Working Dog

There are not just horses on Oakfield Farm. I also have two beautiful dogs:

Belle on the left is pure princess. d'Arcy on the right is always looking for a job. Mostly he thinks it's to monitor the horses. Often d'Arcy seems like a well intentioned, over-enthused goof.

'who needs fences?'

Irish wears bell boots because he has a habit of pulling off his shoes in the field. So instead of hunting for shoes (as much) I spend time looking for bell boots. Last year I got the idea that I should train d'Arcy to find them for me. 

Here's a video of this: 

Brilliant right?
But can you spot the flaw? With the way he shakes the boot it's a bit of a problem. However, I figured that we could work on that. However, after this day I mostly got sticks. He was just as cheery and enthused but ran over the boot to find the stick. So I gave up and decided to buy brightly coloured bell boots instead.

sticks are totally awesome

When I do my night tuck in the dogs always come out with me. When I came back in the house d'Arcy was not there. I called but he didn't come right away. I went in the house figuring that he'd come back soon enough. But he didn't. So Ed and I were out trudging in the rain calling him. He finally came back. I have no idea where he was but I was not impressed.

Today when I brought the horses in for supper I saw that Irish was missing a boot.
Damn it he just got new shoes
With trepidation I lifted his foot.
phew
His shoe was still on. Just the bell boot was missing. I figured that there was just enough light to look around the paddock for it. d'Arcy came with me with his usual enthusiasm. As we walked I decided to give it a try so I looked at him and said 'find it'

He looked at me and then began to zig zag back and forth. After a minute he stopped, looked at something and then back at me. He then ran off. I saw the bright green bell boot.
"That's it! Good Dog!"
He stopped and returned to the bell boot, picked it up and brought it back to me.

Maybe he is a genius after all.

of course I'm smart. I'm a border collie