Though Luc is a border collie like Cass and Chloe, he is not especially talented as a herding dog.  He seems acutely aware that the girls get to work the sheep while he doesn’t, so I try to give him other outlets to be productive.  He’s trained in scent detection, both on narcotics and bed bugs, but we haven’t had much call for either on the farm lately, so he’s deputized himself as my helper.  Since I often have a sore back, I’ve taught him to pick up things I’ve dropped — gloves, car keys, pencils, sheets of paper, even my tape measure.  I’ve gotten sufficiently accustomed to his help that if I drop something when he’s not around, I wait, expecting that the item will magically end up back in my hand.  He’ll also head out into the fields to find things I’ve lost, like gloves or lens caps.

One of his favorite jobs has been bringing me the newspaper from the bottom of the driveway where the delivery guy has been leaving it.  At first, I’d have to be nearby for him to understand what I was asking, but now I can send him for the paper from across the farm.  Recently, though, we got a new delivery fellow who decided to install a proper delivery box to make his life easier.  I couldn’t really argue with something to make a low-wage job a little less onerous, but I was worried that Luc would be stymied by the new location.  I clearly had too little faith.