Dakota Journal

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Kerr Ranch Luke and June

 

The Kerr ranch sheep were spotted in the medicine tipi ring saddle between the butte and a steep rocky cone a half mjile from the handler’s post and five hundred feet higher elevation. A proper outrun bisected the cross drive and fetch gates and started to climb up and out toward the rim to the left of the saddle. Atop this, some dogs vanished over the back side (danger of fixing on the letout pen) and others traversed the slope right toward the sheep above them. Some kicked behind the conical cone, others traversed it, all vanished during the last moments. At this distance I could see the two horsemen and sometimes the foot setout. By their positions sometimes I could seen the sheep, sometimes not. They were a moving smudge. The outrunning dog would reappear briefly behind and above the smudge and then vanish behind the sheep. Next thing the handler knew was either the smudge grew very slightly more visible (coming properly downslope on the fetch line), or had bucked left and were racing down the crossdrive ridge as they did for June yesterday. Some dogs outran in three minutes, some took six; many got lost.

 

Yesterday Luke made a nice outrun and when the sheep lifted they scrambled up the butte and he failed to bring them. Luke never fails to bring his sheep but he’d failed once at Slash J and now again. I hadn’t liked his grip on his second Slash J run either. There are grips and grips.

 

Years ago, my Harry got into the top forty at Lexington 1 and after a season of trial breakdowns I discovered he had a severe heart murmur. In extreme exertion, the leaky heart doesn’t deliver enough oxygen to the brain and the dog becomes faint.

 

Looked like the same thing and I spoke to retired vet Jack Galt about Luke. Before his run I kept him quiet well away from the crowd and sent him calmly. Up he went, up, up - disappeared. I yearned for his dot on the horizon - There! There!. Behind the smudge and next thing I knew, the sheep crossed the saddle behind Luke and ran back to the letout. I whistled my dog off and walked to the judge’s trailer as Lyle told me I’d lost my sheep.

 

“Yeah. I’ve called him off.” I explained about Luke’s heart.

 

“It was the best outrun I’ve seen all day and he came around so nice.”

 

“He’s a hell of an outrunner.”

 

“This took the heart out of him,” she said.

 

It’s worth noting that Luke doesn’t really care if he ever makes one of those big sweeping beautiful outruns again; I care. Luke can run in smaller trials until his heart gets worse. He will travel with me, visit new fields, sniff unfamiliar sniffs and meet new gyps. He’ll never run in another big trial but the regrets are mine.

 

June ran second to last when the sun was low in the horizon and the sheep/smudge was even harder to see. The sunset made the metal pen glisten and the sheep which had been wary were warier. Many handlers lost their sheep at the turn around the post or pen - if they got past the judge’s trailer they were gone. There’d been two or beautiful runs earlier - Herbert Holmes was impeccable - but I’d guess half the handlers failed to score.

 

June lied again, promising to outrun left then trying to cross at my feet but I downed her, redirected, downed her redirected. “Just joking,” she said and shot off perfectly. I watched her up,up,up,up until she disappeared. Then I waited. Waited more. I didn’t see her reappear but the smudge - had it moved? Definitely! Was it June? Had to assume so. I gave a single walk up whistle to remind June she wasn’t alone and the smudge came dead straight. Dead straight. Dead Straight. Smudge became sheep. I didn’t give June one whistle for five hundred yards. She made the prettiest fetch I’ve ever enjoyed. They bucked at the panels and I miscommanded so they slipped by and now they were at the post. They thought to (a) run back up the field ( flee past the judge’s trailer © run back up the filed (d) escape down the field. June forestalled them. They lept with joy on the drive. I did not share their enthusiasm and June came behind me to flank very wide and keep them on the drive. I expected they’d kick low at the last instant so I flanked June below them to prevent it. Desperate wriggle at the drive panel but they went through and turned onto the crossdrive line. I glanced at my watch: three minutes and some. Not enough time to finish. Nice run; not as smooth as Herberts but in the ribbons if we got our crossdrive, didn’t lose them and penned. A crossdrive pre-panel wriggle but they went through and took off. June caught them but a time eating wide turn.

