Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men

by Donald McCaig

  Fifteen dogs ran for the Supreme Championship, Saturday, the final day of the International Sheepdog Trial. The hill on the right hand of the course was a crazy quilt of rust-colored bracken and dark purple heather. The hill was muscular, like a wrestler’s shoulder. Feathery stands of Scotch pine and grasses, light and medium green, fringed the base. Count the specks, one, two, three—there are a hundred sheep up there once you get to looking for them, but they’re only visible when the light bounces off their wool. That cairn, a spike on the brow of the hill, is a shepherd’s cairn, erected to relieve some poor soul’s loneliness. The cairn is a beeline three miles from the packed grandstands.

  On the left hand, the slope is gentler, and there are horse jumps in the field where cattle graze. Behind the top end of the course, is another, greater hill. Lush fields, outlined by drystane walls, cling to its slopes. They are green as any fields in Wales.

  Since yesterday, they’ve expanded the course. The qualifying trials were run in the lower bulb of a squash-shaped field. For the Supreme Championship, they’ll use the upper bulb as well. This is the big course. Ten sheep will be put out half a mile from the handler’s stake. The time limit is increased, too; man and dog will have thirty minutes to get the work done. There’s a copse of ancient trees between the spot where the first lot of sheep will be put out and where the second lot will appear on the other side of the course.

  From where I sit, the sheep look like spilled rice.

  The announcer says that a black-and-white bitch has been found roaming loose, and the owner can pick her up at the secretary’s tent.

  An English shepherd, John Chamberlain, steps onto the course with his six-year-old tricolor dog, Sam. Although John and Sam barely made the English team, they do a fine job today. When Sam runs out just to the place where he found sheep yesterday, he pauses, and three sharp whistles tell him, “No Sam. They’re not there today.”

  An able dog must be able to accept contradictions. Any rational dog will remember where he found sheep yesterday and will turn in of his own accord to gather them. His handler must correct him just at the point where the dog’s faith is already stretched thin. Convinced until this moment that today’s is just another routine job of work, the dog is jolted by these new commands and is cast off again, farther, into the wilderness. Sam accepts the correction and sails out, out, hundreds of yards until he finally spots his sheep. Stop: okay; lift: okay; the fetch is a bit zig-zaggy but the sheep go properly through the fetch gate and now, at this moment, the dog is told to abandon his sheep and swing back for a second lot of ten ewes.

  The double lift is a special feature of the International Sheepdog Trial’s Supreme Championship. On the enormous course here at Blair Atholl, it tests the dog and, not incidently, the dog’s man, to the very limit of communion between them.

  The dog has already gone out two-thirds of a mile to gather and fetch ten sheep. The moment he gets them back near the man, the man asks him to forget about them, face away; go back for more sheep out there, out of sight, somewhere. Sheepdogs are conservative souls, and this is like asking a New York City widow to lay her social security money on the sidewalk and go into the South Bronx for a bag of gold. “Don’t worry. The money’ll still be here when you get back.”

  Faith alone sends the dog back out over the dips and rises until he finds his sheep. Sam finds his. He fetches them back to where he left the first ten, brings all to John Chamberlain’s feet, drives them away, crossdrives them—just the same as yesterday.

  Five sheep are marked with red ribbons. In the shedding ring, Sam and Jack must shed off fifteen while retaining the ribboned ones. Just so.

  The first few sheep come off easily; the dog comes through, splits them off, and they trot away. If the handler is fortunate, these sheep pause to graze close enough so their mates can see them but not so near that the lot in the shedding ring will bolt to join them. They should act as a magnet, but a weak magnet.

  The bravest sheep are earliest shed. As man and dog work, the sheep get more worried and soon, only coward sheep remain pressed into the center of the ribboned sheep, determined not to be selected out.

  The shedding gets harder as you go.

