A Dog Named Boston

Another of my favourite drawings, isn't the simplicity great.













As mentioned in the last post our sheep handling skills improved beyond belief with the acquisition of an Ag-Bike and a sheep dog.

Boston surveying his kingdom from a vantage point.

Julie’s dad out of the goodness of his heart, or perhaps because he had no desire to have a marathon runner as a daughter, bought her/us a Honda Ag bike, this was to prove invaluable in our sheep herding endeavors, as our woolly friends were very soon to find it was much faster than they were and it was being guided by a far superior mind.

A farming friend who had heard some of our stories (pre motor bike) took pity on us and gave us a beautiful black Border Collie-Kelpie cross puppy, we named him Boston, (soon shortened to Boss for obvious reasons) after the serial detective Boston Blackie, Boston was introduced to sheep at a very young age which is the right thing to do with a working dog.

Boston trotted alongside the motor bike with his boundless energy, he was never at home riding on the back as some dogs are, perhaps he just didn’t trust my riding ability? he had a very competitive nature and I’m inclined to think he just wanted to be able to run free.

On a daily basis we would have a race down the driveway to the mailbox, a return trip of a bit over half a mile, if I beat him to the mailbox, as I usually did, he would stop where he was until I started back towards home then take off lickety split and with the headstart often beat me home, we both enjoyed this ritual a lot, he NEVER tried to race the bike any other time only to the mailbox.

While neither the Honda or Boston are visible in this picture just look how well behaved those sheep are so we are there somewhere!

No matter the reasoning he did come to think of the Honda as his mother I believe. At a quite young age he began to question my directions to him, when I sent him around the mob of sheep in a certain direction he would sometimes look at me quizzically and proceed to head of in the opposite direction, he obviously thought he knew more about herding sheep than I did, most times he was right too the instinctive ability of these purpose bred dogs is legendary. With Boston's help Though I was learning.

There were times however that for reasons of my own I wanted to do something different to the obvious with the sheep, at times like these we would come into conflict with me yelling at him to do as he was told and him generally ignoring me.

One day after heated debate about his parentage I roared of on the Honda to do the job myself, Boston followed along and I noticed that each time I turned the bike he would automatically head there too, It didn’t take me long to figure out that if I let the Honda give him directions he followed them very well.

So was born a very good team of man, dog, and Honda, just the slightest of change in direction were noted by Boston who then interpreted them into messages to guide him in his duties, often he seemed to sense the changes perhaps by the difference in the sound of the bike as it changed direction but the visual observations were unmistakable he would pause almost as though asking a question before moving on.

Crazy would have stood no chance against the team effort!!