I spent the weekend with Terry and her insane collie, named Zoe. Terry has always owned collies, and I’ve generally been impatient with such hairy creatures wanting to sleep with me on the couch, so I have tended to ignore her pets rather callously, adding to my demonic family reputation.

Being away from the gym for the weekend, looking out five weeks and trying to imagine my fat ass actually fighting Charles, I picked up a rattan rod that I keep at her place. While the rest of the clan was watching millionaires swat at balls of hard twine with machined cubs, I planned on doing some snaky stick and shadow stick drills. The only problem was, I had a long haired dog-tard barking at me, pushing me, crowding me and sticking her head between my legs—which disconcerted me as when her face was not between my legs she was gnashing needle-sharp teeth in my direction.

Terry explained that collies are a herding breed and that Zoe was herding me, trying to restrict my mobility. She was treating me like a wayward ram. So I thought I’d try to convince her I was closer to a wolf and see how much fun we could have.

Zoe’s strategy was to impede my mobility by getting between my legs—stick-fighters use their knees and shins for this—and, failing this, to check my hips to keep me penned-in, something stick-fighters and boxers do with our open hand.

I decided to keep my stick in guard, limiting stick motions to defensive beats, blocks and checks on the high line, so as not to hit Terry’s dog, and then work my triangle steps, lunges, fades, pivots, step-around—good luck with that without losing your nut sack—and all of my footwork, facilitated by the checking hand.

The session found a natural rhythm in three-minute rounds. After about two minutes of herding me, once I had used my footwork and checking hand to keep her in the pocket, Zoe would start getting psychotic, growling, snarling, snapping and leaping at me. I felt, at this point, that I had acquired wolf status in her eyes and then started worrying the back of her neck and hips with my empty hand, tickling her tail with the stick. Terry about flipped when the dog grabbed my arm in her jaws. But she did not bite, was still trying to control me, so I advanced the drill by using this jawed hand to check her shoulder [like counter-checking in a stick-fight], which totally pissed her off and had her leaping at my face, which permitted me to work on high checks. After about thirty seconds of this, she would back off, turn, dart away, and then charge me.

I was surprised what a good workout this was. Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes, and without the ability to take off her fur coat—and with no Filipino corner man with a water bottle in sight—Zoe had to take a break. I have sparred with fighting dogs in the past, but had never considered what a good sparring partner a herding dog could be until now.

Somehow though, come June 14, I still think my fat ass will be getting herded up the meat chute onto the endangered stick-fighters list.