Short Story

NIP

Malcom Cockburn, The Sherborne Scribblers

The phone rang, ‘This is Sherborne Station, there is a dog for you here.’ I had been expecting the call, so I jumped into the Land Rover and hastened to the parcel office which in those days housed all manner of parcels, day-old chicks, Cornish clotted cream and sundry perishable goods. Today the carriage of the above items has been long abandoned by our railway and the parcel office is home to ‘Cycles 4 You’. Back then, sitting patiently and demurely among the parcels and boxes was a collie dog with a label round her neck which read Nip, and that was all. We bonded immediately and she sat beside me nervous but plainly relieved, for her journey must have been outside any experience in her six or seven years of life ’til then. There would have been at least two changes of train between Lanark in Scotland and Sherborne.

My father started his farming life in the borders of Scotland and he would buy replacement ewes and rams from a livestock agent, Murray Jackson. When we moved from our farm in the hills and mountains of the Borders to the gentle Dorset farmland, a new dog was needed to herd the cows and sheep, and Murray Jackson’s service included supply of ‘part-worn collie dogs’! These dogs, after some five years racing up hill and down dale, were no longer ‘fit for purpose’, but they retained all the formidable skill of a trained border collie. The first dog to come south had been Wull, and I inherited that dog when I returned to the farm after working in Australia. I have to say that Wull and I never bonded. When he lost his temper with me he would go off round the farm on a sulky walk-about. You had to be careful feeding him because I think he knew the phrase ‘to bite the hand which feeds you’! I have wept and grieved over the loss of many pets, but sadly not Old Wull when he passed on. Nip was to be his replacement.

Since there was an absence of any working instruction (as we have come to expect with kitchen gadgets and such) Nip and I had to ‘play it by ear’,

and that could be from a whistle or a shout. All I knew were three voice commands: ‘Go by’, ‘lie down’ and ‘heel’. The first is used nationwide and means, ‘make a sweep anti-clockwise to gather the flock’, starting to my right. Luckily our fields were not big and I am sure Nip must have poopoo’d my sad efforts. She had learned to bring a flock to the fold from a distant hillside; and without her help nothing would have been achieved by me when shearing, dipping, worming etc. were order of the day.

Initially, I made a bed for her in the shed attached to my cottage; in Scotland the sheep dogs spend all year in outside kennels, and it was said that they lived on porridge – I don’t believe it and Nip had dog food from Mole Valley Farmers and plenty of tasty extras. Of course eventually she moved into the house and slept by the Rayburn while it was the cat who was turned out. There are many tales of Nip riding on the back of the motor-bike, Nip playing tag with the pet fox cub around the farm house and here’s another one; she would always ride in the back of the pick-up truck and one day I had to go to the far end of a Yeovil trading estate to collect newly sharpened saws. When I got home Nip was not there, ‘Oh my God!’ she must be left in Yeovil. Asking all over the trading estate several people declared they had seen a dog going towards the A30. Suddenly, I knew where she would be; she had found her way across Yeovil and along the A30 to Mole Valley Farmers, knowing my other likely port of call. I had indeed taken my pet to work that day and every other day of her dear life.

In a Matter of Words – The Sherborne Scribblers’ first collective work of prose and poetry is available now from Winstone’s Books at £9.99