A Boy, His Collie, and a Stampede

This is Prince — my collie, and my best friend growing up. 🐾 I’ve shared his portrait before, but I’ve never told the story that made him a legend in our family. It’s time.

When I was about ten years old, Prince and I were crossing a cow pasture on the way to our favorite fishing spot — a walk we’d made together plenty of times. This time, we spooked the herd.

That’s me, right around that age. Picture that kid standing in open pasture as the ground literally starts to shake under his feet — and a wall of cattle comes rushing straight at him. There is nothing a ten-year-old can do about a stampede. There was nothing I could do.

But Prince didn’t hesitate. He leaped in front of me and barked with everything he had — planted himself between me and the herd and simply refused to move. And the herd split. It broke around the two of us like a river around a stone, and thundered past on either side.

That’s the two of us, with that very pasture behind. I truly believe his natural herding instinct kicked in at exactly the right moment. Collies were shaped over centuries in the Scottish hills to do precisely this — to face down livestock many times their size, to hold a line with nothing but posture and voice, to turn a moving herd. Prince had never had a single day of formal training. He didn’t need one. When it mattered, the whole ancient inheritance woke up at once, and he proved what he was bred to be — with a boy standing behind him.

He was my best friend, and he may well have saved my life that day. More than forty years on, I still think about it. Some dogs you remember. Prince, I owe. 🐕❤️