.”

  She told the woman to leash up Zeus and take him out. “He passed,” she said, filling out the form. “He’s plenty interested in sheep, but we have some calming work to do first. I put him down for a retest. Talk to me later.”

  This wasn’t like the obedience class they gave at the Y.

  Fran turned to the people in line.

  “This dog didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “He’s just doing what dogs do. The owner had no control over him, so when he got excited by the sheep, he wasn’t listening. I don’t know if any of you noticed, but this dog doesn’t know his name. He thinks his name is ‘Zeus, bad dog’ or ‘Zeus, come here now!’ He gets yelled at for doing what any dog like him would naturally do around sheep.”

  The wind blew across the open field. What an incongruous scene Patricia thought. Far off to the left in this small, fenced-in area the larger flock, about two hundred sheep, grazed quietly, and at this end, a line of about fifty dogs and their owners, all stood waiting. Patricia hoped nobody would talk to her. She had no idea what to say, at least nothing that wouldn’t show she had no idea what she was doing.

  The next five or six dogs in a row were clearly hopeless, even to her untrained eye, running in all directions, paying no attention to the sheep at all, barking obsessively, ignoring their handlers. She had no doubt Fran would flunk them, and then her.

  Finally, it was Patricia’s turn.

  Dave’s eyes were locked on the sheep. As she circled the pen with him, he walke
d calmly beside her, staring at the flock as if he had been hypnotized. Fran asked her to go halfway, then turn around. She made Patricia go back and forth five or six times.

  The flies were swarming, and so were the mosquitoes. The smell of sheep dung was powerful. The sun was strong on her face and neck. The sound of barking dogs was grating on her nerves.

  After a few minutes, Fran asked Patricia to take Dave off the lead. When she did, he bolted, circling the pen, round and round and round, rushing past her. Each time she called to him, he ignored her. She moved toward him to try to grab him, but Fran told her to be still. She found herself shouting at the dog. “Dave! Dave! Lie down right now.” She clearly didn’t have control of him, and a moment later, Dave lunged at one of the ewes and bit her on the nose.

  Fran came out to the fence and stood watching, taking notes, filling in the evaluation form. Patricia tried to look over her shoulder but couldn’t see what she was writing.

  Finally, Fran moved inside the pen, stepped in front of Dave, and dropped a few treats on the ground. He rushed past them, then stopped and sniffed the air. Fran leaned over and took his lead, handing it over to Patricia. Even as he ate the treats, Dave couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the sheep.

  “I know it was a mess,” Patricia said, “but I’m willing to learn.”

  Fran was scribbling on her form. “Good for you. You flunked.”

  She pulled another sheet out from her clipboard and motioned for the next dog to come up, then she turned and looked Patricia over a bit.

  “He’s just being a border collie. The problem isn’t him, it’s you. You’ve got a great dog. He needs a better human, one who is willing to do the work with him. I have no idea if that’s you or not.”

  Patricia was not used to being talked to in this way, and she couldn’t wait to get into the car and get the hell out of there. She wanted to reach over and grab Fran Gangi by the throat and shake her like a rag doll. She wanted to be home, in her nice suburban house, not in this strange and chaotic place.

  “If you want to do the work someday, come to the house and we’ll talk about it. In the meantime, take a walk around the farm if you’d like. If not, you can just leave. It would be cheaper.”

  Patricia was thoroughly humiliated. She turned and saw a long line of women with their dogs, and their numbers pinned to their shirts. She walked Dave away from the sheep to a big plastic tub of water. He climbed right in and gulped huge mouthfuls. She hadn’t realized how hot and tired he must have been. She had also never seen him so calm.

  He turned and looked up at her.

  “Good boy,” she said, leaning over to kiss him on the nose.

  There was still a long line of people and dogs waiting for their tests. Patricia walked Dave out back and down a long winding path to the car. When she called for him to get in, he was reluctant and kept looking back toward the sheep. But soon she was driving down the long driveway, leaving behind a cloud of dust.

  ON THE WAY HOME, Patricia stopped at a bookstore in a mall, where she bought three books. Then she stopped at an all-night grocery. That night, she spent several hours online.

  The next morning, at five A.M., she got out of bed, put on her jogging outfit, got Dave, and drove to a state park ten miles from her house. As she expected, it was nearly deserted. She called Dave out of the car, then she took out a large plastic bag filled with a special brand of meatballs—ground liver, beef, and gravy—which she had stayed up till two A.M. baking the night before. She put eight or nine of them in a smaller bag and tucked them in a fanny pack she used to hold her glasses and cell phone when she jogged.

  Then she began a series of drills. Lie down. Stay. Sit. Come. She used one crisp word, not several. She made eye contact, first by holding the meatballs up to her eyes so Dave would look at them.

  “Dave,” she said briskly, and he would snap around to look at her. “Down!” And she would raise her hand. At the instinct test, she had noticed that the people who knew what they were doing didn’t speak to their dogs nearly as much as she spoke to Dave.

  She made him lie down out of sight, behind trees, on the other side of cars, with trucks and buses roaring by.

  Patricia was getting wet, muddy, cold. But she was also getting clearer as she watched Dave respond, saw his flightiness and confusion change as they worked together day after day.

