{"id":288,"date":"2012-07-13T17:55:36","date_gmt":"2012-07-13T23:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sylvandale.com\/ranch_stories\/?p=288"},"modified":"2012-07-13T17:55:36","modified_gmt":"2012-07-13T23:55:36","slug":"promise-the-elk-chasing-cow-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/?p=288","title":{"rendered":"Promise, the Elk-chasing Cow Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Promise<\/p><\/div>\n

By David Jessup<\/p>\n

She was supposed to be a companion dog for my wife, Linda.\u00a0 Suburban-raised, well trained, affectionate, calm (the dog, that is).\u00a0 A classic Australian Shepherd:\u00a0 blue-black back, white collar, buff patches around brown eyes.\u00a0 A polite dog.\u00a0 She\u2019d chase a ball to humor you, but nothing obsessive, like some Aussies we\u2019ve known.\u00a0 Nothing unusual about her.<\/p>\n

Until she spotted her first elk herd.\u00a0 (See video here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Promise came to us in Maryland, courtesy of a friend who had to move away to take care of her aging mother.\u00a0 A month later we flew Promise out to Colorado for our annual nine-month stint at the ranch.\u00a0 It was April, time to begin irrigating our Big Valley hay field.\u00a0 I invited Promise to go along.\u00a0 She cocked her head and stood by the open car door.<\/p>\n

\u201cHop in,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

She sat down.<\/p>\n

\u201cUp,\u201d I said.\u00a0 I tried to make my voice sound excited.\u00a0 I snapped my fingers.<\/p>\n

Promise looked at me as if she suspected I was taking her on a one-way trip to the dog pound.
\n<\/p>\n

In danger of losing my position as pack leader, I was forced to act.\u00a0 She accepted my gentle boost into the car seat well enough, and as we drove into the Big Valley twenty minutes later, I expected her to stick her head out the window, panting and salivating at the prospect of having a good run in this new, wide-open valley.<\/p>\n

I looked around.\u00a0 Promise was asleep.<\/p>\n

I drove on in to turn on the center pivot sprinkler system, got out and opened the back door.\u00a0 Promise shot \u00a0out of the car and raced toward the west pasture, \u00a0a blue-tray fur ball, feet flying.\u00a0 That\u2019s when I saw them.\u00a0 A hundred elk, helping themselves to our struggling new hay crop.\u00a0 They were as shocked as I was by the hurtling, furry missile , fast approaching their outlying members .\u00a0 Instinct had taken possession of our Promise.\u00a0 Instead of a lap dog, we had a wolf<\/em> on our hands.<\/p>\n

Alarm spread through the herd.\u00a0 It divided, some elk running north along the base of the hill, some running south.\u00a0 Promise flanked them perfectly, racing past the stragglers and turning the leaders up the hill, then returning for the southbound bunch.\u00a0 As if she\u2019d trained for this all her life.\u00a0 As if she knew what elk were!<\/p>\n

As the elk clattered past the half way mark up the hill, alarm hit me.\u00a0 What if she chased them all the way to Canada?\u00a0 What if I couldn\u2019t call her back<\/em>?<\/p>\n

I started yelling.\u00a0 \u201cPromise, come!\u201d\u00a0 My pack leader voice took on a note of panic.<\/p>\n

But there was no need to worry.\u00a0 The blue-gray fur ball materialized on the horizon and grew into a full-fledged Promise, loping up to me with a goofy grin on her face.\u00a0 Yes!\u00a0 She responds to commands<\/em>!\u00a0 She’s a wolf with remote control!\u00a0 She got a treat from her relieved pack leader.<\/p>\n

Since that first crazed elk-chasing experience, Promise has become my partner.\u00a0 She no longer leaps out of the car with no warning, but instead, waits for my command to \u201cgo chase elk.\u201d\u00a0 She joyfully, skillfully does her job. And she always returns when called.\u00a0 We\u2019ve done this rapid elk removal exercise a dozen times now.\u00a0 Check out the video here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why is pushing the encroaching elk herd off the tender, new-growth hay \u00a0important?<\/p>\n

The Colorado Division of Wildlife reimburses ranchers for elk damage to hay crops.\u00a0 But to collect the funds, you have to do two things.\u00a0 One is submit all the paperwork\u2014reports every ten days.\u00a0 Second, you have to take steps to discourage elk from camping out in your hay field.\u00a0 They require you to allow hunting on your land, which we do.\u00a0 They distribute things like firecracker shells, which are fired out of a shotgun and explode over the herd.\u00a0 We tried all those things, and more.\u00a0 The elk amble off a few yards, turn around and laugh.<\/p>\n

But with Promise chasing them, the elk actually leave the valley.\u00a0 Not forever, but for hours, sometimes days.<\/p>\n

I called our local game warden with the news. \u00a0She was pleased but cautioned me that elk-chasing dogs must be under control at all times, must not chase elk into neighbors\u2019 property, and must not chase them through fences.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cPromise is a pro.\u00a0 She drives the herd over the top of the ridge \u2013 far enough to discourage them from coming right back \u2013and always stops immediately when I call her. She\u2019s a dog that takes pride in her job.\u00a0 She\u2019s a real working dog. \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Jessup She was supposed to be a companion dog for my wife, Linda.\u00a0 Suburban-raised, well trained, affectionate, calm (the dog, that is).\u00a0 A classic Australian Shepherd:\u00a0 blue-black back, white collar, buff patches around brown eyes.\u00a0 A polite dog.\u00a0 She\u2019d chase a ball to humor you, but nothing obsessive, like some Aussies we\u2019ve known.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[32,35,38],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ranch-stories","tag-australian-shepherd","tag-dogs","tag-elk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}