An uplifting tale of one man and his dogs

Harford Logan has spent a lifetime working and winning trials with his Border Collies, but ask him what's so special about them and he's likely to look somewhere in the middle distance and eventually reply, ' Well, now. That's hard to put into a few words.' And that's why he has written this book. Sit back and sample a few chapters from this richly entertaining world where the sheepdogs are the heroes and the countryside the backdrop to some serious fun.

I. But it was the sheepdogs that were my real heroes. When my class was asked by the school master to draw what we would like to be when we grew up, my friends sketched themselves in the kind of jobs which were familiar to them during those war years – doctors, school teachers, ambulance drivers. My head was somewhere else entirely. I drew a picture of me walking over a hill with the aid of a well-made crook, a fine flock of sheep ahead and the best dog in the country at my side. ‘Nice drawing,’ says Master Curry, ‘but where’s your ambition, boy!’ giving me a sharp clip round the ear.

Maybe he didn’t appreciate that in that simple drawing I had included a champion sheepdog. Or maybe he just couldn’t see how anybody could be content to devote a lifetime to shepherding. He probably remained unimpressed when in a few years’ time that drawing was transformed into a picture of me and my dogs on the front of the Belfast Telegraph after I was a surprise winner of a major sheepdog trial. But then everyone has a different idea of success and what it takes to be happy. Mine’s always been fairly straightforward and even now, given the chance to go back to that classroom, I wouldn’t change a thing on that drawing.

II. As sheepdog trialling is now a worldwide sport with a high percentage of handlers enjoying it purely for fun, it is more and more important that competitors come to a trial for the right reasons. That is, understanding that it is a test of their practical skills as a handler and of their dog’s ability to control sheep in a simulation of a working environment. If it is approached just as a competition, or worse, as some form of dog obedience test, then I see a real danger for the future integrity of sheepdog trials and for the quality of the dogs being bred.

More and more judges at sheepdog trials also fall into what could be called the ‘hobbyist’ category, interested and enthusiastic about trials as a form of sport but perhaps not having a deeper practical base to inform their decisions. The danger for these judges is that they can be inclined to judge trials without sufficient reference to the severity of a fault in a working situation and so are in danger of focusing too heavily on technical misdemeanours, penalising and rewarding the wrong dogs and so jeopardising the trial’s relevance and fairness.

Without continued focus from judges on the practical merits and faults of a trial run, there is likely to be more and more demand for dogs bred especially for their obedience, but not necessarily their intelligence or control of the sheep. The danger of this trend could be that we lose the type of dog that has natural working ability and so have fewer and fewer useful dogs for the reality of hill and farm work. As an example, many of the top modern handlers prefer dogs that are very highly trained, that do just as they are told and are not able to run out to the sheep in a smooth wide curve without the sheep seeing it, sweeping round to be just behind them in a way that is both natural and effective in getting the sheep to move towards the handler. In sheepdog trial circles we call a dog that can do this a ‘natural Outrunner’. Yet, rather than rely on the talent of the dog in Outrunning, some handlers train the Outruns onto them, steering them with whistles all the way. I can understand this because a dog that you train to run out to the sheep according to a very tight set of commands in a trial environment can be controlled in his lines to the sheep better – and, as it currently stands, may win the trial as a result. But the weakness in this practice is that, because they win trials, they are being used as stud dogs to the extent that we are breeding obedient dogs, not necessarily those with natural ability and intellect.

This has made me think that it might be time to look again at the sheepdog trial format and rules of judging. I think we need to redress the balance and find a way to reward and so increase the appreciation of dogs demonstrating the ability and skill to think and act for themselves to the benefit of the handler/dog partnership. There are areas which in my view could be revised to really test the dog and handler in their ability to work together as a team in managing the sheep. I like the idea of the ‘Silent Gather’, where the dog is tested in its ability to bring the sheep to you with no commands. And I’m really not sure we need to put so much emphasis these days on the action that takes place in the Shedding Ring. I pick up on these suggestions later when I explain how I went about training one of my best dogs, Dick. I’m not suggesting that these are the right or only options, just a bit of starter for the kind of debate that I think is needed at this stage in the development of the sport – and before the pressures of competition overtake the underlying principles of trialling.

