You cross a threshold when you start keeping your own livestock on your own land. I'd become habituated to driving out to practice on somebody else's stock; most of these were "dogtoy sheep", animals who existed in that place solely because somebody wanted to practice herding with their dog. I came, I practiced, I left. Sure, I helped vaccinate and worm and band sometimes, but I was helping. I had invested in nothing except maintaining the goodwill of my hosts.

Now, I am experiencing the responsibilities of farming, in miniature. My goats are rapidly chomping through the last of their browse, and I need to create new pastures for them. I need to keep track of their weight gain so I know when to breed them. I need to research the cheapest place to buy feed. I need to learn how to trim hooves (and where to buy a trimming knife). Now it is on my shoulders to decide when they should be vaccinated and wormed next. All this stuff is new to me and it makes me a little nervous.

Meanwhile, Bonnie and the goats and I are working out our mutual relationships. At first the goats were fearful of Bonnie, but by now they have classified her as The Big Drag, rather like an officious schoolteacher. 'Okay, all right, we heard you the first time!' they appear to be thinking. They have learned that the worst Bonnie ever does to them is chew on them lightly (getting them all wet) if they refuse to mind. I have been taking them on walks to spend a little time on fresh browse outside their field, and these adventures can be quite surprising, with goats. The words caper and caprice are both influenced by the latin word for goat, capro, and there are reasons for that.

And each goat is different. Snowdie, the oldest at nine months, is the leader, the calmest and most responsible. Melba, who has the nicest conformation and color, is also the most wicked, with a strong tendency to grab rose bushes as we go by, to shoot off in unexpected directions, and to end up in places I cannot imagine a sheep would volunteer to explore. "Look back!" I will cry, and Bonnie spins to go extract Melba from the roof deck, or from on top of the hay bales. Tule, the baby, sometimes will try to take off on her own but always regrets it and comes bleating back at a gallop.

Yesterday, I took them out to their regular browsing patches. Bonnie already knows all the escape routes and where to position herself to watch them. The main issue for her is that she really hates just watching them eat. She whines and fidgets, moves restlessly around the circle until finally she encroaches on their space, they move away, and she gets scolded. Then it starts over again. I don't have a good command for "leave them alone to browse but don't let them wander over to the apple tree." Their space-bubble, however, is very small. She can literally walk over and touch one with her nose and it won't stop chewing away, if she is gentle.

Then I got brave and decided to take them down the driveway. This is tricky, since there is a steep ascending cliff on one side and a steep drop-off on the other. Bonnie got nervous and pushy, and the goats took off running down the drive. Yikes! Bonnie raced ahead and turned them back, sending them running the other way, their comical nun's hat ears flying. Yikes again! Bonnie raced ahead and turned them back the other way. I saw this could go on indefinitely so I dropped Bonnie and let everyone settle down. It took some practice but eventually we could walk slowly, stop, graze, walk slowly again.

I thought about the light sheep I had tried to work recently at a practice place. When Bonnie "walked on", they started running when she was forty feet away. Neither Bonnie nor I knew to do anything but hold them on a fence from twenty or thirty feet away and head them when they tried to bolt in either direction. If we had to manage a whole flock of sheep like that, we'd be fired the first day. Yet she had moved a flock of a dozen newly weaned lambs across a pasture quite nicely just a few days before—very fearful lambs which had just been chased by dogs. How different livestock was everywhere, and how much Bonnie and I have to learn!

My goat herding was much more like the life of the majority of working dogs: moving their own sheep, goats, or cattle, who know, trust, and respect them. The dog knows each head of stock under its management, and knows where they are supposed to be and where they aren't supposed to be. It is a quiet, mundane world for the most part. It's far different than trying to herd five strange sheep dumped out in a field they've never seen before.

The stockman Bud Williams writes: " … Sometimes we get so hung up with perfection that we forget that men and dogs are individuals. Not everyone is interested in, or capable of, having that perfect dog or being a perfect handler … No matter what your neighbor says, if you think you have a good dog, then you have a good dog."

I like that.