My dog, Millie, is a three-year-old black and white border collie/kelpie/something else cross, that looks a bit like the dog in the recent New Yorker magazine cartoon we’ve put in this column, though she has shorter fur.
When she was about six months old, my wife and kids took her to visit some neighbours, who had recently acquired two fluffy little miniature poodle puppies.
Millie is a friendly dog so they left her with the two little poodles in the backyard while they went inside the neighbours’ house for a catch-up.
After a few minutes they heard a bit of puppy-yapping so they returned to the backyard to see that Millie had rounded up the poodles and had herded them into a corner.
She hadn’t hurt them but she did have them tucked safely in the corner and she was making sure they weren’t going anywhere. Job done.
When I recently saw the excellent New Yorker magazine cartoon we’ve featured here, it made me smile because it accurately sums up what a collie/kelpie type of dog is bred to do.
It is also an excellent play on words, with “herd” and “heard” being pronounced the same way, meaning different things but being equally applicable in the sheep’s response.
Of course, it also reminded me of Millie and her antics with the fluffy little “lambs” she came across at the neighbours’ place.
And it also made me think of real estate and the relationship between seller and agent. Who has the control and how much should the agent have?
It is important that the agent takes the lead and certainly controls the things that have to be looked after to ensure a successful sale … making sure the marketing is good, the write-up is enticing, the engagement with buyers creates the competition that we need to ensure the best possible price.
The agent is the seller’s ears in the market place and should be in control of the sale, meaning he or she is across everything, aware of who the buyers are and giving the seller feedback from buyers.
But, unlike the dog in the cartoon, the agent is not in charge, and is not the controlling force in the relationship between seller and agent. The best results occur when the seller and the agent understand each other and work well to get the best result.
However, the seller is the boss and always in charge. Millie is just not right for real estate sales.
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