It's been a slow blue week. Slow because it rained all week, though we surely needed it. I have always found it disturbing how those whose lives only peripherally touch nature—most of the people I know—find summer weather in winter so enjoyable. Not that we've had summer weather. The inland citrus crop was mostly frozen this year, and the freakish dry cold sucked out what little moisture was in the ground. The late-winter flowers—acacia, almond, flowering plum, narcissus—are all behind their time. The winter grass, which should be lush by now, is hardly a whisper of green in most places, and people are praying for a wet spring, even though last year's wildly wet spring was terrible for the hay crop and the fruit set.

Blue for no exact reason. A friend sent me an entry form for an AHBA ranch trial, and I went ahead and entered, even though I have never been to an AHBA trial, never even seen any kind of ranch trial, and the course plan mystifies me. It's only money and humiliation, I tell myself, hoping I won't get in. Sometimes I experience the full force of how little I know, how short a distance I've come, how limited I am and my dog is, and wonder what the heck I imagine I'm doing. That would be this week. Plus it rained in a irritating way, always drizzling and threatening but rarely delivering the promised downpours that would fill the reservoirs for summer, soak the fields, fill the streams so the salmon could swim up them to spawn. Just enough to keep me from practicing, keep me indoors, feeling dissatisfied, and thinking too much.

Part of my discontent is about my late start. The great handlers have twenty or more years of experience on me. I won't get there in this lifetime even if I were a lot more naturally gifted and energetic than I am. I was talking to George about breeding, and he said he gave up on the idea of developing a line of working dogs when he reflected on how much time it realistically took, to select, raise, train, winnow, over and over. "I'm too old," he said.

At Mass last Sunday, our new pastor's homily was about how God does not bless or curse us with circumstances. That circumstances are neutral, it is what we choose to do with them that is important. Of course life is not about achievement. That's our common delusion. You're supposed to say that it's about the journey. "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive and the true success is to labour." That quote from Robert Louis Stevenson is taped to my wall above my desk.

But I think, blue and rainy, that traveling hopefully is missing the deeper point. Life is about death. In the light of the end, what is important? Okay, not stockdog trials. Not feeling sorry for yourself, pretty sure I can cross that one off. Then, leafing through old Ranch Dog Trainer magazines for gems, I came across a little tribute to a guy named Cliff Johnson, who "in ten short years" went from a beginning stockdog handler to winning Open class Border Collie trials on both cattle and sheep. Cliff's take on his success: "Even a blind hog will find a acorn sometimes." He started out when he was 62. In the photo he looks pretty spry, too.

So I cheered up a little and went out to give all my goats deworming injections, which frankly scares me to death. My dog was right there putting them on the stand, laying down waiting for me to fumble through the procedure praying I wouldn't somehow kill them (although if I fumbled too long she would begin to whine under her breath), and then popping them back in the barn. And I thought nothing of it. We're just working together. What else would she be doing?

All the great trainers have a vision of the perfect performance, and are willing to work in a focused, patient way until that performance is achieved. That willingness to take endless pains is part of their greatness. But that won't be me. That's not where the joy of working stock with my dog lies, for me. It's just the 'with' part.