Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men

by Donald McCaig

  Wiston Cap was a hearty black-and-white dog with considerable white on his face and big upstanding lugs—like his wartime ancestor Wilson’s Cap #3036. Wiston Cap was twenty-one months old when he ran the International, and when he won it, it was about the same thing as a high school boy quarterbacking the American Super Bowl. Border Collies are a slow-maturing dogs. Dogs run in nursery trials until they’re 2½. The International is a desperately difficult, big, big course. The outrun is half a mile, and dogs frequently work at twice that distance from their handlers. Experienced, steady trial dogs fail to finish the course more often than not, and many fine young dogs lose it altogether.

  But what young Wiston Cap did at that daunting trial was win it, and when Jock and Cap came off the course, J. M. came up to Jock, grinning. “Your dog could do that course again,” he said.

  Wiston Cap became the most sought-after stud dog in Border Collie history, and soon Jock Richardson was pocketing better than a thousand pounds a year in stud fees (shepherd’s wages at the time being forty pounds a week).

  Jock got Mirk and Sweep out of Cap, and when the great dog’s sons started to win trials, Jock Richardson was a rich man—in his kennels he had the three best sheepdogs in Great Britain.

  Wiston Cap provoked deep goofiness among breeders. The man who bred Cap repeated the exact mating over and over, hoping to get another Cap. (Geoff Billingham had one of these pups, a bonny big thing named Wattie Cap, who died of pneumonia.) An English solicitor deliberately bred Wiston Cap’s sons to Cap’s daughters until he created a pup with “86% Wiston Cap Blood.” The pup did look like the old man, but, of course, he never amounted to much, and I shudder to think how many deformed pups were produced by those matings.

  And Jock was a splendid handler. Hamish MacLean remembers a trial where the pen was built so narrow nobody could get the skittish ewes inside. Jock, working with Sweep that day, put the ewes into single file and they followed the leader in, quite docily. (Under pressure, sheep do not go in single file.) Then, hurrying, Jock pressed the sheep against the judge’s car to get a quick shed.

  But that’s not the picture that stays in Hamish MacLean’s mind. It’s afterward, after the applause stopped and Jock took his sheep off the course. Then, his sheep put away, out of sight of the spectators, Jock walked alone with his great dog and Sweep jumped up, again and again, his head as high as Jock’s own.

  Johnny Bathgate and David McTeir stopped traveling to trials with Jock. I asked Johnny why.

  “Because he would nae come home,” Johnny said.

  The handlers at Neilston crowd around Jock Richardson and shake his hand. “Have you wintered well?”

  Dougie Lamb is a prosperous, well-regarded man in his forties, but he’s awkward as a boy introducing me to Jock Richardson, who ran his famous dogs twenty years ago.

  “Jock’s the greatest sheepdog handler since J. M. Wilson,” Dougie states, and doesn’t know what to say after he’s said it.

  Jock Richardson’s a big man with smile lines at the corners of his eyes. He’s got the swollen fingers of a man who’s done a lifetime of manual work, and his left hand is wrapped in a handkerchief. He caught his hand in the car door, he says and the men who surround him are all hoping that’s how it really happened, that he was sober. Jock’s dressed swell in a gray pinstripe suit, striped blue shirt, and purple tie.

  Dougie points to Jock’s crook, which has “J. Richardson” carved in the handle. “Oh, that’ll be worth a fortune one day.”

  There’s a young ratty-looking dog at Jock’s heel. Nothing connects them but the bit of twine between his collar and Jock’s hand. Nothing.

  Dougie says, “Oh, when Jock was on the Hill and the heather so thick, and the Americans came over, Cap’d go up and they’d see a thing or two.”

  Jock’s new dog is named Cap, too. Yes, he’s one of Wiston Cap’s grandsons. Yes, he’s just like Wiston Cap except smaller. A bit smaller. Jock doesn’t expect to win. He borrowed the dog this morning from his son-in-law’s farm.

  “Will you have a wee dram, then, Jock?”

  “Nae. Not ’til I’ve had my run.”

  I ask him about Wiston Cap, and he tells how Cap used to come into the kitchen and lay his head on his shoes. Jock’s told this story so many times the life has drained out of what was once a true thing.