III. It is always a handler’s dream to find a puppy showing natural talent and the most important thing during early training is not to knock that natural talent out of the dog. Too much training creates robots. My preference is not to train dogs like soldiers so they do what they are told and nothing else. Let the dog use its natural talent and its brain and trust it to learn to think for itself. In work situations on the hill, a dog that can think for itself when out of the handler’s sight, is worth its weight in gold.

A lot of things in early training do not make much sense to a puppy, such as to lie down, stand, stay and come to the handler when called, but as time goes on they fall into place. You can begin to train a puppy in all of these commands at an early stage, well before the puppy is taken to sheep. This then gives the handler some control when the puppy is introduced to stock and makes life a lot simpler later on in training. Early training can be done in spare time, or in some cases in the house at night. This is an important stage in building an understanding between puppy and handler, helped by the fact that the puppy does not have the distraction of stock to take its mind off the task in hand.

Dick already knew how to walk on the lead so I gave him some basic training – to lie down, stand up and come to me when called. In the first few lessons I pushed him down to the ground and told him to lie down, then got him on his feet and made him stand still until I walked away a few paces. I then asked him to come to me and praised him when he did. He was then ready to be introduced to a few sheep in a small paddock for his initial training.

By now I had been able to study Dick and could tell what his natural traits were. I was beginning to decide the type of approach that I would need to take to train him – they are all individual.

With Dick, it took a few lessons on the sheep before he would listen well enough to stop and then to come away from the sheep on the ‘call off’ signal. With a dog with his enthusiasm I knew this was to be expected and didn’t let it affect the tone I used giving him his commands.

Dick was quite boisterous as a puppy and being so keen, he liked to get his own way. With my knee problems it was often difficult to be in the right place at the right time to correct him so I had to find a way to counteract his enthusiasm. An older dog I had at the time, Mickey, kept things under control, as he was happy to stay in one place until things were getting difficult for the young dog.

If Dick got a chance at all, he would like to be in amongst the sheep and, with me being slow, this was a problem. I even thought I might have to get someone to start this tough young dog as I was not getting between him and the sheep fast enough. But then I had the idea of driving a paling post into the middle of the paddock and tying a sheep to it. With the sheep confined to the post it was easy to keep Dick off as the sheep was more or less stationary. He did try a few times to get in and get a grip of the sheep but now I was able to stop him. As I did I would say, ‘What do you think you are doing?’ in a stern voice and he quickly got to know when he heard these words that I was not pleased with him and he kept back off the sheep.

IV. In a trial the Shed and Single is the final part of the course and is a test of how well the dog can hold the sheep in one spot. In the National and International qualifying rounds where there are only five sheep, two are marked with ribbons or collars. In the first Shed you have to separate off two of the three unmarked sheep from the group of five. In the second Shed or ‘Single’ you then have to separate one of the two marked sheep. In the Supreme Championship and World Trials five ribboned sheep have to be shed from the twenty. Each Shed attracts a maximum of ten points.

When I was teaching Dick to Shed, I started with a fairly large batch of sheep. I made an opening for him to come in and then turned him to the sheep that I wanted to drive off. This was always his last task of the day, so I would ask him to drive the sheep off to the gate to give him some purpose in what he was doing. After a few weeks when coming in on the Shed, he knew he had to take control and drive them off. When he was Shedding perfectly on the larger batch of sheep, I then introduced him to shedding six or eight sheep. After a few lessons on the smaller batch of sheep I then taught him to take a Single by stopping the last sheep.

A single sheep tests a dog more than any other work and it is something which I do not think we have enough of in trials nowadays. Taking a single sheep was one thing that Dick found difficult at the beginning. He was good at coming in on a split: for this his command was ‘Here, Dick’ and for the last sheep it was ‘This Yin’. I thought, ‘How can I make this single sheep easy for him?’ and in the end decided to put a langle on one sheep. Many people will not now know what a langle is, but these are made out of plaited stack rope with a loop on either end. This was attached to the hind leg and the front leg and was widely used in old style farming when sheep wire was not available and fences were not good. When the sheep were brought down from the hills at lambing time, they would be langled on the same side and changed to the other side weekly to keep their legs from being damaged.

