Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men

by Donald McCaig

  There is no good flock without a good shepherd, and there’s no good shepherd without a good dog.

  —SCOTTISH HOMILY

  SHEPHERD SOUGHT ads in The Scottish Farmer usually ask for references. They always specify the number of dogs: “Will need own dogs,” “Must bring two dogs,” and so on.

  Without the dogs, high on an unfenced barren hill, no shepherd could do his work. How can a man catch and upend a lambing ewe? How can he drive a hirsel to shelter in the teeth of a storm?

  A young part-trained sheepdog can make many mistakes. He can fetch when you want him to drive, nip when he shouldn’t, go left when you want him to go right. All these are annoying, but, in time, correctable. The only unforgivable sin in a young sheepdog is deciding to quit and go home. Abandoned by his dog, the shepherd is useless—alone on the high whistling hill, responsible for animals he can neither catch nor gather, sort nor drive.

  The sheepdog who abandons his work is lucky to be sold.

  At the Neilston Trial, the dogs were the same dogs that yesterday worked ewes with young lambs and would work them again at home this evening. Since new mothers are stroppy and defiant, the dogs were too rough for trial work. The dogs would work too close to the trial sheep and grip too readily because that was the work they were used to.

  By summer’s end, and the National Trials, these same dogs will have competed in dozens of trials and will be smooth as silk: working well off their nervous charges and reluctant to grip. For shepherds, sheepdog trials are a busman’s holiday. For the dogs, they’re just another type of work. I hoped that seeing them now before some clever handler put a polish on them would compensate for my ignorant eyes. I was seeking a natural dog.

  In America, where automobiles conquer undemocratic distances (how can a man be free unless he can drive wherever he wishes, whenever?), the demarcation between rural and urban is indistinct. In Scotland, public transportation and public planning are more powerful than the god-given right of any man to take a beautiful farm and put a McDonald’s on it.

  Thus Neilston, only fifteen miles from Glasgow Center, is a real farming village, and in the first week of May, every year, Neilston has its agricultural show.

  The Neilston Agricultural Society sponsors sheep and cattle competitions and hands out ribbons for the best geese, chickens, rabbits, and ducks. Highland pipers, in full regalia, lead the agricultural parade, and behind them, small children control their ponies with just a little help from Da. The Methodist Church ladies have their annual book fair in one tent; there’s a tearoom in another. There are a thousand people here today. It’s May and pale-skinned youths have their shirts off to get some sun.

  This was the sort of day that meant trouble for me when I was growing up in Montana. We’d find someone old enough to buy cases of beer, borrow a car, and drive into the spring countryside. By nightfall, we’d be drunk and sick and the light would have collapsed, but that day, ah that day!

  Neilston’s beer tent is next to the trial field, and the loo’s just behind. The men’s loo is a blue plastic tarpaulin stretched around uprights to form a ten-foot grassy square where men can pee. There’s one Porta-John for a waiting line of women.

  Neilston is the first trial of the season that will culminate, in September, at the International (this year at Blair Atholl, Perthshire). Trial men have come here today to work the kinks out of trusted older dogs or to get younger ones started.

  The trial secretary is a portly red-faced young man. Yes, Jock Richardson is here. “I didn’t know him. He came to me and asked if he could still make his entry, and I said what’s your name? ‘Richardson,’ he said. ‘First name?’ And he said, ‘Jock.’ Wasn’t I embarrassed?”

  Though Neilston is a short awkward course, there are brilliant handlers here today. Both John Templeton and David McTeir have won the International. Alasdair MacRae took the Scottish National in 1986; others are regulars on the Scottish team.

  But most of the shepherds here today are retired, elderly men who sold their dogs when they came off the Hill and, perhaps, weren’t such keen trialists in their youth. Neilston is the first Scotrail stop out of Glasgow, and it’s a braw day to get out of the city, greet old friends, admire the bonny young dogs making their try. These retired men are dressed in their best suits, three-piece tweeds. Many wear the ISDS badge in their lapels. (The dog silhouetted on this badge is Wiston Cap.) Each shepherd carries his crook—a briar staff surmounted by a carved sheep’s horn handle. They made their crooks themselves, between chores, when they were lads on the Hill. “How are you keeping? Have you wintered well?”

