The Houses of Shammai and Hillel

I’ll write a post about my specific experiences with today’s audit of a Ben Means clinic, but I thought I’d get this part out of the way first, for context.

You may or may not know that I’m Jewish. And not super casual Jewish, but fairly observant, keeping kosher, etc. This past Passover (it started the same weekend as Easter), I decided I would kind of “reset” life and make it a priority to try harder in this department, so I started reading some books. The current one I’m on is called Yearning by Irwin Kula. The best way I can summarize it is that it’s basically a book about life and our expectations and approaches with a Jewish filter on.
There are two parts that resonated with me with regard to stockdogging:
1. Absolute vs momentary faith, truth, and doubt
Kula says we seek absolutes here, but the reality is that everything is momentary: you can’t have faith without doubt and it all has to do with momentary consistency rather than absolute consistency. Expecting absolutes is setting yourself up for disaster.

I very much feel that in stockdogging (as in much of life), that you’re encouraged to take an absolute view on everything from how your dog does something to what lines and to how to train it, and you’re expected to take other people’s words for it.

Wisdom is hard won, but I honestly don’t think that taking people’s word for it is a fair expectation unless they’ve impressed upon you that they’ve been there and done that and they’re trying to save you heartache rather than keep you from straying the path.
2. The house of Shammai and Hillel.
So, Judaism really, really loves rules and laws. But, just like secular ones, such things are generally open to interpretation, and Judaism loves that, too. When the sages were trying to sort out the official stance on things, they looked to the two houses.
Shammai looked at the situation, ruled (often the more strict one), and let it be.
Hillel, however, looked at Shammai’s ruling, attempted to fully understand it, and then ruled itself (often differently and more leniently).

Which house won most, if not all, of the arguments? Hillel, simply on the merit that they’d taken time to examine the opposition equally as their own opinion.
I feel like that’s where I’m at with all of this. I’ve been indoctrinated in many beliefs and now I’ve got questions that I know other beliefs have other answers to. I’m sure some people think I am a heretic or a turncoat for looking into what the other side says about the subject rather than taking everyone’s word for it, but my belief is that if my original stance is solid, I’ll come back to it the better for it – or have a slightly modified understanding of the solution or situation.
Open heart, open mind.

And that’s why I went to a Ben Means clinic that was comprised of all border collies. I chose only to audit it because I know that trying to change things up midstream can really mess you up, and I don’t really feel like I need help there. I just really wanted to see what this was all about.
In immersing myself open mindedly into these kinds of worlds, I’m definitely seeing first hand that people have absolute opinions and don’t necessarily come by them honestly or fairly.

I generally don’t try to let people know I have Aussies at stuff like this unless it comes up, so I was pretty surprised that they got brought up a few times while I was there. And I will also say that I have been clearly wrested from the supportive busom of Aussie people who think Aussies are good stockdogs.

The first comment I overheard were how ASCA trials were a joke with the titling system and the judging. That’s fine, people can have opinions, and it’s not about the dogs.

But then a woman came up with a 3 month old Aussie pup and engaged Ben about Aussies somehow, and he proceeded to tell her that if you want a good Frisbee dog, get an Aussie, because if you have  Frisbee or a cow, the dog will pick a Frisbee every time. He actually spoke at length about this but I stopped paying attention. The woman he was talking to was someone I recognized on the Internet who seemed to be a know it all about working Aussies, but I'm not sure she's had one before. She seemed thoroughly convinced at the end of the conversation that she’d be getting a border collie because now Aussies were only for pets. I wanted to stab this otherwise helpful, sincere, and thoughtful man in the eye for perpetuating this whole thing about worthless stockdog Aussies and for doing it to a susceptible woman with a puppy at the end of the line.

And finally, I happened to ask his wife about why Ben wouldn’t take in Aussies for training and she said a couple things:
1. That Aussies tend to work for their owners and not others (fair enough, but Shannon’s dogs take a while to do that, too)
2. That Aussies don’t have a good fetch. When I asked her what she meant, she pointed to a hillside a couple hundred feet away and said that no Aussie she’d ever seen could bring a cow in. They just weren’t serious about it. This is funny to me because, well, dude, I’ve seen PLENTY of Aussies do bigger fetches than that – so who is bringing dogs to them? And should I be stabbing THOSE people in the eye for bringing dogs with poor instinct to stock clinics?
3. That they would get frustrated with their method (and amen, I do think that’s true, though as you’ll see next entry, plenty of Aussie people have had success there)
And then she’s like, “So, you must really like Aussies if you have devoted this much time to this and not switched breeds yet.” And, as always, on the defense, I said, “Well, I’ve been in them for 25 years and I’m not over them yet,” and her response was, “Well, you must really love them, because I was in Huskies that long and switched to Kelpies and found them much more to suit me.”

I just found it so interesting how absolutely against Aussies people were instead of reserving judgment. It’s not doing anyone any favors, especially Aussies. It’s also why I’m holding off on the cattle trials until I can be relatively sure people won’t just file my dogs into the same category as these other dogs because of poor training, performance, or handling. If they deserve it, fine, but I am not going to keep perpetuating it.

I am not saying they’re the best stockdogs for every purpose, but they can be pretty good for lots of them and people get different breeds for different reasons, so it’s interesting how little respect we get with our breed of choice in such circles. I expected it, but I didn’t expect it be so cut and dry.
This weekend I’m going out with the Woods to “help” them bring their cows off the hills and get them loaded for sale – and Dustin wants to work Rippa there. The proof in the pudding will be whether she stands up to the expectations that she’ll do better on big herds than she will with 3-5 heads and we’ll see how it all goes down. I don’t want to hang too much importance on this exposure, but for me it will be a pretty big deal because if she can’t hang, these people might be right.
Open heart, open mind.