Bonnie is afraid of wasps. I don't blame her, I'm afraid of them too. Every autumn, when our ground-nesting colonies of yellow jackets get cranky just before they winterkill, she has gotten stung a few times. This fall was no different, once on a walk in the woods, another time gathering the goats out of their pasture. That sting made her a little leery of gathering them, but she managed anyway, until last week.

It was at dusk. She had gotten practiced at fetching the goats along the drive, so I thought we would take a side trip up a trail to some new browse at the top of the hill. All was going smoothly and then suddenly the goats split up and dashed in separate directions,and Bonnie was writhing and biting at herself. She had stepped right in a yellow jacket nest, and was literally covered with wasps. I screamed at her to run, and started running myself, to the fish pond, where I grabbed my dog and threw her in, holding her down and pinching wasps to death with my fingers, all over her head. Once I thought that most of them were drowned, I rushed her up to the bathroom and stood her in the tub, combing her with a steel rattail comb while sluicing her with cold water from the handheld showerhead. Wasps were washing off her in clumps.

Meanwhile my daughter had gotten the goats penned and was calling our vet. It was after hours but she answered anyway, and told us to give her benadryl and get her to the emergency vet. As I came in the door they whisked her away from me and began treatment—steroids, and morphine for the pain. When I got her back she was already groggy, and she slept strangely that night, with her eyes half-open, in an inert drugged state.

She woke up the next morning, apparently fine. But she had changed about one thing: she would not herd the goats any more.

Sure, she would make a nervous, distracted attempt at controlling them. But they saw through this instantly. I had thought I had some really easy-to-manage goats. What I actually had possessed was a herding dog who made stock management look effortless. Now, I had unruly, mischievous, do-whatever-they-dang-well-pleased goats. It was awful.

I took Bonnie up to Gwen's, to see whether she was useless on sheep too. Nope, she was great on sheep. I made sure to try to set things up so she felt successful, as I knew her confidence had been shaken. No problem, she was successful at everything, relaxed, in control, happy. It was just those goats, with whom she justly associated a hideous and terrifying experience.

What could I do? I didn't know. I asked George at my next lesson, and he said only that I had to try to find ways for her to regain her confidence in small increments. Don't correct her for anything, he said. Praise only.

By the time I got home it was time to feed. I couldn't find the chickens. Where are they, Bonnie? Under the deck, Bonnie reported. Want 'em? Yep, put them away. Bonnie crawled under the deck and retrieved all the chickens and marched them up the hill into the coop. I watched how she just manipulated them with a little turn of her head, waiting for them to make the right decision at the fork in the path. What a cool dog.

Next the goats. Bonnie was least nervous in the barn, where she had never been stung. I was scooping out the grain into the feed basins for the goats, and deliberately, deviously, left the stall door open. Of course in a moment Melba, the infinitely greedy, had her nose in the grain bin. I pushed her out and she jumped on the alfalfa bales and started eating out of the basins I was measuring into. Bonnie, Bonnie! Fix this ! Bonnie couldn't resist this obvious affront to order. She leapt onto the bales and shoved Melba off and shouldered her (resisting all the way) back into the stall. Atta girl! That's my girl!

There's hope for us.