Four-legged heart thieves


Dogs sneak into your heart.
Each has a little trick to effect entry.
Once the trick is learnt, it becomes ingrained.
Take Jock, the jack russell.
Like all little dogs, he fond of getting on to your lap.
But lately, he's employed a new tactic.
I call it the bottom-down chest-out stance.
It's simple. He jumps up, fixes you with brown eyes, turns his back on you and, balancing on his backside, rocks back gently so that his chest is at the perfect height for rubbing.
And, yes, it gets rubbed.
Jock knows it will happen.
He's trained me, as all dogs do.
He knows I will fall for the gag - it's unbearably cute - and I know he knows I will fall for it.
In the end, it doesn't matter.
What matters is that it is mutual trust.
Tui the collie has a different trick.
A lapdog she ain't. Her trick is to roll on her back, put on a goofy expression, and coax me into rubbing her chest.
Works every time.
Yup, trained again. By the dog.
It's the same with many dog owners.
How many respond when their dog nudges their hand with their head?
Almost all.
How many respond when a dog sidles up, presses a face against a leg, and then looks up?

Most, I'll wager.
We think we train our dogs, and in many ways we do.
We teach them to sit and stay and to come (mostly) when called.
But they train us, too.
No doubt about it.
We know we are being duped and used and trained.
And guess what?
We wouldn't have it any other way.
Now, here's that little dog. He's a four-legged quick-witted rub-my-chest kind of a guy.

Smart? Not half



Border collies surprise constantly. They're all smart, but some are smarter than others.
Take Rosie.
She, sadly, is gone. She will never be forgotten.
Rosie displayed all the usual high-brow collie traits: she'd learn a new behaviour in minutes.
Dog trainers rate dog intelligence by the number of times a dog has to be told/shown something before picking it up.
Most collies can learn something new - a new command, a new trick - after being told or shown just two or three times.
That's smart - and they never forget.
But they learn, too, by watching.
Consider this.
In our old house, for no particular reason, I mowed our lawn from left to right, in strips.
No big deal.
Rosie, one day, put a ball at my feet as I walked behind the mower.
I kicked it, and the game was on.
But here's the amazing part.
After fetching the ball, she took it away and placed it on the piece of lawn I was about to mow, on the other side of the lawn.
She had watched my pattern of mowing.
More surprising was that she placed the ball just to the edge of the strip to be mown, just where I could kick it without veering off my path. She knew enough not to put it on the actual strip to be mown, but just to the left.
Oh, of course she'd worked out I preferred to kick with my left foot.
I kicked it again.
She then took it to the other side of the lawn, right in the ''kick'' zone but not in the path of the mower.
I obliged, of course, giving the ball a gentle kick each time.
After the first mow, the game was locked in.
If I went near the mower she brought the ball.
If I started the mower, she was waiting with the ball, ready to play.
Collies love to play, and Rosie loved the mower-ball-lawn game, playing it to the end.
And because she was collie, I even took the game to the roadside grass verge.
I could do that safely because I knew she would never run off the grass on to the road.
She ''knew'' not to. I didn't teach her that.
We could stop anywhere on a car trip where there was grass. She'd run and play without us having to worry about her ''playing with the cars''.
Rosie learnt many, many tricks, and we reckoned she knew up to 60 commands.
Was she exceptional?
To us, yes.
But any owner of a border collie will have similar stories.
Here she is. Smart, sassy, and achingly loyal.

Rosie in action

Those clever collies

We know dogs are smart; we've seen the TV clips about the border collie who could identify up to 1000 items.
Any farmer who uses dogs will tell you how smart they are.
But it is not just their ability to learn, it is their ability to anticipate.
Sheepdogs do it by second-guessing the moves of a sheep, reading each tiny movement of a limb, or the inclination of a head, to try out-think their quarry.
Our collie Tui is proving day by day how smart she is, though she is anything but trained in the way a sheepdog is.
Tui's proving it with a frisbee. At first, her attempts at trying to catch a frisbee were poor.
How that has changed.
But first you have to realise there are many ways to throw a frisbee.
Only frisbee experts can really direct a frisbee's path.
I'm no expert, but I do know that you can alter the flight of a frisbee by releasing it earlier, or later, or by changing the angle of release.
A frisbee released late, with the arm nearly straight, is more likely to fly in a direct line from the body and then glide to earth.
One thrown with an arm slightly crooked may fly high and then, without warning, drop sharply.
I know that because I have thrown a frisbee a thousand times.
Tui know it, too.
She knows it because she has learned to watch its path closely in flight, while running, and putting herself into a position to snatch it from the air mid-flight.
In short, she is anticipating the frisbee's flight.
That's smart.
I've seen experienced cricketers who often forget that a ball cut or pulled, when it pitches, may spin away from its aerial path.
Fielder after experienced fielder has been left grabbing mid air as the spinning ball hits the grass, grips, and changes directions.
Some fielders never seen to learn that - and they've probably been told time after time by frustrated bowlers as yet another one rolls to the boundary.
Yet a dog, albeit a collie, without coaching, can work such things out.
Tui, no matter which direction I send the frisbee, will take most frisbees mid-flight.
She probably gets 18 out of 20.
That's not bad. No coaching. No training. Just a sharp brain working out angles.
And she doesn't watch the frisbee from the hand, as a batsman might from a bowler's hand; she is usually running at the pointr of release, leaving her less time to work out whether the frisbee will dip, veer left or right, or soar up before sliding back.
But if you think that's smart, I'll tell you soon about another dog's trick.
Yep, another collie, the late, lamented Rosie.
Anyway, below is Tui the super frisbee catcher in a quieter moment.
Cute, eh?