  It takes approximately eighteen minutes for a dog to lift, double lift and fetch the sheep to the man. Man and dog have a dozen minutes remaining for drive, crossdrive, shed and getting the five ribboned sheep into a pen. It’s not enough time. Sam takes off seven unribboned sheep. Two more. Then, he works two loose and they run after the nine, but a ribboned sheep decides to go with them, so these three have to be re-gathered. While Sam is busy doing this, the unshed sheep stroll out of the shedding ring. Sam puts the three, plus the unshed vagrants, back in the ring. Sam sheds a pair, another pair; two unribboned sheep are left now, these very difficult, and time running, time running, got one! The final unribboned sheep is practically impossible, and she’s a big one, too, you’d think she’d be willing to chance it. Sam slips in among the ribboned sheep like a snake to sort her off. As she bounces away Sam turns and marches the ribboned five into the pen with seconds to spare.

  It was a workmanlike job, not especially stylish. But on a course this size, a shrewd man just tries to get through it within the time limit, and John Chamberlain and Sam will come in second this day.

  In his three-piece suit, his fore-and-aft, his dress crook, and leather-covered brass spyglass, John Angus MacLeod is the perfect picture of the shepherd-stalker. For the first time since Taff gripped, John Angus is happy. Earlier, he talked to two Irishmen who’d seen (they said) the whole thing, and this is what they reported: “When yon gimmer came through the gate, she challenged Taff and Taff would have none of it. So he took her by the hind leg and upset her. He cowped her and then, ‘Taff put his paw upon her.’ Did you hear, Donald? Taff put his paw upon her!”

  The mental picture of Taff, rampant, upon a cowped sheep satisfies John Angus. He is done mourning.

  The Supreme Championship intimidates men, no less than dogs. Men who run a hundred trials a season pale when they go to this post. Alasdair Mundell is a cool head—there’s no cooler head in Argyll. Alasdair was the only Scottish handler to qualify two dogs—Craig and his Meg bitch—at the National, but yesterday he gave Meg Craig’s whistle at a critical moment and Meg failed to make the finals. Today, Alasdair and Craig come on the course far too early, before the previous man and dog are off. Then, Alasdair sends Craig out before his sheep are properly on the course, and Craig (who is annoyed) charges a ewe on his lift and repeats the charge on the “Go back” lift, but settles then until he brings his sheep to the shedding ring, where Alasdair is baffled. He can only count four ribboned sheep.

  This fluke put the pair in desperate trouble. Alasdair could, and does, ask for time out, for a judge to come onto the field, verify the ribbonless sheep, and designate a replacement, but their working rhythm was shattered, and in trialing, like most sports, everything depends on simplicity and pace.

  They got it sorted out, but Craig had had enough, and when a ewe challenged him, Craig gripped and was disqualified.

  At trials in the States, first-time spectators often tell me why the dogs do it. Some attribute it to love. “They must really love you!” Others, Skinnerites presumably, prophesy, “I’ll bet he’ll get a good bone tonight!”

  Honestly amazed at the dogs’ skills, they are compelled to trivialize them and transmogrify the dogs into lovey-dovey pets, motivated by a dizzy love for their masters, or chowhounds, concerned only with their gut. None of them, not one, has ever asked me why the dogs do it. I find the absence of that question only slightly less interesting than the question itself.

  Patrick Byrne is a young man and dresses in a casual jacket and slacks, not the suit and tie older shepherds favor. His four-year-old Dot bitch is out of Templeton’s Roy and Watson’s Mossie. At yesterday’s qualifying, the Scottish handlers liked the looks of Dot, more so since it was presumed that a young Irish handler would need an exceptional dog to do as well
as Patrick did.

  Few knew how sick Dot was. She’d picked up a virus and hadn’t eaten for three days. The vet told Patrick, “If she were mine, I wouldn’t run her,” and Patrick waited beside the reserve member of the Irish team, undecided, until they called his name. “I won’t get this chance again,” he said.

  Today, the young bitch runs out splendidly but has trouble at the fetch. Her sheep don’t want to come down the course and keep spreading out on her. Dot takes her “Go back” whistle nicely and makes a second gather, but once again her sheep are slow to move. Perhaps she lacks a bit of power, perhaps she still isn’t feeling right.

  Since her first lot had decided to drift back up the course hundreds of yards, toward where they’d been let out, Dot’s slow progress is excruciating.

  When Dot brings her second bunch in, the first is long gone—split up, one packet near the let-out post, another grazing contentedly farther up the field.