 

At most pens, one convinces the sheep the pen is inevitable - the lesser of the dog/man evils; not exactly an escape but the closest thing to it. The few successful pens (5 of 64?) at the Kerr trial were confrontational, the sheep bucking in the mouth of the pen covered by the swiftly precisely flanking dog with the handler dead still, flicking a crook tip maybe once and jumping to slam the gate after the dog wrestled them in.

 

One minute/ten. They bucked,. In the mouth. June working brilliantly . . .”Time!”

 

June floated serenely in a stocktub. I said something to her, doesn’t matter what. The sunset was a band of gray on the horizon. An old fat dog done good.

 

After I post this I’ll pack, drop by the trial field to say goodby to old friends and new acquaintances. The gang of four and I will leave for Havre Montana, an easy 8 hour shot. Anne arrives on the Empire Builder tomorrow pm.

 

 

Donald McCaig

[kelpiegirl]

GO June!!! Donald: This is the best commentary I have read!

[Sue R]

All I can say is, "Wow!". Thank you ever so much for sharing all of this with us. We are blessed.

 

Give those dogs a big pat if you are a patting kind of person - they more than deserve it for their efforts.

[Mark Billadeau]

Donald,

 

Keep 'em commin'; I've been enjoying the reports.

 

Mark

[urge to herd]

Amen, brothers and sisters. These reports are beautifully written, and so evocative. Your latest post about June and her sheep made me clap my hands in joy and let out a hoo-rah.

 

Keep em coming, yes, yes, yes!

 

Ruth

[Belleview]

Donald-

 

thank you. what a treat.

 

Lori Cunningham

Milton, PA

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Havre Montana Some pics

 

I haven't been able to upload pics so this is an experiment. The first pic is the Gang of Four near Sitting Bull's Last Camp, the second is Neenah Ellis with Peg

 

Donald McCaig

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Pics Slash J

 

Bev is the shy handler. I think Kelly Bradley is turning the post

 

Donald McCaig

[juliepoudrier]

Wow, it would be worth going just for the desserts!

 

J.

[NorthfieldNick]

Thanks for posting, Donald! Makes my sheep taking off down the road without me seem like small potatoes- they can't go too far without hitting ocean around here.

 

Julie, you need to move out here. Anyone who's been to a trial with me can tell you about my desserts

[juliepoudrier]

Got a job for me Ben?

 

J.

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Kerr Ranch pics

 

Bud's at the tipi ring. The setout was between the butte and the cone. Donald

[Donald McCaig]

Duplicate, sorry.

[Donald McCaig]

One September twenty years ago, Anne and I decided to vacation in the Outer Banks with her cousin Gary and his wife. On grass, our sheep needed no care and Pip, my first sheepdog, would work for anyone. A Charlottesville acquaintance loved our farm - I mean he LUVVED it - and was eager to farmsit.

I was uneasy when he showed up in his new Saab uncomfortably late the morning we were to leave and when he unfolded tinfoil to offer me some toot I almost called it off. But we were packed, Anne’s cousin was expecting us and we’d paid for the beach house upfront .

“The sheep are on grass; what can go wrong?” I told Anne.

“Lots,” Anne said.

When we came home, anxiously two days early, we breathed a sigh of relief. Barn still standing, house hadn’t burned down, the sheep were grazing quietly and Pip was fine. We thanked our farm sitter.

“Any time” he said. “I’d like to do it again. I REALLY love country living.” At the door he paused to clear up a small mystery. He said, ““I never knew sheep were lesbians.”

“Huh?”

“Oh yeah. That big ewe out there, she was humping all the other ewes. Two or three a day. Man, she was really into it.”

