Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching Through Scotland for a Border Collie

by Donald McCaig

  May Templeton serves wine with supper, which is fine hospitality in a family that rarely drinks themselves. Later this year, she and John will fly to California to judge sheepdog trials. Who would have thought a small dog could put people across the Atlantic?

  The Templetons’ guest bedroom is spacious, old-fashioned, and comfortable. There’s a guest book on the bedside table. There’s a pen.

  Downstairs the Templetons wait, nervously, for a call from their solicitor.

  Last fall, they’d had a boundary fence built and, as is customary, they’d paid half the contractor’s bill (May has the canceled check handy) and their fence-line neighbor was to pay the other half. The neighbor is flashy, drives flashy cars, won’t return their phone calls, and has defaulted on his part of the bill. The angry fence contractor has said he’s coming out tomorrow morning to pull the fence out.

  In his comfortable slippers, in his own chair, before his home fire, John Templeton is desperately upset. May Templeton is confident, cheerful. In The Symposium, Plato created a beautiful metaphor of human love. He suggested that we humans once were unisex creatures, complete and happy, until we were ripped in two. Since that rough separation, men and women are condemned to wander the world looking for another being to make them whole. Some few pairs, like John and May Templeton, do make a whole, and it’s impossible to imagine one without the other.

  John’s solicitor phoned the police to see if they’ll intervene. May leans forward to explain, “John’s a law-abiding man. He’s not accustomed to this sort of thing.”

  In the morning, I leave before the fencing contractor makes his appearance. John and May scarcely notice me go.

  At a smallholding near Sorn, I park beside Hugh Ferguson’s new estate wagon.

  The Fergusons are young, dressed in farm clothes that have seen plenty of hard work. John and May Templeton must have dressed like this when they first bought Airtnock. Their sheep dairy is (after the Templetons’ automatic operation) primitive and slow. The ewes’ teats are washed from a bucket of warm disinfecting water, and the pump is moved from ewe to ewe until each is done. The ewes, Hugh says, average 60 gallons per freshening, and he gets 42 pence a liter for the milk (which will be made into cheese). His greatest problem is transporting the milk to the cheese factory.

  The best milk sheep are Frisians; the second best, Dorsets. Ferguson’s ewes are handled daily and have no decent respect for a dog. Hugh’s smooth-coated Maid bitch needs more work than the young man can give her—and wilder sheep, too. The pasture where Hugh works her is tussocky and rough.

  I take Maid’s picture. “I suppose she’s not for sale.”

  There’s the briefest, slightest hesitation before the young farmer says no.

  I didn’t press the matter, and later on, down the road, kicked myself. Tougher men than I might have persisted and got the bitch—and she was a topper. But I wasn’t sure about offering sixteen hundred pounds, I didn’t like the ethics of buying a dog away from John Templeton the day after enjoying his hospitality. Mostly, I thought that Maid was the only beautiful creature the Fergusons had.

  At home, I am a creature of routine. Up at dawn, at chores by seven, back in the house for breakfast. Walk, train, feed the dogs. I hoped Pip was doing all right. He wouldn’t give a damn if I came back from Scotland without a young bitch. I wasn’t so sure I would give a damn myself.

  I ran across Geoff and Viv Billingham, Saturday, at the Dalrymple trial. “Have you found her, Donald?”

  “Nope. How are things at Tweedhope?”

  “Oh smashing,” Viv took my sleeve. “We’ve got the plumbing in and the Council’s back at work on the layby.”

  Geoff asked if I’d been over to see the agricultural show, “They have some grand cattle, grand,” but I was indifferent to the show, and the trial for that matter. I pulled my car to the far end of the parking lot and pulled my hat down over my eyes. Life had got to be too many for me.

  When I came out of my fretful slumber, it was near noon and perhaps a third of the dogs had already run. I saw Holly run, but she was erratic. Not her day. I checked off the bitches listed in the program and when I looked up, the wee beast was on her fetch. I hadn’t seen the outrun, but the fetch was quite nice; the young bitch kept well off her sheep and balanced them perfectly. Gael—T. Reid, the program read. The bitch brought the sheep around her handler’s feet and started them to the drive gate. At the last moment, the sheep swerved and missed the gate, and the handler lifted his crook in the air: disqualified.