  I was keen to meet Jock Richardson. I’d heard rumors that a head injury had reduced him. I knew he rarely trialed and no longer did well at it. But he had been brilliant with the dogs and a wonderful athlete, and I’d be honored to shake his hand.

  You cannot talk about Jock Richardson without, in the same breath, talking about Wiston Cap.

  Cap, who died in 1979, still haunts the memories of those shepherds who saw him. He was stylish, good natured (“If he was a man he would have come right up to you and stuck out his hand and said, ‘How do you do’; that’s how Cap was”), a splendid hill dog.

  Detractors say Cap was weak. At the Cardiff International, in 1965, the trial that made Cap’s reputation, Cap took ten long, long minutes to get his sheep into the pen. Ninety seconds is more usual. But Cap’s sons and grandsons have won six Internationals.

  Viv Billingham says, “Wiston Cap just seemed to float over the ground.”

  In his trialing career, Wiston Cap only won five big trials, but sheepdog trialing is a three-species sport, full of chance. If man and dog are unlucky, they may draw sheep with a ewe used to going her own way, a worm-ridden ewe, one sickly, and balky. Many trials are decided by narrow margins, and the sheep are accomplices in the score. When Jock Richardson ran Cap, handlers thought Cap was the best dog in Britain. When he lost a trial, they said Cap just wasn’t the best dog on that day.

  Five or six generations back in his pedigree, Wiston Cap had sixteen crosses back to J. M. Wilson’s great wartime dog, another Cap (#3036 in the ISDS registry). From 1939 to 1945, the ISDS suspended trialing, so Wilson’s Cap never had a chance to run in the International, but shepherds who saw him admired him, and he was widely used as a stud dog. He sired 118 daughters.

  For forty years, until his death in 1975, J. M. Wilson was an overpowering figure in sheepdog trialing. He won nine International Sheepdog Trials, and dogs he trained won two more. No other man has ever won more than three Internationals. (J. M. retired three of the huge silver-studded International shields and donated them to small Highland trials, where they’re awarded to this day.) Scots, usually chary with praise, recall J. M. as “The Great” J. M. Wilson.

  A shepherd’s son, J. M. could, by the age of twelve, ken each of his father’s thousand ewes as he passed through them on his way to school. “Ken” in this instance means he knew each ewe’s history, health problems, and where and how she’d lamb. Before he got his first dog, his father used J. M. and his brother Ben to do the dogs’ work, hieing after wild Highland sheep on the steep crags and hills. J. M. became a tenant farmer, and an increasingly prosperous sheep breeder; he was still a young man when he bought Whitehope Farm near Innerleithin.

  Not every hill in the Scottish Borders is hard; some of the eastern and southern slopes are protected, more fortunate. Beautiful Whitehope Farm is a thousand feet above sea level, and the Hill behind it that encloses the steading is just twice that.

  From the 1930s on, J. M. Wilson was a favorite interview subject for The Field and The Scottish Farmer. Although different photographers were assigned to the stories, each took the same three pictures. Wilson himself: The photos showed a young man who liked a joke and an older man who liked a sardonic joke. Then there’d be a picture of one of Wilson’s famous dogs: Cap, or Moss, or Bill, or Bill II, or Corrie, or one-eyed Roy, the only dog who ever won the International three times. So many dogs. Finally, t
here’d be the big photograph of Whitehope, taken each time from the identical vantage point, at the base of the softly sweeping Hill, across the crystal-clear stream—Leithien Water.

  Wilson, the most brilliant sheepdog man of his time, was also the most prominent Scottish Blackface breeder. Year after year, Whitehope tups set records at the Lanark tup sales. When sheep are bound to a farm, the only practical way to improve a flock is by importing high-grade tups, and Whitehope tups were so sought after that the averages for Wilson’s consignments were double and sometimes triple his nearest competitor.

  Farmers who daren’t even bid on Wilson’s best tup would bid on his lesser animals. “Oh aye,” they’d say, leaning over the dyke with their neighbor, “yon tup of mine came from Whitehope—the place that had the record-breaking tup at Lanark. Thirty-five hundred for a tup, what’s the world coming to?” This canny farmer only paid a thousand for his Whitehope tup. Quite a bargain, yes?