One of our rams had escaped the ram lot and spent our vacation week in sheepy dalliance. That year we had two lambing seasons instead of one.

After the “Summer of the Lesbian Ewe”, Anne and I never vacationed together.

 

Along the Canadian border, Montana’s highline is a patchwork of indian reservations and countless casinos. Havre, where I’m staying is a mini- Las Vegas. The inexpensive motel has an unused heated swimming pool, “Montana Lil’s” Casino and a weedy, broken glass back lot for dog walking. Havre is a railroad/oil/dry land farming town town whose strip (US 2) parallels the Great Northern tracks.

Anne arrived this afternoon. I was glad to see her.

 

Donald McCaig

[geonni banner]

The pics are great, so was the lesbian ewe story. Gah! What a nightmare...

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Bearpaw Battle field, Chinook Montana

 

There wasn’t anyone else on the interpretive trial which is a little more than a mile and loops around the creek bottom where a hundred Nez Perce warriors destroyed a surprise cavalry charge by four hundred vengeful 7th cavalry troopers and withstood a six day seige, with their wives and children under exploding shells from a hotchkiss gun. October 1877, four inches of heavy snow.

 

Everyone knows of Joseph’s surrender and the eloquent surrender speech. I knew some escaped the trap and fled forty miles after the soldiers had scattered their horses, Warriors, women and children, old and young, wounded and whole - on foot.I had not known hpw many reached safety with Sitting Bull in the Old Woman’s Land. One hundred and fifty. The 7th cavalry memorial was erected by the DAR, the indian memorial to Looking Glass, the chief who was killed here is ongoing.

 

 

Donald McCaig

[Sue R]

Like Culloden, and so many other battleground sites, it looks so benign now.

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Shield River Montana: Lemonade

 

When we moved from New York city to a remote appalachian farm, fewer than a dozen cars and pickup trucks passed by in a day ; none after ten o’clock at night. Many of our farmer neighbors were elderly bachelors: hunters, fishermen, ginseng gatherers who farmed like men half their age and could still make a showing at the dance Saturday night. Our best friends - Dan and Jill Pender - were urban newcomers like ourselves. But they actually KNEW something about livestock and country living. Without the Pender’s help and mentoring I don’t think we would have made it. We made hay together, bought used farm equipment together and when we had a lamb having trouble, we called them.

 

They became sheep breeders who had a national reputation for high quality animals.

 

Ten years after we arrived, we were pretty well integrated into our tiny (150 people in the zip code) community, and the Penders had two kids (Emma and Rob) when their marriage started falling apart. It was a noisy. painful disintegration - they loved each other so much and so wanted to stay together but they just couldn’t make it work. There were storms and scenes and departures, and reconciliations until everybody along the dirt road, old farmers and newcomers alike, were involved. We were neighbors and frineds: we needed each other..Everybody worried about the kids. They stayed with us sometimes when their parents were in town seeing a councilor.

 

They were honest people and Lord how they tried. They saw therapists and they saw counselors, they did the best they could. For a few weeks one spring, it looked like their marriage just might hold together. It might work.

 

And on a bright May morning, the two kids set up a lemonade stand beside the dirt road where a dozen vehicles passed on a busy day . Their had an icy cold pitcher and glasses and a sign: Pender Family Lemonade: Five Cents.

I’d hauled lambs to market that morning and pulled over on my way home. The lemonade tasted pretty good. “Fresh squeezed,” Emma anjnounced.

Others stopped too. Every rattletrap pickup that came down that road stopped because the neighbor farmers had a sudden hankering for something from a lemonade stand they might have seen in a Norman Rockwell cover for the Saturday Evening Post but never expected to see beside this dirt road in the mountains.

The Penders moved out to Wyoming hoping a new challenge - building a ranch - would bind them together. It didn’t. Sometimes love isn’t enough.

We were bereft. IIt felt like our family had failed too.

