It feels like summer finally. Our predictable summer coastal weather cycle of a cool day, a warm day, a hot day, a really hot day, then you wake up to a clammy blanket of fog over everything, which slowly burns off and becomes a cool day, starting things all over again. The grass is finally beginning to dry and turn that particular summer-in-California color, not "golden", but subtle shades of biscuit and pale ale. The foxtails and wild oat awns are reaching their prime deadliness to dog ears and noses. On the coast there is still enough moisture for the ticks to be teeming; they eventually go dormant when it gets dry enough. The mud is all gone. Out in the big pasture, the late spring flowers: buttercup, red maids, something pale blue I can't identify. As the sheep and I walk, we kick up clouds of tiny white butterflies.

Perseverance furthers, they say. However, that's only partly true; we all know how to repeat the same mistake our whole lives without the slightest different result. So, only intelligent, attentive perseverance furthers, only perseverance poised for instant change of course. That's dog training. Or ought to be, anyway.

For a few months now, I've been fishing for what I could call "local contacts". It is so far to Sherry's that one half hour lesson eats up three quarters of a day, and even in my small efficient car, the cost of getting there and back almost doubles the price. And it would just be nice to know stockdog people, or anyone with my interests, who don't live so dang far away. But it hasn't been easy at all.

First I tried one of the very few people who both has working Aussies and actually works them, and set up a date to meet her and practice with her sheep. When she suddenly cancelled without giving much of any reason, that was emotionally a bit difficult for me, but I got over it and called up a lady who trials Border Collies on cattle and gives lessons. I was nervous, since Bonnie does not seem to me have the makings of a superlative cow dog, but I never found out how we would do because the lady hurt her hip and told me she could not take on new students for the indefinite future.

But perseverance furthers, so I made an appointment for a lesson with a guy named George, whom I knew by reputation as a master of the art of pressure, as having “a very different style”, and who didn't shout at trials like almost everyone else. George lives about an hour inland, and on the West Coast in summer, the inner you go, the hotter it gets. It was mercilessly hot. He had two other students there, both much greener than me, with Border Collies. George also famously likes to talk. Although my lesson was supposed to be at noon, I spent three and a half hours there, during which time Bonnie had three little sessions--she probably worked fifteen minutes total. The other two people also worked their dogs a little bit. The rest of the time, he talked. He talked about pressure, and natural style, and what a stock dog does and does not know innately, and how and what to communicate to your dog. It was all interesting, I never get tired of listening to thoughtful people talk about stock dogs.

But first, he went to fetch the sheep. His Kelpie did a nice gather, brought the flock slowly to the gate, and then spent about ten minutes putting them in an alley. He worked plenty hard at it, weaving, staring, crouching, running sideways, but the sheep seemed to mostly ignore him. After they were in the alley, they stood there for a good while before they moved at an infinitesimal pace toward the barn, where they stalled again. At this point I lost interest, walked over to my car, finished my bottle of frappechino, put sunscreen on my face, arms, hands, neck, watered my panting dog, and came back. Nothing seemed to have changed. At last they emerged from the barn and gradually sifted out into the arena, chewing contemplatively. I reflected that Bonnie would have taken about five minutes, tops, to do the same job, but the sheep would certainly have been slightly disturbed. Another batch was put into the round pen; here he used a different dog, and the sheep walked along more briskly. Was the Kelpie's lack of push a matter of breeding or training? I didn't know the answer, but I did think that a dog who worked like that would drive me crazy.

Since I had never been there before, I was round pen material. I had told George that I wanted to work on how pushy my dog was, and that is what we did. One of the most pleasant aspects of his training style was how very slow, quiet, and subtle it was. He was looking for the slightest sign of giving to pressure, one step backward, or an averted face. Then the reward, the release. “Just like training a horse.”

This is true, except that a horse is only reacting to your pressure and release, while your stockdog is reacting to the stock, and the stock are reacting to the dog, and you, and the sheep on the other side of the fence, and what the leader has decided, among other imponderables only known to themselves; a kaleidoscope of shifting pressures.

When George handled Bonnie, she enacted a textbook demonstration of correct response, staying very wide of her stock yet continuing to work, making a perfect round outrun without him saying a word to her, just using the subtlest pressure cues. Stockdog dressage. That was not quite the case when I tried it. But I felt inspired and hopeful. I hate yelling and throwing things at my dog, even though she does not seem to mind it much herself, and was deeply intrigued by a method which seemed so calm yet effective.

That was before I tried it out at home, of course. But perseverance furthers.