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

by Donald McCaig

  The mist over Loch Tay had a blue tinge to it, like gunsmoke. The summit ridge of Ben Lawer was somewhere above the clouds. Billows of mist hung in the road and slowed our progress. I asked John Angus how much of his run he planned before he went to the post. “When you think about a thing in your mind, you can have a plan to combat it,” he said.

  A few minutes later, he said you’d just want to get finished with this course, no fancy work, just get finished.

  Later, he estimated it’d take 360 points to qualify for the finals on Saturday.

  As we race into Tummel Bridge, John Angus says he’ll send Taff off before the sheep are all the way to the let-out post. If Taff picks them up before they’re in line for the fetch gate, they’ll be unlikely to get in the ruts. I ask if that won’t confuse the men putting out sheep, to see a dog come sailing out, long before they expect him?

  “Is this the bloody turn?” John cries, “Damn!”

  We’d shot across the motorway and down the ramp on the other side. John braked, then wrestled us around, and we were back on the motorway again.

  We park today on the hill above the course, and there’re shepherds (in wellies and waterproofs and with crooks) taking admissions. When a handler wins a place on his national team, he’s mailed a rectangular gold badge. Among the crowd today, I’ll see shepherds and farmers whose badges read: Wales 1985, England 1987, Scotland 1978. Between trials, the badges are kept in the trophy cases in their dining rooms, along with the brilliant polished trophies and the photos of the kids and grandkids.

  The badges also serve for admission. John Angus’ Scotland 1988 lies dust covered in its glassine envelope on the dash. “Hold that up for them, won’t you, Donald?”

  From the hill, the entire course lies misty at our feet—the grandstands, secretary’s tent, restaurant tent, beer tent, crafts-and-gift tents, and caravans for Chum Pedigree Dog Food (The Pro’s Choice), the Alliance Insurance Company, and the Bank of Scotland.

  The loudspeaker welcomes us to the 1988 Blair Atholl International and reminds us there are a good many sheepdog items on sale in the secretary’s tent, as well as tickets for the International dinner tomorrow night.

  On Thursday and Friday, the qualifying trials alternate members from each team, in reverse order of rank from their Nationals. The last shall run first. Bobby Short, a Scottish shepherd, and his three-year-old Bill (out of W. Stewart’s Bob and his own bitch Gael) go to the post. The Blackies are light but not desperate. They are gimmers: yearlings after their first shearing. Most have pure-black faces, some are spotty black, and a few bear skinny horns. They are quick to sense a dog’s weakness. Later, when Rob Kincade’s Nan comes on too hard at the lift, the sheep fly down the course like banshees, and Nan never does get them settled.

  When your run has gone wrong, is a complete disaster, your sheep flying this way and that and your dog no longer listening, you can’t quit. You’re out there as a member of the Scottish team, and if you walk off, all your team points are forfeit.

  Over the years, the Scottish team has won most frequently, but the Welsh and English teams are formidable, too. Several men here have won the International before. Tim Longton, J. R. Thomas (nine scions of his great Don dog are entered in these trials), Raymond MacPherson, and John Templeton. Meirion Jones won the International in 1959 with his Ben dog, and this year, Jones’ Spot has dominated the Welsh competitions.

  I sit beside Peter Hetherington and his wife, Molly. Peter is a small, articulate shepherd, carefully dressed, who exports fifty dogs every year to America. Although Peter comes across frequently to judge our trials, he finds Americans deeply puzzling. One year he flew over with the dog that had just won the Scottish Nursery finals. “A bonnie dog, that.”

  It was in Texas. One spring afternoon, in his host’s barn lot, they were training dogs—just fooling around, really—when a neighbor drove in. This man—he was a wealthy quarterhorse breeder—had never seen anything like these dogs. A revelation came to him. He asked, “Which one of these sumbitches is the best?”

  Peter pointed to the Nursery champion.

  The Texan said, “How much for the sumbitch?”

  Purely to discourage him, Peter said he could have the dog for five thousand dollars.

  Okay. The Texan went for his money belt, counted out the price, and chained the dog to a standard in the back of his pickup.

