Five mornings a week, Dr. David Slotwiner, the chief of cardiology at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens hospital, can be found tending to human hearts.
But on Sunday mornings, he is on a grass-covered field at a rural farm in Hackettstown, N.J., standing among half a dozen sheep, whistle in hand, teaching his Border collies Cosmo and Luna to herd.
“It helps me think about what it takes to be an effective leader, though doctors don’t respond to whistles very well,” said Dr. Slotwiner, 58, who specializes in cardiac electrophysiology.
He started coming to the farm during the coronavirus pandemic, after Cosmo began showing aggression and bit his wife, Anne Slotwiner, 60. A trainer recommended a small sheep farm in New Jersey, Wayside Farm, that trains Border collies — and, once he herded with Cosmo for the first time, he was hooked.
Dr. Slotwiner shares a three-bedroom house in Pelham, the oldest town in Westchester County, with his wife, Cosmo, Luna and a 15-year-old American Eskimo rescue, George. (He has two adult sons, Harry, 28, and Peter, 25.)
A newborn lamb at Wayside Farm in Hackettstown, N.J., where Dr. David Slotwiner trains his Border collies.