  She was quite small, built sleek, smooth coated, black and tan. Powerful, like a .45 caliber pistol on a .38 frame. Gael lay at her handler’s feet, cleaning her paws. Tom Reid, from Creetown. Near Newton Stewart, it is. “Aye,” Tom Reid said, “Yin’s a useful beast.”

  A man in his sixties, Reid wore a cap that matched his tweed jacket and the kind of tinted glasses Hollywood producers prefer. His lowlands accent was hard to understand. “She’s two-and-a-half years. Aye, she ran at the nurseries, but I’m no a trial man, I’m a dog breaker [trainer].”

  David McTeir made his appearance, and in the choreography of his arrival, I found myself shuffled to the rear, facing the backs of two men’s tweed jackets. McTeir’s face is a half size too big for his body, with the hard planes of an Easter Island carving. I’d met David before, but we didn’t say hello today. Tom Reid and David McTeir spoke the lingo. It was their country. Their sport coats were more recently pressed than mine. “That’s a bonny wee bitch.” (David)

  “Oh, aye. Aye.” (Tom)

  “And she’ll keep off her sheep. I don’t suppose she’d ever run too wide?” (David)

  “Nae. She’d nae let a ewe get away from her.” (Tom)

  “And she’ll kep [fetch] them right to you?” (David)

  “Oh, aye.” (Tom)

  “And with the tups, strong ’uns, she’d not be afeart of them?” (David)

  “The wee bitch’ll abide no nonsense. She’ll nae grip. She’s nae a grip in her. But she’ll shift her sheep.” (Tom)

  As the two Scots traded these suppositions, they spoke softly, and if I hadn’t been standing practically on their heels, I wouldn’t have heard a word. Of course, it was rude to stay standing there. I stayed.

  As David McTeir talked, he ran his crook gently down the wee bitch’s back. She paid no mind but lay calmly watching the trial field.

  “And how’s she bred?”

  “She’s by MacKenzie’s Don.”

  “Oh, aye. Grand hill dog, Don.”

  “She dinna just look her best today. She’s just comin’ off pups, ye ken.”

  She lay favoring her swollen teats. She was blowing her coat, and a wisp of hair rolled off her back in the faint breeze. Tom Reid coughed and held his handkerchief to his mouth. He said, “I only go to the local trials. Since I lost me leg [he patted his left leg] I dinna care to drive, so I must travel with others. They’ll be anxious to be going.”

  McTeir persisted with his queries, “I suppose she’ll go to either hand?”

  “She didn’t like her ‘come bye’ ” (left flank). “She’d nae take it. So I said, I’ll just breed her and see if that makes her go better, and now she’ll go to either hand. And,” he smiled, “I’ve four bonny pups in the bargain.”

  McTeir grew confidential, “I don’t suppose you’d be selling her. Mind, I’m no a rich man.”

  “Oh, I have too many young dogs coming on. Perhaps.”

  “And what would you be asking?”

  “Weel … after the nurseries, I turned down eight hundred pounds for her. Man wanted to take her to Ireland. But I have pups out of her now. …”

  “Aye. Weel, I’m Davey McTeir. McTeir’s Ben.”

  A smile of recognition. “Oh, aye. Aye.”

  “… and Bill and Mirk.”

  “Oh aye. Famous dogs those.”

  “I’m looking for a bitch. Perhaps I’d come down and see how she goes at home.”

  As the two Scots exchanged phone numbers, I
walked away. When I looked again, Davey McTeir was in conference with his friends, Tom Reid and the wee bitch were gone, and a long-haired dog was in difficulties on the trial course. Big dog. Looked like Pip, only bigger.

  I felt the fool. The big white Texas hat I wore to the trials (just like I did in the States) was a fool’s hat. I wished I spoke the language. In my mind’s eye, I saw David McTeir run his stick down the wee bitch’s back; gentle, idle, proprietary. In the car, I consulted my schedule. Trial tomorrow in Glenrothes. All the Highland handlers would be there. Maybe I could finally meet John Angus MacLeod. Glenrothes was a long haul, across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. If I was to find a B & B at Glenrothes, I should phone ahead for a reservation. On the Dalrymple course, a Scot was running a dog better than I owned, better than I would have run him. The Billinghams had gone home. The sun shined down. Oh, it was a bonny day for an agricultural fair.