There's water in the Orari now.

Not much, but you'd be a fool to try to take it on with a four-wheel drive..

A bloke I know calls it a ''loose-bottomed bugger of a thing'', and he's not far wrong.

It's fairly narrow, with swales and rounded boulders, and washed clean by occasional high water.
In the lower reaches, where we walk, there is often no water.
There are, however, rabbits, and Jock and Tui often prove how slow they by trying to catch them.
It is futile.
Tui, now, will chase for a few moments and then gives up.
Jock - well, he is a terrier - tries a little longer, but he is no match for the speed and nimbleness of a rabbit, much less a hare.
They, too, share the riverbed, as do nesting birds, and there are signs warning dog owners to take care.
We do, and stick to defined tracks.
It is the tracks on the side of the river that take our attention.
Originally, they were access tracks for council staff, and then the local Lions got involved, with others, to develop the tracks, mostly for cycling.
They have done a wonderful job, and the tracks are used for an annual bike challenge (a very good fundraiser) and for walkers.
That's us.
At this time of year, the cooler weather has done its work and the tracks are carpeted with leaves of all colours, and they scatter and fall as the dogs play.
In one section, there are pines with low-hanging branches, under which is a thick layer of needles.
This is Tui and Jock's favourite place, and where they play their favourite game.
Jock hides under the low branches, way off the track, and then lets out one sharp yap.
That Tui's cue, and she tries to find him.
As she noses around, he darts hither and thither, always a step ahead.
After five minutes of trying to find - and catch him - she gives up, more interested in a one-on-one race.
She always wins.
This is what they did again today.
I've seen it a thousand times, and I smile every time.
Anyway, this is their stamping ground.

Great branches arch over the tracks that thread up and down the Orari.
Before the sun stretches into the sky, they are ghostly shadows.
The leaves rattle in any wind, so much that on a fine day it sounds as though it's raining.
This is where my dogs play.
You won't know them yet, so here we go.
Tui is a soppy border collie, all cuddles and leg rubs and very loyal.
Her best mate is a bristle-faced parson jack russell, Jock.
He's knee-high and programmed for fun.
They have come here every day in their short lives.
If it is not home, it is close.
They run here, they play hide and seek - yes, they do - they leap over branches, skirt under branches, race up the straights.
It's fair to say that life ain't half bad for these guys.
There has been only one days in their two-year-old lives when they have not been out - normally to the Orari - but sometimes they get to visit other parts of South Canterbury.
They've explored plantations, coursed through streams, scattered leaves on walking tracks and once, when it snowed, they made footprints in the snow in the local domain.
Strictly forbidden, of course.
Collies and jack russells might not be natural companions, but these guys make a fair fist of it.
They are not inseparable, and there have been arguments, but they have become so attuned to each other, that they know each other's games, weaknesses and strengths.
They have also surprised each other.
She's quicker in a straight line that Jock, by a wide margin, but he's a Mini to her Roller, swift into corners - and to stop.
She skids. He stops.
Time after time she has had to vault over him, crouching low.
Once, the collie's mind was more active than usual.
She slowed, then pressed herself to the ground, as though mesmerising stock.
He continued running, realised too late that she had stopped in his path, and decided the only way forward was up and over.
Had the collie not out-thought him, this manoeuvre would have been fine.
But as he was overhead, she raised her head enough to upset his flight.
He went into a somersault and landed on his feet to find his mate behind him.
He spun around to try to work out what had happened.
What had happened is that the collie beat him at his own game, and it is something she has tried again.
But jack russells aren't dim; he saw what was planned and, at a speed that startled the collie, he bore left, snaking through leaves to leave her without an overhead victim, and bemused.
It's like this every day with these guys.
Love 'em?
Oh yes.
This, then, is about them, the places we visit, and their influence on our lives.
It is profound.
Stay posted, folks.
We're off on an adventure.