  Now, Jock works part-time for a dairy farmer. The farmer drove him here today.

  When it came my turn to buy a round, I passed right by Jock Richardson without asking what he wanted, but when I started for the tent, courteous Geoff asked Jock and, yes, Jock would have a half pint of bitter.

  Later I was to argue with Viv and Geoff. “If somebody has a drinking problem and says he doesn’t want a drink, it’s wrong to press one on him.”

  Geoff thought that was treating Jock like a child. “It’s for Jock to say ‘nae,’ ” he said.

  A month after Neilston, I spoke with a man who’d been on the Scottish team with Jock the year he qualified Sweep to run in the International. The night before the Championship, Jock’s teammate paused at the door to Jock’s hotel room, which was “full of those Welsh cronies of his, and everybody drinking and having a grand time and Jock was wrestling Sweep, just rolling that big dog around on the floor. Of course, next morning, when Jock and Sweep went out on the course, oh, Jock was no bloody use at all.”

  When he was in the money, sometimes Jock wouldn’t return from a Saturday trial until Tuesday. He’d stop at each pub along the way, and Cap’d be wandering around outside. And there’s more than one sly Scottish farmer who used that great dog to line his bitch while Jock was inside, too drunk to know.

  After a shoving match in the beer tent at one Scottish National, the ISDS suspended Jock.

  J. M. Wilson washed his hands of Jock, and John Angus MacLeod got his start when J. M. lent him seventy-five pounds to buy Glen away from Jock. (John Angus went to the International with Glen.)

  It was the waste that offended prudent Scottish sensibilities. All that money. Those grand dogs. While he was suspended, Jock couldn’t register pups with the ISDS, so he sold Mirk and Sweep to a Welsh pal of his, a livestock dealer. Some say it wasn’t a real sale. Some say Jock was still getting the stud fees as the Welsh man bred those two great dogs until they were so frail they had to be lifted onto their bitches.

  Today, at Neilston, Jock walks to the post with a jaunty young man’s stride and stands at the post like he owns the place, the ratty looking Cap dog at his side. His commands are very quiet as Cap negotiates the course, and Cap has a fair run going until, on the drive, Jock gives Cap the wrong command.

  Dougie Lamb groans aloud. “Jock’s reflexes are gone, you see. That’s not too bad a dog.”

  Jock’s mistake has cost him enough points that he’ll be out of the prize list. With a boyish grin, he turns to the judge. “Disqualified,” he says, and walks off the course.

  Watching Jock Richardson past his prime was like catching the faintest waft of a beautiful woman’s lingering scent after she’s left the room.

  In the beer tent, I meet Jock’s employer, who is a corpulent man, perfectly satisfied with himself. He jabs his finger toward Jock. “He used to be a champion at this, you know. Oh yes, very famous.”

  It was March of 1979, a bitter March in the Lammermuir hills, and Old Wiston Cap was fifteen. Jock had been to the pub that night and was dressed in his best slacks and sport coat, but stopped to check his dogs before he came into the cottage to bed.

  There was snow on his coat and cap when he came inside and said softly to his wife, “Mary, Cap’s dying.”

  Jock went back outside then. His good wife waited for him to come in as the fire grew ashy white and cold. Mary went to bed, and it was a chill bed that night, a lonely one.

  In the light of dawn, Mary Richardson, frightened now, stepped outside the cottage door and hurried to the row of doghouses in the steading. Jock Richardson sat, snowy and coatless beside the body of his great dog. No telling how long he’d
sat there. He’d wrapped Cap in his only sport coat to keep the old boy warm.

  I have always wanted to know what a man like that might say to a dog like that on his death night. When I spoke to Jock Richardson, of course, I had no right to ask.

  At the Neilston trial, neither Viv nor Geoff did very well. Geoff retired Cap, and Holly rushed her work and came fourth. Dougie Lamb and Suzie were second, and Alasdair MacRae was third with his black unregistered bitch, Bute. Alasdair seemed surprised when I asked if I could stop by. “Oh, I suppose you could. …” John Templeton won the trial with his eminent Roy.

  I go into the loo for a quick pee and the ground is squoogy under my feet and the old man hunched on his side on the grass has pissed himself. The ruddy young trial secretary and I lift him out of the muck to a place where he can sit, and the young man asks, “Where do you bide, sir? If you’ll tell me where, I’ll see you home.”

