Texas rancher trains dogs to tend to cattle

Mike Wright looks for two things in a cowdog - presence and eye. "It's very similar to the way people are," the lifelong cattleman and dog trainer said. "If you've got three people giving you lip, and you walk up there, are you looking at all three of them? Or, are you looking at the one that's closest to you?" The 30 or 35 border collies and hangin' tree dogs in a kennel outside Wright's East Mountain home know the answer to that. "These dogs, they are looking at that cow that's closest to them," he said. "I want the one that's going to look at the one that's the closest - 'You move, I'm gonna get you.' That's presence. Presence, presence - presence is a huge word. It's everything. It's everything, and lots of eye." Wright, 47, has worked with both cattle and dogs since he was a boy in Mount Pleasant. "They take the place of three or four hands for us," he said, describing his niche in the cattle world, getting herds in optimum shape for market. Starting his dogs at 7 or 8 months old, Wright puts each through training beginning with getting them used to humans and horses. "We take a young dog. We teach them to follow, to go with us (while we are) horseback," he said. "We teach them their names - the basic stuff. And then they go through a 30-day period of what we call collar training." Commands are learned in that month, and he didn't mean sit, stay and shake. The terms Wright's dogs master include, "down," a command to hunch down and be still; "come," if the dogs are to your right, and, "here," if they are to the left. "Come by," tells them to circle back clockwise, while, "way to me," sends them counterclockwise...more