My Life in Dog Years Read Online Free PDF

the hot sun chewing on a straw, ruffling a dog’s ears and watching the combine rumble around the golden field.
    They became in some way more than another person could be, perfect companions, and it bothered me that I didn’t know all of how they lived, only saw them at odd times during the day. One morning when we wererained out and couldn’t work the fields I decided to follow the farm dog around through his day.
    His name was Rex and he was a large collie type, slightly overweight, with a white ruff and thick gold hair matted here and there with burrs—all the colors smudged liberally with fresh, green cow manure he’d rolled in just that morning in back of the barn. (They love the smell of fresh manure on their backs and the sides of their necks.)
    This particular farm had nine milk cows, three pigs, a pen of calves, a couple of palomino ponies for two daughters who would someday be old enough to ride them, a coop full of chickens and perhaps five hundred acres under cultivation.
    I walked out in the morning after a quick cup of coffee and made my way to the barn with the farmer, a stooped man named Warren, to begin milking. There was already alight mist that would be rain, and as soon as we were out of the yard carrying buckets to the barn Rex was off like a shot into the haze in the direction of the pasture.
    He did not need to be told but ran to where the cows were, went around them several times to form them up and with a couple of gentle nips got them heading for the barn. I have read somewhere that the reason dogs work stock is that the wolf in them is still strong and the herding instinct is a perversion of the hunting drive that moves wolves.
    It sounds like a tidy theory, but having watched Rex and dogs like him work animals, I don’t think it can be right. Every move they make is concerned with care for the animal they are herding, not with hunting, not with killing them. I have seen wolves course and kill and there is nothing similar about their actions.
    Rex ran ahead of the cows, then behind,keeping them in a group and watching out for anything that could bother them.
    When they reached the barn he stopped driving them and waited patiently for each cow—and they most decidedly did
not
hurry—to step into the barn and work her way to her stall before he would signal the next one in. All of this done without a word from Warrer.
    There was business in it, of course—it was work, and important—but there was affection as well. Rex obviously liked the cows and when Warren told me that Rex slept with them in the winter, curling up next to a cow in the barn to stay warm and cozy, I could see why when Rex looked at them it was with more than business in his eyes.
    When the cows were all in their stalls and being milked, Rex went to the head of the barn and sat by the door, waiting. I was not certain what he was waiting for until Warrenpoured some milk into an old pail lid and put it down and the cats materialized from the loft and other parts of the barn and began to drink. I’d had no idea there were so many cats. They seemed to come from everywhere. Rex watched them eat and when one kitten kept getting pushed away from the crowded pan Rex used his nose to make a slot for the kitten and pushed it into place with another nudge.
    He watched them until they had devoured the milk—a matter of moments—and then turned and left the barn, trotting out into the rain.
    I followed him. He went to the pigpen and stood looking at the pigs for a moment. Then the calf pen, where he stopped. I know it sounds far-fetched, but he seemed to study each calf individually, or perhaps he was counting them. From there he went to the chicken coop.
    Here he paused and turned. He had seen me following him at a distance and he looked at me and wagged his tail and started for me. But I turned as if to walk back into the barn, and he returned to the chicken yard. I stopped behind a corner and watched him go around the wired-in yard