But in the middle of an bad time in their lives two kids set up a lemonade stand beside a country road that had never seen a lemonade stand. And every glass they poured glistened with hope. And every glass was fresh squeezed.

 

 

Twenty five years later we crossed and recrossed the Shield River beside Montana’s Crazy Woman Mountains. You never forget the people with whom you were young. The Pender kids had grown up - she was married and a teacher, he edited a poetry magazine. They’d visited us and Anne had spent two weeks in Seattle with their mother. Both those kids had come back to our valley to see where they’d grown up and Anne had spent two weeks in Seattle visiting her old neighbor. We’d heard rumors and stories about their father but hadn’t spoken since he took his family west.

 

It was a beautiful afternoon. We’d come down through the Fort Belknap reservation where gas stations are a hundred miles apart and paused at a coffeehouse in Livingston to catch up on our email.

 

“Montana Gates” are common awkward constructions- four strands of barbed wire attached to a skinny post wired to solid poss. Neat metal gates - just like Virginia - announced Dan Pender’s ranch. Lush green meadows in the shadow of the mountains. His guard dog left the sheep long enough to greet us.

 

Like us, our old friend was a quarter century older. Like us, he hadn’t changed. We sat in his kitchen talking about new books, new sheep, new dogs and old times. The door was left open so the gang of four rushed in and out accompanied by Dan’s Bassett Hound, Mollie. They ran as much as they wanted until June found the biggest softest chair and settled down with a grunt.

 

Our visit was astringent and satisfying as lemonade on a hot country day.

 

Donald McCaig

[Donald McCaig]

duplicate

[juliepoudrier]

OMG, what gorgeous country! I'm really enjoying your dispatches--thanks for sharing!

 

J.

[alligande]

Thank you for sharing your trip, it is a wonderful account of places I will probably never travel to and of people I would never meet.

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Cody Wyoming 32 hours from home

 

The Big Bear Motel was western pet friendly, too small for me,Anne and the gang but a very nice acre of wasteland right outside the door until I realized it was the lip of a three hundred foot precipice descending to a river.

 

The Buffalo Bill Museum is splendid - terrific photos of Lakota warriors in full tribal regalia in a 5th avenue hotel. Those boys had fun. Rooms of plains indian decorative art. Anne was taken by the war clubs, smooth,sleek, decorated (one had a mirror in the head, reflections being spirit power, with a sharp iron wedge just where it would do the most good. Like getting brained by a Modigliani.

 

Donald McCaig

[Donald McCaig]

Sand Hills Nebraska, The Trouble and Strife

 

Because the Buffalo Bill Museum was so excellent, we didn’t get out of Cody until noon, After the Wind River Cannon, Wyoming became hard alkali desert. One town had pop: 1, another was engagingly named “Hell’s Half Acre”. .Offagain onagain rain and mist. Despite the ruler straight road, 75 mph was unpleasant. Shoshoni Wyoming is as ugly as Midland Texas.

 

It got prettier, if no drier after Casper and into Nebraska. My energy is high from dawn to noon and Anne took the wheel as it got daark. It was raining so hard when we unloaded at the motel; the gang clustered around our legs and wouldn’t pee. Peg hadn’t emptied since morning. Fortunately a restaurant was beside the motel. Unfortunately it was Country Cooking. Chjildren, please avoid restaurants with washable plastic menus.

 

Leaving my half eaten meal? product? on the plate, I went back to the motel, pulled on a sleep mask and shivered. Anne got Peg out between storms.

 

I was up at four to gas the cruiser and find our coffee.

 

The cruiser jerked when I tapped the gas and wouldn’t roll freely.

 

 

Uh-oh. The transmission has been rebuilt twice ( the Overdrive band is too skinny and breaks but the car is driveable without it). This didn’t feel like an overdrive band - it felt like something weird was happening in the tranny’s innards. I’ve rebuilt a couple motors but transmissions are a mystery So. Okay. 26 hours from home. The towns big enough to support a gas station are seventy-five miles apart.