  The next time he came to the States, Peter asked about the dog, who’d been one of the best dogs exported from Scotland that year. When the quarter-horse man had folks over for a barbecue, he’d send one of his hands down to the barn to turn three sheep out. The dog’d race out and fetch them to the patio to his guests’ applause. “A good sumbitch.” Peter shook his head at the waste.

  Mist clotted the field, and it was difficult to see the sheep at the top end. As they came down the course, the sheep bore to the left, so the dog had to be far left to keep them straight. Then, at the gate, they fell into the ruts, and the dog had to race to the other side very quickly, to push them out of the ruts and properly through.

  Each of our small acts reveals us. When Johnny Templeton walks onto the course, he is quiet, diffident as a cleric. Alasdair MacRae strides to the post, dangles his crook from it, flips his coattails, and sets his fingers to his mouth for the first whistle. Stuart Davidson, once a champion Gaelic football player, goes to the post like the cock of the walk.

  John Angus strolled out there like he and Taff were sharing a pleasant joke, all alone in the world. Taff swirled around to John Angus’s left leg, asking to be sent that way, but he and John Angus had a wee chat, and Taff swirled to the right hand, all aquiver. John Angus whispered to Taff, asking him some questions, and Taff sailed out like the Bullet Train; I never heard the command.

  John set himself in case Taff should need a correction on his outrun, but Taff went out, out, like he could have gone another five miles, and came around behind the sheep properly, and John whistled him down. Taff came onto them, came onto them, came onto them and They’re Away! Flying down the fetch line, Taff was out, far to the left, counteracting their leftward lean; but surely Taff was too far, a hundred yards off his sheep. The sheep stayed on line approaching that fetch gate, ready to slip into the ruts. I’d swear it was too late when John Angus called Taff around to the right, Taff was too far away, couldn’t possibly get there on time, but as the lead ewe tried to sneak around the gate, Taff arrived. “No,” Taff said.

  Startled by his materialization, the ewe draws up short, swerves, and now all the sheep are bolting across the back face of the gates, right past the gap, to the far side but John Angus brings Taff around to block them—“Not here either”—and, abashed, the sheep trot through the gap where they should have gone in the first place. All this to and fro had excited the sheep, and they picked up speed as they approached John Angus at the handler’s post. The leading horned ewe was flock leader, and she didn’t like the look of John Angus. She began to swerve wide and perhaps, here, John Angus might have taken a backward step to give the sheep more room, but he did not; he asked Taff to put more pressure on them, to keep the turn tight, and they whipped around John Angus and flew away from man, dog, crowd. In the grandstand I lifted my camera as the sheep sped toward the drive gate. Perfect! John Angus, Taff, five sheep, the gap in the drive gate; the line was so straight you could have laid a ruler on it.

  Except for that to and fro at the fetch gates, Taff hadn’t dropped a point. He had a brilliant run going: impeccable.

  The next phase is the turn after the sheep go through the drive panel; a tight turn is required to bring the sheep onto the crossdrive. John Angus put his fingers to his lips for a whistle.

  Five sheep hit the drive gate gap at once, running full tilt, the horned ewe slightly in the lead. John Angus whistled Taff around NOW! and Taff raced left around the outside of the drive gate and disappeared, right under the ewes’ noses, and from where I sat, all I could see were the back ends of sheep; Taff was under their snouts some
where. The sheep slewed, and one ewe (that horned ewe, it was) shot straight up into the air like a Harrier jump jet. She fell and scrambled to her feet, and as the sheep straightened for the crossdrive, Taff came into sight behind them and the crowd and I held our breath. Would the judges call a grip? Had they seen something we hadn’t?

  Whatever Taff had done in the face of those sheep had a salutary effect because they were stepping along the crossdrive, docile as could be. Quietly, John Angus whistled Taff on.

  A single judge stepped out onto the course, lifted the bell, and rang it briskly, “That’ll do, John.”

  John Angus turned, not really surprised. Confusion and anger warred on his face, and he opened his mouth and snapped it shut. He directed Taff to take the sheep where another dog could remove them from the course. Then he started toward the judges, then he halted, called Taff, and gave Taff a distracted pat. The grandstands applauded because it was hard, hard luck.