  In the thirties, sheepdog trialing was viewed as a crude sport, with all the social cachet of, say, coon-dog trialing in the States. Although the ISDS Secretary always dug up minor royals to award prizes at those early Internationals, press coverage ignored sheepdogs and shepherds in favor of gossip about the royal party and photos of prominent country gents mingling with their social inferiors. The country gents often brought their pet dogs to the International. Fancy dogs: poodles, Great Danes, Bouviers des Flandres.

  There’s a wonderful photograph of J. M. Wilson accepting the trophy he’d won with Fly (1928). The gaily dressed marchioness who presented him the prize requested that he sing a couple verses of a “darkie” song before she gave him his award. So, after breeding, training, polishing, and running a world-class athlete in the most difficult test of man and dog ever devised, J. M. Wilson sang a few choruses of “Oh Dem Gals” before they gave him his trophy.

  J. M.’s old pal, Johnny Bathgate, says, “J. M. was a longheaded chap.”

  He was also unsentimental, a man who didn’t suffer fools gladly. One woman handler came to J. M. for advice about her dog who wouldn’t take his left flanks no matter how she begged and pleaded.

  “Put a bit of lead in his left lug (ear),” Wilson advised.

  “Oh. But how would I do that?”

  “Madam, with a gun.”

  Good dog men are frequently asked questions that are beneath them, questions to which there are no proper answers except, perhaps, “If you could understand the answer, you wouldn’t be asking the question.”

  In the States, a disproportionate number of good sheepdog handlers were skilled horsemen before they turned to the dogs. It was Vicki Hearne who explained this to me. “You can’t be as stupid with a horse as a dog,” she laughed. “Horses are too big.”

  Many other top dog men were athletes before they got involved with dog athletes. Competitiveness, I thought. They do so well because they are accustomed to competition. But mine was a shallow answer. If raw competitiveness was the key, our trial fields would be cluttered by arbitrageurs and property developers and movie producers and other inflamed ego types. I think sheepdog trialing is safe from Donald Trump.

  It is obvious, at a sheepdog trial, that the dog does most of the work. It is, after all, a dog trial. But top dog men have the lightness, grace, and precision of great athletes. If a klutz did manage to get hold of a great trial dog, a Wiston Cap, the klutz wouldn’t start winning sheepdog trials—unless the man was clever enough to let the dog school him.

  In 1987, at the Blue Ridge Trial, the lot where the sheep went after their run was too near the course. The sheep had run the day before and knew that lot promised rest and shade.

  You may recall that the Blue Ridge is run in a great grassy bowl with the handler standing on one rim. When the dog brought the sheep around the man and started them on their drive away, the sheep tended to drift downhill, toward the bowl bottom, until, fifty yards along, the sheep would remember that blessed lot, over the rim on the right and they’d bolt for it, pellmell. To keep them on line, the dog would be on their left and when they shot off to the right, he was in the worst position to prevent their escape. Bill Berhow, one of America’s best young dog men, watched as handler after handler took DQ (“off-course”) for their score. Bill had three apparent choices, none attractive. (1) Let the sheep drift going down into the bowl, hold his Nick dog at their heels and prevent their sudden bolt. Possible points off for drifting: 3–8? (2) Bill could wait until the sheep bolted and cry Nick around from left to right—but that stunt wasn’t working for anyone. No dog was quick enough to catch them on the course. (3) When they broke, Bill could send Nick directly to their heads, around the left. Heading the sheep was a slight fault, 1–2 points off. Most of the better handlers adopted this strategy.

  Bill and Nick had a nice outrun, nice lift, and the sheep came up to the post slowly, around his legs, and Bill sent Nick to the left to hold them on line, perfect, perfect, and then, Bill cried Nick around to the right, before the sheep decided to bolt and when they did, Nick was right there to hold them. A perfect save, and Bill Berhow and Nick won the Blue Ridge that year by one point. When I asked Bill how he knew when to send Nick he said, “I could see that lead ewe was thinking about taking off.”

  Any athlete, dog or man, must master the flowing gestalt of things, must comprehend physical meaning, must be slightly ahead of the action. Amateurs think of a sheepdog trial as static geometry: a pattern of invisible straight lines the sheep must traverse. That’s mistaking the choreography for the ballet.

