Not quite a dog’s life on the farm
MY first friend was Spot, father’s dog, one of an old breed with a shaggy coat, brown and white, heavy and capable of dealing with sheep or cattle without fear or favour. There are not many of these hardy, old-style dogs around now, the sleek nervy Border collie has taken over.
Spot was coming on a bit and you could teach him nothing. But he was big enough that when we were still small we tried to ride on his back. He was very patient. We tried to make and put a harness on him to pull our sledge but that wasn’t too ?effective.
He would lie patiently at the back door until Father came out, then off they went. Trim was his younger companion, a more traditional dog but chained up when not working. I think our Father did not trust him too much, but it is also a truism that two dogs can get up to mischief if allowed loose together that neither would do on their own.
I had little to do with dogs then for many years until working at Greenland Mains. Donald Nicholson was our shepherd then and I was in my very early years of learning a trade which you never cease to learn – farming.
Donald had a bearded collie, I forget his name or where he came from, possibly, I think, from Coghill relatives at Kirk, Bower. Let’s call him Beardie. He had hair down over his eyes like a Romney sheep and, again, there’s not many of this type left.
When we were going out of Dickie’s lambing field heading for our three o’clock cup of tea at Donald’s nearby house, we would find the dog no longer at our heels.
There were maybe 300 ewes or more in the lambing field. But out of that number Beardie would appear, gently moving a ewe towards us, picked out by himself I know not how.
If Donald said, “leave it and come here”, Beardie ignored him. He knew better. And sure enough when he had taken the ewe up to us it was in the process of lambing. We had not seen it, but he had, and he knew what to do – take the ewe to us for assistance, even if it was a perfectly normal lambing with no distress. He was always right and we could only marvel at him.
He would catch any lamb we wanted by nosing it over on the run, then lying on top of the lamb and holding it down gently with his forepaws until we came up.
That was sometimes needed when we saw what we called a “stuck lamb” out in the field, a few days old, a euphemism for a lamb that badly needed its bottom cleaned. Not attended to that lamb would die. Beardie knew it, and again would take appropriate action even on his own. Beardies had a great reputation for brains, and no way am I going to dispute it.
DONALD had various dogs but had one bitch who produced a litter to Beardie, though none of them were beardies. I was usually working in winter with the cattle and brother David was working out of doors. But going down to the lambing field in the evenings was our normal practice.
We each got a pup from Donald, I think David’s was white, mine was the traditional black with a very little bit of white under his throat.
We were introduced by Donald to the choosing of a pup, six weeks old and time to wean them. Donald told us to pick one and lift him by the tail. If he squealed or struggled, reject him. If he had a wall eye, reject him. If the pup neither squealed nor struggled but just looked at you, put him on one side as a possible. Such stoicism was desirable.
I am sure today that process would be banned if the welfare people knew of it, but we were picking a working dog to share the hard vicissitudes of life with us and that method of choosing had a long history.
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Then the final choosing. Which one did we fancy? Which one met your eye without looking away? Look at the pup’s feet – big feet, big dog. Even at six weeks they would show very positive individuality, a foretaste of what they would become when grown-up working dogs.
I called my pick an unimaginative Ben. He was a good friend of mine for many long years.
We had a few milking cows at Greenland Mains that in summer went out to the field to graze, to be brought in at milking time in the morning and evening. The gate of the 36-acre field of New Hansel was left open, the cows found their own way there after milking.
Came 4.30pm and, whatever we were doing, and in a quiet conversational voice I could talk to Ben. But if I said the words, “fetch the cows, Ben,” off he would go, take the cows out of the field entirely on his own and gently, and without any chasing or fuss, take them up the road and round to the milking byre door. If I forgot to send him off he went anyway at the appointed hour.
The cows were pretty well trained, too, each went into their own stall and waited to be milked, often without tying the neck chain. They knew their names and their places.
Ben had another characteristic. About four o’clock in the afternoon he would disappear.
The mystery was solved when Danny Morrison, who drove his bus up to Barrock and then back down to go to Wick, told me Ben waited for him to go up, raced alongside him in the field and waited for Danny’s return to race him back. Then, honour satisfied, he came home. He never went onto the road, just had a good chase with the bus.
TIME went on. I bought Lower Dounreay and Nettie Dunnet from Keiss and I married on November 23, 1953, and went to our first home, the excellent farmhouse of Lower Dounreay, built in 1860 and demolished by UKAEA in 2003. We left it unwillingly in May 1956 for Isauld, but had no choice in the matter. Ben came too.
Ben had the most useful trait, inherited from his father, of knocking down any lamb we wanted, but as gentle as could be. To see him nudge the lamb over with his nose was a treat. Just say, “catch the lamb” and he did. No biting or nipping at all, just that nudge under its backside.
He would catch a ewe for us when asked, gripping it under the throat by the wool but never biting, holding it for us to take over. He was very good at it. Though the ewe would be much heavier than Ben, it seemed mesmerised by his grip and would stand still. That made lambing outdoors feasible.
I went to Aberdeen late one October to buy some Leicester ram lambs. I borrowed father’s Ford Consul car as the vehicle I had then was mighty cold with no heating. I went to Aberdeen late one day, sale the next day, home the third day. I forgot that I had transferred Ben from my van into the boot of father’s car.
Home again at Isauld I opened the boot. Ben regarded me with his usual patient charm, jumped out and relieved himself for what seemed a long hour, though that was I think impossible. All the long way to Aberdeen and back he had not uttered a sound, and his manners had been impeccable!
He lived to be 16 years old, dying peacefully one night. He lies buried at Isauld under an apple tree in the walled garden.