  John Angus MacLeod and Taff came off the course to the shepherds waiting for them. John said, “That bloody horned ewe. That bloody, bloody bitch!”

  Raymond MacPherson said, “Taff was already too tight when he came around you at the post.”

  Peter Hetherington said, “I warned you about that at the National, John. Taff was coming in too tight at the National.”

  John Angus said, “I never told you, but at the National, at the pen, Taff just clipped in and. …” John Angus made a jerking motion like a dog gripping wool. “The judges didn’t see it.”

  Peter Hetherington shook his head.

  John Angus said, “Taff was too tight Tuesday at the Grampian trial. That damned Michael Puegniz walking his bitch over the course like that, keying them up.”

  Helen stayed mum and when John turned toward the beer tent, she followed. “They couldn’t have seen a grip,” John Angus said. “I couldn’t see it.”

  Peter said, “Aye, but she cowped, John. If yon ewe hadn’t cowped, they couldn’t have called it.”

  John Angus marched through the loiterers inside the beer tent, bought his dram, and drained it. He said to me, “I feel like cutting my throat.” I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  It rains off and on as the qualifying continues. At noon, they set up the course for the brace trial. In the brace, the shepherd sets off two dogs and works them simultaneously. After his shed, he puts one lot of sheep in an open-mouthed pen and leaves a dog on guard while he puts the remaining ewes in a different pen. Stuart Davidson has a brilliant run with Craig and Moss. Both dogs are out of his Ben (a son of John Angus’s Ben).

  After four pairs run the brace, the singles trial resumes. The handlers’ commands are sharp as dogs’ barks. R. T. Goligher’s Vic has what can be described as a temporary nervous breakdown. Vic does fine until the drive gate, when he whips to the sheep’s heads and fetches them instead of driving as he ought. He takes his shepherd’s corrections and gets the sheep back on track but skulks at their heels like a guilty teenager, turning his face toward Goligher for instructions at every step. This “keeking” is a fault. At the shedding ring, Vic won’t come in because he feels so guilty and has become afraid of the sheep, and Goligher can’t come off because he will lose team points, but he’s dying out there, asking his dog and his dog refusing.

  A pet Border Collie is tied to the fence, transfixed by the action before him. When his owner feeds him a cookie, he takes it to please her, but it dribbles out of his slack mouth.

  There are Border Collie buffs at all the big trials. They’re the ones with the funny hats with the Border Collie badges, the jerseys with alternating rows of shepherd’s crooks, Border Collies, and sheep, the sweatshirts with legends (“Happiness is Spot”) on the front side and a dog’s blurry photo on the back. They are perfectly nice people who know more about the history of herding dogs than any shepherd in Great Britain. Some buffs own seven or eight Border Collies that they take on annual holiday to farms where the dogs can see sheep.

  Some get obedience titles on their dogs (the Border Collie wins most of the obedience championships at Crufts), and some use their dogs for search and rescue or tracking. (One woman I know has her Border Collie trained to fetch a fresh roll of toilet paper.)

  Many are careful to breed their bitches to the best working sires. It’s hard to guess what the shepherds make of them. One woman told me her pup, Royce, was by John Templeton’s Roy. “Roy’s Royce,” she said. “Get it?”

  Johnny Bathgate is manager of a mixed (arable and livestock) farm not far from the Billinghams. From deep instinct, he is a kindly man, and his farm laborers take their meals at the same table as Johnny and his wife.

  In the sixties, Johnny drove David McTeir and Jock Richardson to the trials. Of the three friends, only Johnny has never won an International. One spring afternoon, I watched Johnny work Vic, his powerful male, in a steep pasture above his farm. With anxious ewes and new lambs, Vic never set a foot wrong. Vic is as heartily muscular as Johnny Bathgate is gentle. I told Johnny he was a very lucky man.

  When we came off the hill, Johnny put Vic up in the byre, in a straw-filled concrete kennel. The Bathgates keep a feist dog in the house, a Lhaso apso-terrier (?) mix, a matted, dancing, prancing beast with the full run of the furniture. I asked John if he ever let Vic in the house.

  “But Vic’s a collie,” John replied.

