Susan is a 16 ½ year old Border Collie. She was a champion herding dog when she was young, but I didn’t meet her until she had been “retired” from herding.
My involvement in sheep herding came as just the byproduct of us getting a rescue Border Collie (Cooper). I will explain Cooper’s story elsewhere. However, after Cooper got older and started to slow down, we got Gordy. Gordy turned out to be way above my skill level, so I looked for additional training opportunities. Our friend Glen has sheep at his small ranch in Prunedale and we started practicing there. And that’s where I first met Susan. Susan was owned by our friend Mimi, who had run her in competition while Susan could compete.
Some of the time, Mimi and I trained our sheep dogs together; sometimes we practiced together; often we encouraged each other through training problems, and sometimes we even competed against each other. In competition, she always beat me.
Mimi died quite unexpectedly at a training event we were both attending nearly two years ago. She was fine one day, and gone the next. She had two dogs she was training (Ben and Laila), and she still had her two retired dogs, Susan and Myles. Her two working dogs went on to ranches where they get to work sheep every day. The two retired dogs spent a few weeks being shuffled around and not finding a permanent home. Both were very unhappy dogs.
We decided to take them in. Myles was a year younger than Susan, and Mimi had imported him directly from a trainer in Wales. Susan was bred here in Monterey County. We were able to keep Myles alive for a year - he came to us with failing kidneys. With Susan, we are now approaching two years and she's still doing fine.
I started taking both the old dogs on our training trips to Prunedale, and I was able to let both dogs have some time with the sheep. I had no idea what would happen with these two old sheep dogs. The Border Collie herding instinct is very strong, and both dogs immediately began to do some basic gathering of the sheep. Susan is still interested and she gets right in with the sheep and works on controlling them. The video is from Monday (11-18-2024).
She’s not great at it anymore and she won’t take any commands from me, but she sure loves to have the chance to work the sheep. I try to give her two or three short sessions because it really tires her out. I think she spends lots of mental energy trying to anticipate and control what is happening with the sheep.
We’re going to keep her doing this as long as she can. Watching her age gracefully is immensely satisfying.