Approximately thirty years ago, I knew I wanted to work with dogs.
At the time, I already had an Irish Setter whom I had rescued a few years earlier. During a conversation with a friend about Weil’s disease and the damage rats can cause to property, grain stores and livestock, I decided I wanted a dog who would genuinely enjoy working a farm environment.
That decision led me to Derbyshire — roughly 230 miles from where I was living — to collect an eighteen-month-old Plummer Terrier.
His name was Storm.
On the journey home, I sat him on the front seat of my Land Rover with the vents fully open to keep him cool. He sat upright most of the way, bolt straight, like a human colleague out for the day admiring the scenery. I spoke to him calmly as we drove, reassuring him that everything would be fine. Every so often, he would glance at me as if to ask, “Where are we going?” I would stroke his head and quietly talk to him. He seemed to appreciate the contact.
About ten miles from home — after several stops for water and short breaks — I pulled onto a hard standing. It was a hot day, and a vast wheat field stretched out before us. In hindsight, I was probably a little carefree, but I unclipped Storm’s lead and let him run.
He disappeared into the wheat, and I could only track his path by watching the crop ripple in the sunlight. Yet he never went more than twenty feet ahead of me. When I realised I didn’t actually know where I was going, I turned back toward the truck.
At that time, I owned one of the early “brick” mobile phones, clipped to my belt. When we returned to the Land Rover and I opened the door for Storm, I instinctively reached down to check my phone.
It wasn’t there.
I patted around my belt and pockets, the way we all do when something important is suddenly missing. The phone had clearly fallen somewhere in the wheat field.
“Sorry, Storm,” I said aloud, “we have to go back — I’ve dropped my phone.”
I unclipped him again and stepped into the wheat, trying to trace my original route. I had taken perhaps ten steps when Storm suddenly emerged from the dense crop — my mobile phone gently held in his mouth.
I stood there in disbelief.
I had given him no cue. No instruction. No request to “find it.” I had only met him a few hours earlier. He had no training history with me. Yet somehow, he had registered the change in my behaviour, understood that something was wrong, identified the object, located it, and brought it back.
To this day, I do not fully understand how he did it.
What I do understand is this: that was the moment I first truly recognised the depth of a dog’s cognitive and emotional capacity.
Storm went on to live a full and happy life. On my friend’s farm, I would let him work for hours hunting rats, and he would return utterly spent, completely fulfilled. But that day in the wheat field shaped something far more important than his working life.
It shaped mine.
I have now lived alongside eleven dogs. I would not say I have “trained” them in the traditional sense. I have lived with them, observed them, respected them, and allowed them to reveal what they are capable of.
When I meet a client’s dog for the first time, I often think of Storm emerging from that wheat field.
I do not see a problem to fix.
I see a thinking brain.
An animal capable of extraordinary perception.
A being who may understand far more than we assume.
And I never begin with training.
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