Joyce Geier - Troy

In the beginning, there were Shelties, good friends, and a herding clinic that needed "just one more participant".

That led to a herding club, an Aussie, and the day almost 25 years ago that my Aussie and I lost the club's entire flock of sheep into the coyote-populated New Mexico desert.  While I was examining my checkbook to see if I could pay for 40-some-odd sheep (nope), another club member sent her young Border Collie, Ross, after the sheep.

When Ross went blithely up the cliff-edged mesa and disappeared from view, I panicked.  I knew that I didn't have enough money anywhere,  or even enough equity in my house, to cover both Ross and the sheep.  I was  doomed.

Except that, five minutes later, Ross reappeared, all 40 sheep in one nice tight group, and brought them casually down the cliff and back to our club's demo area.   That day, I swore that - if I ever got a Border Collie - it would be a Ross pup. 

A bizarre series of events resulted in just that, and a few years later a black and white fur-ball  tumbled out of an airline crate and into my arms.    Troy started licking me the moment he came out of that crate, and fifteen years later, he was still licking me when he transitioned into the next world.

But oh, the places we went and the things that we did and the people that we met in between!

He was just nine months old when I bought a dozen rambunctious Cheviot yearlings and started herding; it took me all of three weeks (maybe)  to teach him everything I had learned about it.  It took him the rest of his life to teach me a fraction of what he knew from the moment he was born.

In the beginning we had only a small ring to train in, and so we walked our wild woollies  almost daily to larger, neighboring fields.  And we lost sheep - everywhere.  Sheep in the swamp, sheep in the garage, sheep on the neighbors second-story deck; sheep in ditches, sheep in the woods, sheep in a pond.  No sheep was ever injured or ever really misplaced - in fact, they often looked quite puzzled at the unexpected turn of events, and participated in these adventures with impressively good grace and a surprising sense of humor.

Troy always tried to prevent these mishaps, but he was dealing with a hopeless dunce. It took me a long time to learn to leave him alone and just trust him when we were in a jam. In the meantime, his solution was to simply listen (perhaps a bit too well) and do what I asked him to do.  He let me make the mistakes, and then he let me figure out how to salvage the job.

And yet he always had my back during these recovery missions.   I (we) waded in the swamp to carry the sheep out, I (we) got cut up by the sawgrass heaving sheep out of ditches, and I (we) walked sheep two miles home the day we (I) couldn't get sheep on the trailer.  But his teaching method was effective; I rarely made the same mistake twice.

Troy taught me to trial, too.  From Novice-novice to the USBCHA Nursery Finals to Open and even the USBCHA semi-finals, we won and lost our share.  He had this knack of looking at me when we were at the post in the big trials, and then heaving a deep sigh as if to say, "She's a basket case again.  I guess I'll just have to take care of it."  And then off he would go, and do, and my confidence grew and I learned to have fun and I dared to dream.

Troy isn't here anymore, and I still miss him. But every dog I work with and every trial I enter just builds on the foundation he laid.   I'd like to think that, now, maybe I can actually share the things he taught me whenever I'm training young pups or running green dogs, and that maybe now I'm a better student as they, in turn, teach me.

If only every handler were so lucky.