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I was deleting the (too many) photos on my laptop and I came across this video from years ago. That pretty much sums up the relationship between dogs and cats: highly variable and always interesting. Some dogs are best friends with cats, some ignore them, and some chase them or try to round them up. Or are afraid of it, often for a good reason.
In the video you will see Maggie, left, protecting Nellie from Willie. Willie, like many Border Collies (including Skip), perceives cats as odd, soft-hoofed cattle. Maggie, on the other hand, was protecting Nellie at the time they met. What I love most about the video is Maggie’s facial expression. She’s one of the most expressive dogs I’ve ever known, and she usually either has a sweet, passive face when resting (the real female dog’s face when resting) or beams with joy like a sparkler. She’s perfectly capable of throwing shade at me or another dog at times if Princess Margaret feels her royalty isn’t being honored, but I’ve never seen her so serious. What Willie would like to do is herd Nellie like she’s a sheep and on a few occasions pinch her if she doesn’t obey. Why doesn’t she walk away when I approach like a lurking predator? How can I take control of this creature I’m genetically programmed to guard? Poor Willie.
Nellie’s behavior is equally funny to me. You can see how stressed she is by Willie’s behavior – as in, not. But does she revel in Willie’s inability to do what he wants to do? Or just enjoy a good roll on the carpet? Attribution about mental states is sometimes a dangerous game, but in this case, it’s hard not to imagine that something related to Willie is going on.
Skip came to see us, would never have seen a cat in his life, and his behavior reflected that. He looked shocked the first time he met ours, started chasing Polly one night (he stopped easily, but Jim, Polly and I were equally scared for a few long seconds), then transformed while trying to round up the cats. He became a dog that was really obsessed, and I had my work cut out in those early days. At first, I couldn’t get his attention when he looked at a cat. Here’s a video of the process we started in the first few weeks, note how “Look” didn’t work, but “House” did. (Which means “to get into the house.”) It doesn’t sound like much, but seriously, it was a huge step up at the time.
After a few more weeks, he got off easy on the first try, but as long as Nellie and Polly were around, he never stopped responding to cats like they were tiny sheep.
All this got me thinking how interesting and varied the relationships between dogs and cats are. Best friends. Enemies. Cattle. Predators. Prey. Young mammals to feed. Play friends.
As you can imagine, given the topic, it was impossible for me not to fall down the google rabbit hole of “dog and cat videos”. This one popped up right away, and I’m including it because 1) the german shepherd in the second video is too adorable for words, and the bulldog dog in the third segment scares me because of all the entrapment of the body and neck bite. (Is it too late to save this cat, or is it just me?)
I would like to have a conversation on the relationship between dogs and cats. Your experiences? Your thoughts? I’m at the beginning of this reflection, but I feel like it’s an often stereotyped and simplified relationship. But it sounds much more complicated and interesting than is often believed. I would like to give him our attention.
MEANWHILE, back at the farm: We just got back from the Star of the North Sheepdog trial in Minnesota last weekend, and what a wonderful weekend it was. Here is the Friday morning view from our motorhome:
The colors were non stop:
However, I was disappointed with our races. Skip ran too far when passed on his first run, completely missed the sheep, then strayed so far when I asked him to run back to the sheep that he ended up in the paddocks. Finally, after about THREE YEARS, he came back to me calling and got on the sheep. We had a great race after that, but of course we lost a billion points. His second race was a good pass and recovery, but we got beaten by a crafty old sheep who took advantage of me stopping Skip a few times, and we had a tough mess. I feel bad for letting him down. He runs waaaay too wide, especially when he’s stressed, but, still, I haven’t done my job well enough. Sigh.
But still, it’s a game, right? It was gorgeous all weekend, although a bit nippy. Ok, it was really cold the first day, in the 30s and 40s, but when you’re surrounded by that, how bad can it be?
Sunday Maggie and Skip I was able to help prepare the sheep for the novice races and had a great time. This is where we were forced to work. Poor us.
Maggie and Skip swapped, while working hard, Samantha (not pictured) let four sheep out of the pens at a time. Thanks to Samantha for making it easy for me, and to John Wentz who did most of the setup. We were just the transition team (it was a long way from the paddocks to the start, and over the crest of a hill), but we had a great time. Thanks to Pearce Ward for putting together such a great tryout, and to everyone who worked so hard to make it happen. (I’m mostly talking about you Claudia and Maddie!)
After the end of the Novice class, Skip was able to move the remaining sheep to the other pens set up for the Open class. We enjoyed it too – I love real work and can’t get enough of it on our little farm with our little herd and little pastures.
I hope there was a lot of good in your weekend too. Tell us about it and add your thoughts and experiences on dogs and cats getting along well. Or not. You know, like “dogs and cats”.
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