The Shepherd's Life (25 page)

I know we will only get one chance. Make a mess of training this pup and we won't be offered another one in the future. My daughter is inspecting my face for signs of weakness. Her look is searching for a yes. But we haven't been told which one we are allowed to have yet, so she may be disappointed. But Paul knew what he was doing when he handed the puppy to her. He smiles and says that she is the last bitch that hasn't been claimed. I am pleased, but my daughter looks like she wants to get in the car quickly before he changes his mind and withdraws the offer. I almost have to prize it off her when we get home. She wants to take it to bed, but I have to tell her that a sheepdog is not a pet.

It is easy to waste a sheepdog. I know because I did it when I was twelve years old. Dad allowed me to keep a fine-looking puppy called Laddie. I didn't know how to train him properly and got frustrated when he couldn't do what I wanted him to do. I'd raise my voice, and he would become confused or scared. It was a bad combination of a young dog that needed instruction and me not knowing enough to guide him. Fewer farmers than you might imagine know how to train a dog, or have the time to commit to doing it well, so many dogs can do the basics but little more. It is difficult to get a sheepdog working well, and understanding you. It required more wisdom, patience, and kindness than I had. It still tests me. Laddie was a useful dog on the farm for the next few years, and there were moments when he did good things and we understood each other—once we sorted two ewes that we needed for a show off a hundred others we didn't need in a field and walked them home. But it was a rare moment, and I always knew he wasn't as good as he should have been. Sometimes he'd run home when I lost my temper and shouted at him. He lost trust in me. I knew whose fault it was. Mine. I knew that I'd let him down. I look back and think he would have made a good dog if I had known a bit more. But a man's life comes full circle; you can learn, and do better than your past. I am determined not to make the same mistakes again. We called the puppy Floss.

 

24

Floss learned fast. I tried to have two short training sessions a day with her, starting by teaching her to lie down, walk to heel, and come back to me when loose. Then I introduced her to sheep. She was unsure of them to start with, but when they raced away from her, she couldn't help herself: something in her body took her whizzing past them and holding them back to me. We kept at it in little bursts, building up her confidence, until she could hold these half dozen sheep whichever way I let them run past me.

After little more than ten days she is working like a sheepdog. I build a round pen for the sheep, and let her run round the outside of them. I encourage her with commands so that when she goes clockwise I give the command “Come by,” and when she runs round anticlockwise I say, “Away.” Then we take this to the field and she gets it immediately. There is a thread of understanding between us, but it can break at any moment. When training a young dog, it breaks all the time. Snap. She is confused. Frustrated. Lost. The training is all about finding that thread of connection, finding that understanding, trust, and belief in each other.

Some shepherds are wizards at training dogs. I am an amateur, so I ring Paul and ask him questions and he patiently shares his knowledge. I start to think he has sold me a great dog. She is timid when not working; like many sheepdogs she doesn't want to be a pet, she is all about the work. Floss makes me look good. You show her once how to do a thing and then she knows. She is getting faster. Stronger. Fitter. She listens intently. She wants to know what I want her to do before I need her to do it. She turns almost before the command syllables are uttered. This is about more than command and response. It is more like a shared understanding, a shared thought. She is an extension of my brain and my arms. But she is still green, and will do a thing that she thinks needs doing whether I want it done or not, like holding sheep from going through a gate I want them through. I just about stop myself raising my voice, and sounding mad. I call her back and show her what I meant. She almost smiles as she comes back to my feet. I feel blessed to have a dog that can work like this.

Months later, Paul comes to our farm and sees Floss work; he works her himself and seems pleased. He lets us have another puppy to train called Tan, and he too is special. He is a stronger boned dog, but fast and tough, and eager to please.

 

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One day my sister and her husband went to help my father on the farm. They had made a schoolboy error and driven his quad bike up a field without realizing that the bags of sheep cake (a grain mix concentrate) in the rear had toppled over and were being spread over the fields, wasted. When they got back to him, oblivious to their mistake, he exploded (insert your own swear words). My brother-in-law, who is a mild mannered and kind man and slow to anger, was furious to be spoken to like that, and stormed off with my sister in tow. When they passed me down back at the house, as they got into their car, he turned to me and said, “Your dad is a fucking loose cannon.”

A day or two later this had, like most family rows, blown over, but the name Loose Cannon has stuck. It has become Dad's nickname in the family. Even he smiles. Helping my dad has always been a risky business. You can quite easily end up falling out with him. Once when I was back for a weekend from university I got out of the car and he stormed past me, cursing and swearing, clearly not pleased to see me, and clearly fighting some other losing battle. I wasn't in the mood after hours on the road. I just shouted after him, “Should I fuck off and leave you to it?”

And he replied “Yes, fuck off.”

I got straight back in the car and went elsewhere.

Some battles are better avoided.

