Smiling Heidi, Resident Teacher

Heidi, our adult Livestock Guardian Dog (LGD), has the most winning smile and is a patient teacher. When Heidi is lying down and on the job (a state not to be confused with “lying down on the job”), she smiles with her eyes. Narrower than Luther’s or Molly’s, Heidi’s eyes perpetually hint of her smile and generally deprive her of the soulful, round-eyed expressions the pups favor. When Heidi is up and working, her smile is an acknowledgement of the person with whom she is communicating and extends into her spine. One can see that she feels the smile throughout her being.

My favorite Heidi expression is the “welcome” smile she gives me after we’ve been separated for a time. Even the low-key version of her welcome smile incorporates her tail and front legs. But it’s Heidi’s full-on, charming welcome smile that makes one feel good all over. As pictured, this smile incorporates the full dog: her eyes squint, her nose crinkles and her tongue may appear, her paws & legs dance, her spine twists, and her tail wags from the tip of her nose through the last hair on the end of her tail. Heidi’s smile says, “Hello! I’m glad to see you and I’m happy that you’re here—even though I won’t get close enough to snuggle up and say as much.”

Heidi’s smiles are much cleaner than the pups’ sometimes-muddy welcomes. Molly is still learning to keep her paws on the ground—and off of the person she wishes to embrace. And while Luther manages to keep his paws off of people, his perpetual involvement with the environment often carries consequences: dust, mud, and/or freely-wandering ticks. The pups extend physical, tactile greetings; Heidi’s greetings may be gymnastic but they rarely involve any physical contact, and when they do the contact is slight and fleeting.

I try not to imagine the circumstances that Heidi endured as a youngster, those which keep her an arm’s length from human contact most of the time and a hand’s length from being petted at all times. By now I believe she trusts me. If I hold open a gate and stand back or turn my back to her, she’ll now pass through it without waiting for me to vacate the opening. Indeed, I even encountered her sleeping in the hallway of the barn last week—a highly vulnerable position due to the still-crowded conditions of our box-filled barn. (We moved far too much stuff with us when we came and have left a trailer-load of inconsequential items in the barn awaiting an expansion of floor-space. Boxes of pots and pans, jars, books and office supplies, clothing, and even paintings and mirrors spill from the platforms our operations manager built. The platforms are fine, but having goats who love to play King of the Mountain can send packages cascading across the corridor—much to the delight of whichever goats have caused the avalanche.)

When I encountered Heidi sleeping soundly in the corridor I stopped and spoke her name before gently passing her. I daresay I could have touched her at that moment, but only at the expense of the trust I feel we’ve built so far. I’m wondering if her “condition” is causing her to demonstrate nesting behavior; by now she must be halfway through her pregnancy and she may be beginning to feel its demands on her body. (What?! Heidi’s pregnant? Yes. More details below.) I need to spend some time just sitting in Heidi’s territory over the next month, to see if she might just not cross over that last invisible barrier and incorporate me physically into her inner circle.

It’s good that Heidi’s teaching has come to fruition of late because I imagine she’ll be off the job of guarding livestock when she has little ones to mind. I’ll admit I had doubts last month. After the perimeter fence was completed but before the top and bottom strands were electrified, Heidi took to roaming one day. She apparently wiggled out beneath a gate that provides an ample gap (until the wire just below it is charged). Since she appeared down by the house at about the same time that the little gray goat Gretchen slipped out of the home pasture, I praised Heidi for working when I encountered her. Gretchen was routed back in through the pasture’s lower gate, and Heidi followed after I had retreated a safe distance of maybe thirteen yards.

The next two days Gretchen and Heidi repeated the adventure. Unconcerned about Heidi’s being a flight risk, I encouraged her guarding behavior—until puppy Luther wriggled out to join Heidi and the pair romped off to explore. They checked out the front acres, its little wooded patch and the stream, then Luther trotted down the driveway and out onto the highway, crossing over the stream and venturing beyond. Although he stuck close to the highway barrier, I was scared that his lack of road sense coupled with the traffic that sometimes speeds by presented a recipe for disaster. Heidi watched Luther’s silliness, then she crossed through the stream, ducked under rusty barb-wire, and joined Luther in the neighbor’s hayfield.

