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Dawn is lighting the dewy flanks of Old Town Club’s second tee when Pete the dog takes off for his first morning romp, blazing over a fairway rise to where maintenance crews are already mowing greens and raking bunkers.
“This is one of Pete’s favorite tricks,” says Bryant Evans, 34, Director of Agronomy at Old Town, a Perry Maxwell gem in northwest Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “It’s all a big game for Pete, designed to try and make us chase him. Give him a minute, he’ll be back with something he’s swiped from the staff. I promise you.”
Sure enough, seconds later, Pete bounds back carrying a crew member’s fluorescent yellow glove in his mouth, making a pair of joyful loops around the boss’ cart as if daring him to give chase.
“Okay, Pete,” Evans calls out. “Time to go to work. Load up.”
The young Australian shepherd responds by dropping the glove and leaping into the passenger seat of Evan’s maintenance cart, flopping down beside his master to slurp from a pint glass of water attached to the floor.
“This probably wouldn’t have been possible six months ago,” Evans allows with a chuckle. “But Pete’s a quick learner, probably smarter than his owner. We’re really both still learning. He’s come a long way since November when we had to chase him. Remember that?”
Who could forget it? On an equally golden morning the previous November, as crews were prepping Old Town for one of the final tournaments of the season, Pete was a white blur rocketing around the golf course, blissfully oblivious to his master’s commands, at one point stealing a staffer’s radio from his cart and leading two assistants on a merry chase over the course that took almost half an hour to play out.
But time and patience – and no small amount of training with tasty snacks – have begun to pay dividends for Pete and Bryant, a pair of working pals following a storied tradition that dates from a time when greenskeepers realized that herding dogs made ideal companions and superb protectors of the turf.
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