As we drove into Bellingham in the twilight, looking for a restaurant for dinner, the first big warm raindrops fell, the beginning of a mild summer rainstorm. The rest of the drive to the Ballards that night would be made more interesting by three small mistakes I had made while preparing to leave my house: first, I hadn't replaced my windshield wipers since last winter (the last time it rained, in my part of the world); second, I hadn't rotated my balding front tires the way I meant to, and third, I had driven off wearing my computer glasses instead of my regular ones.
This last was not so noticeable to me on the interstate in daylight, when the signs were big, and repeated. Residential street signs in the rain at night with bad wipers were completely impossible to see. Naturally, Gwen drove, but I was of no help to her at all. We probably would have floundered for a long time trying to locate the Ballards' driveway, except that as we drove by, Tim was standing out on the road waving to us.
Another warm haven. We piled into a house crammed with dogs and puppies and people. Maureen, the owner of Tag, the sire of the litter I'd come to see, was there to get her pick pup and show me how Tag worked, and we all played with the pups and talked and talked and talked until, well, midnight again.
Anybody who has followed my diary up until now can testify that I am not exactly prone to gushing, but I have to say, the Ballards set the gold standard for me in what working Aussie breeders should aspire to be. Not merely generous and welcoming, they are educated, forward-thinking, and profoundly ethical, with the future of the working Aussie as a whole, not just their kennel name, at the forefront of every decision they make. I felt honored to be in their company.
The pups were all blacks and reds, with little white for the most part. A happy intrepid bunch. They were somewhat undistinguishable from each other at first, but the two Marilyn thought might be right for me, a black male and a red female, I tried hard to spend more time with. Still, by the time we went to bed, I only had the sense that the red girl was Marilyn's favorite and was one sharp little cookie.
The next morning, Tim brought Tag down to the round pen to see how he would work sheep with him. Tag is a strikingly beautiful nearly solid black dog. He is only three and just a sheep ranch dog without much formal training, but he did know one thing, which was that he was Maureen's, not Tim's. He immediately jumped the gate and ran back to Maureen. Only when she stood next to Tim and echoed his commands would he work for Tim. But then he was magnificent.
I have never seen a green dog work quite like Tag. Tim gave up the round pen idea and moved into the field, where Tag, with almost no cues, moved way out to perfectly balance Tim's light ewes. He would drop like a rock for Maureen, always anxious to do exactly what she wished, keen, graceful, moving in great sweeping arcs but never over-flanking, always in control. I muttered to Gwen, "I don't want a puppy, I want that dog," and she nodded agreement.
After this stunning exhibition we all piled in cars and drove an hour and half along the Fraser River to Downriver Farm in Hope, where there were some nice dogbroke cattle, so that we could see how Tag did on cows. This was an amazing drive. Rags of mist and occasional rain obscured the mountains most of the time, but when it cleared, the black snowy peaks hanging just above us, the waterfalls streaming down vertical rock faces, were like nothing I'd seen before, even coming from a state known for its natural wonders.
Tim was the ideal tour guide, since he knew the answer to every question I asked, which tended to be things most tour guides don't know, like what crop is that we're looking at, how does Canada support its sheep industry, and how do you make haylage. Tim is a retired professor of soil science and forestry, and is the kind of person I could listen to for hours.
Tag hadn't worked cattle much, but once Maureen let him know that it was okay to do so, he entered into it with enthusiasm. Here he was really too raw for me to get much sense of how he would develop with experience, but his sheep work was certainly unforgettable. Add to that his beauty and grace, his exquisite biddability, devotion, and his stable and friendly temperament, and it seemed a shame that more people didn't know about this dog.
He is also a complete outcross to all the pedigrees I had ever seen. So in a way it is no wonder he didn't seem like any working Aussie I had watched before.
That night, I realized that I still didn't know what puppy I was going to take home. I didn't feel deeply drawn to any one puppy, I liked the red pup, Betty, but I felt odd about taking Marilyn's favorite, even though Marilyn insisted she wasn't keeping any of this litter.
She had bred this litter specifically to save Tag's genes for future generations of working Aussie breeders, not for herself. I wondered what to do. How tired I was! I hoped I would have a prophetic dream telling me what to do, because we were scheduled to leave for home the next morning.