Spud is my faithful riding companion, the family conscience, and our cat and puppy guardian. In her lifetime, she has helped raise five puppies (each belonging to a neighbor or close family member, and most recently our own puppy – I love dogs but can’t imagine having that large of a pack.) She adjusts her play to the size and scrappiness of the puppy in question, increasing her intensity from extreme gentleness to all-out rough-housing as the puppies get older, stronger, and more rambunctious. When a new dog visits our house, Spud polices their interaction with our two cats, cutting the dog off and even growling if the stranger attempts to chase either of “her” cats.
Her black and tan coat shines, and her dark eyes seem to tell you she could talk — and probably out debate you — if she had the appropriate vocal apparatus. She is built to run and loves to do so, covering ground with grace and speed I envy. She has German Shepherd ears, but only one stands upright while the other lops over. Her ears characterize her personality: intense, alert, and strong but also loving, sensitive and gentle.
A pound special, she became part of my life when Rob adopted her while living for two months in Oregon with his sister. At the time, Rob and I weren’t married, but we were heading there, and he planned to move back in with me when he returned to Wyoming. His sister may be an even bigger animal lover than I am, and she encouraged Rob’s interest in getting a dog. Thus, Rob went to Oregon to help his sister’s family settle into their new home, and he returned with a five month old puppy that needed to settle into ours.
We don’t know Spud’s breeding. The pound billed her as a German Shepherd/Labrador cross. The Shepherd definitely shows, but she lacks the happy-go-luckiness, webbed toes, stocky build, and thick coat of a Labrador. I grew up with Labs, and while I will always have a soft spot for floppy ears and big, dopey grins, I’ve discovered through Spud the fun in hypothesizing about mystery breeding. She is nine years old now, and she still occasionally does something that surprises us and seems to indicate some blood we never guessed at before.
She was three years old before we learned that she knows how to work cattle. Rob, my brother, and I were at my family’s long-time camp in the Red Desert with Spud, my parent’s dog, Hank, and my brother’s Lab, Hadsell. The land where we camp is multiple-use public land, and we know the family who owns the grazing lease on the parcel. We are accustomed to sharing the meadow with cattle. When a ranch hand rode into camp that day, he sat his horse and surveyed the cows grazing alongside our tents.
“You should put these lazy dogs to work,” he said. We demurred, explaining that we didn’t want to put our dogs to chasing someone else’s cows. Generally speaking, doing so is bad form and can lead to getting your dog shot. However, he wanted to see what the dogs would do, and since they had his blessing, we urged them to follow when he called them up and turned his horse to push the cows off the meadow and into the sagebrush.
Hadsell was simply puzzled and kept looking to my brother for explanation. Hank, a Border Collie/Aussie mutt of questionable background, huddled underneath the camp table, unwilling to take on the large beasts. Spud, to our surprise, trotted out with the rider. She tends to be suspicious of strangers, and Rob and I couldn’t believe she would go with this man she had just met. Then the real shocker of the day: Spud did not just chase the cows, picking one or two and sending them will-nilly into the brush. Rather, she really worked them, tracing back and forth behind them, bunching them together, circling back for strays, and even nipping at the heels of the more recalcitrant bovines.
Over the last six years, Spud has had several opportunities to work cattle, and she always comes back to us with a big dog-grin on her face. A few years ago, upon meeting Spud and hearing about her herding prowess, carpet cleaners working in our apartment suggested that she might be part Australian Kelpie. I have researched the breed and think this could be true. But I also am not prepared to put the mystery of her breeding to rest, because I know that she’s one of a kind, a dog who came to us by way of Oregon, bears the name of an outdoor movie theater in Idaho, and is now and forever our Wyoming Potato.