More About Rusty

It was a week ago that I wrote the blog post that started the story of Rusty’s life here and two weeks since he died. Here are more photos of him the way I like to remember him.

In that last post Ginny was just a baby. As she grew up she became obsessed with The Ball. Rusty never stooped to playing with a ball or toy but he sure liked to chase Ginny when she chased the ball. In fact that was the only thing that perked him up in those last couple of months.

Rusty knew that he had important roles to play when we had school field trips and our spring open house, Meet the Sheep. He had to keep track of the small animals that were not where they belonged (bunnies in this case,)

And a chicken here. I never had to worry about him grabbing one of these animals, but he thought it was very important to watch them.

Another bunny on the loose.

Rusty was always patient during our field trips.

He also paid attention when I warned him to “leave it”.

Rusty took on many roles here but the original idea was that I needed a Border Collie to help with sheep. He was my pathway into learning about sheep herding. He and I went to lessons at Herding 4 Ewe, just a mile from here. He wasn’t the one who needed the lessons but I needed to learn how to help him be successful and develop confidence and how to not get in his way. It certainly helps when starting a dog to use sheep that are already “dog broke”. It is also important to not try and start a dog using ewes with lambs, especially when those ewes have horns.

My sheep were a tough crowd for the dogs, and Ginny didn’t get as much early work as Rusty did, but that’s another story. I am trying to make that up to her now and weaned a group of lambs so that she and I have a group to work with. (That’s also another story and maybe a blog post coming up.)

Rusty excelled at this very important job. That was to keep the rams away from me when I had to do something in their pen.

I could talk about how all work and no play isn’t good. But remember that for a Border Collie the Work is what they want to be doing. Sheep work (or watching bunnies or whatever) will always take priority over anything else. But if we weren’t going to do any sheep work, then going Across the Road was the next best thing for Rusty.

He always watched and chased after Ginny while she focused on the Ball.

I won’t say that Rusty especially liked water but he wasn’t shy about cooling off when he got the chance. And as his hips got more sore over the last several years I think he liked to walk in the parts of the canal where the water was just deep enough to support his body weight.

I think this is the look of a content dog.

Other important jobs included harassing ground squirrels. The chirping under an old wood pile kept the dogs focus for what seemed like hours.

If we weren’t Across the Road then any puddle would do to cool off.

This was taken in 2018. Maggie is now gone, but Finn and Sawyer still live right next door with my son and DIL. That’s Kirby in pink, the granddaughter from Texas.

The pack.

Have you ever seen a Border Collie smile? I never could get a good photo of it but Rusty had a great smile when he was pleased with himself.

Rusty knew that if I was cracking walnuts it was treat time for him. He heard me scooping them out of the bucket and would come choose one.

In the last year I encouraged Rusty to help herd the chickens. He got to use some of his herding skills but wasn’t at risk of being beat up by a ram. He complained about this in his later blog posts (here is one), but I don’t think he really minded.

Rusty really was The Best Dog Ever. We can’t replace him.