  Patrick whistled Dot back for her third outrun, and once she picked up the near packet, he whistled her for the rest, nearly at the far end of the course, almost a mile away. Gallantly, Dot brought the strays together, down the course; joined her second lot; and began her fetch before the judge signaled, “Time!”

  Patrick Byrne doffed his cap to the grandstand’s applause, patted his brave bitch, and they came off the course together.

  There’s a well-known American handler (call him “Jake”) who imports all his dogs from Britain. Jake’s been a trial man for a good many years and is a formidable competitor. Words are not his friends. Whenever I’ve asked him for an explanation of dog training or trial strategy, his answers are unintelligible.

  For many years, whenever Jake brought in a new dog or bitch, the first thing he did was give it a thrashing. To show it, he said, who’s boss.

  I suppose I must assure you how peculiar this behavior is. Undoubtedly handlers thrash dogs in fits of temper, no doubt a corrective shake is occasionally required during the training of some Border Collies. But there are other dogs who can’t be struck at all, and none routinely. In three months in Scotland, I never saw a handler lay a hand on a dog. When Taff gripped—clearly a dog failure, not a man failure—John Angus gave him a pat and put him up and never brought the matter to Taff’s attention. John Angus, viewed the grip as a disruption of their communion.

  What is interesting about Jake isn’t that he beats his dogs, it’s how well they work for him. Jake attributes that to the beatings. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

  Meirion Jones, a Welshman, and Spot (ROM, registered on merit) laid down a simple, nearly perfect run. Spot’s outfield work was flawless and inbye, he lost a few points when three of his twenty sheep bolted around the end of the drive panel. Shedding was handsome, brisk. Meirion Jones rushed matters at the pen and would be penalized slightly for that, but penned successfully.

  “This’ll be the run to beat,” John Angus said.

  You can work a bitch in heat beside most sheepdogs and so long as the dog’s working, too, the male will ignore her. If you were to dangle a nice juicy kidney before Taff at the handler’s post, he’d think you’d gone round the bend.

  Unlike most dog breeds, Border Collies are frequently bought and sold when they are middle aged and fully trained. I’ve known dogs who’ve had eight different owners. Sometimes a man will sell a dog and several owners later, repurchase it.

  Sheepdogs have as various personalities as do men: shy, cocky, aggressive, retiring. Many are excitable; others are calmer. A sheepdog can work for a man and not give a damn for him. Must the actor love the director?

  It was getting late. The light was lowering on the trial field, the hilltops and shepherd’s cairn were gone in the mist.

  Stuart Davidson’s Moss had won the Scottish National and yesterday’s Brace Championship (with Craig, his running mate) and made a beautiful qualifying run.

  Moss picked up his first lot of sheep well enough but went so wide on his “Go Back” that he jumped the course fence and disappeared into the woods, and it was long minutes before he jumped back into the field. Confused, he almost crossed over, but in the nick of time, he spotted his sheep and came around properly behind them. He joined the two groups, started his drive, and everything settled until the drive gate, when all the sheep flinched at some figment of the sheep imagination and trotted around the outside of the gate. Stuart Davidson had come onto the course today to win, and by the time his sheep were in the shedding ring, he was furious. That jump over the fence and missed gate had cost him dearly in points and time. With minutes remaining, Stuart and Moss changed gear. Suddenly, things got funny. With Moss on one side, Stuart on the other, shed sheep just flew off—big batches and little ones. Moss never ran through; he just eyed them until they broke. It was like the Keystone Kops, and the crowd loved it: flying sheep, man and dog on a roll. When a ribboned sheep came off with two unribboned ones, Stuart sent Moss after her. Don’t ask me how a dog can select a ribboned sheep from two unribboned ones. I’d never seen it before. We all cheered when that ribboned ewe trotted back into the ring alone.

  Stuart was in such a hurry to get to the pen he almost fell over, and his five sheep broke halfway around the pen before Moss stopped them. No more nonsense: They went in. As Stuart slammed the gate, he raised an arm high, like he was directing the cheers for his dog.