  In the beer tent I asked for a whiskey. I poured water from the cool pitcher. The barman returned 20 pence from my pound note. “How far to Creetown?”

  The barman shook his head, “I’m afraid I dinna ken it.” He turned to his assistant, “Mary, have ye ever hear’t of a place, ‘Creetown’?”

  She shook her head. “It’ll no be near here.”

  “Newtown Stewart?”

  “Oh aye. That’d be well south. Ayint Stranraer.”

  I took out my notebook. “Would you spell that, please?”

  On my map, Newtown Stewart looked like fifty miles. The dash clock said 4 P.M. I hoped Creetown was small enough so I could find Tom Reid. I drove dangerously, like a bat out of hell.

  At 6 P.M., I stopped in Newtown Stewart and I popped coins into a phone box. I got Reid’s number, but it buzzed and buzzed.

  The parking lot behind the Creetown Arms was such a tight turn that I had to take two shots at it. The dusk had turned odd, cold, and there was no greenery in this place and never had been. So near the coast, I could smell the sea iodine in the air.

  Robert, my host, was a middle-aged Englishman who’d sold the hotel but was managing it until the new owners came in. Robert dreamed of owning a regular pub somewhere in the south. “At closing time you are finished,” he said. “No more bother. Close the door, sweep up, go to bed.”

  Creetown, he said, was not lively. The young man sitting at the bar nodded agreement: Though he was born here, he and his wife lived in London now. No, he didn’t know any Tom Reid. “A sheepdog man, you say? George, have you heard of Tom Reid?”

  George, a dour old herd, shook his head.

  “George herded here since before I was born,” the young man confided. “He knows everybody.”

  Gloomily, George consulted his pint. I had another myself. They young man, it turned out, was a prison warder. “Oh, the work’s not too bad. The pay’s all right.” That’s right, he was home for a visit. His uncle had sheepdogs, perhaps the American had heard of him?

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh, he sells his pups as far as Castle Douglas. Gets fifty pounds for them.” Uncle raised purebred tups, perhaps the American had heard of them? His tups brought fabulous money, last year one fetched twenty-seven thousand pounds. “Do you know how you can tell a good sheepdog?” he asked.

  No, I didn’t.

  The prison warder opened his mouth and pointed his finger in there. “Black mouth,” he advised. “The roof of its mouth’ll be black. That’s what Uncle told me. If you want a gude sheepdog, you must open its mouth.”

  I tried to phone Tom Reid but still no answer.

  Robert said, “That’s a Newtown Stewart exchange.”

  “That’s why we dinna know him,” the young warder said. “He’s no in Creetown.”

  “Uh-huh.” I had a pint. The clock made its rounds. I ate lasagna. Some of Creetown’s unmarried young came in for a drink before they went dancing. Like country young everywhere, they were dressed in a pastiche of recent urban fashions. The boys’ pants were too tight, and I wouldn’t have wanted to walk far in their sharp flimsy shoes. The girls wore bright blouses that had been ironed fresh that afternoon.

  When Reid answered the phone, I was suddenly at a loss. I’d almost given him up for an evening in the pub. “Mr. Reid?”

  “Aye.”

  “I’m the American you talked to at Dalrymple today. I was wondering if I could come by and look at your wee bitch?”

  Long pause. “We’el, you know there’s a man interested in her. Mister McTeir. Famous for the dogs.”

  “I’m in Creetown. I drove all the way down here just to see her.”

  “Oh aye … Well, she’s not my only bitch, you know. I’ve a three year old ready to trial.”

  “So you wouldn’t mind if I came over?”

  “Oh, I suppose not.” Tom Reid gave directions.

  As I came down Carswilloch Farm lane, it was nine o’clock, the light plummeting into dark. The farm was flat. The land behind it was flat, too, until it ran up against the blunt black horizon. Tom Reid stood outside his modest cottage, beyond the darkened main house, beyond the equipment shed. I shook his reluctant hand briskly.

  “Aye. Now, like I told you when you rang, Mr. McTeir has expressed an interest. He’ll be coming by to see her.”

  “Uh-huh. But I’m here now. You haven’t sold her, have you?”

  “Nae.” A pause. “Where are you from in the States?”