When I put the langle on one sheep in the batch, she could not move as fast as the other sheep and as she was walking in a different way from the rest of the sheep, it was easy to draw Dick’s attention to her. So when I said, ‘This Yin,’ he soon got quite keen on this last sheep, mainly because of its strange movement. I would take the langle off the sheep after each lesson, but I always put it back on the same sheep for the next lesson. This meant that after a few days she was almost able to keep up with the other sheep, therefore making the job of taking the Single more difficult day by day. After about a week or ten days, I introduced Dick to taking the Single without the sheep being langled and in a short time he was Singling perfectly.

V. Judging at Doug Peterson’s trial turned into another of these unexpected dramas I seemed to be in the habit of running into. We were judging out of an open cattle trailer set on top of the hill, which had a great view right over the ranch house and all the motor homes set out in a big flat field down at the house. From this vantage point I watched as the skies started to get dark and then got really black. After a very short time folk began running to their motor homes for shelter. Within five minutes there was no one left in the open, except the chap that was competing and the lady beside me who was keeping the scores and doing the time-keeping. Both of us were still in the open trailer when all of a sudden there was a flash of lightening and sparks ricocheting off the bars of the trailer. Says I to the girl, ‘I think it’s time we weren’t here.’

But the rain was hammering down before we could tell the competitor on the field to stop, get our papers and things gathered up and get into the relative safety of the pick-up truck. I had never seen rain like it. After a very short time there was a wall of water coming down the glen to where the motor homes were all parked, washing out the fences and liberating Doug’s sows as it came.

There was a scramble to untie dogs from the motor homes otherwise they would have been drowned in the torrent that was now rushing through the field. Feeding utensils, deck chairs and sun umbrellas were being washed down a creek beside where the motor homes were all parked. That creek had been dry until this flash flood appeared. And in amongst it all, were Doug’s pigs, squealing and darting around like mad things in the mud.

Once folk had got to grips with the scale of the storm, they soon sprang into action and had tractors towing the motor homes up onto higher ground. I never saw a flood coming up so quick and such a drama ensue, but inside an hour the sun was shining bright again and the flood had gone down. But it took a lot longer to get Doug’s stray pigs gathered up and closed in so we could resume the trial.

VI. Early one morning when going to carry out a routine check of the sheep, I was faced with a heart-wrenching scene. Dick and I walked round the fields and came on dead sheep everywhere. Sheep were stuck all around the hedges where they had been savaged by local domestic dogs during the night and their wool was torn and spread all around. Some of those that were not dead were badly injured and had to be put down. One of these sheep was particularly special. She was born and bred at the farm and had just won First Prize Gimmer (a one-year-old ewe), Supreme Border Leicester Champion and Reserve Interbreed Champion at the previous Royal Ulster Show. To see the state of those sheep would have brought tears from stone.

The surviving sheep were understandably terrified, yet when they saw Dick, they began to creep out from the hedges and their hiding places and one by one gather around him. It was a strange and very moving sight which I will never forget. They had just been savaged by and lost many of their flock to dogs, so to most it would seem almost unbelievable that these same sheep should put their trust in another dog – and so soon.

But that morning they demonstrated the real respect they had for Dick, a vote of confidence for the way he had worked with and protected them over the months and years they had known him. I stood aside and watched as the sheep began to take comfort and become more settled in Dick’s presence.

I ran Dick in five Irish Nationals, five times he made the Irish Team, and three times he made the Supreme Championship, but I will always think of this scene with the frightened sheep as his greatest achievement – and a real illustration of why the sheepdog is as important as the handler in working with sheep. It’s a partnership, not a master-servant relationship. Remember that and you’ll reap the rewards.

To contact Agilitynet click here for full contact details.
Please do get in touch - we love hearing from you, even if it's only to tell us that one of the pages has gone wrong!