  Remember, he’s an animal, she reminded herself, not a kid. He can be trained like an animal if he isn’t treated like a child. Paul thought she’d lost her mind. He complained that they never had breakfast anymore, and that she had become obsessed.

  She just smiled, and he left her alone.

  She went through five greasy fanny packs before she gave in and got a rubber-lined fisherman’s bag. They continued to train in the cold, the rain, and the strong sun.

  One hundred times a day: “Lie down.”

  One hundred times a day: “Come to me.”

  One hundred times a day: “Stay.”

  One hundred times a day: “Sit.”

  They trained in malls, near traffic, in front of firehouses and schoolyards, alongside dog playgroups, using other dogs as distractions and bait.

  She did not miss a day.

  Then, one autumn Saturday, she drove back to Gooseberry Field Farm. She paid her money and got her number—30. When it was her turn, Fran Gangi waved her in.

  “Hey, Infiniti,” she said. “I didn’t think we’d see you again. Let him off the leash.”

  Dave circled the pen. When he was directly across from Patricia, she raised her hand, as in a salute, and then, without a word, lowered it again. Dave dropped to the ground.

  Patricia could hear the murmurs from the people behind. “That dog is good. She knows what she’s doing.”

  She released Dave and he circled around to her. She made him lie down, then stay.

  Fran told her to bring him into the pen with the sheep, and she did. Dave charged toward the sheep and Patricia leaned over the fence and said calmly: “Dave, down.”

  He dropped to the ground. The sheep moved away, but slowly. They were not in a panic this time. “Away,” she said, and he moved to the left. She turned to Fran. “I haven’t worked on ‘come bye’ yet,” and Fran nodded, scribbling notes on her test form.

  Dave circled the sheep, dropped down, nipped at one of the ewes, then came back.

  Fran told Patricia to come out. “He passed. You did too. Nice work. Want to come in for coffee later?”

  Patricia didn’t quite understand why this felt so good, but it did. She leaned over and knelt to the ground, hugging and kissing Dave. “What a good boy. I love you,” she said, and at that moment, he looked beautiful, calm, and proud, as if he had been born in that spot and had done what she’d asked every day of his life.

  AN HOUR LATER, Patricia walked through the front door into the strange world of Gooseberry Farm. Patricia had never been in a place like it. Old overstuffed sofas and chairs lined the big living room, and cardboard boxes filled with forms were stacked up all around, as were bags of dog food, leashes, boots and rain gear, flashlights and harnesses, balls and dog toys.

  Along the walls were dozens of framed photographs of dogs, and scores of trial ribbons, agility awards, and AKC and other herding certificates.

  A sofa growled at her as she went past, and only then did she realize that there were crates everywhere, dogs in almost all of them. Fran’s dogs were either working or else kept in crates, to help keep them focused. They were not pets in the sense that Patricia knew the term.

  She heard talking from the rear of the room, which opened up into a big kitchen. She walked over and saw Fran seated at one end of a table, logbooks and evaluation forms scattered in front of her. Five or six other women were gathered around the table, and in the middle were steaming coffee mugs, a rasher of bacon, and a tray piled with mostly burnt corn muffins.

  Five of the women had dogs tethered to their chairs—two Aussies, three border collies. Patricia had put Dave in the car
and left him there. She sat down, and the women all introduced themselves. Patricia had already gathered that time with sheep was precious to these women, and if they couldn’t pay for the time, they happily worked their asses off hauling hay and doing farm chores in exchange. These women were completely at home in Fran’s kitchen.

  One woman, who introduced herself as Lisa, said, “We’re here at least once a week. We all know how to eat Fran’s muffins, something that should be done very carefully.”

  The other women laughed, and Patricia could sense how comfortable they were with one another, how at ease. It was strange, but she felt accepted in that kitchen, even though she had no reason to feel this way.

  The talk was all dogs. About their encounters with other dogs, their training successes and failures, Internet hysterias about dog food, stories of dog bites and fights. About getting their dogs to listen to them, about the sweet feeling of working with a dog, of taking sheep out to pasture. About the trials they were entering, the ribbons they were seeking.

  Patricia didn’t say much until Fran asked her about her life and work. Patricia told them she’d given up her pediatric-medicine practice a few years ago, the liability insurance so expensive, the paperwork staggering, the fights with the health-insurance companies so relentless. Plus, she had wanted to be there for her girls, to be at home, and drive them to school, and know what was going on in their lives. She was surprised to find herself starting to choke up, and she blinked back the tears. This was no place to cry.

  When Patricia said she was a doctor, Fran had perked up. They needed a medical person at the trials and instinct tests, she said. People were always getting stung, falling down, spraining their ankles, getting bitten by dogs, cutting themselves on knives and fences, falling off ATVs, even blowing out their knees. Maybe Patricia could work some of the trials as the on-duty medical person in exchange for lessons.

  Patricia said yes right away, a bit startled by how quickly she’d responded. She had turned down a dozen offers to join medical practices, and yet she jumped at this. But it felt natural, comfortable, and she was suddenly eager to use her skills, to have a role to play.