  The old man’s cap lies wet in his lap. His three-piece suit was fresh from the dry cleaners only this morning.

  “Please, sir. Glasgow Central, please sir.”

  “What can this American be thinking of us?” the young man says. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Glasgow Central, please sir.”

  “Do you have a ticket? Shall I put you on the train?”

  “Please, sir.”

  Dusk is long in the springtime, so far north and it doesn’t go completely dark until ten. On the way back to Tweedhope, we get right on the motorway, no problem. Geoff is upset about Jock. “Do you know what he’s doing? Jock told me he’s digging ditches for that dairy man. Digging ditches, a man like him.”

  We turn off the motorway north of Moffat and get on the back road.

  As the car soars up, up, into the hill, Viv puts a tape on. It’s an ancient frail song and she sings along:

  “Oh, the wild mountain thyme, grows around the purple heather … Will you go, Laddy, will you go? …”

  Geoff says, “The lads used to follow Jock Richardson. It was like he was the pied piper. At one trial, Jock came out of the beer tent and found a gang of boys, wrestling. ‘No, no,’ says Jock. ‘You’ll have to do that properly.’

  “And he created this contest, you know, eliminations and all that. There was to be a prize for the winning lad, fifty pence.

  “Jock was judge and he declared the winner of each elimination match until finally, there were only two lads left, a big lad and a wee lad, much younger. Oh, that wee lad, he was giving it all he had. And he was having the better of the other lad, too. The wee lad’s sister came along then and says, ‘Mum wants you. Right now.’

  “So the lad looked up at Jock, and Jock jerked his thumb. ‘Get along now,’ Jock says, ‘Your mother wants you.’

  “So the lad gets up and dusts himself off. Oh, he was heartbroken but not going to show it, mind. And the lad got, oh, twenty feet away before Jock called him, “Laddie,’ and Jock went into his pocket and gave him the fifty p first prize.

  “That’s how Jock was. And the thing is, that day, I happen to know, that fifty p was all the money Jock Richardson had.”

  4

  The Man Who’d Sell His Shoes

  He was a gash an faithfu tyke,

  As ever lap a sleugh or dyke.

  His honest, sonsie, bawsnt face

  Ay gat him friends in ilka place;

  His breast was white, his tousie back

  Weel clad wi coat o glossy black;

  His gawsie tail, wi upward curl,

  Hung owre his hurdies wi a swirl.

  —ROBERT BURNS,

  “THE TWA DOGS”

  Every single thing I’ve learnt about sheepdogs has come hard for me. I’d expected lessons in Scotland but not these lessons. I’d come to buy a bitch. What, besides money, was required of me?

  I don’t know how I’d imagined it: Perhaps I’d hoped some American-speaking Scottish dog dealer would trot out a half-dozen fine young bitches, one on the heels of another, each properly bred and trained, each with a price tag coyly peeping from her feminine collar.

  Two of Viv’s bitches, Stel and Lucy, might be for sale, though never a direct word was said about it. True, Stel and Lucy were shown in their best light, but The Best Light is the only illumination Viv Billingham has. Stel was a shy bitch, and when last I tried to train a shy bitch, she ran from me to the top of the barnyard hill and wouldn’t come until I went indoors and my wife called her. Lucy had been trained by an obedience handler and now, working sheep, she was awfully unsure of herself, constantly looking back to her handler for reassurance.

  Once, in passing, Viv said a certain Scot would give two thousand pounds for Holly if Viv was willing to sell. I couldn’t afford this clever, young, beautiful bitch if she had been for sale. I could, however, yearn like a schoolboy. I must have taken fifty photographs of Holly. Viv asked if I’d send her one.

  “Sure.”

  Monday morning, after Neilston, Geoff mentioned that other guests were expected at Tweedhope and it wasn’t until I had my car packed that I realized I’d been asked to leave, so gently was it done.

  Butte, Montana, where I was born, is in the Rocky Mountains, and like all mountaineers, I’m an altitude snob. I never expected the Scottish Highlands to be high, but they rose beside the road like leviathans: sheer, heads lost in the mists, their northern flanks slathered with snow. Snow in the second week of May. Christ!