  Scots can be quite unsentimental about their Border Collies. Most weeks in the Scottish Farmer, retiring shepherds disperse their tools:

  2½-year-old bitch,

  out of Davidson’s Moss

  £400

  5-year-old bitch, works cattle

  £200

  18-month-old dog, trial potential

  £800

  Sometimes an aging eminent dog will be let into the kitchen to doze its days away by the fire, but, more often, dogs never see the inside of a house. I’m not sure whether this is the Scot’s fastidiousness or respect. Most of the dog quarters I saw were clean and well furnished with straw, and perhaps it’s not awful for a tired working dog to have a quiet place where people can’t pester him.

  Still, where the Forestry Commission has planted its blocks of dull overbearing conifers, among the ruins of shepherds’ cottages and steadings, you can find hand-cut gravestones for these dogs, on a rise, where they’ll be touched by the first warm rays of the morning sun. NELL. CAP. LOOS, ALWAYS FAITHFUL.

  Spectators on the far left side of the Blair Atholl course had a better view of Taff’s grip than did the judges or John Angus himself, and several said that when the horned ewe came through the gate so quick, Taff was right in her face and it was the other sheep piling up behind her who’d cowped her. Taff hadn’t laid a tooth on her.

  When John Angus tried that explanation on Johnny Templeton, Johnny Templeton said, no, Taff had got a hind leg, but later, in the car toward Kiltyrie, Helen protested, “Taff couldn’t have done that. He’s never done that in his life.” That afternoon, she and John Angus had found an Irishman with no place to sleep and promptly invited him to Kiltyrie. We four were the only customers for late dinner at a pub in Aberfeldy. The Welshmen, Mr. Jones and Mr. Evans, had met up with their wives and were out for an evening of dancing.

  Once they’d shown the Irishman his bed, John Angus and Helen let the dogs out for exercise. John Angus was awfully discouraged. “We keep too many dogs. Poor beasts, they’re mad for work and we haven’t it for them.” He bent to pluck a twig from Taff’s tail. “I should quit this stupid bloody business,” he said.

  We went in the parlor, and John Angus unrolled his bandage and kneaded his injured leg. John Angus said if he sold off the dogs, he wouldn’t get much for them. “If a dog isn’t good enough for John Angus,” he said bitterly, “it isn’t good enough for me. That’s what they all say.”

  Helen drank tea.

  John Angus said, “I’ve been neglecting the farm. I could get more work done here if I wasn’t off dog trialing.”

  Helen said, “If you give them up, John, you’ll have to give th
em up absolutely. Sell every dog and never go to a trial again. Not even to judge. John, you couldn’t do it.”

  After a bit, John Angus told how his Cap dog had gripped at the Queen Mother’s Trial. One ewe had been crazy, bolting to this side and that, until, Cap lost all patience. John Angus laughed, “Cap gripped at the pen and he wouldn’t let go. He clung to her all the way off the course, he was that determined to stop her.”

  Friday morning. In the program of the International Sheepdog Trials, the duke of Atholl says:

  Being in the middle of a hill farming area, trials have always been popular, and I know there are many local farmers and shepherds who are greatly looking forward to seeing the best dogs in Britain and Ireland in action, and I’m sure your Society will find that the audience here is both knowledgeable and appreciative. Certainly we will all do our best to make all competitors and spectators feel at home—no doubt the local refreshments will help to do that!

  Helen Smeaton finds that condescending. The duke’s message is signed, “Atholl,” and I find that condescending. John Angus laughs, “The man has a snout on him like a hen salmon.”

  We are racing along, skilled Helen at the wheel, the wee Irish and me in back. John Angus cries, “Helen stop the car. There! Stop the car!”

  A hirsel of ewes was grazing the peat bog on the flank of Ben Lawer. “Look,” John said. “That’ll be one of Alex MacCuish’s ewes. She’s cowped.”

  The ewe had slipped into a deep narrow drain, a hundred yards from the road. She was on her back, her feet fluttering feebly, as John Angus squooged across the peat bog toward her. He no more than righted her than she fell down again. The second time, John Angus leaned into her until she had her balance. A prolapse trembled at her anus like a pink balloon—the pressure of her internal organs had forced a bit of intestine out, but she’d be okay, and so said John Angus as he hopped back over the fence, and once more the Buffalo charged.