We have had three, 28 total years of dog life between them. They have trained me to meet their needs. I think that’s what border collies do so well with their “Please sir, do this” replies to commands. I follow through to please them while believing, not really, that I am the master. I have fallen in love with them, with their curious cocking of the head when they are working to understand something and with their supernatural recognitions of hand and eye signals, but mostly because I can release them in a field or on a trail and they will never run away, but leap out of sight and return, every action of theirs a game they make to keep themselves amused. I have seen them thinking, making decisions, revealing the new words they have learned without us knowing.
I have spent more hours with them than with any other person but my wife: in canoes, on rocks next to waves, on long sand beaches, on mountain trails in Maine and New Hampshire, in more fields than I can remember. They will play with me for hours, tolerating my short attention span and need to vary their tasks. When they run, I forget about my own gripes or age and only live with their speed and joy. In movement, they make exhilaration.
They know our scents, the subtle sounds of our cars separate from others, the shapes we have made together to encompass our routines — now we eat, now we walk, now we sleep next to you on the couch, now we play pig, play rhino, play frisbee and ball. I know, I know, any dog we take in might do the same — lab, mutt, pit, husky, dobbie, shep, golden — but when we found Pete in the shelter 20 years ago, 9 weeks old, the links snapped into place. I guess we love what we know. In spite of the hair, the bills, the mess, the bother, the sicknesses, the limits, the checks on our time, their implacable desire to learn, their easily bored selves, we are theirs. Once border collies make their claim, there is no escape.
