Sheep farmer Mary Geer of Tuscola County’s Koylton Township loves her border collies such as Charm, shown here. For years, border collies herded sheep in the rolling meadows on Geer’s farm. Geer no longer uses them for that purpose, but still owns three of the dogs and walks her acreage daily with them. (Photo by John Cook)
By Tom Gilchrist
Staff Writer
KOYLTON TWP. — Border collies have been loyal to Tuscola County sheep farmer Mary Geer, and she’s loyal to the breed.
Geer, 69, no longer uses border collies to drive her sheep into different parts of her fields on her 120-acre property where she moved her flock in 1988. She no longer does herding demonstrations with her dogs, and two of her best border collies, Scott and Meg, have passed on.
Yet three border collies — Charm, Rebel and Nell — remain on her picturesque Shaydes of Gray Farm, running daily through the rolling meadows that still house about 125 sheep, contained by electric fences these days.
“Once you have border collies, you never want anything else, because it’s like you can talk to them and they know what you’re saying,” said Geer, 69, a retired legal secretary who worked for Oakland County.
“They’re very bright, but they’re not for everybody,” Geer said. “They need a job to be content, or they get neurotic. They’re obsessive-compulsive.”
The CBS-TV program “60 Minutes” aired a program June 14 about Chaser, a border collie some people call “the smartest dog in the world.” When Chaser was tested to determine if she could identify 1,022 cloth animals, balls and plastic toys — each with a unique name — the dog correctly identified 95 percent or more of the objects in each of hundreds of tests.
The results were published in a scientific journal article about Chaser, owned by retired psychology professor John Pilley.
Mary Geer turned to border collies — a breed developed in the border area between England and Scotland — when the last of her three children moved away from the home in 1989.
“I got my first border collie when my kids left home, because I needed the help,” Geer said. “Prior to that, I just used the children as helpers.”
Geer has raised sheep for about 40 years, moving her farm from a spot near Leonard in northeast Oakland County to its location near Kingston in Tuscola County. She sends lambs to market for their meat and also sells the wool from her flock.
Geer also owns two great Pyrenees, Ted and Max, as guard dogs, and two Maltese dogs named Toby and Buddy stay indoors with her. There’s also a German shepherd mix, Hershey, that stays in a barn after Geer rescued it from a friend who couldn’t handle the dog.
“All the dogs get out at least twice a day,” Geer said. “It’s not fair to a dog not to spend time with it.”
Geer used the Internet to find Charm, a 3-year-old border collie known as a blue merle because of its soft gray-colored coat.
“It’s one of those things where you plug in a search for a blue merle border collie, and look what pops up,” Geer said. “I wasn’t expecting to get Charm but, again, she was a rescue.”
Though Geer’s sheep are kept in fields segmented by electric fences, Charm still races along fences and keeps a close eye on the animals when Geer walks her dogs through the fields. Frequently, Charm crouches in the grass and keeps a keen eye on a group of sheep, or human beings, for that matter.
“Charm has a lot of (herding) potential but I just don’t have the physical ability anymore,” Geer said.
Geer’s 10-year-old border collie, Rebel, still demonstrates herding skill but 11-year-old Nell “loves people and she doesn’t care about sheep,” Geer said.
“I got the border collies because it makes life a lot easier,” Geer said. “I did demonstrations with them for two or three years.
Scott and Meg were my working dogs. That’s when I was really being serious about it and training the dogs. I still enjoy it but my knees aren’t as nimble as they used to be, and I have a harder time.”
Through the years, though, Geer’s various border collies did their part, teaching the sheep to respect boundaries.
“After so many years the sheep got to the point where a dog isn’t as necessary, and the moms train their babies,” Geer said.
Geer’s daughter and son-in-law, Debbie and Mark Eschtruth, live up the road from Geer and help operate her farm.
“I’m turning it over to her,” Geer said of her daughter. “Someday I’m not going to be able to do this, so right now I’m the source of the information, the benefit-of-my-experience type (person).”
The grassy meadows near Kingston, however, still call out to border collies Charm, Rebel and Nell — and Mary Geer.
“I’ll own ‘em until I can’t get out and walk ‘em anymore,” Geer said.