  “Virginia. It’s the state right behind Washington, D.C., on the television news.”

  “Oh aye. We’el she’s fed her pups and her belly’s full of meat. …”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  “I’ve another bitch, that’s ready to trial. …”

  “Oh, that wee bitch, she’s a … bonny beast.”

  Sighs. “Aye. We’el, there’s tups down the road I have the use of. …”

  “We can take my car.”

  The wee bitch wasn’t at all keen to come out of her doghouse. “Come along, lassie. Come along now.” Tom Reid unclipped the chain from the doghouse and used it as a lead. “She doesn’t care for the car. When she was eighteen month she was in a smashup. She always rode between my wife’s feet. My wife’s deid.”

  When we got to the training field, the only light was a thin band on the horizon. The field was ten acres, kidney shaped, bordered by trees. At the far end were gray shapes—a half dozen of them. “Could you have her fetch them without commands?”

  A look. “Aye.”

  She sailed out, came to the treeline, raced along it, stopped. Tom Reid whistled two sharp whistles, and the wee bitch disappeared into the dark. I couldn’t see her now, but the gray shapes began to flock together. The bitch was a presence, like a negative magnet behind them. They came: big beasts, unshorn Cheviots, swathed in thick battings of wool.

  “Gael! Take time, Gael!”

  And the Cheviots slowed. The wee bitch was flanking from one side to the other, keeping just far enough off the sheep so she wouldn’t panic them. “Could you ask her to circle around them to the left?” I asked.

  “Come bye, Gael.”

  The wee bitch came to their faces and they jolted to a stop like rail cars run into a yard bumper.

  “Bring her around to the right.”

  She did that, too. “It’s getting hard to see. …Would you have her press them against the fence?”

  “Aye.” The older man had got into the spirit of demonstrating his dog. When he asked the wee bitch to press the tups against the fence, they’d have no escape, they’d turn on her, drop their heads, stamp. “Get up, lassie. That’s a girl. Get up, lassie!”

  She hesitated but came on to those snorting pawing 250-pound tups, lifting her forepaw, setting it down, leaning forward onto it, sliding, like a drawer on a glide.

  “Flank her, please.”

  In the dark, she flashed back and forth under the tups’ noses, left, then right, then left again, and you could tell where she was because all the tups aimed at her.

  “That’s all I needed to
see,” I said.

  Tom Reid called Gael to his side. He said, “Her outrun was no right just then. But she was asleep when we fetched her and her belly is full of meat. …”

  “I’ll give you eleven hundred pounds for her.”

  Though the field at our feet was perfectly dark, there was enough light higher, for Reid and me to see each others’ faces. “Ach, weel. Mister McTeir, he’ll be coming to look at her. We’d exchanged phone numbers.” Tom Reid stooped to reattach the clumsy kennel chain.

  “You know and I know David McTeir isn’t going to keep her. He’ll sell her to somebody else for more than he pays you. I’ll take her home with me. There’s no difference between me and David McTeir except you’ll know who’s got her, where her home is.”

  Reid inspected me for about thirty seconds. He said, “Let’s go back to the cottage. Do ye have much dog trialing in the States?”

  On our drive, I made conversation, “You’re a hard man to get ahold of,” I said. “Nobody in Creetown seemed to know you.”

  “My wife and I moved here in the summer. She was already sick with the cancer.” In the glare of my headlights, Tom Reid led the wee bitch into her doghouse. Gratefully, she scooted inside and lay down, facing away. Tom Reid sighed. “She’s had a hard day, poor beast. The pups take it out of them. Come inside, man. What would you be saying to a wee dram?”

  We sat in overstuffed armchairs on either side of an electric fire. Family snapshots reposed on the sideboard. Tom Reid found his whiskey and hobbled into the kitchen for water. The framed photograph on the wall must have been three feet long: sheepdog in working stance. The photo bore the legend: “Don—Breeder: J. Herries, Trainer: T. Reid, Owner: J. Varnon.”

  “Mister Varnon sent me that picture from Texas. He was that pleased with Don. Have ye seen Don?” Tom Reid asked.

  “No, he’s in Texas. I don’t get that far south.”

  “Don was a topper. I sold him to Peter Hetherington. Do ye ken Peter?”