It’s a dog’s life for humans
ROB IS wearing odd socks and his tweed jacket has a patch on one elbow. He would certainly drive a Volvo if he was able to. He is, according to Barbara Sykes, an eccentric old gent with wonderful manners.
But Rob is not a person; he is a Border Collie. “I wouldn”t insult dogs by comparing them to people, but they have got personalities,” says Barbara, who runs Thinking Like Canines” courses at Golcar Farm near Bingley.
Besides Rob, the canines in question are about 20 Border Collies, who lodge and work with Barbara at her thriving Mainline Border Collie Centre. Some are descendants of nine-times national trialing champion Meg, while others are adopted and rescued.
Although Golcar still maintains a commercial herd of 100 ewes, it is the dogs which bring home the bacon, drawing visitors from all around the country.
They come in groups or singly, from bullied children and those struggling with grief, to office groups on corporate training. And they come to improve their team skills, boost their confidence and improve their trust in the world by building a relationship with one of Barbara”s dogs.
“We have made our own problems as humans,” says Barbara. “We live in such a fast world, these days. It never calms down and we often fail to concentrate. But dogs don”t have the number of frequencies that we have – they just focus on the job in hand.
“Thinking Like Canines is a sort of therapy which takes people back to their nature and their gut instinct through working with the dogs. It allows them to experiment with body language and eye contact without fear of reprisal, and teaches them how to communicate naturally with the people around them.
“To Think Like a Canine you have to step forward with confidence, be relaxed, learn how to focus and be content with yourself.”
Barbara runs assertiveness training and dog-handling at Golcar, but I”m there for the Sheepdog Experience”, which is usually booked by groups. It takes participants outside to learn how to herd sheep with the aid of a collie.
“The course is all about taking hold of yourself and keeping control, but it”s amazing how many visitors will let the dog tell them what to do,” says Barbara.
With this warning ringing in my ears, we set off for a field where I will pit my leadership skills against a flock of nine anxious but defiant Herdwick sheep.
I start off in a fenced ring, some 8m in diameter. My first canine partner, Hope, is introduced as “a cheeky City boy in a sharp suit and a fat tie”. I am warned straight away about his boisterousness.
Following Barbara”s instructions, I stand near the fence, facing towards the centre of the ring, before turning to my right and pacing half a dozen steps. What should happen, as the sheep jostle away from me, is that the dog rushes round the outside of the fence to take up a new stance balancing the animals in the centre of the pen, facing me.
What actually happens once the sheep move is… nothing. “Too indecisive!” calls Barbara. “You hesitated several times and you didn”t look at the dog once. Remember, you”re a team. He needs to know what you”re doing.” It is also important that I assert my authority and don”t let the dog dictate my movements, she says. So when Hope next decides to ignore me, I stir up the routine by walking right through the middle of the ring scattering the sheep. He is unable to resist the challenge, and darts off around the ring at a crouching run to balance the sheep once again.
Leadership
“We call it the pack to professional relationship,” Barbara explains. “The pack leader makes the decisions and acts for the good of the pack. He earns its respect by being strong, brave and fair. The leader takes responsibility and the dogs get security.
“It isn”t like a master and servant relationship, because a servant simply does whatever he”s told and doesn”t think for himself.” The parallels with work or home life are clear.
To illustrate the difference between the dogs, Barbara decides to bring Moss into the ring. She is the collie equivalent of “an 18-year-old girl with high heels and a short skirt who never stops talking”. Things are looking up.
She is less confident than Hope, and needs my support to avoid being cornered. And perhaps this need keeps her mischievousness at bay, because I find her much more co-operative in keeping the sheep facing me, in the centre of the ring.
Our respective strengths and weaknesses are a good match, says Barbara, and Moss visibly becomes more daring as we work together. But it should be possible for a person to work with any of the dogs, she adds.
“There”s no such thing as a bad dog. The animal is a mirror-image of what you are, so if you are stressed out, the dog becomes stressed as well. Every mood change affects your body and your aura, and the dog picks it up straight away.”
Now it”s time for an exercise beyond the pen, and this time I”m working with 10-year-old Peggy. She is “an elegant late-30s executive who still knows how to let her hair down”, Barbara tells me.
The aim here is to work with the dog to bring the sheep towards me as I walk backwards around the field. But the pace is my undoing, and soon Peg is ignoring my commands to “sit” or “come by” while I, in turn, stand in the wrong place and the sheep dither. They soon scatter to a distant corner of the paddock, exasperating my team-mate.
After that, things go from bad to worse and, after re-penning the sheep without a single command, Peggy retires and vents some of her frustration by peeing on my coat.
CONFIDENCE Barbara tells me about some of her past clients. “An office group visited us once, with a man who”d just joined the company. When we asked them to pick dogs for each other, he was given Hope, who”s quite a handful. No one knew what he was like, you see, and he struggled until I put him in the ring with Moss.
“She’s a little unsure of herself, but he worked with her brilliantly – reassuring and raising her confidence. His colleagues saw this new side to him, and he was given responsibility for training the juniors back at work.
“Another time, we had a girl in. When you asked her questions, she would only answer what she”d worked out beforehand, but after she”d spent some time with the dogs, she began to say what she actually thought.
“If you tell someone about teamwork or body language, you”re just talking, but if they try it out on someone else, they understand better. And if that someone else is a dog, it is better still, because they are 100% honest.”
Looking back on my Sheepdog Experience”, I did work up a healthy respect for the collies I met, and perhaps it did give me an insight into my shortcomings as a leader.
I didn”t cut much of a figure as a shepherd but, there again, I had only been at it two hours – and I certainly did see first hand how encouragement and space can produce better results from a team member than pressure and criticism.