  There were no fences across desolate Rannoch Moor. Sheep grazed near the road, untended, and here and there, a heap of wooly scraps in the ditch marked where a car had killed one. On the left, the knife ridges of the White Corries. J. M. Wilson had a dog he called “Corrie.”

  The road dropped into Glencoe, curving into the broad, haunted glen where the last highlanders to submit to King William were assaulted in their sleep, pursued by bloody knives through the winter snows. It may be that William never read the order he signed “to extirpate that sect of thieves.” He may have been as blood innocent as he claimed.

  It wasn’t the Glencoe murders, qua murders, that shocked the Scottish conscience. The MacDonalds of Glencoe were a rough bunch of cattle thieves, and murders weren’t uncommon in the eighteenth century. What stirred up the highlanders’ wrath was the abuse of hospitality: The MacDonalds were slain by their guests. Scots did the deed willingly. I did not know whether my kinfolk were with them, but they easily might have been.

  It was quite cold. Despite the clear sky, winter hadn’t withdrawn far from the Highlands.

  Beyond Glencoe, beyond Fort William, established, as Sam Johnson said, to subdue, “savage clans and raving barbarians,” road signs were printed in Gaelic as well as English. So early in the spring, the brightest color was the gorse, vulgar metallic orange bushes splotching the shoreline of the steel gray lochs. Occasional cottages were always white and lonely, tucked beneath the stark hills for comfort.

  Glennfinnian meant nothing to me. Charlie who? Glennfinnian was a loch between two farms with sheepdogs. I got out of the car and stretched.

  In 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie sailed from France with a force of seven men and vague promises of French assistance. When Charlie landed, the highlanders were appalled. Where was Charlie’s army? Many of the highlanders were Jacobites—adherents to the Jamesian line of Scottish kings—and Charlie was the rightful heir. Many highlanders were, like Charlie, Catholics. Dramatically, Charlie ordered his French ship to abandon him on the beach. He may have been feckless, but he was no coward. He shamed the highlanders into joining him, and here, on the shores of Loch Glenfinnian, from dawn to dusk one grand day, the Highland clans pledged Charlie fealty.

  They weren’t just romantics. Since the union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707, Scotland had been depressed, and doubtless the clansmen were hungry. Doubtless, some slipped out of their remote glens to join Charlie for the pure unadulterated hell of it. After the Rebellion collapsed, Donald (a highlander), was asked if he’d really thought the Jacobites could prevail. “I ne’er thocht aboot it,”
he said, “I just thocht hee pleasant it wad be to see Donald riflin’ London.”

  On this May morning, two tourist coaches were parked here. A tour guide had a smoke. Casually dressed tourists took snapshots. Kids ran for the loo. A statue of a stern highlander stared out at the loch as if Charlie might yet reappear.

  From Glenfinnian, Charlie’s army marched on Edinburgh (which fell to them with glad hosannas). They licked the English at Preston Pans. They turned south toward London. Oh, it was a stirring sight.

  Beyond Loch Glenfinnian is empty country until the sea. Great sea lochs stretch out, promising all the freedom of the western oceans. The caravan parks were empty this early in the season. Rafts of salmon cages floated in the lochs, and twice I saw helicopters ferrying salmon from freshwater to saltwater lochs; precisely transported as their luminous bodies underwent the miraculous sea change.

  I hadn’t expected Scotland to disturb me. I’d come here to buy a dog.

  The Scottish farmer is hemmed in by regulations that Americans would find intolerable. The Scot can’t tear down old buildings or erect new ones without permission. He can’t plow down an ancient hedgerow or flatten a dyke. British government inspectors tell the farmer how often to dip his sheep, and they verify that his beasts are treated humanely.

  In exchange, the farmer is protected from rapacious development and devastating market shifts. He’s paid a subsidy for each productive ewe, government agencies handle his wool and ensure a market for his lambs. Scottish farmers aren’t as desperate as farmers in the States.

  Still, like his American counterpart, the Scot is feeling a squeeze. At one time, a shepherd would look after seven hundred ewes, but nowadays twice that number is more common, and some farmers quit employing shepherds altogether, relying on contract shepherds for the lambing, shearing, and dipping.