Collie
This lovely ginger canine (a rough coat, sable and white standard collie with black markings) had a pretty strong herding instinct. She got in trouble a couple times, running away from home to go check out the cows about a mile or so west, across the Houchen Creek and a field or two from (the, not a) Podunk, Nebraska.
Her volunteer work wasn't appreciated by the farmer.
She loved to bite the water flowing from the end of a garden hose, and do circles in a wading pool, while getting a drink from it.
She did in fact once literally spend part of an afternoon herding a turtle that had wandered into the yard.
She was a good friend to her boys and her cats.
If she ever barked, something was up that needed attention.
She kept the little charges who would come and go with babysitting, including an adorable set of sisters, ages three and five, in the yard, never nipping no matter how excited they might get. (Sometimes herding dogs nip if the sheep get out of line, and not all of them work well around children).
She didn't like fireworks. As a herding dog she wasn't inclined to run away, but fireworks weren't to be abided and on a few occasions she would make herself scarce until she was sure the little town had quieted down. I'm fairly certain she went to the creek to get away from the noise, but I never knew for sure.
The mosquitos gave her heartworms (Dirofilaria immitis) once. I didn't know heartworms existed until that happened. We gave her regular medication to prevent that from recurring.
She loved hiking down the creek to the Nemaha River.
Collies have a thing they do sometimes when they're playing which is rooted in one of their flock-protective instincts. They'll run at you full speed and ram into you with their chest. They can knock you over if you're not ready for it.
I had forgotten about this until recently when my mother asked me if the border collie does this, too. She does!
In fact, their personalites are so similar, these two collies, that once or twice I've called the border collie by the wrong name, even though half a lifetime has passed between those memories and today. She tilts her head, and I realize my mistake.
They would have liked each other, the collie and the border collie. Alas, they're never to meet, separated as their lives are by time, linked only in the memories of a man's longer life, spanning the gulf between them.
I took these photos and it's possible that I might have the negatives around, somewhere. These images were scanned almost two decades ago from prints that had already slightly faded, by my dad. If I find the negatives someday, maybe I'll scan directly from those and update the images.
Reading it back, this essay seems a little melancholy. Though that's not really what I was aiming for, perhaps it's appropriate. I suppose I'm still grieving, and probably that's OK.
For a hauntingly beautiful, deeply thoughtful, and poetic exploration of the loss of a canine friend, see the essay, How to Grieve for a Very Good Dog by Annette McGivney, author of Pure Land, and winner of the 2018 National Outdoor Book Award.