Dakota Journal

[ShoresDog]

Your explanation of "versatile" is perfect. It's now the definition of record, far as I'm concerned. Thanks! And thanks for your updates. It's such a great treat to find them here for a good quick read to start the day.

[Eileen Stein]

Hi Donald,

 

Interesting observations, but I can't agree with your thinking here, especially since it seems to contradict a lot of your other points:

 

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.

 

In the first place, while hill gathers in the UK are often managed from an ATV in the sense that the shepherd's butt may be on the seat of an ATV, the near-vertical or craggy terrain of much of the grazing land in the UK makes it impractical for ATVs to actually do the gathering. The dogs do the gathering, much as we see in David Kennard's video, "The Year of the Working Sheepdog." The same is true in the west, where the grazing area is vast and may have ravines or other terrain features that dogs can negotiate and ATVs cannot. This photo of Denise Wall's illustrates that very well. Also, even on easy terrain, the point is that a big outrunning dog saves you the NEED to gather with an ATV -- the need to spend your time and your fuel on a less-efficient method of gathering your sheep.

 

But my main problem is with your sentence, "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." What does that mean? Are you presuming that a "big outrunning dog" has no capacities other than doing a big outrun? That it's like a phillips-head screwdriver that would be of little use to you if 90% of the screws you work with are slot-headed? But even if it were true that 90% of your work was with slot-headed screws, you still need the phillips-head screwdriver for the other 10%. And more important, the working border collie is and should be -- as you note -- versatile. It's more of a full tool box than a tool. It should have both a big outrun and biddability. To meet the farmer/rancher's needs it should be more than a big outrunning dog, but it should BE a big outrunning dog. As you also say, our dogs enjoy a common gene pool. Would Tommy Wilson's dogs or their offspring be as desirable to a western rancher who uses his dogs to gather open range if he couldn't count on their being "big outrunning dogs"? If they had never been tested for their capacity to do big outruns? Heck, they wouldn't even be desirable to Tommy.

 

Border collies are unique in their ability to do big gathers. If that ability is not tested for, and bred for, it will be lost. If your fields are so small that your dog is never called upon in its daily work to do a big outrun, I would argue that it's MORE important, not less important, that he be tested for that ability in trials if you are considering breeding from him. After all, it's unlikely a farmer's dog will ever need to put sheep into a free-standing pen, or drive sheep through free-standing gates, but surely you wouldn't argue that trials with pens or gates on a fenceline would be as good a test of the sheepdog as the trials we currently use. Similarly, I can't accept that "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." Our best trials combine work at a great distance with work close at hand, independent work with precisely commanded work. Trials that test for the exceptional demands of sheepdog work over and above the everyday routine are what will keep our gene pool strong and our dogs versatile.

[jdarling]

The same is true in the west, where the grazing area is vast and may have ravines or other terrain features that dogs can negotiate and ATVs cannot. This photo of Denise Wall's illustrates that very well. Also, even on easy terrain, the point is that a big outrunning dog saves you the NEED to gather with an ATV -- the need to spend your time and your fuel on a less-efficient method of gathering your sheep.

 

I don't find the same to be true out here in the west. From my experience having lived out here, much of what I see that cannot be handled by ATV is handled on horseback. If the rancher has a dog, they generally have no idea what the dog is capable of, often just instructing the dog to "git 'em up" ... where the dog normally runs straight at them, eventually managing to get behind them after harrassing them for a bit, and then fetching them to the desired location. What I find is the trial folk out here have the opportunity to train large outruns on range ewes because there is a lot of land out here, and a lot of range ewes. The range ewes are generally rented from the Peruvians or whathaveyou for the trials, but I have yet to see one of the Peruvians enter any of those same trials with their dogs. I don't wonder why. Generally, when you see the shepherds with the huge flocks moving the sheep from one grazing area to another, there's a shepherd up front with his black and white dogs, then the huge flock of sheep with the LGDs in there, and then a shepherd at the rear with a couple of black and white dogs walking along in the back. The dogs aren't particularly eyed up or "working" unless they need them to actually do something.

 

From what I have seen, more often than not, when a rancher brings a dog to a trainer, the rancher needs more training / education than the dog -- simply for the fact that the rancher has no idea to what extent the dog can be of use.

