I do not have the right temperament for competition. That is just a fact. As the date of the AHBA Ranch trial I had entered (sheep, large flock geese) approached, I felt an ever-increasing nameless dread, and my mind went in hopeless little circles: maybe I'll catch the flu! Maybe I'll forget to wake up early!

The day before, I drove out to the ranch where it was to take place, to practice. I took the sheep out into the field and they immediately got away from Bonnie and ran straight up the side of a near-vertical hill. I took the geese out — Bonnie's first encounter with geese — and they ran around the outside of the take pen and got wedged into a dead-end vee in the fencing, from which they were impossible to extricate. It was horrible. I decided, okay, my goal will be to simply not lose my stock. If I do that much, I'll consider it a success. I went home, packed my car, and went to bed with a stomach ache.

That night I had a dream in which a voice said, just love your dog.

The morning dawned clear. At the ranch, people were milling about, their breath smoking in the cold, their dogs excited. I was the only novice handler. It was all Heelers, Kelpies, and Border Collies; except for one noncompeting dog. Bonnie was the only Aussie. The course involved a bridge, two roads, a graze, and several obstacles. This was no five minutes-around-the-fenceline Started ASCA course. I had forgotten my boots so my feet were sopping from the wet grass by the time we'd walked the whole course. I didn't know a soul.

The morning trial was alternating sheep and geese, the afternoon, goats and geese. The first run was magnificent, basically perfect, by a Border Collie with many years of trialing experience. That turned out to be the highwater mark. There were a number of other nice runs though, including one during which a flock of tame guineafowl flew in to check out the action while an Australian Cattle Dog did her best to watch the geese in the graze and ignore their obviously highly critical comments as they peered over her shoulder.

One Kelpie I was surprised to see exhibit no eye at all on the geese. Must be one of the more upright-working kind, I thought — until she got back from her run and flattened in front of the sheep pen. It wasn't that she didn't have eye, she just didn't consider geese to be livestock, and was simply obeying orders without working them at all. Poor dog, her other run was on goats, which plain terrified her. She never got to work her sheep that day.

The original idea was to have a motorized vehicle drive slowly past the advanced dogs while they kept their stock moving along the marked road, and be parked for the beginning dogs. By trial time, the vehicle had transmogrified into a goat-drawn cart, from which the handler had to extract a piece of fruit while his dog kept the flock stationary. Many of the dogs were rather startled to come across a harnessed goat wearing a flowered eyeshade. The sheep and geese were unmoved by the sight, but the goat herd in the afternoon trial was delighted, crowding around the cart like field workers at the canteen truck at lunch time. Some of the Border Collies had a time trying to pry them loose. This was one of the several places where the loose-eyed dogs showed to advantage — they had no trouble simply coming through and shouldering the goats away.

Bonnie, being one of only two beginning dogs, ran her sheep almost last of the morning, by which time I had made friends with the other contestants and become completely resigned to my fate, whatever it might be.

I had watched carefully to see how the best handlers positioned their dogs at various sections of the course, and where runs went wrong. As the dog just before me finished up, I wet my dog down (by now it was sunny and warm), and went to sit in a private corner with her. "Be my good farm dog, Bonnie," I said. "That's all you need to be."

She took the sheep out of the pen with the perfect aplomb of long practice. Off we went down the road to the bridge. I was mortally afraid she would be so pushy the sheep would scatter, but no, she stayed back, and when she got a bit close I dropped her. Atta girl. She turned the sheep after the bridge and we went back over. Through the panels, back to the graze. It was hard to get the sheep positioned without stepping into the graze but after some fumbling we managed it. Bonnie hates watching sheep graze, and I had to remind her to stay down about five hundred times. Despite this, the sheep by now trusted her and ate their alfalfa — hers was the only run of the day in which the sheep felt relaxed enough to eat.

Next we put the sheep through the chute. Here, practice paid off again, as I had set up a practice chute at a friend's place and had worked out many small essential points, such as how long the sheep needed to be walking straight toward the entrance for a successful passage (surprisingly long),and how far away I had to drop my dog so they would not feel at all rushed (surprisingly far). We didn't have much trouble there. Then Bonnie saw the bag.

This was a white garbage bag tied to the fence across the field. A breeze had kicked up, and it had begun to flap, a strange bobbing object which absolutely needed investigating. Bonnie abandoned her flock and went bounding toward it in high, challenging leaps. I cried "Bonnie, you shitball! Come back here!" Luckily the acoustics of the field made it impossible for the judge to hear me. In a few moments Bonnie returned to her task and we moved on to the goat cart challenge.

Bonnie thought the goat was just fascinating. However, at this point the sheep were coasting, and were content to wait for me to bring my dog back to her duty. From there it was a short trip to the repen. Once the corner was turned it was a straightaway and the sheep took off at a trot for home. Uh oh. Bonnie was having none of this, and without orders took off, that little California Red wether I'd had my eye on the whole time split along the repen fence and Bonnie headed him in a little cloud of dust. Not pretty.

I set up the repen properly and in they went. I had survived. Everyone applauded and the guy with the sterling Border Collie run told me I had a real nice dog. In fact I had qualified and won my class handily.

Then I had my geese run, only about seventeen hours in broiling sun later. By that time, everyone, geese included, was tired and hot. I set up the take pen exactly wrong, ignoring the 'you can't mean this, Boss' look my dog gave me, and almost lost the whole flock, but Bonnie turned them for me, even getting one out of the creek into which it had floundered.

Now, of course, the geese were agitated, and Bonnie was really was too close. We struggled along the road, losing points all the way, but the course was a good bit shorter for the geese, and we aced the graze, the panels, the chute. The geese were panting, poor things. I don't like to see poultry pant. In the event, we qualified again, with a better score than the sheep run, although we missed first place by half a point.

I drove home exhausted, sun-crisped, but happy. My good dog, Bonnie, who gave her best for me that day. I love my dog.