  In the States, Border Collies often meet their first sheep at sheepdog handlers’ clinics, where twenty or so dogs work one at a time, under the supervision of an expert trainer. Many of these dogs are family pets, greatly beloved by their owners. For sheepdogs, they live in the lap of luxury.

  Whether eight months old or five years, they walk into the pen with the sheep and goof around and shun the sheep until some movement, some attitude, alerts them and they see sheep. It is a brilliant transformation: from being dog they become sheepdog. They drop down in a crouch, their tails drop below their hocks, their eyes flare, and they start to work the sheep. At this point, usually, the instructor takes over, introducing the dog to his new world. Like as not, the dog’s owner is more ignorant than the dog—a fact the dog soon senses. Frequently, a dog who shows great promise when the instructor works him backslides and plays like a puppy when the owner takes command.

  I’d hate to see who the dog would go to if the instructor and the owner both called “Here!” at the same time. Sheepdogs don’t confuse love with know-how, though frequently their owners do.

  Heflin Jones, a Welshman, with 5-year-old Meg, was last to run. Although they didn’t complete their shed, the pair had enough points to come in third today. Despite his last-minute acrobatics, Stuart Davidson came in fourth.

  As the crowd pours out of the grandstand, the International Sheepdog Society gathers in the infield to award its grandest trophy: the heavy International shield, a plaque ringed with the names of eminent dogs.

  The duke’s black Labrador retriever lies with his posterior toward the crowd, does not acknowledge the Border Collies, and never takes his doting eyes off the duke.

  Meirion Jones is awarded the International shield, the Chum Supreme Championship trophy, the Sun Alliance silver tray, and the Caithness Glass award. Patrick Byrne and Dot get the sportsmanship award. As the International Team gathers for the official photograph, the duke bends to pat Meirion Jones’s Spot, and Spot jumps to the end of his lead, alarmed and amazed.

  The media here today are the Scottish Fanner and Working Sheepdog News and yours truly. Photographers’ flashes brighten the twilight. The second time the duke bends to pet Spot, Spot lets him do it.

  For four hundred years, sheepdogs have been bred for a complex set of skills and desires. Inept dogs were put down. Thus, genetically, most sheepdogs have a rough idea what to do. The trainer refines that idea and explores, with the dog, some of life’s contradictions.

  The dog must be instantly biddable but be able to think for himself.

  The dog must be able to bring a stroppy tup to his knees but never nip a lamb, even when the lamb r
uns right over him.

  A good working collie uses reason to support his faith.

  The trial dog needs great courage (how would you like to do the most difficult bits of your daily work before two thousand knowledgeable spectators?); a temperament that can handle stress, and, finally, style. When an eminent dog joins a dangerous man, they can create a performance that is, by either standard—dog’s or man’s—beautiful.

  That’s why the dogs do it: because it’s beautiful. When a sheepdog meets a man able to help him create beauty, the dog will put up with almost anything. It’s sad when eminent dogs are given shoddy goods, “sumbitches” to work with.

  As the handlers load their dogs and trophies, John Angus spots Eric Halsell, the BBC sheepdog commentator and pursues him through the parking lot crying, “Points off, eh Eric! Points off!” The little man blanches and gets away from this lunatic highlander as quickly as he can.

  Back home, it’ll be cooler and our trial season just beginning. This fall, I’ll run Gael, and Pip, so long as he is able. The best single day Pip and I ever had on the trial field, we came fifth, and years later I can remember details of his run. In other hands, Pip might have become eminent; he was good enough to teach an ignorant man how to work a sheepdog. Gael, and every other new, young dog I’ll train will owe him that debt. Pip, a forty-five pound, black-and-white dog, changed my life.

  Departing cars at Blair Atholl have made a morass at the gate, and I’m grateful that Helen is at the wheel. As we wait for the cars ahead to get through the deep muddy spots, Helen says that next year, for the International, they might rent a caravan.

  John Angus is still laughing, “Did you hear me with that wee man? ‘Points off! Points off!’ ”

  “With a caravan we could make breakfast and have a cup of tea whenever we wanted.”

  “Yes,” John Angus says, “and it’d be easier on the dogs. Are we going to Wales, then?”

  “Aye.”

  “You’re very confident. How do you know I’ll make the Scottish team?”