 

Denise's photo is gorgeous ... no doubt. However, isn't that Denise's own dog?

[Eileen Stein]

From what I have seen, more often than not, when a rancher brings a dog to a trainer, the rancher needs more training / education than the dog -- simply for the fact that the rancher has no idea to what extent the dog can be of use.

 

I'm sure the situation you describe is very common. I would never dispute that there are many, many operations which could benefit from good dogs that are not in fact using dogs, or not using them to their full potential. At the same time, we certainly both know of ranchers who need and do use dogs with big outruns in their operations. My point was that, if we say, "Oh, big outruns aren't needed anymore, so there's no need to test for that capability in our dogs," then we are likely to end by creating a situation where a rancher will not in the future be able to obtain the kind of dog he can bring to a trainer and be shown the gathering capability the dog has and how he can make better use of it.

 

Denise's photo is gorgeous ... no doubt. However, isn't that Denise's own dog?

 

Beneath the picture, in the description of what's going on, Denise has written, "In the blanket of sheep pictured, there were three dogs working gathering and directing the sheep to the gate. There's one dog visible on the middle right. I don't know if it's my dog or not."

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Mayberry The Show Jockey

 

It isn’t really Mayberry, it’s Albion Illinois, but with its treelined brick streets, town center bandstand and folks on porches, it might as well be Mayberry and that’s what Mack and his friends called it as they grew up there. Mack waved at us from his mother’s front porch as we pulled up.

 

Mack Gilbert’s father raised the best Montadales in the midwest and Mack was showing in junior classes as soon as he could hang onto a halter. He became a shepherd and show jockey, tending people’s purebred flocks and showing them at Sedalia, Louisville and the National in Denver.

 

Anne used to show her Rambouiletts and that’s where we met Mack. His mother Edith tells me we met at Louisville but that was twenty years ago and her memory is better than mine.

 

We’d come ten hours from Missouri and figured on another ten hours tomorrow. 95 degrees. We were glad to get out of the car and walk to the town fairgrounds where the dogs could stretch out, run and meet Spot, Mack’s 12 year old Border Collie who told Luke - doggily, wordlessly:”This is my turf.”

 

“Anything you say, Boss,” Luke replied.

 

The sheep show world is like the dog show world if not more insular. While dog show breeding produces ordinary pets, many commercial sheep rearers avoid show breeding because of genetic problems of line breeding (incest) and breeding for extremes. Suffolks have spider syndrome, Hampshires are hidden Suffolki/Hamp crosses, polled Dorsets ( which breed out of season) have been so outcrossed to Columbiss, fall lambing dorsets are now rare. I remember one Suffolk show in the seventies where the judge came into the ring with a tape measure.

 

Show sheep are not without appeal: Buy a twenty thousand dollar ram, cross him onto a five thousand dollar ewe and produce two twenty thousand dollar yearling rams - right?

 

Well, er . . .

 

With a lifetime in sheep, Mack is a sought after show judge and has gigs lined up for state and county fairs, national events and Mexico.

 

Mexico?

 

“Hair sheep mostly.” he laughed. “They know how to treat a judge. After I finished they just peeled bills off a big roll. I said, “I’ll come back anytime (another laugh)” and they said, ‘How bout next week’? so I did.”

 

Mack laughs easily and often. He is bemused by the world and men’s follies.Seven years ago he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer: “one doctor said I had a ten percent chance to make it three years, another said four months. Fortunately” he laughed, “I was Disease of the Month, all these top doctors would get together and think about me. I didn’t think I would survive the surgery” (they removed one caratoid artery, half his neck, and a tumor on his spine). “I got down to 120 pounds but was booked to judge the National Suffolk Show in Reno “ (a basque owns the Gold Nugget Casino and for one night the showgirls are replaced by parading sheep and the audience has spit jars beside their complimentary cockitails). “Mack says, “It gave me something to look forward to.”

 

120 pounds in a body cast, neck brace and bandages, Mack judged the show. I’ve heard from others that it was the best, fairest judging in ten years. When I told Mack, he laughed.