 

It’s ranch country. Yippee ti yi yay.

 

Saturday noon, most farm/ranch suppliers close until Monday. Every one of these 300 pop towns has a guy who can fix a transmission - the wrecker driver will know him. But he won’t have parts for a twenty year old Ford transmission and he won’t get them in until Tuesday or Wednesday next.

 

No big problem for humans - Anne can fly home. Four dogs is a big problem.

 

 

How far could we get? If we got to Illinois, Rod Crome (our next stop) could help. Who else? Isn’t trainer Jill Morstad in Nebraska? Warren Buffet’s in Nebraska but I don’t think Warren has a kennel and anyway I don’t know him personally. Far as I know, Warren Buffet’s a cat person.

 

We loaded up. Maybe we could get to Illinois. I didn’t tell Anne any of this: no sense both worrying when one can worry for two.

 

The cruiser engine hummed but the cruise control kept kicking out on hills and the car didn’t have enough punch. About ten miles out of town a red light popped up on the dash.

 

It was the god damned parking brake light! I pulled onto the shoulder.

 

“I meant to tell you I put it on,” Anne said.

 

I never use the damned thing. Last night, as she parked at the motel, Anne had tapped it. “There. We’re here. That’s done.”

 

Good tranny, defective parking brake brake light. When I released the brake, the cruiser sighed relief. Donald is a dope. Repeat after me: Donald is a dope. Thank you, I feel better now.

 

Donald McCaig

[Sue R]

The car feels better, and you feel better knowing it feels better, and you'll know to check the parking brake in the future...

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Mound City Missouri The Versatile Border Collie

 

No place is more dog safe than a sheepdog trial. Other sheepdoggers don’t pester your dogs, no “ootchy-cootchy-coo”s . Vehicles are slow and dog-aware. Which is why Peg didn’t get clipped the last day at the Kerr Ranch when she ran to greet a white pickup. She greets visitors on the farm and though we don’t like it we’ve not tried to cure her. Something about that white truck spelled “visitor” in Peg’s canine brain.

 

On this journey, Peg, a perfectly nice dog, has been more worry than the other three dogs combined.

 

The trial dogs are versatile and Peg isn’t. Not Peg’s fault. She hasn’t had trial dog training - which includes mannerliness - nor the rich life experiences Luke, June and Danny have enjoyed. (Danny may be a dickhead on sheep, but he’s fine to travel with).

 

I knew Janet Larsen and sold her a pup once (bad story). Janet’s “The Versatile Border Collie” is, finally, an apologia for conformation showing. If what’s key to a Border Collie, it’s defining characteristic, is its ability to win multiple titles, and the most prestigious title is “Ch”, title chasing is mated to conformation.

 

Border Collie versatility is more interesting than that.

 

Peg’s fine at home on the farm among her familiar pack but her experience (and training) haven’t prepared her for the bigger world. When Peg rushed to greet that truck, the trial dogs dropped on command. They didn’t care about white trucks anyway.

 

I believe that many/most dogs never leave familiar environs because their owners, having never taken them anywhere, cannot take them anywhere. Boarding kennels fill when the family goes to the beach/lake/mountains/National Parks.

 

When I started getting out with my dogs I noticed an odd phenomenon. Every region has a handful of trialists who dominate competition. Yet at the Finals these same handlers drop way down in the ranks. It’s the home team advantage.

 

A couple years back,, some British sheepdog handlers and dogs – they were the cream – were invited to bring their dogs to Utah for the Soldier’s Hollow trial.

 

Where they were skunked. Utterly skunked.

 

Sheepdogs (and I dare say humans) work within their known world and that world varies as importantly as, say, Manhattan isn't Keokuk, isn't Dover, England isn't Williamsville Virginia.

 

 

We routinely underestimate the importance of gestalt, assuming that because we can work in one context we can work as well in a different one. My Williamsville neighbors tell me, with utter seriousness that they won’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t ever visit Sodom, Gomorrah or New York City. When we moved to our Appalachian Mountain farm, some New York City friends were afraid to visit us.

