February 1, 2026

It was a crisp, sunny Saturday afternoon on the last day of January. I was just about finished with my writing assignment when Craig came into the office. "Would you like to go for a walk?"

"That would be lovely," says I, turning to see a slightly different smile on his face. One that said this was not just a romantic stroll. "And . . . ?"

"We need to walk the goats back from the meadow to the barn, and I need your help."

Afte hitting publish on Substack, I dressed appropriately for a walk involving ranching and we headed down the driveway. It really was lovely, always delightful to take time to enjoy the view together.

Then the work started. I had Oakley on leash and waited. One false start, the goats wouldn't follow without Oakley's help, but Gigi came so I swapped dogs. Gigi and stood in the driveway between the gate out of the meadow pen and the county road. Our assignment - to pretend to be a fence so they'd turn towards home instead of the open road. We did our assignment well. I took pictures.

Oakley, however, is the most frustrating border collie we've ever had. He brought the goats across the meadow to the gate nicely bunched together, out the gate, turned toward the barn and headed up the driveway and then . . . he decided there wasn't enough action. He does not have a slow speed. He disobeyed commands, ran at them, split the herd in three groups and had a grand old time doing four times as much work as necessary.

His humans were not amused. We got 'em all moved in the end, but there are no after pictures back at the barn, we'd almost lost daylight. Darned dog.