 

26

Dad would disappear off to the local auction to buy us a turkey. The little rural auction markets are the clearinghouses in the days before Christmas for any table-ready birds that are not sold direct to people on the farms. Often there is a last-minute glut and bargains can be had. As he drove off, we would turn to each other and smirk, because Dad never just buys
a
turkey. The bargains on offer are sometimes too much for him to refuse. He loves bidding for things, seeing that they make the “right price.” Sometimes he gets the turkey he was sent for, but usually he comes back with enough assorted poultry and fowl to put on a medieval banquet. It all depends on the trade (prices). If the trade is bad, he will not be able to help himself and he will fill the car up. He arrives back later that night, beaming at what he has done. My mother goes out to the car and comes back, shaking her head, asking what the hell she is meant to do with all those birds. She asks him what anyone is actually meant to do with six turkeys, three geese, and a partridge minus a pear tree. Dad shrugs like it isn't his problem (he is confused why women are always so negative). It is good cheap meat, he says, half the price most folk had paid for their Christmas dinner. We can freeze it and have it in January. My mother groans, and reminds him that the freezer is still full from his “bargains” of last year. We all laugh, and everyone agrees that letting Dad go to a turkey sale is a bad idea. We tuck into cold turkey in July with some chips and tease him when he says it is “a bit dry.” We laugh and tell him next year we'll stop him going to the turkey sales. But, of course, we never do.

 

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My younger daughter's eyes are so wide with excitement she looks like she might explode.

“Dad, wake up.… He's been.”

“Eh? Who?”

“Father Christmas.”

“No way.”

“Yes way … Dad.

“I've got a stocking full of presents.”

The pattern of our Christmas is the same as when I was a child. It has always been the tradition that the children can open their stocking presents from Father Christmas when they wake up (as long as it isn't too early). So they pile into our bed. Then, in a frenetic blur of ripping paper, Christmas begins. Soon the bed is littered with crumpled wrapping paper, sticky tape, and kids stuffing sugary sweets in their mouths. Once the stocking presents have been opened, I go outside to feed the sheep, Helen puts the turkey in the oven, and the children have to sit on their hands, enjoy what was in their stockings, and bide themselves until I get back in. They are not allowed to touch their main presents under the Christmas tree until the sheep are fed and I come back in and have had my breakfast. I'm not sure how long it has been like that in our family, but the lesson is a simple one. The farm and the livestock, and the men and women that work, come first.

We work through Christmas. The sheep need feeding and looking after as if it is any other day. It sounds like a pain, but it isn't. Tending to a flock of sheep or feeding cattle feels like the most natural thing to do on the birth of someone born in a manger in a faraway land of shepherds. We go to church the night before and see our friends and neighbours, and I enjoy singing those carols that are about shepherds, and eating mince pies. We can make things easier by readying things on Christmas Eve. So the day before is fairly hectic. Hayracks are filled, feed bagged and ready for the morning, pens mucked out, and a host of little routine jobs done so they don't need doing on Christmas Day. So it is just the core shepherding work that is needed, each batch of ewes to feed and check they are okay. It is kind of nice to be outside doing something decent on Christmas morning. I see cars flowing down the wet grey roads. People heading to their relatives to see presents unwrapped. My neighbours pass by and wave on their way to their sheep in the fields around the valley and beyond, bales of hay and bags of cake stuffed in the back of their vehicles. When the sheep are fed we can sit down and enjoy a day of presents and gluttony.

 

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Like my father before me I make the kids endure a long wait as I shepherd the ewes. When I get in, the kids quickly serve me a boiled egg and some toast and plead that I hurry up eating it. On no other day of the year do they pay any attention to my breakfast. Our youngest, Isaac, comes to tell me that the living room sofa has presents on it for him. He is desperate that I come so they can open them. I give in, and we enjoy our Christmas as a family. Isaac gets a lot of books about farm animals, some toy sheep for his farm, and some games. The toy sheep are his favourite thing. He “shows them” like he is trying to copy someone else he has seen doing it for real. It seems a serious business. He tells me he needs a sheepdog now, like Floss, and then he can come and help me and his granddad. I ruffle his hair and tell him he can borrow my sheepdog for a bit longer, and that maybe Floss will have pups one day. Then I tell him there is more to life than sheep and sheepdogs, but he looks back as if I've just said something idiotic.

Presents are unwrapped. Chocolates munched. A giant turkey dinner with all the trimmings devoured. The queen's Christmas address is watched, and the national anthem emotionally hummed to. Then I usher the kids out to get some fresh air, which none of them want, but they are all nicer for it. They all have to do some jobs every day and Christmas is no different. This way they learn about duties and responsibilities. Working makes the food and family times later in the day more meaningful: we have earned the rest through work, not idleness. I'd hate not to work at Christmas.

My children have long figured out what makes me tick. When my elder daughter was four years old, she looked at me sternly across the kitchen table and said, with a wisdom beyond her years, “The trouble with you, Dad, is that it is all about the sheep.”

 

29

My father has cancer, but he somehow manages to come home from hospital in Newcastle for Christmas. Though very ill he insists on coming to the farm for his Christmas dinner. He is an ashen-green colour and has to disappear to the toilet every few minutes. But he eats some dinner. The women of the family bustle about making Christmas happen. The kids play on the floor.

Dad is happy and relieved to be home in his place in the world. From our window he can see his tough, wind-battered, rain-sodden farm, stretched beneath us in a rare moment of winter sunshine. His tear-reddened eyes soak it in, like it might be the last time he sees it.

“Look how that new tup stands.”

The stock tups are grazing away across the hillside and have caught his eye. One swaggers towards some ewes penned the other side of a wire fence. We don't need many words. The tup was part of the story of the autumn past, when we had fallen for him and taken a chance, buying him for a high price. He is the future of our flock. Our choice. I'd nudged Dad's elbow and egged him on to buy it when he had wavered at the auction. He'd loved that. The sons and daughters of this tup will be born in April, and sold the next autumn. We buy dreams of the future when we buy a tup like that.