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we’ll get her out early.”
    Fran asked Zeus’s owner to come up to the fence and stand beside her. She walked over to Zeus, and tossed him a treat, which he refused to eat at first.
    “He’s still cranked up,” she said. Then she threw another. And another. Finally, Zeus began eating them. He seemed to calm, to turn away from the sheep. After a few minutes, Fran bent down and untied him from the gate. Zeus looked at the sheep, then at her. She stood back a few feet, held up a treat, and then told Zeus, “Here.” He walked over to her, just a few feet from the sheep, and lay down. She held him in that position for several minutes, tossing treats down around the ground. Zeus ate the treats, but never took his eyes off the sheep for long.
    “You can tell he’s not a border collie,” Fran said quietly. “They wouldn’t take the treats. Interesting.”
    She told the woman to leash up Zeus and take him out. “He passed,” she said, filling out the form. “He’s plenty interested in sheep, but we have some calming work to do first. I put him down for a retest. Talk to me later.”
    This wasn’t like the obedience class they gave at the Y.
    Fran turned to the people in line.
    “This dog didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “He’s just doing what dogs do. The owner had no control over him, so when he got excited by the sheep, he wasn’t listening. I don’t know if any of you noticed, but this dog doesn’t know his name. He thinks his name is ‘Zeus, bad dog’ or ‘Zeus, comehere now!’ He gets yelled at for doing what any dog like him would naturally do around sheep.”
    The wind blew across the open field. What an incongruous scene Patricia thought. Far off to the left in this small, fenced-in area the larger flock, about two hundred sheep, grazed quietly, and at this end, a line of about fifty dogs and their owners, all stood waiting. Patricia hoped nobody would talk to her. She had no idea what to say, at least nothing that wouldn’t show she had no idea what she was doing.
    The next five or six dogs in a row were clearly hopeless, even to her untrained eye, running in all directions, paying no attention to the sheep at all, barking obsessively, ignoring their handlers. She had no doubt Fran would flunk them, and then her.
    Finally, it was Patricia’s turn.
    Dave’s eyes were locked on the sheep. As she circled the pen with him, he walked calmly beside her, staring at the flock as if he had been hypnotized. Fran asked her to go halfway, then turn around. She made Patricia go back and forth five or six times.
    The flies were swarming, and so were the mosquitoes. The smell of sheep dung was powerful. The sun was strong on her face and neck. The sound of barking dogs was grating on her nerves.
    After a few minutes, Fran asked Patricia to take Dave off the lead. When she did, he bolted, circling the pen, round and round and round, rushing past her. Each time she called to him, he ignored her. She moved toward him to try to grab him, but Fran told her to be still. She found herself shouting at the dog. “Dave! Dave! Lie down right now.” She clearly didn’t have control of him, and a moment later, Dave lunged at one of the ewes and bit her on the nose.
    Fran came out to the fence and stood watching, taking notes, filling in the evaluation form. Patricia tried to look over her shoulder but couldn’t see what she was writing.
    Finally, Fran moved inside the pen, stepped in front of Dave, and dropped a few treats on the ground. He rushed past them, then stopped and sniffed the air. Fran leaned over and took his lead, handing it over to Patricia. Even as he ate the treats, Dave couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the sheep.
    “I know it was a mess,” Patricia said, “but I’m willing to learn.”
    Fran was scribbling on her form. “Good for you. You flunked.”
    She pulled another sheet out from her clipboard and motioned for the next dog to come up, then she turned and looked Patricia over a