  Often I’ve watched the beginners bring their dogs to sheep for the first time, and from the way the men walked, how they held their stiff bodies, I knew it was hopeless. You cannot train a dog if you’re bumping into things all the time.

  Nor can you train a sheepdog if you have too great faith in words. The mental model for too many would-be dog trainers is the drill sergeant: “Right About Face!, Left Shoulder Harms!” And dogs can be trained to those useless mechanical perfections. After all, that dairy farmer’s dog did STAY, even when it killed him.

  But such dogs are no good on the trial field, no good on the Hill.

  The most important command any dog has is his name. “Pip” means, “Off!” “Pay attention!” “Think!” “Get up!” “Come here!” and, half a dozen other things depending on how and when it’s uttered. His name is the first word any dog learns yet, sometimes, when a sheepdog is sold, the new trainer will change the dog’s name. It is common for a new trainer to change all the dog’s whistle commands and sometimes reverse his flanks so “Away to me” no longer means “Go right” but now means “Go left.” In a skilled trainer’s hands, the dog’s confusion is brief.

  One time Jack Knox was working a student’s dog in a five-acre pasture. When you’re “putting the flanks” on a dog, you wait until the dog wants very much to go left, is actually started left, and then command him to the opposite side. Since your new command violates the dog’s previous training, his own developed sense of where to be, his balance, you announce to the dog that a new level of understanding is required.

  This young dog went out, out, started to head its sheep, swung around to the left, Jack whistled “Go right,” and the dog instantly took the command. When the dog had found a new balance point, Jack whistled the dog “Down.” There is nothing particularly remarkable about this except one thing: This dog had never been trained to whistles.

  When Jack, or any other top dog trainer goes out with his dog, he becomes pure communication. The trainer’s body and voice are the command.

  That this communication works for dogs who never take their attention off their sheep, rarely look at the man and, over great distances, cannot possibly see him, extends the boundaries of communication or perhaps affirms the primacy of intention over fact.

  Much of J. M. Wilson’s dog history occurred before the distemper vaccine, and his kennels were hit hard by the disease. Roy, thrice winner of the International, barely survived a bout, and many other fine dogs died.
In 1935 Wilson was working a young part-trained dog on the Hill when the dog had a sudden fit and attacked him. Wilson tried to toss his coat over the dog to subdue it, but the dog savaged his hand and wrist until J. M. shot it. Wilson took blood poisoning and very nearly died. His was an excruciatingly painful wound. But when a reporter from the Scottish Farmer visited him in the hospital, “Wilson lay back on his pillow, his heavily bandaged hand outstretched before him. ‘It was the most promising dog I ever had,’ he said softly. ‘The famous Craig was its father and his son was the double of him. He had the same markings, the same nature, the same tricks. …”

  Maybe Geoff Billingham is right. All dog training is regrets.

  Wilson and his wife had no children, but J. M. had protégés. Dougie Lamb remembers being in the beer tent midway through a National trial when J. M. came bursting in. Everybody set down their drams. In his powerful voice, J. M. said, “When I was young, I’d watch Sandy Milar because I could learn from him. Out there is a man you can learn from.”

  That man was Jock Richardson, who was as gifted with dogs as J. M. was and, perhaps, a bit kinder. Jock wasn’t longheaded at all.

  Jock Richardson grew up a poor city boy and came to livestock work after he was full grown. Before he took his first shepherding job, he trekked around the countryside with a stallion, offering him at stud. When Jock became a shepherd at Lynne, near Peebles, David McTeir worked nearby at Milton Manor and Johnny Bathgate tenanted Easter Dwyck. The three friends traveled to the sheepdog trials together. Up at Saturday dawn to do chores before they set out, they wouldn’t be home again until dark. On the return trip, Johnny Bathgate’d get sleepy and curl up against the door, and David McTeir’d drive and Jock Richardson would ride in the back seat with the dogs, singing.

  J. M. Wilson took an interest in Jock Richardson and gave him young dogs to train. When the young shepherd qualified Wiston Cap to run at the Cardiff International, J. M. took Jock under his wing. Now, J. M. was no drinking man. Jock Richardson was so nervous that day at Cardiff, he drank four bottles of (nonalcoholic) ginger beer.