Stumble It!
Suzie, our first Australian shepherd, had been in training to herd sheep for a couple of years. She had a couple of herding titles, and loved "her" sheep. I had come to be good friends with our herding instructor Chris, so when she had her sheep sheared one year, she offered me a couple of fleeces to spin. I was working too many hours to ever get around to cleaning, carding and spinning it myself, but I took the fleeces and proceeded to research spinning mills that would take small quantity jobs for individuals. I found one in Virginia, called to ask them if they could take my approximately 30 pounds, and they said yes, no problem--but the fleeces had to be picked clean of as much of the field debris and bits of poop as possible.
I had the fleeces in a couple of feed sacks out on the porch because they stunk to high heaven. Our four dogs had access to a fenced yard on one side of our house, but they had to go through the screened porch to get to the yard. Any time I let the dogs out to the yard, Suzie would rush to be first out the door and would position herself in front of the fleece bags in full guardian mode, on her toes, head up high, legs straight, and a low growl in her throat. The dogs would give her wide margin as they made their way to the door. I always wondered if she thought the sheep themselves were in the sacks.
Cleaning the fleeces required the assistance of Suzie. I tried to do it without her, but her whining from inside the house as I pulled bits of debris, poop, and small broken chunks of wool out of the fleeces left my nerves on edge, so I let her supervise. I finally finished with the two piles of fleece, double bagged them (UPS didn't want the smell of sheep fleeces permeating their trucks and everyone else's shipments) and boxed them for shipping. At this point I put the box in the dining room because rain was forecast overnight and I didn't want the box getting soaked. Suzie slept in the dining room downstairs all night, laying in front of the box to guard it. She didn't even want to eat or go out to do her business because she was sure harm would come to her fleeces if she left them. When I finally took the box to the shipping store the next day, she was devastated.
Instinct in animals amazes me to no end. Aussies, like many other breeds these days, fall into two groups: working and conformation. Suzie, who was bred from solid conformation lines, would have been the ideal show dog had she been correctly colored (white on the body behind the shoulders is not allowed by the Australian shepherd breed standard). Her structure and movement are spot on for the breed. But to hear the breeders of working Australian shepherds, conformation bred Aussies don't have any herding or guardian instinct--it has been bred out. Not so. If that were true, Suzie should have been indifferent to sheep and to sheep fleeces, but she isn't. Her instinct is every bit as strong as any working bred Aussie. It is simply not that easy to breed out generations of instinct. It is true that there are many conformation bred Aussies in which the instinct is weak, but it is still there to some degree.
Fortunately, televised dog sport shows have awakened an interest in competitions that allow dogs to use their instincts. Herding trials are more popular than they ever have been, and more conformation breeders are training their dogs on livestock to ensure that the instinct does not pass out of the breed. Agility uses a lot of the drive and energy that Aussies have, obedience keeps them focused on their human partner, tracking helps them focus on the environment, but nothing gets an Aussie's juice flowing like herding sheep or cattle... or even ducks!