 

Edith showed Anne the photo album from her trip. She and a friend had crammed a Ford Focus with all their gear (including a tent and two cots in case they had to camp) and spent weeks touring the west visiting Mack’s friends. Mack says, “They were Thelma and Louise thirty years older.” Edith won $1400 on the slots which paid for the trip and four new tires.

 

Her peach pie came out of the oven (Jiffee crust) with vanilla ice cream. We drank black coffee (Mayberry style).

 

After he felt better, Mack decided he and Spot should revisit old friends and placees he’d worked so they drove to Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and Colorado. Pics of Spot at Mount Rushmore, on a Wyoming ranch (“it’s a real ranch - 40 by 15 miles”), Spot in California. His son in law invited Mack to a rock concert in Golden Gate Park and afterwards, they had dinner wherea total stranger kept buying them rounds of drinks. Finally, the buyer came over and introduced himself. He'd mistook Mack for Guido Sarducci (the priest/comic on Saturday Night Live). “You made me laugh so many times” the man said. Mack crossed himself and said, “I’ll remember you to the Pope.”

 

Half in the bag, with long skinny moustachios and absent his cowboy hat, Mack does look like Guido Sarducci.

 

Spot was in most of the photos, several times looking off into the distance from the centerline of US 50 which runs into Ely Nevada and is billed as “The loneliest Road in America”

 

“You can drive for hours and not see another car,” Mack says. “It’s good for thinking.”

 

In the photographs Spot looks aloof and thoughtful but not particularly lonely.

 

Donald McCaig

 

 

 

.

[Donald McCaig]

Dakota Journal Home

 

It was hot and muggy when we rolled out of Illinois at 6:30 am. We drove down our lane at 6 that afternoon. It was cooler in the mountains. The sheepdogs renewed acquaintances with the guard dogs and Peg ran around like “Not in my Wildest Dreams!!!”

 

4825 Miles in 13 days, Anne and I were glad to get out of the car

 

Our Dakota Journal has ended. I hope you and your dogs will travel there one day.

 

Anne and Donald McCaig, Luke, June, Danny and Peg

[Mark Billadeau]

Welcome home Anne, Donald, and co.

Thanks for taking us along for the ride.

 

Mark

[Sue R]

Thank you, Donald, for a lovely trip!

[juliepoudrier]

Thanks Donald. I'm glad you've made it safely home and that you took the time to take us along! I do hope to make the Dakota trials trip someday.

 

J.

[bcnewe2]

Thank you for sharing. Your words really give beautiful mind pictures!

[Cynthia P]

Thanks Donald

 

I felt like you brought me with you. Wonderful job

 

Cynthia

[bc friend]

Donald, thank you for sharing and for giving us such vivid descriptions of your trip and the dogs!

[ItsADogsLyfe]

Thanks for the very interesting journal on your trip. I really enjoyed reading it. The pictures were great!

[MicheleS.]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about your trip. Thanks for sharing.

[Bordercentrics]

Thanks for taking us all along. I enjoyed travelling with you and your crew.

 

Kathy Robbins

[Tea]

I have pondered all these things often.

 

I ride a horse and take my flock out to forage everyday. I must ride in front because we may meet loose dogs, bikes and hikers. My LGD walk in front with the horse. He knows if someone is on the trail.

 

My dogs are in back. Mostly I cannot see them. I move about 120 at my peak during the summer and utilize the big 80 acres that is availible to me.

 

The sheep will stay there without a fence. But I normally must use one because of loose dogs. I utilize the grass in spring and summer and browse in winter.

 

I have to gather the flock with Sweep, and he has a natural outrun. For him it is easy. But if he would not work close on the trails or in the paddocks or in the rig. That would be tough for my buisness.

 

If he would not gather in the forest that also would be hard. But he does all these things.

 

Now Gunny does not have a natural big outrun. She is a tough little dog. The one I use for certain situations that call for less diplomacy.

But she is great on the trail.

 

However- If I have to take one dog, I take Sweep, even though he is young. Because it is easier for me to gather the fields.

And he will also work close.

 

 

 

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I wonder what dogs are made availible to ranchers? Also a person from South America working sheep for $ I don't think would spend it on trials as he is sending it home to his family.

[Tea]

Thanks for your writing!

 

I did enjoy it.