Bruce took this video (probably best watched on youTube) a few weeks ago when the cows were in the perfect pasture to see what Mike actually does. He gathers naturally. His "lie down" still amazes us even after 3 years. He is trained to standard border collie commands so "come by" means clockwise and "away to me" is counter clockwise." Walk up" means to walk toward the stock wherever he is. "Bring them here" means just that. " Look back" is to get him to look back and see an animal he may have missed or one that is over a rise out of sight. He will run back and search. When the grass is high it's very comical to watch because he will run, and every so often bounce up on his back legs to try to see over the grass. There are also many commands that are specifically ours like "get the cows up" and he gets the ones up that are lying down in their stalls. Border collies do not bark when they work but when Mike gets cows up he makes frantic laps around the barn barking, always in a clockwise direction. Cows that don't get up eventually get punched with his front feet or bitten, although its more like a dog kiss actually. When we tell him to "put the steers in" he gathers the steers in the cow yard and puts them in a pen next to the barn so we can lock them in and run the cows through the yard. "Go around front, get her outa there" has him going in front of a cow that hasn't backed out of her stanchion and nips her so she will back out and go outside with the rest. "Lie down ,watch em" he lays down and holds a spot like in a doorway or an alley. "Jump in / jump out" and he will come into a pen through the stanchions if I need his help or go back out if I don't and so on. He is not aggressive and when it looks like he bites we think he just punches them with his feet and maybe pinches them with his teeth. There are times we wish he was more aggressive but he is not. We laughed watching this video because Bruce had to tell him to lie down twice the first time because he wanted to make sure he was laying where he could see something. Also when he comes back from going all the way up on the left he hears Bruce's voice and he assumes he will go left as he did before. He starts to go left but when Bruce sends him right he nearly runs into the last cow changing directions. At the end he is looking back trying to figure out what Bruce is doing while he follows the cows. On a normal morning Mike takes the cows home and Bruce goes and resets the next fence. When Mike has all the cows safely across the road he goes part way back to the pasture and waits for Bruce to come with the 4 wheeler so he can get a ride. If we let him take the cows back to pasture by himself he goes very slowly and when we get out there he has gently pushed all the cows into their new break of grass and he is just laying there watching them eat . These days he is beside himself with so little to do. As we are milking he comes into the barn every 10 minutes to check and see if we are ready to do anything fun. He goes out into the steers feed bunk and watches them. They, and also the calves, wash his ears so he is generally wet. When the weather is nice he plays with his ball or goes and watches the goats which we refer to as watching Goat TV. We think he is already looking forward to spring.
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