RIDE EASY PARDS: Hotrod, Boxcar and Miss Kitty.
Allen and his wife herded sheep on the Dogie Ranch one year. They had three border collies, Hotrod was the old man of the three, the master. He was a little stove up but still the best. Miss Kitty, the youngest, was starting to work pretty well but was a bit over zealous. The other was Boxcar.
He was the one who did the most work, perhaps three or four years old, very well trained but not yet the dog Hotrod was. Hotrod didn’t do as much work as the other two out on the range, but in a shed, he was almost magical. The first time I saw any of them work was on a mountain side.
I was tending sheep camps for a couple of weeks while the sheep boss took some time off. We needed to get a count of the sheep as there was a marker sheep missing. Marker sheep are generally black or have a bell on its neck or something that sets them apart from the other sheep.
If you have a marker sheep for every hundred sheep and one is missing, it’s a good chance that there are more missing. It’s a simple way to keep a rough count of a band of sheep spread out on a mountainside.
Miss Kitty was just over a year old and was working with Boxcar. Hotrod stayed at the wagon with Mrs. Kirkpatrick as he was getting a little arthritic.
Allen was letting Miss Kitty do most of the work. She was pretty enthusiastic and full of go. Boxcar was lying at Allen’s feet where he had been told to stay. He didn’t move anything except his eyes and his ears, but you could see that he was watching everything.
Allen used hand signals along with a shrill whistle from his lips to direct his dogs, just like my dad and nearly all the other good dog handlers I ever saw. None of them used any sort of device to whistle, just their own piercing tones to get the dogs’ attention.
He wanted Miss Kitty to “go way ‘round” and gather them. When she got them all together, he signaled her to bring the herd of about 1,200 ewes and their lambs to him. She was about two thirds of the way, and Allen had her stop. The band was moving to our left and seemed to be starting to split.
She was working too close. He whistled again and waved for her to go back and stop them, which she did, but they started to go to our right. Boxcar’s eyes and ears were nearly carrying him to the sheep. He whimpered but didn’t move