The pair romped for hours. I stood at the roadway entrance to the neighbor’s hayfield for close to an hour while they studiously examined this new area. Grey mist fell steadily seeming to blanket their adventures in a weather-made cloak. When they turned and headed back towards me, I walked along the field’s inner edge, climbed over the barb-wire, and turned to see if the dogs were still following me: they were not. After waiting a bit longer, I returned to our farm and trusted Heidi to get Luther home safely.

The next day the pair repeated the adventure. I was chastised for allowing such an investment to wander unsupervised and unprotected. (I paid as much for each of those dogs as I did for Lucy because their initial cost was raised by 50% when I bought the right to breed them at a future date. Even though Heidi is unregistered—a result of her having been a rescue dog—her status as a learned adult justified her cost. The expense of the dogs collectively was somewhat mitigated by the break we got for accepting Molly at the last minute in order to maintain the bond she and Luther had built as littermates. At a third of what we paid for each of the others, Molly was a purebred bargain and the breeding rights came free!)

At one point on a Saturday in late April I saw Iben, the gentleman who’d been hired for the weekend to help on the farm, approach Luther (who had soloed this time) out by the highway barrier. When I saw him stooping to affix his belt to the dog’s collar as a leash, I took off down the hill trying to warn him that Luther is no ordinary dog and I’d rather he not try to lead him anywhere. Luther, being the unusual dog that he is, communicated his unwillingness to work on a leash quite nicely without my help. His perennial response to having his collar attached to any lead—my hand, a bit of twine, a lead rope—is to lie down and present his matted belly for tickling. This maneuver is very effective and often results in Luther’s being excused from whatever move I had had in mind. When he’s vertical, whether it be on his belly or on his paws, I can pull beneath his chin and use his collar to inch him forward by dragging. As might be imagined, this method of movement is greatly hindered by the pup’s efforts. When I do outwait him, Luther will travel on a lead with me for a distance until we approach an enclosure that could be used as a time-out for him. I think he overdoes the resistance act, especially since he’s adept at escaping enclosures when he determines that I may have forgotten him. (Smart dog. I have a mind like a sieve and the memory of a gnat.) At times of human-canine struggle Heidi is noticeably absent from the scene.

Little did I realize that these two days of romping abroad, uncharacteristic behavior for Heidi, coincided with her coming into heat. Beyond the unusual behavior, I saw no evidence for this until I found Heidi and Luther stuck together (in that way of dogs) one afternoon. Although I had noticed Luther mounting her once or twice that was the first time I’d seen them successfully mate. Thereafter for the next few days they remained in close physical proximity much like a pair of love-struck adolescents. (Later I consulted my Master Gardener friends about the canine gestation period and was promptly informed by Kathleen that it’s 63 days. Heidi’s pups are due to arrive at the end of June.)

Molly meanwhile remained faithfully at home when they roamed and then became even needier than usual for attention when she was effectively shut out of the couple’s little world. Indeed, Molly always erred on the side of caution and took care to be “good.”

Very recently, when I had begun escorting the goat herd downhill to the front, Heidi again slipped out to work. Since she stayed on the job, I appreciated her efforts. On the second day I invited her to exit through the main gate with the herd. I was less enthusiastic when on the second afternoon Molly shot out through the main gate when I was in the process of swinging it closed. I grabbed at her coat and she lay in place for a moment, then wriggled free and went directly to Heidi for instructions. In short order I realized that the perceived escape was actually a teaching moment between Heidi and her student and I left the dogs to their work.

The following day when Luther joined the gals, I was leery for a bit until I saw that he, too, was on the job. By afternoon, though, he became bored with the goat-watching and ventured into the neighbors’ yard. I noticed him approaching a fenced-in watchdog some three houses over and he allowed me to slip a bit of twine onto his collar and accompany him home. Timeout that day was served twined to the truck’s trailer hitch where he could watch goats without wandering and I would be ever-cognizant of his restrictive condition.

We’re learning together, the pups and I. Heidi teaches us both individually and collectively. Likely I am the slowest of her students, but she does not appear to hold that against me. In fact I actually touched her back yesterday! She’d come smiling up to me without being cut off by the pups and came close enough that I could lay a hand on her back momentarily. I have hope that she will be more approachable than she has been by her due date.

I wonder which, if any, of the pups will inherit Heidi’s wonderfully expressive traits.