 

Gestalt is life or death to every intelligent mammal. One must not misread one’s environment.

 

Stevie Wonder stays in Holiday Inns because the blind singer can navigate identical motel rooms. Food and motel chains don’t succeed because of exceptional cuisine or accommodations: sameness is their virtue. McDonald’s coffee in Mound City will taste the same as their coffee in Cody. We top mammals can afford to be lazy. We needn’t be alert or make complex decisions to be fed or housed.

 

Unlike McDonalds; no two sheepdog trials are alike. For the dog, the plantlife is different, the scents are different, the livestock is different, the soil is different, the humidity iis different, the sky is bigger or smaller . . .

 

And the handler may be asking for different skills.

 

Trial gestalt affects handlers. At these big western trials, better eyesight would be an boon. Experience with range sheep is a must. A dog accustomed to enormous outruns is not an extra cost option - he’s standard equipment.

 

The westerners believe their trials are the true test of the sheepdog because at great distances so much more depends on the dog. There is something jaw-dropping beautiful about a dog throwing his entire self into an 800 yard outrun.

 

While I admire a dog that can work/think on its own, I can’t agree. If the final test of a sheepdog is its usefulness as a farmer/rancher’s tool the big outrunning dog is rarely the tool of choice. Farmer’s needs have changed here and in the UK. Most sheepdogs on western sheep operations are handled by Peruvian or Mongolian herders and big gathers are rare. Hill gathers in the Uk (and here) are often managed from ATV’s. In the east, most sheep are reared on homestead flocks which need precise work but rarely a dog that can outrun more than 300 yards. What these homesteaders need in a dog is biddability - swift learning and obedience to command.

 

In short, New England trials with their shorter outruns and well dogged sheep are as practical a test of the useful sheepdog as the big western trials with their huge outruns and sheep that have rarely seen a dog before the day.

 

And our dogs, east or west coast enjoy a common gene pool.

 

Tommy Wilson (Virginia) has a dog from Dennis Gelling(British Columbia) and,

Dennis will get one of Tommy’s Roy pups. A pup from Oregon may find itself on a New Hampshire hobby farm. A New England pup may end up in West Texas.

 

We breed to the sires and bitches that win sheepdog trials and the best of them win trials east and west. They are the versatile Border Collies

 

Amanda Milliken’s and Beverly Lambert’s dogs will whup you whether the gestalt rewards wide running handling of wild sheep or the exacting precision of a NEBCA Trial.

 

Yes, Amanda and Beverly are exceptional handlers, but more importantly they and their dogs have competed from Texas to Quebec. And unlike Peg, their dogs are versatile.

 

 

Peg’s like the boy in the bubbles - unable to develop her capacities because she’s never been exposed to opportunities or threats.

 

I believe our dogs have capacaties beyond our everyday understanding. I believe that when a young dog whose been through one hill lambing fetches a higher price than one who has merely been “trained”.

 

Sheepdogger culture has always valued the dog’s experience - pet dog trainers train pups, we bring the pup to trials and introduce it to its world.

 

I think we can and routinely do increase our dogs’ natural intelligence and that the most versatile dogs have the ability to draw on their wealth of experience to make intelligent, novel decisions in the world.

 

Some months ago I took June to a South Carolina kindergarden class. The teacher, wisely advised: “Children if any of you don’t want to be near the dog, sit at this table” while the other kids lined up and, one by one, leaned over to pat June’s belly. “:Now wash up, Billoy.” Now wash up, Jill.”

 

June lay flat on her back while twenty small children patted her belly. June never lies on her back, she doesn’t like having her belly patted. I doubt she’d roll over for me if I COMMANDED her. She understood what was needed and did her duty.

 

Unlike Peg, June’s versatile.

 

Donald McCaig